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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...
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, foll...
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 i...
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...
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"> ...
I'm a PHP/Python programmer learning Java and C#(.NET). My main development OS is windows 7 but I've used Linux and I currently dual-boot 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 and I don't kno...
What skills, knowledge and talents should a junior programmer aim to obtain in order to be qualified to become a team leader?
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 s...
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 ...
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?
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?
Do good programmers need to have syntax at the tip of their tongue when writing code? What do you make of them if they google for simple stuff online? Are they good or bad(maybe they know where to look for)? Should programmers have a good memory? Is this a trait for a good programmer?
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 ...
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 pr...
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...
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 compone...
I completed this website 4 months ago. (I would like to keep the website anonymous - if this post comes up on google search by customers, it will have a negative impact on their business). We did several iterations, the client was very demanding (and nosy), I complied with every single thing that was wanted, including ...
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 develop...
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 o...
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 ...
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...
I know how we start with JavaScript, we cut-and-paste a snippit to gain a little client-side functionality or validation. But if you follow this path in trying to implement rich interactive behavior, it doesn't take long before you realize that you are creating a Big Ball Of Mud. So what is the path towards expertise i...
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 class...
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...
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 sho...
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 eve...
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 at...
Take a large company, formed through many iterations of mergers and reorganizations. This company produces lots of different products that are all targeted to a specific industry. Most products share similar characteristics, such as communication standards and certification and safety requirements. But there is no unif...
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 li...
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. While this questio...
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?
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...
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 amou...
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 h...
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 infiltr...
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: What kind of language constructs have you seen that help improving cache usage? How to innovate on cache usage since most s...
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 m...
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 fu...
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% li...
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 m...
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 be...
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 ...
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) What is REST? What position it occupies in web architecture ecosystem? How tightl...
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?
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 ...
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 figur...
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.
Is it must that every developer should know XML? How important is XML for a developer? Any suggestion...
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 in...
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 ...
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 o...
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 no...
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 Agi...
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/serve...
Long time back, when I was reading my introductory programming books on (Basic, Pascal, C/C++), one thing that was emphasized is you can't become a professional programmer over night or over few weeks. It takes time to grasp programming and to apply it for solving problems and developing applications. Now, once someone...
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); // ...
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?
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 be...
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.
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?
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 ho...
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 under...
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 d...
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 c...
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 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 ...
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 t...
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.
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 litt...
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...
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 te...
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?
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...
I have read a lot of threads about functional programming languages lately (almost in the past year, in fact). I would really like to pick one and learn it thoroughly. Last [course] semester, I have been introduced to Scheme. I loved it. Loved the extreme simplicity of syntax, the homoiconicity principle, the macros (h...
This is just a wondering I had while reading about interpreted and compiled languages. Ruby is no doubt an interpreted language since the source code is processed 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 machi...
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 com...
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 requ...
What is a situation while coding in C# where using pointers is a good or necessary option? I'm talking about unsafe pointers.
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 ha...
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 ...
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...
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,...
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 ...
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.
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 ...
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'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 ...
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 resour...
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 co...
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...
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. ...
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. I suppose any competent programme...
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?
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.
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, 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. Even I responded the emails, I maintain...
In an IT project: Who should participate in time estimation? Developer, team leader, scrum master and etc? Whose vote should be counted most?
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 com...
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?
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 t...
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?