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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 datab...
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 fu...
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 In this particular case, the web answers were incomplete, outdated or plain wrong.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...
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 WinForm...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 f...
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, c...
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) ...
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-dimens...
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 princip...
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...
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...
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 work...
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 critici...
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...
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...
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 sho...
I am not convinced by the idea that developers are either born with it or they are not. Where’s 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 ...
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 o...
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_j...
I recently asked a question on SO about Python web frameworks: https://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 fra...
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 ?
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...
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..
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...
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?
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.
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...
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...
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 Proj...
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 (...
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 c...
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 r...
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?
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 sh...
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. Ther...
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...
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...
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 t...
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?
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...
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.
A local college is teaching C++ to first year college students (16 years old) with no prior programming experience. As first programming language, is C++ suitable?
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 w...
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?
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 reprod...
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.
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 l...
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 bo...
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 a...
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 ...
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...
It seems to me that the programming industry is in a race to the bottom. If we take the practices of: Not taking time to implement best practices Using other's people code as much as possible (custom code as a liability) Using increasingly higher level languages to improve productivity GUI based development "tools" t...
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 o...
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 ...
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. How does a query optimiser work? If a database was performing badly how would you use the performance logs to find out the problem...
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...
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 so...
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) Loo...
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 pr...
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, p...
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. Curr...
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...
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? ...
I learned at the University some steps to model a database: Model the problem using the Extended Entity-Relationship Model. Extract the functional dependencies Apply some algorithms to normalize the database (3NF or Boyce-Codd) Create the database I'm studying Computer Science and since I received that course I'm w...
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 detect...
Practically every text on code quality I've read agrees that commented out code is a bad thing. The usual example is that someone changed a line of code and left the old line there as a comment, apparently to confuse people who read the code later on. Of course, that's a bad thing. But I often find myself leaving comme...
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?
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 ...
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 wh...
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 egg...
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 ...
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 bl...
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? Excep...
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.- sourc...
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?
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. While we made that leap forward, developers are still free to do as they please for testing their code. One issue that we h...
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... Who pays best? Any regulations? Any problems with getting the app approved by Microsoft Market? If you chose Admob: Which plugin do y...
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 f...
(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 practice...
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 ...
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 s...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 im...
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?
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 lan...
How does the web app http://20q.net work? Can I write a similar program, in a smaller scale, and if yes how?
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 us...
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 comp...
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 trans...
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...
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...
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...
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 hap...
When I changed my Facebook password yesterday, by mistake I entered the old one and got this: 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 [s...

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