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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: C...
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?
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 t...
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?
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?
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?
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 ...
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?
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 y...
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 tryin...
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?
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?
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 ...
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 run...
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?
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?
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...
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:\>...
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.
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 fr...
I find myself lagging behind on new skills, techniques, language features, etc, and I am finding the time to do so is lacking. Between work, professional, personal and family obligations, I'm lucky to find a few stray hours here and there to focus on any new technologies or reading that I want or need to do. I do make ...
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 discussing 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 so...
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...
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 Ja...
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 immer...
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 de...
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> /// Descrip...
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...
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 be...
A question with absolutely no relevance to myself: How would a programmer with a stellar SO reputation (like 30k+) market his or herself to poential employers/investors who have never heard of SO? In other words, how can one describe SO in a few sentences that will make a high reputation sound impressive at an intervie...
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?
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.
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...
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.Windo...
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 th...
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 ...
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 ...
What are your strategies to improve the flow experience when doing work?
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.
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 diffe...
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 th...
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...
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...
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...
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 sou...
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 ...
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? ...
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 fo...
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 in...
Is it still worth it to protect our software against piracy? Are there reasonably effective ways to prevent or at least make piracy difficult?
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?...
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 underpay...
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.
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...
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 wo...
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? I have already read the technical reasons for why ORMs are so difficult to write from this Stackoverflow post: https://stackoverflow.com/qu...
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, com...
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 ...
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 avail...
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 goo...
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 exc...
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 imp...
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'...
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’t afford having designers and UX experts, programmers have to do almost everything in the software. But these interfaces are rarely intuitive (the...
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...
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 ...
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)...
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 inst...
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.)
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 ...
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 ...
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 goi...
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 les...
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. T...
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 cho...
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 agai...
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 creat...
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...
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 everythi...
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 "Gödel, 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. Is the content still...
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 ...
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 t...
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...
It seems a bit of a controversial subject to document everything, including the "JavaBean" syntax of getters and setters for fields: People say its needlessly long and repetitive breaking DRY (don't repeat yourself), that the naming convention should explain everything, and it clutters code/documentation. Sometimes tho...
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?
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
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?
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...
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?
In a message to comp.emacs.xemacs, Jamie Zawinski once said: Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. I've always had trouble understanding what he was getting at. What does he mean by this? Update The answer that I'm looking for is one whi...
What free UML authoring tools do you use and why is it better than others?
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...
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, pyt...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 de...
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 freq...
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 le...
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 projec...

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