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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?
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. Bas...
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 ...
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 Int...
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 doe...
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 exc...
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 pr...
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 Difference...
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...
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 wh...
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 ass...
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 i...
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? Ta...
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 th...
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 on...
The company I'm working for is looking to hire a senior developer with more experience than me, and they expect me to do the technical part of the interview. I've only been programming a few years and am not sure I have the knowledge needed to evaluate the coding skills of someone who has greater understanding/experien...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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 hashe...
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...
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.
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...
There have been many questions with good answers about the role of a Software Architect (SA) on StackOverflow and Programmers SE. I am trying to ask a slightly more focused question than those. The very definition of a SA is broad so for the sake of this question let's define a SA as follows: A Software Architect guid...
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) r...
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 “look at this awesome piece of code I’ve written”. Yet we can get very defensive when asked to submit items of work for code reviews or get negative comments from other p...
Given a long method with Pac-Man ifs, would it be wise to: Break down code blocks into regions. 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 a...
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 rela...
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:...
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 Basi...
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 ...
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 ...
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 uni...
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 pra...
This is in continuation to my previous question where I asked is it necessary to learn algorithms and data structures. I feel yes it is. Now I work in an environment where I won't ever get the chance to learn it by experimenting or practically or in any assignment. What is the right approach like the right books, right...
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 ju...
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 n...
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...
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”...
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 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: ...
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.
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 appl...
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....
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...
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? He...
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?
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/… 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.
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 "od...
As a freelance programmer: What is your process for gathering requirements from a client? 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,...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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?
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...
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 involve...
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...
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 s...
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 = getStr...
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?
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 ...
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 c...
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?
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/pa...
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...
(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 d...
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 i...
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...
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 change...
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 innumer...
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 th...
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?
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 user...
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 si...
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 arg...
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 i...
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 exce...
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 ...
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 Do...
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 GU...
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...
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 ...
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 runn...
When building a parser to a programming language what I earn and what I lost choosing one or the other?
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 ou...
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?
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 ...
Im really not getting the idea: What is Detailed Design. Why use Detailed Design. Advantages/Disadvantage of using Detailed Design. Any alternative methods other than using Detailed Design. Could some one please guide/explain me ?
As I have had it explained, the open/closed 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...
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 kn...
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 ...
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 colu...
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...
"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...
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...
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...
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 : p...
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...
As part of a continuing quest for knowledge, I'm spending some time this week learning the basics of F# as an introduction to functional programming. I think I am understanding the construction of software under this model and some of the proposed benefits, but am still a little fuzzy on the real-world use cases. I was...