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Is there a software license that allows free access to source code, but does not allow redistributing any binaries, either direct from the source code or modified source code for a limited time? The idea being much like a open source software patent; the original developer has the exclusive right to sell and distribute...
Consider the need to simulate a set of entitities in an accurate way. All entities exist in an artificial timeline. Within 'steps' of this timeline, all entities can do certain operations. It is imperative that timed events, are handled accurately, and not in processing order. So simple threading isn't a proper simulat...
I'd like to build a web service similar to Kickstarter that allows users to pledge money to an idea, tho I'm unsure how I can implement this kind of payment system. If the the idea receives a specified amount of money, then the donors are charged. If it doesn't, the donors are not charged. I've done some preliminary...
Very often I'm working on small projects only for myself. I'm working on one machine, but recently I thought about using some kind of version control nevertheless. This would have some benefits as for example: I don't have to care anymore for local backup Mistakes can easily made undone History can be maintained But ...
Should I guarantee or add a warranty clause to my contract in the event code breaks or an anomaly occurs outside the client's hand or act of God? If so, what should that language say?
I am looking to integrate a live auction component (similar to BigDeal.com) to a website. I generally program using PHP. What is the best plan of action with this type of project (Timer, live bids..)?
Fairly recently I started maintaining my own open source JavaScript library. I created it to solve a pretty specific need but fairly regularly see questions that can be solved (in whole/part) by using my library. I post my answer and make sure to always include that I maintain the library. I feel for open source projec...
I've worked on both Mac and Windows for awhile. However, I'm still having a hard time understanding why programmers enthusiastically choose Mac OS X over Windows and Linux? I know that there are programmers who prefer Windows and Linux, but I'm asking the programmers who would just use Mac OS X and nothing else, becau...
I'm a beginner programmer and all I've worked with so far are console applications in C++. Coding wise, how is the graphical side of programs created? I understand the logic that I am using from console apps will be the same, but how do programmers create the graphics that this logic is then used in? I know this is sor...
What is the deal with functional programming? I see talk about it a lot but to be honest I've never found them at all useful. Why do so many universities apparently teach them?
Are there any canonical sources for learning how to structure multi-threaded programs? Even with all the concurrency utility classes that Java provides I'm having a hard time properly structuring multi-threaded programs. Whenever threads are involved my code becomes very brittle, any little change can potentially break...
I know that Android uses the Java language with a limited Java SDK and that Google claims it isn't Java. But is it right to say that Android is a Programming language? Or is it more right to say that Android is a framework in Java? Or is both true?
Dear programmers, as part of my final year university project, I am conducting research into what makes programmers prefer to program for Android as opposed to other mobile operating systems. The description does not need to be detailed however, I am trying to find patterns between programmers to determine what propert...
This has happened to most of us... You come to work one day. Everything seems normal - the sun is shining, birds are chirping, but you notice a couple of weird things on your way to work that remind you of the déjà vu cat in the Matrix. You get into the office and there are a lot of phones ringing - but it could just ...
Please share your views on the code review process. If someone gave a code snippet and asked you to review that code, then what are the major things you will focus on that code Review process? For instance, I will check if any dead code is available in that code, other than checking dead code, what are the key elements...
I have always had this question in my mind and I would really be happy to get an explanation for this. Is it only me or do you also feel the same way that it's hard to find anything on MS site. For example, every time I need to download .NET framework I have to Google it. You never know what you can download, no catego...
As a follow up to my prev question: What is the best aproach for coding in a slow compilation environment To recap: I am stuck with a large software system with which a TDD ideology of "test often" does not work. And to make it even worse the features like pre-compiled headers/multi-threaded compilation/incremental lin...
If you have a number of years experience in working with Java and a number of years experience in working with C# and .NET, I would value your opinion on software development productivity differences between these two environments. One of our customers is considering replacing their existing software solution. As the r...
We have been using Hudson for quite a while and we loved it. Now many Hudson-developers have "left the building" to create their own: Jenkins (which means the project has been forked). As Hudson/Jenkins users, we are now worried whether we should opt for the original "big and stable" producer Oracle, or the "small and ...
I need a way to implement a fast lookup algorithm / system to find users very quickly in a multi-level department and multi-level employee/manager relation organization structure. Departments can have any level of departments and users directly connected to departments. User are connected to departments and other users...
I came across this Wikiepedia article which says that using interfaces for defining constants is not a good thing. Solution suggested there is to define constants in a final class and use static import. That works for Java. I come from the PHP world which does not have the "import" thing. So, what is the acceptable so...
Following on from a previous thread that had a link to TekPub, I have just had a quick look and I think it looks pretty impressive. Are any of you guys subscribers and if so would you recommend it? I am mainly interested in general software design and, as a language, C# and it's features. Is there much content poste...
Let's assume the situation where a team of four developers is building an application. During the testing phase, bugs are reported by users. Who should fix them? The person who committed the erroneous code, or anyone who is free? What is preferred approach in agile development (scrum)?
We use compilers on a daily basis as if their correctness is a given, but compilers are programs too, and can potentially contain bugs. I always wondered about this infallible robustness. Have you ever encountered a bug in the compiler itself? What was it and how did you realize the problem was in the compiler itself? ...
We know of Linus' law: With enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow In general, people seem to say that open-source software is more secure because of that very thing, but... There are many small OSS projects with just 1 or 2 developers (the cathedral model, as described by ESR). For these projects, does releasing the s...
I have a "real" project I'm working on to make money from, and a side project that is vastly more interesting. I'm having a problem where every time I go to work on my "real" project, all I can think about is ideas for my side project. How do you guys deal with that? Just power through the real work?
I have this open source code with MIT license that uses an Apache 2.0 licensed library. I want to include this in my project, so it can be built right away. In the point 4 of that license explains how to redistribute it: excerpt: 4 . Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Wor...
What are some Best Practices for refactoring and renaming in team environments? I bring this up with a few scenarios in mind: If a library that is commonly referenced is refactored to introduce a breaking change to any library or project that references it. E.g. arbitrarily changing the name of a method. If projects ...
When you interrupt the work on some code (be it because you have to work on something else or go on vacation or simply because it is the end of the day), once you close that Visual Studio project, what is your preferred way to remember what you want to do next when you start working on that code again. Do you set a Vi...
Let's say you're in a computer store looking at 10 laptops, you want to really compare the system's capabilities. What will be an efficient "your fav language goes here" script that will allow you to do this? As an example, when I go to the store I usually open a macbook and a pro's terminal and write an equation in py...
I have worked on several ordering systems. Every one of them has tracked the shipping and handling as part of the order header rather then tracking it as a line item. To me, it would make more sense to keep them with the line items, even if the information is not displayed that way to the user. What are the reasons for...
Sometimes I end up writing unit test cases for code that other developers have written. There are occasions when I really don't know what the developer is trying to do (the business part) and I just manipulate the test case to get the green line. Are these things normal in the industry? What is the normal trend? Are t...
I've given a few talks recently and I have not found a good way to make slides. Here are a few desirable characteristics for programming slides: They're slides. A standard emacs buffer won't do it. They have syntax highlighting for code. They support basic formatting, like font size and color and bullets. No fancy ani...
I do not know any programming languages at all. I will self teach myself and need to know the best place to do so where I can learn from a most basic level. Where is a great place to begin learning a language? What language is best to learn first? Is it silly to learn Ruby first? Here, I came across someone saying ...
Here's an example with a Flash project, but I'm sure a lot of projects are like this. Suppose I create an image with Photoshop. I then export this image as a jpeg for integration in Flash. I compile the fla as an asset library, which is then used in my Flash Builder project to produce the final swf. So it goes like : p...
I just had a technical phone screen w/ a start-up. Here's the technical questions I was asked ... and my answers. What do think of these answers? Feel free to post better answers :-) Question 1: how would you represent a standard 52 card deck in (basically any language)? How would you shuffle the deck? Answer: us...
I have a blog where users can post comments. When creating a comment, various things happen: creating the comment object, associations, persisting sending notification emails to post's author given his preferences sending notification to moderators given their preferences updating a fulltext database for search ... ...
Our firm makes websites. We also design websites. But sometimes our client brings his/her own design. This is often made by an in-house designer, or it is the same design they used for something else. However, sometimes these designs look awful. And I am talking really unprofessional, unbalanced, uncool. But the client...
Some IDEs (or code editors like Notepad++) are released under GPL. If I decide to make a program using the IDE, do I have to release my program under the GPL? Or is it only if I take code from the open source?
Why should I write a commit message? I don't want to and i think its stupid every single time. A GUI frontend I use which will go unnamed forces you to do it. I hear other doing it every time even if they are using the VCS on the command line. If I commit several times a day and haven't finished a feature what am I wr...
Do you think a re-distributor providing full source in a weird archive format is complying with the GPL? This project http://sourceforge.net/projects/minivmac/ is GPLv2 based on the earlier vMac emulator but it provides the source exclusively in mac disk images. While after jumping through some hoops you can eventuall...
How do you manage your reading list? Like me, you probably have 12 technical books on the go at once, and that's not including the non-technical books :) Any tips? Regard TDG
I need to work with IT projects in system or web development in order to improve my skills by following the requirement specification. Is there any available requirement specfication to download in order to create an application?
Typically when i work on a project i only go back a few days or the last major change when i decide to do something drastic. I sometimes notice i broke a test or a feature and overlooked it for a few weeks so i may go back a month or two and see if the feature or test is broken and trace down the week i broke it. Then ...
I would like to out who provides technical support (commercial) for two major DVCS's of today: Git and Mercurial. This is for a place where they've been using Subversion for some time and now they're renewing their software licences. Although they will be keeping Subversion as well, they would like to justify beginning...
The germ for this question came up from a discussion I was having with couple of fellow developers from the industry. Turns out that in a lot of places project managers are wary about complex data structures, and generally insist on whatever exists out-of-the-box from standard library/packages. The general idea seems ...
Well the question is in the title - how do I improve my code reading skills. The software/hardware environment I currently do development in is quite slow with respect to compilation times and time it takes the whole system to test. The system is quite old/complex and thus splitting it into a several smaller, more mana...
Thinking that there might be others, but not sure -- but before getting into that, let me explain what I mean by static and dynamic data sources. Static (or datastore) - Meaning that the data's state is non-changing, and if was changed, that would be a new state, and the old data would be considered stateless; meaning...
I'm writing a library to generate and check CSRF tokens. I would like to do it without having to use sessions and/or cookies. What I've come up with is this: A token generated from the current time and a unique token id (unix-timestamp.unique-token-id). The token would then be hashed using the HMAC method. The retur...
I am implementing a primitive message-passing system. Currently, I am designing a receive function for async calls. Can I implement such a async receive function without using callback functions?
I have been trying to figure out ways to effectively do performance reviews before an install happens for all releases done by our team. Do you usually make this a part of code review process or do you handle it as a separate review task? FYI - we do not have a dedicated performance testing team. It is up to the devel...
For example, when I first started out freelancing a year ago, my business card had my name, email and website - and up top a list of the technologies I'm comfortable with. In retrospect I don't feel this was a wise decision. Why would a potential client know what Python or Ruby is? How could he know what .NET was? I s...
I'd like to have your opinion on the difficulty of the following interview question: Find the contiguous subarray with maximum sum in an array of integers in O(n) time. This trivial sounding problem was made famous by Jon Bentley in his Programming Pearls where he uses it to demonstrate algorithm design techniques. On...
If this is the wrong place to ask this question, please let me know. I'm a Python programmer by occupation. I would love to learn C. Indeed, I have tried many times, but I always get discouraged. In Python, you write a few lines and the program does wonders. In C, I can't seem to be able to do anything useful. It see...
How do you handle incomplete feature requests, when the ones asking for the feature cannot possibly write a complete request? Consider an imaginary situation. You are a tech lead working on a piece of software that revolves around managing profiles (maybe they're contacts in a CRM-type application, or employees in an H...
Do I learn objective C? Is using Cocoa the easiest and best way to make a UI?
The Java is GPL license (reference from wikipedia). I am not sure I can use it in in commercial projects. I already have a website written in Java and I plan to use this for commercial use. Is that illegal?
What differences are there, if any, between BSD and BCL licences?
We're looking to create regular backups of a couchdb database, to ship offsite. What's the least intrusive way to obtain these - ideally without interrupting or significantly slowing down performance on the existing database server?
I forked a project that was dual licensed under the GPL and a commercial license. Since my code was open source and the GPL being what it is, I started by releasing my app under the GPL. But now I'm thinking about dual licensing the project and can't figure out what to do. Since I have copyright on a majority of the co...
Repeat Business obviously happens because the company has a great product or a great service. In the software industry, do companies make the code base complex enough so that the maintenance comes back to them? I have heard of cases where companies say "ya this code base has minor errors, let's ship them anyway, and ...
"Everyone Knows" ... ... that c is widely used for low level programs in large part because operating system/device apis are usually in c. ... that Java is widely used for enterprise applications in large part because of enterprise libraries and ide support. ... that ruby is widely used for webapps thanks in large pa...
In the dev shops I've worked in, nobody has ever mentioned "coding priorities". I read this in a book or site somewhere, and sets the expectation of what priority should be first in the code. In places where this is not specified, what should the first priority be? It may sound simple to say "do what the business need...
I've been thinking about this and it is blowing my mind... How does a session state provider properly works internally? I mean, I tried to write a custom session state provider based on Azure Tables or Blobs, but quickly I realized that because there is no way to ensure an atomic operation or establish a lock, race con...
What do you think of Java's GNOME bindings and I was surprised to know that the latest version of the bindings was released this month and they're backed by a company that uses them, which means that there's a considerable amount of activity in the project, and that it's not going to be ditched anytime soon Is this goi...
I have been doing a little thinking about inheritance vs. realization vs. composition. I am not about to post the whole detail here. So I was wondering, when we are not talking about creating interfaces to facilitate unit testing: Why does interface-based programming seem to focus upon the grouping of common behaviour,...
I started seriously taking a look at Lisp this weekend (by which I mean I have only been learning Lisp and not reverting back to projects in C#) and must say I love it. I have dabbled with other functional languages (F#, Haskell, Erlang) but haven't felt the draw that Lisp has given me. Now as I continue to learn Lisp...
I'm currently design an application that involves a lot of calculation. Now I have generally two possibilities which I have both tested: 1) During startup of the application I calculated only the most important values and these values that consume a lot of time. So the user has to wait approximately 15 seconds during s...
Admittedly my experience of using the MVC pattern is limited. It might be argued that I don't really separate the V from the C, though I keep the M separate from the VC to the extent I can manage. I'm considering the scenario in which the application's model includes a number of elements that have a common base class...
I'm looking into the feasibility of using off-the-shelf distributed SCMs such as Git or Mercurial to manage millions of XML files. Each file would be a commercial transaction, such as a purchase order, that would be updated perhaps 10 times during the lifecycle of the transaction until it is "done" and changes no more....
The trend in application design and development seems to be starting with the "guts": the domain, then data access, then infrastructure, etc. The GUI seems to usually come later in the process. I wonder if it could ever be useful to build the GUI first... My rationale is that by building at least a prototype GUI, you g...
I am a an engineering student and I want to learn more about systems programming . I wanted to know the various open source projects that I have as options to learn from about the same. The Linux Kernel Project is very stable and has a very large code base.I wanted to know about projects that would not take much time t...
Is it a good idea if I put the books I read on my resume, or at least those related to software development?
IBM got me confused (again). For many years IBM have been pushing for Portlet Containers with the JSR 168 and later the JSR 286 Specification. 2008-2009, IBM the Lotus division introduced the iWidget Specification. Based on my reading, it is a more dynamic and lightweight version of the Portlets, close to Google Gadget...
I currently work in a professional capacity as a software engineer working with the Android OS. We work at integrating our platform as a native daemon among other facets of the project. I primarily work in Java developing the SDK and Android applications, but get to help with the platform in C/C++. Anywho, I have a gr...
To me, Visual Basic seems clumsy, ugly, error-prone, and difficult to read. I'll let others explain why. While VB.net has clearly been a huge leap forward for the language in terms of features, I still don't understand why anyone would choose to code in VB over, say, C#. However, I still see (what seems to be) the vas...
If so how, and what value would this rating have in understanding the code? For example, I would guess that programs using genetic or neutral algorithms would be less predictable than one calculating the sum of pi.
For example, the Objective-C convention is to prefix the symbols with two or three capital letters which are abbreviations of the project: NSString, CABasicAnimation, MGTwitterEngine… In C, many projects also do this (OpenGL and nginx for example). Is this also considered namespacing or am I missing something?
I am facing the following dilemma at the moment. I am using code from a scientific paper in a commercial project. So basically I copied and pasted the code from the paper's pdf into my code editor and use it in my own code. The code in the paper does not have any copy restrictions or license(like the GPL) so I thought...
Does your company have architectural principles that are written and agreed upon? How did they come about? How do you manage ownership and acceptance of these principles? Are they helping you or hinder you?
I find working in isolation, on a piece of code that won't be seen by anyone else for weeks, draining. I'm looking for ideas to try to keep myself productive and motivated. What do you do to remain motivated and productive, when given a long term programming task, and working on your own (for example, from home, withou...
We have a lot of services, some that demand some security, some that don't. We want an easy way of telling, in code, if a service will be secure or not. What would be the better way: Annotation or inheritance? public class SomeServiceImplementation : BaseSecureService, ISomeService or [SecureService] public class Som...
Let me explain my need: I'm having a networked environment with 3 computers connected to a server which will be running full-time. The server also runs a FTP server. I would like to create an environment where 3 developers will be able to work on the same project. For example, if I'm creating a CRM app, I would like t...
A friend told me that writing comments inside methods is not good. He said that we should have comments only for the method definitions(javadocs) but not inside the method body. It seems he read in a book that having comments inside the code means there is a problem in the code. I don't quite understand his reasoning. ...
Do they feel frustrated, disappointed, or even don't admit at all?
A long time ago I programmed a lot in ADA, and it was normal to name arguments when invoking a function - SomeObject.DoSomething(SomeParameterName => someValue); Now that C# supports named arguments, I'm thinking about reverting to this habit in situations where it might not be obvious what an argument means. You might...
I am developing some external modules for an application. These modules are BPL files and if present in the application folder the application loads them and uses whatever is available inside. How can I prevent the sharing of these modules by my clients? I need them to be authorized to use the modules (module by modul...
I'm writing a small research paper which involves software development methodologiess. I was looking into all the available methodology's and I was wondering, from all methodologies, are there any that have provided the foundations for the others? For an example, looking at the following methodologies: Agile, Prototyp...
I am developing python library for database inspection. When is good time to announce/release it? Obvious answer is that when it's ready to be used. But I would like to get some feedback on the API, on what would be useful and act accordingly to release early rule. Any advice on what I should consider before releasing?...
I don't like ms diff that integrated into Visual Studio 2008 TFS Edition. Is it possible to change this file comparer to external one (Beyond Compare, for example)?
My development team just grew by 100% (from 1 developer to 2). My new cohort want to invest in bug tracking software. Is there benefits to such software for such a small team?
I am wondering: how feasible it would be to start developing a social networking website entirely based on silverlight; This has been fairly discussed over the years in favor of HTML. Has something changed with silverlight improvements over the years? What about: * Performance -- active users -- technology used, MV...
In technical interviews which interviews experienced programmers , the interviewers ask a lot of knowledge based questions . [eg. Like how to configure this and that in the xml] . These questions have exactly one answer and it is very likely that a good programmer may not know the answer to it (and hence get rejected) ...
This is slightly different to most questions (trying to avoid duplicates) When would you consider not using a framework (i'm talking PHP here for websites) when does one choose pure html/css/jquery over a PHP framework It seems to me that a framework can be a bit bloated in some cases and overkill for certain circumsta...
Recently stumbled upon this paper (PDF) talking about ACLs, or Architectural Composition Languages. They're a fusion of two earlier lines of research: Architectural Definition Languages (such as UML) and Object Composition Languages (such as XAML, WWF, or scripting languages). The goal of an ACL is to have a high-level...
C and most likely many other languages provide a struct keyword for creating structures (or something in a similar fashion). These are (at least in C), from a simplified point of view like classes, but without polymorphism, inheritance, methods, and so on. Think of an object-oriented (or multi paradigm) language with C...
I'm hoping to get some tips and advice on how to educate the rest of the company on how to submit proper bug reports. Currently we get tickets like: When I click this link I get a 404. (They include the page that 404s and not the page that caused it) Sometimes the right column flows into the button column. (no screen...
I think that I conceptually understand C# delegates, however, I am struggling to find a real world example where they would be useful. Can you provide some answers detailing how C# delegates were used in real applications and what problems they enabled you to get around.
I've worked mostly with interface building tools such as xCode's Interface Builder and Visual Studio's environment to place forms and position them on screens. But I'm finding that with my latest project, placing controls on the form through a graphical interface is not going to work. This more has to do with the num...
I have a MVC2 project, my question is: should I migrate to MVC3? Why? I'd like the opinion of some who already migrated, or at least used MVC3 and MVC2. Already read http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/01/13/announcing-release-of-asp-net-mvc-3-iis-express-sql-ce-4-web-farm-framework-orchard-webmatrix.aspx and I...

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