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Say I am developing an app for sale. Does it make sense to use a public repository for this project? Doesn't default copyright protect the code from someone else using it? If so, what advantages are there in paying for a private repository?
We are currently investigating automated user interface testing (we currently do automated unit and integration testing). We've looked at Selenium and Telerik and have settled on the latter as the tool of choice due to its much more flexible recorder - and we don't really want testers writing too much code. However, I ...
I'm currently working at a place that may be looking at forcing developers to use an automated code formatter on version control check-in. I'm looking for developers opinions on the advantages and disadvantages of doing this ... how you think it would help or hinder developers. My specific case involves Java/JSPs, but...
I am working on a script to get data from excel spreadsheets to a database. The data is from surveys conducted by our office where the data comes in with very little formatting. At the moment, the data is manipulated with a lot of copy and paste, then analysed 'by hand' (ie. someone clicks and drags in excel and does p...
If we want to have code reviews before a developer delivers his work, then can you suggest whether multi stream project { i.e., each developer create his own stream and view and later deliver to single stream.} or single stream { i.e., all developers work on same stream } which is advisable.
There are lots of other APIs I need to use besides the Selenium test tool to be able to get tests working. Not using them for just one week and the mind has lost all of them. How is it possible to remember zillions of APIs?
What are your rules of thumb for when to use structs vs. classes? I'm thinking of the C# definition of those terms but if your language has similar concepts I'd like to hear your opinion as well. I tend to use classes for almost everything, and use structs only when something is very simplistic and should be a value t...
There appears to be this notion among the project management team that stating that "it works" means it should then be deemed 100% complete. Most programmers know that isn't always the case. If I'm trying alternative approaches to get a piece of functionality working, that doesn't necessarily mean I found the best solu...
What has key/value stores got to do with making database sharding easier? Because if I do not use a key/value store, I can easily shard my database too right? (Like say, I can easily say users with names that start with this character will have their data stored in this server, and those tables themselves aren't key/va...
When reading various Stack Overflow questions and others' code the general consensus of how to design classes is closed. This means that by default in Java and C# everything is private, fields are final, some methods are final, and sometimes classes are even final. The idea behind this is to hide implementation detail...
How much should a reviewer trust the coder who submits the code for review? I always have that dilemma of whether I should go test of the changes proposed or should I trust the submitter that he would be knowing what he is doing? Mainly because at the end of the day its reviewers responsibility also. Code-reviews are n...
I am posting this anonymously because I don't want to get into potential trouble. I have a big problem. I recently joined a team that is less than a year old. I have been here since a month in to the project started. The company structure looks like this: Owner (non-technical) Project Manager (non-technical) Lead ...
So, I'm starting a brand-new project in Java, and am considering using Spring. Why am I considering Spring? Because lots of people tell me I should use Spring! Seriously, any time I've tried to get people to explain what exactly Spring is or what it does, they can never give me a straight answer. I've checked the i...
I'm in a position to write something along the lines of business process management (BPM) software for a small to mid-sized company, but I have no clue about the design goals, and patterns I can adapt for typical BPM. What defines BPM and are there any typical approaches to it? How do I learn more about it?
I just read an article on MSDN about reasons for declaring classes as sealed. In the last paragraph, Eric Lippert says: 4) Secure. the whole point of polymorphism is that you can pass around objects that look like Animals but are in fact Giraffes. There are potential security issues here. I tried to look on the ...
I am trying to estimate speed differences when creating code on my desktop PC that will be ported to Android phones. I don't need to be exact, but a good estimation will help stop me from creating code that is dismally slow on an Android phone. I want to support down to the Android G1 so I am using it as my "baseline...
Currently I'm working at a .NET project-based company. Our coding is not modularized, mostly we are copy/pasting old code that is needed on a new project and modify it. I was trying to standardize and modularize some functions (Email Management Module, CMS Module & etc) by implementing a 3-tier architecture concept whe...
I've got some general questions about modelling a series of betting markets and bets within them. I'm writing in Ruby but it's ultimately agnostic towards which language I want to use. I have a concept of "games", for example, a soccer league. While the league is running, people can place various types of bets. A bet m...
I am currently working in asp.net and having almost 1 year of experience. Now my company wants to change my technology and wants to put me in mobile development (might be other than .net mobile development). Would this be harmful for my career? As I have heard that it is beneficial to have a long experience in a specif...
I work at a place that is CVS-crazy and Bugzilla-nuts. There are so many branches off each release that one cannot count them. Everyone is constantly auto-merging. There is no fluidity at this job. Everything feels lock-step. It takes 25 steps even for a simple thing. It's not like being on a factory production line:...
The application which I am working on currently is a bit huge. It cannot be explained in 15 minutes or so. Last time I ended up drawing some class diagrams and how they are linked, but I could see that the interviewer was not happy with the answer. What are the main things that should be highlighted when answering thi...
I want to improve usability of K9 Email client, Make a new UI and implement some additional functionality. This software is Licensed Under Apache 2.0. http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/ https://github.com/obra/k-9 Can I use the whole source code of this app with some modifications to some of classes and make this app a C...
Do variable names affect website performance? I know this will going to be very low number, but still can any one provide the reasons for not choosing a long variable name in aspect of performance?
If computers are able to parse data organised in curly braces, why are we using <foo></foo> syntax in certain languages? Only because of legacy etc or are there further reasons behind this? I think I speak for many people if I say that that looks just redundant and it's awkward to work with. In adition it doesn't "enfo...
Does anyone knows the differences between these ones? http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/editions/express.aspx (Look for CTP3 LocalDB in the page) http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/editions/compact.aspx I wonder why microsoft started Denali project (now in CTP).
In JIRA, when creating a new issue, i am presented with a number of choices, some of which look like they don't belong. For example: "New Feature". This should be a part of a story right? How can one chose when to use "New Feature" and when to use a "Story"? "New Feature" looks like a type to me or a "Story" to me. Or...
I have ran into the above phrase many times (especially during classic VB days) and I have been wondering what it really mean and where it originated from. Any ideas?
The big project I'm working on for a couple years now is a control (and everything) application of an advanced device, heart of its firmware. The device is quite advanced, with more different functionalities than I could say from memory, and 98% of them are handled by this one huge executable. In one hand, the program ...
I have a customer who wants the ability to modify the .properties files packaged in the web applications WAR file so that they have the control to modify environments at settings. They will be hosting this site on their own servers so I can't say I blame them but I am a little unsure what the best course is. I would t...
If I’m using the MVVM pattern – this one for my WPF application And my project requires a search function on different sources – say clients, accountants, cases. What would be the best way to go about it so that I only have one search view and the search results shown in the ListView are ‘dynamic’ in that they could be...
We have handsome library of cakephp modules at my workplace, and we develop custom websites at good pace until the shopping cart comes our way to slow down the process. I have used various (Magento, Opencart, Zencart) shopping carts in different project, where we have to merge them with our core cakephp application. Us...
I have a potential customer who has an idea for an ipad application but is unable to find sufficient fundings for this. One idea that came up is that I do the work either for free or for a minor fee and then receive a percentage of the income from appstore. How do I decide what percentage is realistic? How is this affe...
I have used RAD tools for windows and web development for many years (primarily Infragistics). I invariably find myself in some situation where I have a very difficult time figuring out what is going on because these controls have layer upon layer of indirection and abstraction. This goes for all sorts of RAD tools, in...
I am non computer science undergraduate and work as a web-developer(java, python, AS3 etc.) as a professional. I take 1 course per semester at my local university. I had taken Artificial Intelligence(comprising logic, context free grammar, CYK parsing, introductory NLP, markov chains, HMM etc.) last semester. I am plan...
I have written code at home, on my own time and using my own knowledge and equipment, while under no contract or NDA. I want to make this code open source so that I can use it in software I write for an employer, without denying myself the right to use it at home or elsewhere later. I'm not sure if saying it is in the...
I have a project on my resume in which we had used MVC Architecture and Java, JSP and MySQL. Hence during the interviews if the position requires experience about MVC Architecture, I have to face the question like "Explain this project." What exactly is the interviewer is expecting? I know that they want to know how we...
I recently had a conversation with a fellow developer about Agile Software Development. While I understand the principle, it seems that continuously changing requirements creates the potential for the project to go on forever. But, at least where I work, projects need to reach completion because it's a contract. That ...
I'm currently working on a project that's about to reach over 5,000 lines of code, but I never really completely thought out the design. What methods should I use to structure and organize my code? Paper and pen? UML diagrams? Something else?
Most of my projects start small. Many times I start with a web page (1 file) that has the code to... select stuff from the database => display it to the user and offer editing => receive the edits (sometimes complex enough that it requires parsing) => update the database all of this in 1 file, of course. As the project...
Is there a collection of commonly-agreed-upon design guidelines for separating the Model classes from the View/Controller classes in a Java Swing app? I'm not so concerned that the View/Controller know nothing about the Model as the other way around: I'd like to design my Model to have no knowledge of anything in java...
What is the best approach to mapping between Entity, View Model or dataContract. For example I've seen the following modelling structures for SOA. WCF -> DataContract distributed to client. Middle-tier -> Models and Interface with then mapped to repository type and eventual a concrete class which implements a ORM. ...
If you have an application of some sort and you want your users to be able to write plugins for it, how should the application be designed? What do you have to take into account, what design patterns are for this etc?
I have over 10000 images which about 2000 are duplicates in other formats (as in JPEG, PNG, GIF). Both of these numbers are increasing every day. I need to delete those duplicates and for that I must know how to find them first. My first thought was to check an images pixels and find other pictures that have the same c...
Is there any algo that can help splitting irregular shape into regular shapes, and eventually calculate the area of the main object by summing the areas of those regular objects?
A recent previous question of mine had an answer that sparked a different and unrelated question in my mind: Customer wants to modify the .properties files packaged in our WAR file The question that I thought of after reading this answer is, just how low-risk is the data being collected on people (non-users, lets just ...
A little background first. I'm a project manager at medium-sized company. I started as a CS major and had a little exposure to programming, but after a few months I knew it's not my path, so I switched over to management. That proved to be a good decision, and after graduating I've worked in software management at vari...
Whats the best way to get back and stay abreast to latest stuff going on with C#3/4? I do have Jon Skeet's book
I am a fairly new developer. Professionally I have programed in C# for two years as an intern and 6 months as a junior developer. A friend of my family needs help with a project that is written in VB.net. I have never used VB.net, so I am a little worried there. But, the real question comes in the fact that once I l...
What is it about Perl that makes it so useful in Bioinformatics ? Why isn't C++ or Matlab or Python the big language?
"bloom filter allows us to store data in constant space" Can someone explain what exactly does that sentence means?
I'd like to know what Microsoft components need to be installed for this new LocalDB to run on a users machine. Now in CTP3: SQL Server Express LocalDB LocalDB is a new lightweight deployment option for SQL Server Express Edition with fewer prerequisites that installs very quickly. This makes it ideal for developers...
I am the creator of a growing open source project. Currently, I'm becoming frusterated trying to figure out the best way to manage documentation. Here are the options I have considered: HTML Website A Github Wiki Markdown Files Hosted On Github Placing All Docs in Github README.md The documentation is already written...
I have no choice but to work on my own, and can't find an adequate solution for getting my work looked over, sanity checked, having someone to brainstorm ideas with, discussing best practices and so on. I thought I'd get an answer via Jeff Atwood's article: In Programming, One Is The Loneliest Number, the best I could ...
I've read a lot about TDD and I've tried to develop using TDD without success ... I always stop staring at the screen... I've learned that I should not write tests for methods or class. I should write tests for behaviors. That's because objects interact with each other and this interaction should be tested. Following t...
I'm working up an API for a REST service that I'm going to both be producing and consuming. I've spent the past few days trying to figure out how to handle authentication nicely, and think I've finally come up with something. I'm coming up with this based on the following facts about the application stack: Client & Se...
I am trying to use JUnit to test a class (FooWriter) that is responsible for writing my application's data to disk using a custom file format. The data set being written is potentially very large, and I want to at least be able to test simple things, such as whether or not the expected number of lines were written out....
I'm looking for a book that explains functional programming in an accessible manner. Also I would prefer one that isn't too dull, and doesn't use an esoteric language. Ideally it will use examples that demonstrate situations where functional programming leads to more elegant or simpler solutions than imperative approac...
"Method" is a special term in Object-Oriented Programming. Does anyone know when the word began to be used in this particular sense, and in connection with what programming language or other branch of quantitative learning?
When starting a new project, are "proactive" designs useful? I mean, if you create a UML diagram/Activity diagram/Use Case/Class diagram/etc. for anything and everything can think of, then when you think you're done, you start coding. Afterwards, you realize an important feature or method was left out. All your spiffy ...
I want to be able to send messages between computers on the internet network but with minimal functionality requirement are- 1)computers can join/leave the group (I expect the group size to be a maximum of 5-10) 2)any message generated by any computer will be sent to every other node (this is the main requirement and I...
For my blog script I have a usergroup and permission system set up. Each user is assigned to a usergroup and I have a long list of permission settings. Both are stored in a MySQL database. At the moment I perform around 10 permission queries for each page, for various content management functions. Coupled with another ...
Our software uses in-house written deployment software due to the complexity of the product. As part of our current QA (not dev) build process (using more in-house software) we compile the code, patch the databases, deploy the software and run a smoke test and, in some cases, automated UI tests, before the build is "pa...
If someone has created something like a DevExpress library, or Infragistics, Telerik, RavenDb etc., what's the easiest way to start selling it? What are the required steps? Is there some rules for licenses and stuff?
I'm thinking about to switch in middle term to node.js for server-side and mostly jQuery and scriptaculous for client-side web development. For the scripting I'm planning to use coffeescript. do you think it's okay to use coffeescript or should I learn "plain" Javascript? What resources e.g. books, e-books, mailinglis...
I am a JavaScript programmer and am planning to take Freelance projects related to JavaScript effects for the web. Recently a potential client approached me to create a JavaScript effect for his website. The effect was quite complex and it was not generic. That is, every time the design of the website would change the ...
I have a project folder that has multiple duplicate files that are named slightly differently to create "backups". So I have "file1.txt" and "file1 backup.txt". Is there a preferred method to capture the old history when I make the folder into a git repository?
I'm thinking to use an entity-attribute-value (EAV) model for some of the stuff in one of the projects, but all questions about it in Stack Overflow end up to answers calling EAV an anti-pattern. But I'm wondering if it is that wrong in all cases. Let's say shop product entity, it has common features, such as name, des...
I am thinking of doing a short presentation at work about using Stack Overflow as a resource for your day job. What is your experience doing this? Would you deem it a valid resource to tell your colleagues about it or is it similar to telling them about Google as a resource? Is there a better way of doing it? I was lea...
When faced with writing an algorithm to solve a small project/problem is it better to come up with pseudo code that isn't efficient/optimum but solves the problem and then try to use the inefficient code to inspire a better/good solution? The solution must be acceptable, not necessarily "super-amazing-out-of-this-world...
Okey dokey, next crappy-code-at-work-rant-turned-into-a-real-question (I hope): So, I'm debugging some code, and we've got something like this: objFoo.TabIndex = 5 'VB.NET property with setter implicitly called and TabIndex is a property whose setter is the beginning of an insane call tree, with subroutines and XML ...
When talking about IDE software or about what a programming language allows you to do or not at the source level, I often use the word IntelliSense, which has a precise meaning in the Microsoft world, but is inappropriate when talking to people who don't have to be familiar with Visual Studio. In this case, what is the...
My company is looking to create an app that we'll use internally on several (about 20) BlackBerry Playbooks. We don't want it to be put up on App World because it's just an internal application. I'm wondering if there are any: Costs involved with this outside of paying a programmer to develop it - i.e. Are there any l...
My team started using Scrum a few sprints ago. Our project involves building software interfacing with physical devices (think robots and sensors) and our typical Product backlog usually represent adding controls device to the whole system. We split down the task close to the example here. Each device integration feat...
I have a UI control that uses a provider class to implement the actual logic of a complex task. So the control delegates to the provider to do some work. But the provider needs to work with the control too; it needs to fire some events on the control. I was looking for a good design pattern of how the two could work ...
Currently I'm working on a social networking project whose design is developed by the another company we are dealing with. We informed them that we need a task to be done on high priority to finish the project ASAP. We told them that what we need in the task and the party said, "What you do code or design?"? Is it the...
I'm currently working on a project with a new programmer. How do I help him speed up his work? He often asks me questions, and I pair programmed with him in backbone.js (a part of the project). Now I want him to handle the project himself so I can concentrate on other things to speed up the process. He doesn't want to ...
What kinds of software testing do you know? I've heard about Test-Driven Development, Unit tests etc, but can't understand their importance and difference. For example, why are we using regression tests or acceptance tests. What advantage they provide?
If I write a public-facing commercial website, and use a GPL javascript library and/or binaries without modifying them (such as plupload), would I be required to make the source for my website available? Is that considered distribution? That component is just an example. I know a commercial license is available, but wo...
I have created a Windows Form project (VS solution) under a TFS 2010 project. I may eventually add more solutions to the TFS project. My question: Can we create a Use Case WIT for a specific solution within a TFS project? Furthermore, is it possible to create a "traceability matrix" that starts at the Use Case level an...
I was wondering what "profile" means in Wikipedia: XML is a profile of an ISO standard SGML, and most of XML comes from SGML unchanged. According to http://xml-tips.assistprogramming.com/sgml-xml-html-xhtml-all-together.html: HTML is a subset of SGML. XML is a highly functional subset of SGML. XHTML extends and s...
Yesterday, I rolled out a v1.0 release of a Web project I've spent about 6 weeks working on (on and off, that is). I haven't made any exact records of my time, but according to my experiences I would estimate that out of all the time I spent programming, half of it was spent debugging. I estimate that to be about a goo...
Ever since I discovered programming five years ago, I've done a lot of things. I've learned numerous programming languages and technologies and tried out many interesting things. I've written games, both console and with graphics, console and windowed applications that run in the desktop, CRUD web applications, my own ...
I read through a few discussions in SE about Cloud Computing . From them, I understand cloud as "computing / data-storage facility that is owned by a different entity; using hardware & software architecture that make it easily scalable on-demand, therefore support rentable-scalability models." Also, "the owning entity...
Is it possible to do the following in C# (or in any other language)? I am fetching data from a database. At run time I can compute the number of columns and data types of the columns fetched. Next I want to "generate" a class with these data types as fields. I also want to store all the records that I fetched in a col...
Is there some kind of generalization to the effect called Heisenbug? Because I would like to describe in my documentation how instrumenting a program changes the execution no matter what. In The New Hacker's Dictionary it is defined as following: heisenbug /hi:'zen-buhg/ /n./ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle i...
I have built many web sites and I would like put them in my portfolio. But now when I am checking I see that most of them are changed as they switched to another company. Now I am confused what should I do Do I put old thumnail or screenshot of site or new one? (I have old screenshots) If interviewer checks the site a...
I have seen many times that if we build a website for a client then there is a possibility that this site gets changed over a period of time. I was thinking that from now onwards whichever site I make I will host a copy of the site on a personal server. Like client1.myserver.com so that even if they change it I have th...
I'm working on a flash player that needs to track how long a user plays a video for. In addition, I need to know the user. I can easily do that with a request to the server. What I've thought of so far is sending a request to the server when the user presses play and another when the player stops playing the video. The...
I'm considering trying to sell a small desktop application (I would be considered a one-man mISV, I guess?) at a price of about $20-$30 USD. I would distribute to customers by download only. I get the sense the best and most intuitive way to do this is provide a download link from the application's website. What are ...
Let's say that my company was to develop a replica of MS Word (just as an example). What would be the bottleneck to the development process, assuming that one has infinite cash available and an organization like Microsoft? In other words, what are the most usual hindrances from developing such software fast? Let's assu...
I want to briefly discuss managed or interpreted languages. It's said that they're worth developing in, because the CPU time is worth less than the programmer time required to develop in a faster language. I'm curious if the same thing could be said for the compiler. If I had some mythical compiler that took four times...
Given that browsers (Chromium/Chrome thus far AFAIK) seem to be introducing embedded site translations and utilities such as Wibiya and given the amount of work that localizing a site can be (depending on framework, view re-writes, database-driven message localization, etc), does it make sense to put in work to localiz...
I am working on Asp.net webform and it already provides me ready to user Ajax solution by using an update panel, so should I invest my time learning how Ajax really work ?
A colleague and I were discussing how to echo HTML inside of javascript code. Specifically, in a situation similar to this: new Element('div', { html: '{long string of HTML goes here!}' }.inject($('content')); Short snippets seem to work well in this situation, but what if we were echoing a large set of data? The ...
I have some code where a good inheritance model has gone downhill and I am trying to understand why and how to fix it. Basically, imagine you have a Zoo hierarchy with: class Animal class Parrot : Animal class Elephant : Animal class Cow : Animal etc. You have your eat(), run(), etc methods and all is good. Then ...
As a software development contractor I've worked on many projects with differing standards and conventions. Quite often these conventions go against the software best practices we know and 'love'. The question is, when you're working on an established project with specific ways of doing things that you know aren't the ...
I was given a small project to complete over the weekend for an interview. Not a very difficult project at all. Fortunately, I was able to spend all my time designing, developing, and testing the application rather than having to research something I wasn't familiar with. After working out a couple of critical bugs, ...
While Sun's Java code convention suggests to put line break before the operator, many other guidelines disagree with it. I do not see any obvious pros and cons. Are there advantages of using one of these styles over the other? String longVarName = a + b + c + d + e + f; vs String longVarName = a + b + c + d ...
I wondered if anyone could advise on the best way of storing a users acceptance of the Terms and Conditions in the database. I am in the UK if this changes anything. I have had the T&Cs drawn up by a UK Lawyer so don't need any advice on that part! At the moment I am thinking at the time of signup having a checkbox say...
I am a junior software developer and I have been researching some of the practices in the industry to make myself better. I have been looking at unit testing briefly and I cannot see how the extra time writing a ton of unit tests is going to make my code better. To put things into perspective: The projects I work on ...

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