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Possible Duplicate: How to prepare yourself for programming interview questions? I am going for c#-sql server job and I was looking for some link where I could download some questions and answers to have look at.Googling I have found many but because there is no download you have to click and navigate for each quest...
I have seen some source code containing Copyright notice in the beginning of the file. Most of them are either GNU General Public License or Apache License. If I want to develop any open source software what are the steps should I follow? Do I need licensing my software by registering somewhere, or I just add the text ...
hope I am in the right place to ask this. A client, for whom I developed a group management software (in Flex) is now asking me to develop a fully-fledged hotel management software (tailored to his specific needs, that's why he does not use an existing one). However, he wants to access it on the Web and have a Desktop ...
According to this answer to this question, a good reason for always starting with a failing test ("Red") is to make sure that the test is working and that the code that will be written is what makes the test passes. (my paraphrase) Since it appears to me that the ability to write a test before any code has been written...
A major objective of software development is to focus on delivery of features implemented in good quality code. Knowledgeable developers are supposed to write software with good performance to the extent of their understanding (that is, in the software module they are working on). For example, they should be able to u...
Unit testing consists of executable code which exercise a certain functionality and then assert some conditions. The results are either Pass or Fail. The objective is always to have all tests passed. Software performance profiling usually requires help from some automated test/profiling tool, but the results seem to ...
If so, can you tell me how learning a new paradigm changed your approach for solving programming problems even if the problem is in another paradigm/language/technology? I will really appreciated If you can tell me in a specific manner, how your X (ie: JAVA/C#/C++) programming skills improved by learning Y (ie: Scheme/...
What should I consider when taking an application (web) from a few users to hundreds or thousands? Basically, what should I be considering when thinking about escalating?
Read first: For a definition of the two terms ("profiling" and "benchmarking") and the need for distinguishing them, please read this answer to a previous question. I have to admit that until I saw Winston Ewert's answer, I have never thought of the need to distinguish the two techniques. I simply think that "profiling...
I want to explore the contentions between the two hot topics: Clean code vs. Good performance. (In progress ... please post comments to help me flush out the details of this question. Thanks.) Examples which may help me define the question: Windows GDI+ is known to perform work on separate threads, which would have ha...
This is an offshoot question from this answer to a previous question, where http://speed.pypy.org is highlighted as an example having a good presentation. (However, it appears to me that the project doesn't separate the components of execution/tracking/report-generation/web-service, which makes it harder for other peo...
If it is relatively easy to get good code coverage from profiling (because profiling tells you which functions are/aren't called, how many times, and with what parameters), how do I get good performance scenario coverage when doing performance benchmarks? How do I even know that there isn't some "performance blackholes...
I heard Javascript is a full language just like c++. Is this true? What else is it good for programming besides web stuff?
I am a recent (as of yesterday) college grad - BS in Computer Science. I've been a huge fan of version control ever since I got mad at an assignment I was working on and just started from scratch, wiping out a few hours worth of actually good work. Whoops! Since then, I've used Bazaar and Git (and SVN when I had to for...
I heard some people complain that APSL 2.0 ( http://www.opensource.apple.com/license/apsl/ ) has too many limitations. What's the limitation of it compared to BSD or MIT?
What lessons did you learn from a project which nearly/actually failed due to bad multithreading? Sometimes, the framework imposes a certain threading model that makes things an order of magnitude more difficult to get right. As for me, I have yet to recover from the last failure and I feel that it is better for me not...
Sometimes software performance tricks are found from a methodological and thorough search. Sometimes it requires divergent thinking and courage to try crazy ideas. Sometimes an idea is just the beginning that needs to be followed with a lot of hard work. How to foster a time period where everyone can try different idea...
So I am designing a webpage which will be used for global users, includes users from Canada, US, India, UK etc. I need to apply validations for this phone number field, but I'm not sure the best way to go about this. Some of the valid formats I can think of are: 1800123456 (India) use of "-" in US phone numbers I am ...
I need to learn COM for my current project. I am a noob and I haven't been able to find good starting points for COM. I have been looking into MSDN and googling... I did find some interesting articles on codeproject.com, but I am not satisfied. Why do we use COM ? Why does it exist ? In what places does it exist ? .......
Implicit parallelism^ can take a big burden away from many programmers, placing it on the computer. So... why is it is not more widespread at present? ^ Implicit parallelism is to make a computer be able to figure out itself how to do more than one thing at a time, instead of a programmer needing to do this job using ...
I just stumbled upon a question at SO about PAC and got interested in the pattern. I'm wondering why it's not as widely used as MVC? What is the MVC benefits compared to PAC?
I'm trying to understand whether cloud computing is meant for small to medium sized companies OR also for large companies. Imagine a website with a very large user base. The storage and bandwidth demands as well as the number of database transactions are incredibly high. The website might be hosting videos, music, imag...
I'm new to version control (currently using SVN), but I don't understand how this helps developers. What does version control do that makes it useful in a development environment?
Just read a presentation about using Python for Scientific Computing. I am currently using MATLAB (student license FTW, which will expire when I graduate soon). So I was wondering how matured SciPy and NumPy are with respect to relying on them for all the Scientific Computing I need to do. The advantage is that it's fr...
We are a small team that is about to start developing a localized version of a successful US web app in Korea, using RoR. Our question is: What process would you recommend we use to go about developing the app? Should we start with the data models? The views in HTML and then code them? Take a single feature, develop it...
My company is considering consolidating all their tier-1 (i.e. top end production) applications and sites into one all-encompassing code base. The theory is that their permissions, design and overall functionality can be homogenised and centrally managed. I have no end of concerns about this approach since the data str...
The dynamically typed languages I know never let the developers specify the types of variables, or at least have a very limited support for that. JavaScript, for example, doesn't provide any mechanism to enforce types of variables when it is convenient to do so. PHP let you specify some types of method arguments, but t...
I'm a developer who mostly does web stuff in ruby and C#. I'd like to start tinkering with iOS and Mac development. Over the last few month i've been trying to get fluent in one set of key bindings (vi / vim because it just feels right). I have the awesome ViEmu installed for visual studio on windows which gives me a t...
The last couple of years I've been observing an exponential growth in the news related IT companies and individuals taking their cases to court, on one side, and the questions concerning legal matters everywhere on the web, on the other side. I very much doubt people and companies have suddenly started stealing each ot...
Why issue tracker systems usually have distinct "Opened" and "Reopened" statuses?
I am wondering if there is any research on the lifespan of cookies on users computers? For a website I'm building we are looking at giving the users some personalization based on a previous selection when they come back at a later point. However, our users mostly will come back a few months or even a year later. Of cou...
Learning to manage stress is vital to staying healthy while working at any job. A necessary subtask is learning to recognize and limit the sources of stress. But, in the midst of the daily grind, it can be difficult to recognize sources of stress (especially for an intense, focused persona such as a programmer). What t...
I'm sure everyone has experienced something like this. You go into a meeting with a client who has a project. They have no/few requirements in mind and the vaguest understanding of what they want/need. At this point, there seem to be two options: 1) Tell the users, "Ok, so I can't build something for you if you cannot ...
We're a bunch(4-5) of 3nd year college students about to begin our 3 months summer vacation and we would like to get going on a project. We want to make a game with XNA, it doesn't have to be big or something but we have 3 months so I'm not sure how big it can get. I plan on being the "team leader" because I have the m...
See UML colors here. Here is the example, I have following entity classes: User(name) MailBox(owner: User, label) Mail(from: User, to: User, subject, body, composeTime) MailCopy(type, from: User, to: User, subject, body) MailDelivery(mailCopy, mailBox) Use case: Every users have three mailboxes by default: MailBox...
There are a two main codebase structures that I have seen when it comes to MVC frameworks. The problem is that they both seem to have an organisational bug that goes with them. Standard MVC /controller /model /view Problem: No separation of related components (forum, blog, user, etc..) Modular MVC /blog /controlle...
Here's my question: What are the weaknesses with different types of NoSQL databases? Specifically, what're the weaknesses of key-value stores, graph data stores and document stores? I've had an easy time finding strengths, but documents on weaknesses seem to be scarcer. Edit: In comparison to each other, and to relati...
I'm new to programming. I know a little python and a little objective c, and I've been going through tutorials for each. Then it occurred to me, I need to know which language is more flexible (python, obj c, something else) for screen scraping a website for content. What do I mean by "flexible"? Well, ideally, I need s...
In the Ruby on Rails tutorial, I read something that suggested that experienced developers do not use scaffolding since they tend to like to just write the code to connect the MVC on their own. In a different place I read that it is a good idea to use scaffolding because it helps you stick to convention so others who l...
If this has already been asked, feel free to redirect me and I'll close this. I gave my current employer notice to quit my job a few months ago, and they haven't been able to find anyone to replace me. I'm able to leave the job in another month, and the company has started to ask me if I'd be willing to continue workin...
I often see in C and C++ code the following convention: some_type val; val = something; some_type *ptr = NULL; ptr = &something_else; instead of some_type val = something; some_type *ptr = &something_else; I initially assumed that this was a habit left over from the days when you had to declare all local variables ...
I've just read this page http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/10/jquery-globalization-plugin-from-microsoft.aspx One of the things they did was to convert the arabic date to the arabic calendar. I'm wondering if it is a good idea at all to do so. Will it actually be annoying/confusing for the user (even if th...
So I am in the middle of making (and maintaining) my own code library with quick snippets to make life easier. I'm assuming a lot of other people do this to help. My question is, what sort of things do you store in this so called library Also, Do you use any tools to organise this library?
I was reading the article here: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html and the part about the "blub paradox" was particularly interesting. As someone who mainly codes in c++ but has exposure to other languages (mostly Haskell) I'm aware of a few useful things in these languages that are hard to replicate in c++. The questi...
I'm a coder and have experience with both native and managed code. I started out with Pascal and C, then moved into C++ and eventually into C#. Over the last year or so, I've been coding almost exclusively in C# and have lost a lot of what used to come naturally when I was a C++ coder. A few weeks ago when I sat down t...
I provide a web service using a site and recently I got a proposal for franchising that service to another company. The problems come when they want all my code to run in their servers. I understand their reasons, but I want to take measures that the core of my PHP code remains hidden and unchanged. I want to take meas...
There are a lot of android resources types: layouts, strings, drawables and so on. I understand that readability of it's names is important but can not create a table of rules how to name them in the best way. Are there any best practices on that?
C# (and the .NET platform in general) is looking like it's becoming a good option form multi-targeting applications: official Microsoft .NET framework: full-blow Windows development, ASP.NET development, Windows Phone development, etc. Mono and all its derivatives: MonoTouch, MonoDroid: the rest of the world. These t...
We are having a discussion about design. Keep into account this is fortran, so we can't be too smart. We have the following classes: Application, System, Calculator, CalculatorSimple, CalculatorPeriodic, Result. Application is an application object which handles System objects. In order to compute information on the Sy...
Jame Gosling said “You should avoid implementation inheritance whenever possible.” and instead, use interface inheritance. But why? How can we avoid inheriting the structure of an object using the keyword "extends", and at the same time make our code Object Oriented? Could someone please give an Object Oriented exam...
I'm looking into Lab Management right now for our test environment for manual and automated testing. I'm just getting started on the process of putting together various servers to host/support it and then I'll be making some dummy projects and working through the process. Currently, we are using System Center Virtual M...
When I first started programming, I assumed that I would one day get to the point where I would start a project by sitting down and sketching a UML diagram of all the classes, then pretty much stick to that. I have now been programming for a couple years and it is not turning out that way. As I go through a project, I ...
I was recently made the team leader of a database (95% MS SQL Server, 5% misc-Oracle, Sybase, Access) development team that manages and develops a large number of databases in a corporate environment. I'm looking for resources (checklists, utilities, best practices, procedures, websites, books, etc) that will help me ...
In OOP there is the Open/Closed principle that states that "software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification". Taking in consideration that in Ruby it is to possible to reopen a class, don't you think that this breaks the Open/Closed principle? When do ...
A common question in Tech Interview is to design a particular system, usually an existing product of the company. For example, "Design Google Docs". What is the expected answer for such a question? I mean, such systems surely have a complex design which is beyond the scope of any interview. What are the interviewers ex...
This is more a web design / user experience question, but since programmers.stackexchange.com is more opinion based, I posted this here - Does it make sense to have a single tab in a web app? I don't see any reason to have a tab if you can't tab to it from some other tab. My PM is demanding a single tab. I honestly ...
Tools and frameworks make complex tasks simple. This seems like something that would be supported by KISS(keep it simple stupid). Tools and frameworks also have the potential to introduce leaky layers of abstraction, where the complexity of the issues are far more problematic than anything you would have written yourse...
In order to produce a plug in and incorporate it (merge) easily with Visual Studio 2010. I was wondering which language was used by Microsoft to create it? In order to offer our product to Microsoft, we must know which language is better to integrate with Visual Studio. Was it pure C++? A friend of mine told me it was...
I've heard a lot of buzz about the Iron languages.. I mostly write line of business applications in c# and I'm not really enjoying c# these days. Is IronRuby mature and fast enough to be used in silverlight right now? As in am I gonna get a call in the middle of the night from an angry customer cause the silverlight ap...
I will soon begin the process of applying for entry level programming positions. As of now I have no professional coding experience, so all I have to show is some personal projects and code samples to show what I am capable of. How do I present such things as code samples, my specific work on collaborative projects, pe...
Not sure if the title really fits with the question, but figured it was the closest to give an overview of my question.. I'm working on a web application that (fairly heavily) employs the use of browser-specific CSS functions such as -moz-transform) and I'm curious as to what approach those with more experience develop...
Many questions and answers on the C/C++ pages, specifically or indirectly discuss micro performance issues (such is the overhead of an indirect vs direct vs inline function), or using an O(N2) vs O(NlogN) algorithm on a 100 item list. I always code with no concern about micro performance, and little concern about macro...
I worked in Linux environment before and I have to work in windows XP for my current project. In linux, I enjoyed using script files for automating tasks(even smaller ones), and it did save me a lot of time. I see windows command prompt is severely handicapped in terms of power and the number of commands available. I ...
I work in a shop that lives by its CI process. We have traditionally used SVN and are considering moving to git (want to leverage its ease of branching, stashing, etc). Thinking in terms that a distributed source control system, by its very nature, seems to put the need for a central repository as a secondary concern...
I have a number of user stories where the same feature needs to be shared by multiple roles. I have started writing these stories like this: As a Role-A or a Role-B When I perform Action-X Event-Y should occure. Is this the correct way to represent that concept in user stories, or should I break it up into one stor...
I'm coding a new site. İt's like StackExchange, a social site and a blog. I try to create a multi-language site, however I can't decide how to do it. I have to use modules, so I must use OOP, while having multilanguage interface. How can I do that? There are two language options (Turkish and English), used continuousl...
Suppose I release some source code under the new BSD license. Is it allowed for someone else to take this code, make modifications to it and distribute it under the terms of the GPL? From Wikipedia: Many of the most common free software licenses, such as the original MIT/X license, BSD licenses (in the current 2...
I have 1 year and 6 months of experience on Android. All of my experience has been into application development. Recently I have got offers from two companies. One is offering me a profile to work on application layer and other is offering a profile on Android middleware. Can you guide me which would be better? Is mid...
Let preface this by saying that I understand that any advice I may receive is not to be taken as 100% correct, I am just looking for what people's understand of what this license is. I have been looking for a library that allow be to deal with archived compressed files (like zip files) and so far the best one I have fo...
I have a Django model called Entity. Different types of Entity have different attributes (e.g. some have a currency associated with them, others don't). I'd rather not have to create a new subclass for every permutation of attributes. Question: Is it a bad design decision to create a CharField or TextField called "attr...
I was looking at some certifications that can potentially enhance my knowledge and market value as a Software Engineer. IEEE's Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) caught my attention. When I looked on the net for any user experiences with it I couldn't find anything substantial. Doesn't seem too popular....
Every time I check out a web page dedicated to some programming language I always see the word "powerful" in the list of idiosyncrasies / attributes. If every programming language is powerful why do they put that word in the tutorials / documentations?
A key issue with mainframes is that the cohort of supporting programmers is dwindling. While normally this wouldn't be a problem in that a falling supply of programmers would be offset by an increasing amount of salary those causing a rising supply of programmers via the law of supply and demand, I'm not sure this is r...
I work at a company that only uses stored procedures for all data access, which makes it very annoying to keep our local databases in sync as every commit we have to run new procs. I have used some basic ORMs in the past and I find the experience much better and cleaner. I'd like to suggest to the development manager...
What makes the web application perform and scale better is always a big topic. And finding the performance problems and tuning them is another... Here is some my thoughts of how to "finding" performance problems: For a "new" api/application or other Analzying the detail api and then preparing the Jmeter/Grinder testi...
I like the small iterations. I like the unit tests. I like code review. What I don't like is the starting off with little or no documentation. Am I alone in this? Do I simply have a misunderstanding of the process? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
The Lean Software and System Consortium 2011 conference, which took place last week, stated the vision and values of lean software development. Here are the six values of lean software development as photographed by one of the attendees. Number 1 is "accept the human condition." While I can sense the humanistic and may...
After many years of coding, trying various programming styles, weeding out unreadable or impractical stuff, I still can't figure out one thing: what is the best way to single-line-comment multiple lines of indented code. 1. setup_checkpoint(); // if (object->looks_suspicious()) // guard->full_body_scan(ob...
Alright, so my situation is as follows: 1 Front End Developer 2 Back End Developers 1 QA Tester We all currently have Virtual Machines, or Second PC's set up with our windows environments to test. Now, the real issue is our Windows Environments expire. We're now running into points where randomly parts of our team fo...
I'd like to know if some of the major programming languages can absolutely not be used to create some very specific types of software. By major programming language I mean the likes of C++, C#, Java, Ruby, Python. By "cannot be developed" I mean cannot be developed or it is unrealistic to do it due to performance, diff...
Reusability is a feature of good software design. Is reusability an acceptable gloss ("brief notation of the meaning") for good software design? Why?
I develop a cross-platform project (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) and use CMAKE, some python and platform-dependent scripts (sh, bat) for construction. Nevertheless I find the process of construction before release rather boring and annoying. Switching between computers, typing commands, copying binaries, eeww. Does anyon...
Some advice here, I've run into a system where the DAL contents of hundreds of sql command calls are split up on a class per table. There are also a Business layer which get it's data from this DAL, recieving it further to other methods and layers in other places. Nearly 100% of those Business Methods are pure forwar...
I have 5 years of experience writing WPF and WinForms applications. I solo wrote the software and thing always turned out well, and the company I work for has happy customers. Plenty of SQL, EF, LINQ, etc along the way. Things look nice to boot. I know zero ASP.NET. Neither my job nor personal projects have let me to w...
One of the devs on my team believes that it is necessary to write a javadoc comment for EVERY parameter in a method's signature. I do not think this is necessary, and in fact I think it can even be harmful. First off, I think parameter names should be descriptive and self-documenting. If it's not immediately obvious ...
What are the relative pro's and con's of both DFA's and NFA's when compared to each other? I know that DFA's are easier to implement than NFA's and that NFA's are slower to arrive at the accept state than DFA's but are there any other explicit, well known advantages/disadvantages?
If JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation, then when you say JSON object, aren't you really saying "JavaScript Object Notation Object"? Would saying "JSON string" be more correct? Or would it be more correct to simply say JSON? (as in "These two services pass JSON between themselves".)
Why is big O most commonly associated with worst and average case complexties of a function
When do repetitive operations become a code smell? I read this article by Charles Petzold where he suggested this and was wondering what people thought.
In my brief time as a professional programmer I've seen lots of applications written by programmers who's entire education appears to have been reading the first couple of chapters in a .NET 2.0 book. Heck when I started I wrote most of those applications! What are the biggest design patterns crucial for writing AWESOM...
are monads, or more specifically f# computational expressions, a form of aspect oriented programming? Update: f# workflow builders have methods other than bind and unit. They have hooks for lots of keywords. see Creating a New Type of Computation Expression.
At my office, we are about to embark on an epic journey of converting an old Delphi 5 application to something more modern. One of our options is to convert to Delphi Prism, but we want to see what options are available to help us. So far, all I've found is Oxidizer (last worked on 2 years ago). Are there any other ...
I am trying to set up some sort of collaboration app/forum with unlimited threading; no difference between posts, threads, or forums. Any post can be answered an unlimited amount of time, and the same post can have several children, themselves having several children, and so on. Each post can also have several parents....
As you already know there are compiled and interpreted languages. From a performance point of view which is better when visiting a website? Will a website that was developed with a compiled langauge will load faster and performs actions faster as will? I want to reach to a point where I can unnderstand the steps requir...
I'm in the process of building an iOS application that will allow users to upload short videos (low res. and < 5 seconds) as well as full-size images as taken by their iOS device. Not being certain of how successful this endeavor will be I'm looking for something solid, cost affordable and can scale as (if) needed. He...
I'm currently writing an application which I am thinking of open sourcing once I'm out of beta. However, I would like to maintain ownership of the icons and other graphics (they're actually the work of someone else that I'm paying to do). Does the GPL allow this kind of mixed licencing? Or is it all or nothing? Are the...
Question -- I currently have a large monolithic Java application which I am working to break up into services components. One of the components I want to separate out is the service which handles and presents users and profiles. Currently the core service uses a MySQL backend and is written in Java, and is only hosted...
Looking to switch to Win7 as machines are cheaper, easier to repair and as a web developer, I wouldn't have to emulate IE anymore. I want as smooth a transition as possible, so what would be the closest match to my current stack of apps. MAMP TextMate Transmit Filemerge (for use with GIT DIFF's)
We are looking at introducing an integration platform. In the begining it is an extra layer and an extra cost. But after a while the service that a new system needs will be available on the integration platform, therefore saving development effort. Question is does anyone know of any studies that look at how long the a...
I've been trying to introduce topics such as unit testing, dependency injection, inversion of control, etc... to co-workers. I've given mini lectures, demonstrations, and have suggested these topics during lunch and learns. Reception has generally been positive and people do see value in such topics. Even though they...