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Go is one of the few languages that are supposed to run 'close to the metal', i. e. it's compiled, statically typed and executes code natively, without a VM. This should give it a speed advantage over Java, C# and the like. It seems, however, that it's behind Java (see the Programming Language Shootout) I'm assuming th...
I was under the impression that a version control system eliminated the need to have "change logs" plastered everywhere in the code. I've often seen the continued use of change logs, including big long blocks at the start of stored procedures with a big section blocked out for changes to the file and littering the cod...
I have an interesting, fairly common I guess, issue with one of the developers in my team. The guy is a great developer, work fast and productive, produces fairly good quality code and all. Good engineer. But there is a problem with him - very often he fails to address edge cases in his code. We spoke with him about it...
I went to a "job fair" recently and I was surprised to see how much emphasis workplaces seem to put on the programming languages candidates are familiar with. From my (admittedly limited) experience, while truly mastering a programming language may take years, learning it to a reasonable level is a fairly simple affair...
I keep coming across the word "proxy" used as a verb in tutorials, etc. Usually something will "proxy to" something else. What does this mean? Having spent some time googling for what it means in a programming context, I mostly found "proxy server" or some other noun use. I understand the word proxy generally means "a ...
When working on a project, the code may be developed reasonably fast in a single day or bit by bit for a prolonged period of few weeks/months/years. As code commits are becoming to be considered as a measure of project development, it doesn't really mean it has more code written than a project that has lesser commits. ...
What are some good ideas, common approaches and appropriate questions that you would bring when interviewing a software development intern to join your team? I really don't have expectations of any kind for this person, I understand that as an intern with no prior work experience that he won't have much to bring to the...
I was just curious if anyone knew why the lightning bolt was selected to represent events in various IDEs? or when it was first used? From the top of my head the lightning bolt is used in visual studio, delphi and axure prototyping.
Let's suppose you're the lead of a team of developers that needs to build a big information system such as an ERP or Human Resources software, or whatever system that is composed by multiple business modules. The system must delivered quickly, be scalable and have good evolution and maintenance capabilities. Your team ...
I started my first professional project recently and have hired a web designer to do the layout. My question is how can I sync the work with the designer? Currently our process goes like this: the designer creates a template sends it to me by mail I view, edit & agree the designer codes the html and sends it to me bac...
Suppose there is system for gathering info about system activities. There is a client part with an interface and there are agent parts that are installed on each machine. I estimate that there could be max 20 computers now. Later could be more like 50. My solutions: Agent stores data into local database e.g. sqlite. T...
I need to implement flexible AND simple (if such thing exist) and at the same time utilize built-on means if possible So far I have MembershipProvider and RoleProviders implemented. This is cool but where do I go next? I feel like I need to add term "Priviledge" and than hardcode those inside application. Users will c...
A lot of time for decent tech jobs you have to go through a phone screening process. If you suck over the phone you generally don't get a chance to show how bad ass you are in person. These interviews, even for experienced and advanced positions, very often involve trivia style questions over basics. Unfortunately fo...
For our company needs, we need to sell one of our software on *nix-like system. How can we distribute and protect our software ? I know that almost every program on linux is open-source, so how can we protect source code ? Do we need distribute part of source code in object files ? Software written in C.
If you were tasked with performing due diligence for a software product/IP you/your company was considering buying. What would be your steps to make sure the purchase was acceptable from a technical risk level? The scenario is one company has a product you or your company is interested in buying in it's entirety (IP ...
I'm currently facing a dilemma with an upcoming performance review. When I started with my company around 1 year ago I tried to be as honest as possible in my perception of my programming skill set and knowledge. I based my perceived skills on my coding ability relative to those I consider to be good programmers and ...
I am bound and determined to setup CI at work. I have played with Jenkins, and will download TeamCity when I get home (damn you work enforced download filters!) I have no IT support, and only so much spare time. My main question: Can Jenkins or TeamCity integrate with git or mercurial repositories that exist only on a ...
Any news whether the official Mango release will allow sideloading of apps? I mean ability to deploy apps without going through the MarketPlace? I would like to see the ability to deploy my own apps on my own device without using third party services and paying extra fees. I don't plan to publish apps publicly. (I trie...
Is it worth Learning XML as a web developer when JSON is better for AJAX? or is it better to concentrate on JSON/Javascript for AJAX?
What is the difference between .net and asp.net? Which role does PHP more closely fill? If someone was developing a website using asp.net and C#, how would you communicate that idea to a colleague, i.e. what's the language you would use?
There is a common practice in TDD to write a test before fix to avoid regression and simplify fixing. I just wonder what if the test and fix will be written by different people, total spent time will be almost the same but as now three people will think about possible failures (+tester) we increase probability that fix...
I'm new to web development and I'm a bit confused about the different languages and technologies in the web. I understand the basic is Html, Javascript, and Css. Then there's jQuery, ASP.net, Html5. I'm confused where I should use each technology and which should I use. For example, here is a video of a WPF application...
so OCL is supposed to extend UML when we as a designer/analyst cannot express something with a diagram, is has a full blown specification still, there is not (at least not that i know) any production-ready compiler supported by any major company (Oracle, MS, IBM, Apple, Google for example) that can translate OCL to any...
In languages that distinguish between a "source" and "header" file (mainly C and C++), is it better to document functions in the header file: (pilfered from CCAN) /** * time_now - return the current time * * Example: * printf("Now is %lu seconds since epoch\n", (long)time_now().tv_sec); */ struct timeval time_now...
Like the title says, I would like some advice from knowledgable web developers on figuring out security issues for my e-commerce site. I am designing the database as well as the code that communicates with the database to make changes, etc. I have a few questions, but in general a good checklist on what to do to make t...
I'm looking forward to develop a desktop application using Python. I'm a beginner and I don't have sufficient expertise in Python. I'm also a Java programmer. Although I have some experience in building UIs using Swing, I see that apps developed on Swing are too damn slow. Well this might be one reason why many of the ...
I have a question regarding software licenses. I plan to put a license to a framework that I have written. My intention is that the license should be open, in order to maintain a community. To be clear I will explain how I expect things to work. The framework will define some common API for certain functionality as we...
I've recently been asked to design a video player for the iPad. I've never done one before and I'm wondering if I could get some caveats in terms of it's development and design. Are there areas of building a video player that are particularly buggy or troublesome? What part of building one takes the most time? Generall...
This is a bit "one megabyte should be enough for anyone", but... A 64-bit flat address space allows up to 4.3ish billion times more space than a 32-bit address space. That's 17,179,869,184 GiB. Obviously, the transition from 8 bits to 16 bits was pretty quick (I'm viewing things in a teen-during-the-80s way, ignoring a...
I am currently working on a money tracking/invoice creation app that I intend to release for free. The app can be broken down to three parts: The Framework, a generic, all-purpose collection of classes (php/mySQL) The app itself (php/javascript) The design (images) I am trying to find licenses that fit three differen...
For quite some time I've been searching for a web-based, open-source project management program that I can run on my rented space at Dreamhost to track client projects. dotProject seems nice, but I've never figured out how to create projects that only certain people can access. I'm usually working on two or three proje...
I have a history of web development using LAMP + html/css (though I admit the LAMP aspect isn't in great depth) and would like to follow the career path of software developer, so I'm currently learning C, after which I'll look at C++. I was wondering if anybody could give me a list of subject area's within computer pro...
I am thinking about a career in software engineering, but before I look for work I wanted to get an idea of what to expect particularly with pressure. This will be my first programming job (so I am looking for entry level), so I am not yet mature as a programmer yet. My question is what is the pressure like in these j...
This summer I'd like to develop a number of applications, all of them relatively small, yet risky -they're complex, I'm inexperienced-. I'm gonna work on my own because my classmates or other IT people I know really don't have a genuine interest in programming (I swear!). Besides from making good code, I'd like to anal...
I was presented with a new problem recently, to provide an estimate for a project in which I must use a framework (and potentially bits of another framework) that I am unfamiliar with. It's much easier for me to provide estimates when I'm at liberty to use what I'm familiar with, but it was as though a crippling paraly...
I hope this question isn't too broad. In the future I may need to add some accounting and financial-tracking systems to some applications (mostly web-based applications, but my questions pertains to desktop apps as well). Now, creating a simple record of financial transactions is theoretically easy. One database table...
I need to run to work soon, so this will be brief. I've only been with the company for a couple weeks. It is a good company, this is a contractor who just happens to be twice my age. I am new to the professional programming field. This database does exactly what Wikipedia says not to do for 1NF. It repeats telephone...
I just read this article on iCloud's use of Azure: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/is-apple-really-using-windows-azure-to-power-icloud/9687 Anyone know if there is any truth in it?
I mostly understand the theory of TDD, but I can't figure out how to get started. I sit down to write a unit test for a personal project and realize . . . I have no idea what I am testing. What objects, what functionality, etc. E.g., let's say I want to write an app to help our family manage chore assignments. Here ...
I am interested in patenting a piece of software that I have created with a group of people. I live in europe. I have no idea how to go about it, but I have multiple users tell me that I should have it patented for safety. So I was wondering where do I start? There are so many links online giving me a whole load of inf...
Is it normal/just for a software company to ask for power of attorney to ensure they obtain patents on anything you invent while you are employed as a programmer? Update: In my case, I went back the the employer. They told me they have no interest in using my inventions which are not related the domain that were not ...
I am thorough with programming and have come across languages including BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP, LOGO, Java, C++, C, MATLAB, Mathematica, Python, Ruby, Perl, JavaScript, Assembly and so on. I can't understand how people create programming languages and devise compilers for it. I also couldn't understand how people ...
I have a large system in OpenEdge ABL that could use some documentation-love. Currently a team member is working on a utility that can find methods and functions and make some "Javadoc-esque" html pages out of it. It's pretty rough around the edges. Okay, it's like sawblades around the edges. I'm trying to find somethi...
Back on my theme of late: interview questions. Was recently asked to describe a time I'd used logging. My first instinct was to respond with compiler warnings set to full and error-out. What he was interested in was the use of logging as a debugging tool. Unfortunately I couldn't think of one at the time except the o...
We have a software product has a lot of usability features, and we're constantly changing it. We have issues with things like persisting scroll position which seem to get fixed, but then are broken again when we release. We have good testers, but we seem to miss things like this because there are just so many features ...
I'm creating a software application where up until now, the majority of code and assets have been produced by me. There are smaller bits of code that I've taken from other places; these have all been licensed as "do what you want with it". I've gotten to a point however, where I want to incorporate fairly large parts o...
I have developed some PHP and HTML code for a freelance project, I want to make my contractor able to use my code commercially, since they will sell my project to their own client (an enterprise), but I want to disallow them from recycling my code for further projects, could this be achieved by some GNU license? Also I...
Is it considered bad practice to use a flat file when doing unit tests? If an application reads in flat files and parses them, would this be a better approach than hard coding strings into the unit tests themselves?
I am wondering about which programming languages people see fit to create a program idea that I had. I am looking to create a fairly simple program whose main functions are adding to, managing, and searching through a database of people, all through a polished GUI. It will be for use in the business world, so I think...
First I firmly believe in the code review process and always want someone else to review my code. My question really centers around how can I do a better job at performing a code review for someone else? I know that to perform a code review you need to have knowledge of the how the existing code works and a knowledg...
I'm slightly confused about how AJAX works. I mostly understand the PHP/MySQL model of retrieving database information for the user, but how does AJAX do it? From what I understand the AJAX engine sends an HTTP request to the backend which does some magic and returns XML data to the AJAX engine which translates it to H...
Do Android/iPhone Apps use AJAX to interact with the backend? If yes, is this common? Or do most apps use a different method for fetching database information. And if so, what other methods are there? Are server-side languages ever involved, and if so, is that more common to see with app development?
So, I just started an internship, and I'm worried that I'm asking too many questions. My mentor assigns me projects and helps me learn all the company's technologies and methodologies. However, there's so much new material for me to learn while doing this project that I have a lot of questions. I generally ask quest...
I am researching programming languages used for AI programming. I know that LISP is taught as an AI programming language in my university, but Prolog rarely is. I am kind of fond of Prolog, but I'm not an AI programmer so I don't think I'm qualified to judge for myself why Prolog is better than LISP/Scheme. I was wonde...
I've been asked to give a quote to extend a piece of software i'm currently giving away for free for use by a company. They tell me they are using it in-house at the moment in conjunction with some "post processing" steps, which they would like to incorporate into the application proper. What should I keep in mind when...
This includes everything that contributes to the success of the app and is non-programming. Some points to consider: How do you make people notice your app when there are hundreds released every week? How to get an article published in a mobile app blog about your app? Should you buy ads? What about a press release? ...
A friend of mine is considering using FreeBASIC in a critical production environment. They currently use GWBasic, and they want to make a soft transition towards more modern languages. I am just worried that there might be undetected bugs in the software. I see that their version number is 0.22.0, which indicates, that...
So given the Separation of Concerns, how coupled should the View and ViewModel be? For example, I want the visibility of a Control in the View to be databound (databinded?) to a flag in the ViewModel. My first hunch would be to use a boolean value, IsControlVisible that returns true/false. However, in the View, visibil...
Could you please tell me which tools are used in python to build projects, as well as which continuous integration servers are used and how to deploy projects to the server? What I mean is web projects, but will still be happy to know more of this information not only around the web.
Does AJAX need to use a server-side language such as PHP/ASP.NET/Java to access a database? Or some sort of web service tied to these languages? Or is AJAX able to communicate directly with the database?
Just read these lines- If your data is object in nature, then use object stores ("NoSQL"). They'll be much faster than a relational database. If your data is relational in nature, the overhead of a relational database is worth it. from- http://seldo.com/weblog/2011/06/15/orm_is_an_antipattern So, how do I know wh...
What is an Enterprise/Automated Deployment tool, and how would it be used? Examples would be a plus, but please don't turn this into a list. What are the key factors that should be evaluated when looking at such a tool?
We are in the process of building a stock market simulation game. The frontend design is ready but we are clueless about how exactly the back-end algorithms are to be designed. What algorithms should we be looking at implementing in order to get this working? We're coding in PHP/RoR/Python. If there's an open source sy...
When I have to implement a new feature or fix a bug, I usually try to recreate the situation with a test. I sometime spend around 3 hours coming up with fixtures and writing the test. The actual feature implementation or bug fixing takes less than 1 hour. Does anyone else out there spend at least 3 times longer to wr...
Almost everyone will now say the blessing: performance! Okay, C does allow to write athletic code. But there are other languages that can do so, after all! And the optimising power of modern compilers is awesome. Does C have some advantages that no other language has? Or there's simply no need for more flexible instrum...
You know that C# is a compiled language. But when we develop web applications we use ASP.NET + C#, in this case can we say that ASP.NET is compiled? If ASP.NET is not compiled does it affect the performance of C# when ASP.NET and C# works beside each other to develop web applications?
I want to find a freelance job, but I've never done any freelance work before. I want to know what the process involves. Can you please answer the following questions? If the programmer finds a suitable freelance job, how can they apply, and how will the future employer evaluate the programmer's abilities? How does th...
I've worked fairly extensively with the MVC framework cakephp, however I'm finding that I would rather have my pages driven by the multiple MVC than by just one MVC. My reason is primarily to maintain an a more DRY principle. In CakePHP MVC: you call a URL which calls a single MVC, which then calls the layout. What I w...
I'm a very ambitious university student who wishes to learn pretty much everything there is to know about computers (bash me if you want, I love learning). Recently I thought it would be a fun project (albeit a lengthy one) to design and build my own kernel. I got some basic info and I've gathered that I need to master...
I am primarily a web designer, and a very rookie web developer. Say I have a comprehensive web app I want developed through a freelancer on Odesk.com What is the best way to effectively communicate the entire project, goals and requirements? Wireframes, spec sheets? Any examples/templates on this would be greatly appre...
Perhaps this is an esoteric question, since I will never distribute the code in question and I can fairly easily avoid using GPL code, but I'm curious and it's bugging me--but not enough to consult a lawyer. What is more, I think I am more interested in the morality of this issue than the legality. I have a program th...
I am given this set of code and need to suggest ways to improve the code's cohesion and coupling of the classes. But I thought these classes are quite well de-coupled since it looks like they are making use of events. And in terms of cohesion, all the init() calls are placed together, everything seems quite alright to ...
I'm going to try my best to frame this question in a way that doesn't result in a language war or list, because I think there could be a good, technical answer to this question. Different languages support type aliases to varying degrees. C# allows type aliases to be declared at the beginning of each code file, and the...
What do you do to stay focused when learning a new language with so many other interesting languages out there?
Having had a number of instances of merge problems and other difficulties with a large Subversion repository and a team of 10+ developers I'm considering whether SVN is the right tool and what else to consider? Primary system being managed is a large PHP web application with release cycles averaging 2-3 weeks apart an...
Why don't any of the major RDBMS systems like MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, etc. have good full text indexing support? I realize that most databases support full text indexes to some degree, but that they are usually slower, and with a smaller feature set. It seems that every time you want a really good full text index,...
In database programming there's a technique called "normalization" that you do to data you want to store. Has anyone tried to apply this concept to object design? How did you? How did it work out? Edit: To expand/clarify, database normalization is more than a set of principles to reduce redundancy. There's actually ...
Do you find that it is better to learn through reading books or to just jump straight into a project and pick up what you need to know using the web, or some combination of both?
I have been considering using the Amazon cloud (EC2) for a small workflow application. In terms of power and storage, a SQL Server Express database will more than meet my needs. I have been cautioned against paying for just a Windows server instance and installing SQL Server Express due to mainly security issues. Is i...
Possible Duplicate: Is unit testing or test-driven development worthwhile? I've been working with C# for the last 2 years, and I've never done any unit testing. I just need to know what the objective of unit testing is. What kind of results do we expect from unit testing? Is code quality checked by unit testing? In ...
I would like to become a professional in php, I have learned nearly all about the language syntax and concepts and I have a good knowledge in C and C++, which made it easier to become familiar with PHP. (Of course, I learned MySql too.) But I don't feel like being able to build even a little good website of my own! It ...
How do you style complex compound AND / OR if statements for maximum readability? How do you indent and where do you place the line breaks? My particular situation is something like the following. It's definitely better than smashing everything into one line, but still looks messy. if ( ( x == y && ...
I'm starting to work with git for the first time, and I'm trying to come up with a workflow that works for me, so I thought of coming and asking around. Right now, I'm in a couple of projects where I'm the only programmer and, in fact, the only pusher to origin. I'm working like this, where c is a commit, p is a push a...
I just watched this talk by Greg Young warning people to KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. One of the things he suggested is that to do aspect-oriented programming, one does not need a framework. He starts by making a strong constraint: that all methods take one, and only one, parameter (though he relaxes this a little lat...
I've done a bit of work with CodeIgniter and a lot with straight PHP... I had the opportunity to use asp.net mvc3 recently and was absolutely blown away with my productivity. Despite not "knowing" the framework, the combination of scaffolding + intellisense + code generation through the context menus left me feeling ju...
It seems to be quite a big thing right now and experience with converting web sites to be more accessible seems to be a common criteria for jobs. My question is, why is it important? Is it a legal issue? Can I get sued if my web site does not comply with some accessibility standard? If so, what law would I be breaking?...
In blackberry we can override keyChar() method and capture the keypress event or we can register onKeyPressListener. i know, onKeyListener is observer pattern. In android also there is a KeyEvent.callback and onKeyListener Both are events why we no need to register for keyChar event. what is the difference between both...
My background has largely been manual testing and I started learning core java to be able to work with Selenium. I am wanting to write couple of reusable method, like reading/writing data from csv, excel, word etc. I created a class named - FileHandler and created method for this. Hence this class deals with all sorts...
I am trying to implement a view that contains many elements, whose state change depending on the actions you perform on it. I guess this is something that people often run into so I would like to know what approach works best for you. What I usually do is define several states for my view: {Loaded,Initialized,...} and ...
Just thinking out aloud - we programmers love all this voting/badges/rep stuff so could a scheme like this be introduced into a companies code review process to encourage better coding. Something like You (or others on your behalf) can post a review (could be snippet, single commit or series of) for a code review Oth...
I want to ask the user of my bash script to pass a directory path as argument. Which one of the following is a good programming practice? Require that the user enter a trailing / (forward slash) Require that a user doesn't enter a trailing / (forward slash)
I think great technology is invisible. Besides the usual suspects (GHC, Xmonad, proprietary trading software) what great examples are there of end-user software written in Haskell? I think good examples are FreeArc, Hledger and "Nikki And The Robots". Do you have more examples (full blown GUI apps, small CLI tools, etc...
I am .net programmer using Asp.net ,C# and Sql server 2005 to display set of information. My project is to create tools for Call Center Systems in my office. Now i am have created the project. but its too slow and takes much time in the time of page loading and post back. I need Suggestions to improve page performance...
Everything is in the question. I've just discovered this new feature and I don't really understand what it stands for. All I know is that it can represent loops and alternatives in sequence diagrams. Can someone explain me what it is?
I have a database table with many columns, that I want to display over several pages, similar to a turbo tax style information collection form. With only 1 or 2 items per page. Is it right to create 1 model, then a viewModel with only certain properties per ViewModel for each section I want to create in this workflow...
My best friend just started his internship a month ago. The problem is he is discouraged. He was a good A+ student at school, and he is feeling that he doesn't know anything at all. The issues he is working on, although they are on languages he feels comfortable in, seem so alien to him, he said. He's getting really di...
I'm beginning to realize that developing software is (amongst others) a process of constantly asking yourself questions. Questions regarding quality of code, separation of concerns, minimizing dependencies, ... But the main question is: how far can you go without ending up in a mental hospital? I'm applying for a new j...
We've been running Pex over some code, and it has been showing some good things (well bad things, but showing them before it gets to production!). However, one of the nice things about Pex is that it doesn't necessarily stop trying to find issues. One area we found is that when passing in a string, we were not checking...
I've been volunteered to sit down and talk about the life and work of a Developer with a 15 year old work experience student next week. The catches are that I've got just half an hour, and I'll be just one of the people talking to her - other people in different roles in the business will also be running through the e...
I'm trying to come up with a good approach to creating a re-usable development environment such that it doesn't take a couple days to re-build a machine if it starts to sputter and to be able to onboard new developers faster. Reading about Quora's development setup made me consider alternatives to the old development ...