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while ( true ) { // what is each time through this loop called? }
Possible Duplicate: Has anyone done CSDP certification? The value of certifications notwithstanding, I'd like to know what you know or think about the certifications offered by the IEEE. They're called CSDA (entry-level) and CSDP (mid-level) I'm a big fan of certifications, they work for me since I like to have a cl...
For a custom software that will likely take a year or more to develop, how would I go about determining what to charge as a consultant? I'm having a hard time coming up with a number, and searches online are providing vastly different numbers (between $55/hr and $300/hr). I don't want to shoot too low because it's goin...
At the beginning of this year I was promoted to a lead developer role after our team's lead developer moved to a different department. I have about 5 years of job experience and due to availability and past performance I was management's primary choice for leading the project. I was a little apprehensive but decided ...
I've read the Learn You a Haskell book up to the point where they introduce Monads and stuff like Just a. These are so counterintuitive for me that I just feel like giving up trying to learn it. But I really want to try. I'm wondering if I can at least avoid the advanced concepts for a while and just starting using the...
Note: This is a question about networking, not gaming. I'm using StarCraft merely as an example. The game StarCraft (not StarCraft 2) supports online play. One person hosts, and other people join. If the host leaves during the game, the game can continue indefinitely without the host. How does that work? Consider t...
I had taken a telephonic interview and the interviewer has given some problem for which I was supposed to give him the algorithm. Since its was a telephonic interview and I had no paper or pen, so I could not give him the correct solutions. So I got bit demotivated that my problem solving skills are very low (I have a ...
My team is using clear-case as the version control. The project which I am working is not started 7-8 years back. During the entire life time of the project we had several releases bug-fixes service packs etc. The issues are tracked using the bug tracking system and most of the people who work on the bug-fixes follows ...
I got into the game of programming, exactly a year ago. Now i am posing as an HTML, CSS and Javascript Guru. html5 and css3 are the new things out there but in my opinion they are still experimental, (some new websites remind me of the blink tag). I know HTML 4.x and xhtml were out there for a very long time and eventu...
I've worked different kind of applications both having centralized and decentralized logging mechanisms. I feel centralized logging mechanism is good to see the proper flow of code and timing of executions while debugging problems. Most of the implementations will have small fixed file size for easily narrowing down th...
I have very similar code over multiple files in my project. If a client wanted some level of commented code, would I have to invest the time into duplicating the code for every file. I think it would simply be a waste of time. What would be the best/easiest way to provide comments to a client. (Refer them to a readme t...
What makes a language scalable ? I believe scalability is more about system design. It sounds really odd to me, to say that one language is more scalable than the another.
We're implementing an CMS based on ASP.NET MVC. Now, any designer should be able to provide themes for this CMS. But to write a theme, they need to be able to modify the generated HTML, thus the concept of View. In other words, they should be capable to either modify current views, or create new views from scratch, to ...
I'm sure you all have heard managers saying that "we need an analyzer", or "we need a designer". While I'm a .NET developer, I hardly can differentiate an analyzer from a designer (not web designer or UI designer). Who is analyzer? Who is designer? Do they overlap?
I don't know where to post this, so sorry if this is the wrong place. I bought the book Learn to Program by Chris Pine on my iPad, I will be travelling for about two days so want to read this book and learn to program obviously but won't have access to a computer so is it worth reading this book while travelling? I fli...
So far I've always coded using raw/embedded, dialectic SQL. This seems obviously wrong to me because it ties you to concrete technologies so your software can't be deployed to any machine - especially servers. In general (independently of the programming language and RDBMS), what options does one have in this case? How...
I am making a commercial software product and I want to publish it soon. In my product title can I have words like Photoshop, Visual Studio, Delphi, etc? For example, a full name would be something like: "My product for Photoshop ver 123" or "My Product for Delphi 123".
Consider this scenario: Stakeholder(s): Let's build a web application to manage user's financial data. Scrum team: Ok, let's do it. . . . After 3 sprints Stakeholder(s): Let's also implement a mailing system, so that when user's financial status is not good, (s)he would be warned. Scrum team: Ok, it's not that hard. We...
Rewritten question: I'm not asking a JavaScript-related question, but all "client" languages used on the web (HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, and so on). If I put JavaScript code (that is GPLed) on my website, and this website is accessible from anyone over the web, am I violating the GPL in some way? What happens if I would l...
This question is about databases but I prefer to post it here and not in dba.stackexchange. The reason is that I have concerns with the application as well as database design. Programmers can better assist in this regard. My four year old .NET application is using MySQL 5.1 database server as back-end. The database is ...
I was just watching the Jon Skeet (with Tony the Pony) presentation from Dev-Days. Although "write a string reverse function" is coding interview 101 - I'm not sure that it's actually possible to write a general string reverse function, certainly not one that works in all localisations and all string types. Apart from ...
We have been trying for months to convince my boss to switch to OOP php, but each time, he takes out his previous experience with programming and convinces us other wise. i need to talk like a boss to him, tell me how do i convince him? I need to make him understand the long term benefits and also financial benefits. ...
I have more than 6 years of experience with .Net (C#/ASP.NET) and Visual Studio. But recently I'm tempted to switch to Linux/Mono. It comes up with some questions: Can I run my old Visual Studio projects and source codes in Mono correctly? My clients use IIS for ASP.NET and MS Windows for Winform and Console projects....
I feel as if a return statement should only return one value. When it returns multiple, things get confusing. I know since the return type in Java has to be declared, this is difficult to do, but in languages like Python it is a snap. Are multiple return values a sign of bad design or coding style? Python example def...
Becoming a good analyzer and designer can greatly benefit a developer. But there are definitely obstacles for this. Not everybody is interested in OOAD, and not every person who is interested, knows the path. Should a good OOAD know multiple OO languages? Or should he/she have failed projects? How can one become a good...
This might seem like more of a graphic design question than a programming question, but I think it has much more technical/programming merit than actual graphic design. The concept of "responsive" web design revolves around using media queries in CSS3 to detect the size of the viewing device and adjust the CSS rules ac...
I'm looking for some implementation ideas to be able to have offline apps sync data to a central server. The server will be Sql Server 2008. The clients will download data from the server when internet access is available and will need to allow the user to make changes offline and then sync the changes back to the ser...
I'm doing some data transmission from a dsPIC to a PC and I'm doing an 8-bit CRC to every block of 512 bytes to make sure there are no errors. With my CRC code enabled I get about 33KB/s, without it I get 67KB/s. What are some alternative error detection algorithms to check out that would be faster?
This is part of a series of questions which focuses on a project called the Abstraction Project, which aims to abstract the concepts used in language design in the form of a framework. Another page associated to it related to ease of use can be viewed here. The meta-topic associated to an inquiry about the framework ...
Programming in Windows with Visual Studio 2010 C++ and MFC. My question is about how best to store, update, and pass around program settings or options. I have a simple main GUI window/frame/dialog. On that main window I have an options button. When I click the options button I create an Options Dialog. Inside the ...
Possible Duplicate: Code maintenance: keeping a bad pattern when extending new code for being consistent, or not ? As my experience in programming increases with each project, I look back at earlier projects and cringe at some of the ways the code is structured or how well i have implemented a design pattern. These...
I gave my rate to my client with a simple breakdown as requested. I listed out the components of my rate: Salary Benefits Overhead (tax, suppliers, etc etc) The client is ok with 1) and 3) But he wants a further breakdown of 2) Benefits (incl. vacation, sick days, insurance, etc) I am just using a very conservative ...
I don't even know if this question makes sense ... but let me let you grok it... imagine ... You're totally absorbed into some programming thought/idea/concept, your brain is in its most active state thinking up a solution to a problem, or as Joel Spolsky puts it -- you're deep into your "zone" -- AND, suddenl...
I wanted to know how (real) elevators work. But, so far, I could not find much material about the algorithms they use, nor software (if any) for simulation. Could anybody give me references for that?
The Apache 1.0 license includes an advertising clause: Apache: All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this * software must display the following acknowledgment: * "This product includes software developed by the Apache Group * for use in the Apache HTTP server project (http://www.apache...
I have been working with a code being maintained for years. We're using clear-case as version control. To submit the code for review and get the code count (for project metrics) are usually painful. What's the best way to conduct code review for maintenance software? How effective we can share the code for peer review...
Which approach is better when working with a source control software like TFS or VSS? I have experienced different approaches and I can't tell which one is better. Should we let developers decide upon it? Or should a team has a unique strategy for check-in check-out operations?
Related: As a beginning programmer, should I favor building my own libraries over using 3rd-party libraries? As an intermediate to advanced level PHP web-developer and a young one at that (15yrs.), should I build an entirely new CMS for my website or rely on pre-made software such as WordPress or Drupal? I don't exac...
After shipping a release, once in two to three months, I get 10 to 15 days of free time. By free time, I mean no work, no one cares what you are doing etc., but you have to come to the office and go. Do you get free time like that? How do you utilize this time? I tend to read, but I feel cramming more and more informat...
I am really confused with this. I believe that the more I am getting experience, the more I am becoming an expert at finding mistakes and fixing them quickly. Now my boss got website from a programmer who does very very bad coding. Now he sends the list of problems to fix. Suppose it's the stylesheet problem, and the o...
A surprising number of quality, scalability, and load problems have been occurring on an application I currently support that I did not originally write. Thankfully I have new projects that I have been doing from the ground up to retain some semblance of my sanity. The original team consisted of 20 some developers (mo...
For someone who has not worked anywhere in Java Technology except learning just the core concepts in his Masters (MCA) and Graduation (BCA, bachelor degree course): Is it possible to get job anywhere in Java technology? Considering he/she has not studied it in regular college and not First Class throughout except BCA,...
The company I work within is tentatively moving towards an Agile project management strategy - having experienced the "joys" of waterfall one time to many. Key to this is a shift in emphasis towards delivering functionality as opposed to meeting hard deadlines. While the development process and client relationship has ...
I was reading a paper (PDF) that introduced a term, internal syntax, that I've never heard of. What does this term mean, and how is it different from the source syntax? It looks that the internal syntax is used to formally prove some properties about the language (at least in this paper). I'd like to know the exact def...
As many of you already know Apple released a new OS last week so I installed it on my system to see if the project I'm working on works. Well, absolutely nothing works. There are a lot of deprecated methods so I would like some advice on how to tackle updating your code so it is compatible with the new platform.
We're currently in a situation where we have a choice between using an out-of-the-box object-relational mapper or rolling our own We have a legacy application (ASP.NET + SQL Server) where the data-layer & business-layer are unfortunately mashed together. The system isn't particularly complicated in terms of it's data ...
I understand that exception in program means that something unpredictable happened (but not so bad to unavoidably crash the application!). The try-catch-finally sequence makes me sad because the program is harder to read (one more level of curly brackets) and harder to understand (jump from anywhere to catch in case of...
I sometimes see the term "Bootstrapper". I saw it last when creating some learning exercises for Prism. I stumbled upon UnityBootstrapper class. My question is: when would you call a class a "Bootstrapper"? Why? What does it say about the class?
Does anybody have suggestions on creating a flowchart representation of a REST-style web interface? In the interest of supplying thorough documentation to co-developers, I've been toying around in dia modeling the interface for modifying and generating a product resource: This particular system begins to act different...
I am rewriting a vb6 installer into NSIS. One of my priorities is to compile-to-release in the least number of steps possible; ideally, a one click process, in which all needed files are included, registered, and put in the right folders. At the moment, I am creating several folders. One for app_path files, one for sys...
I am learning Python and am intrigued by the following point in PEP 20 The Zen of Python: There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch. Could anyone offer any concrete examples of this maxim? I am particularly interested ...
One of the tenets of Functional Programming is the use of Pure Functions. A Pure function is one that is side-effect free and referentially transparent. Getters are not referentially transparent - if a Setter is called between calls to the Getter, the Getter's return value changes even though its parameters have not (...
We have an application which collects a lot of data and has reporting baked in to it. The first iteration was a Crystal Reports integration which worked nicely. Create the report in Crystal Report designer and then import the RPT file into the application. This worked nice but users needed the application to run a r...
Should I store only the user's session id along with the data in a table, or should I store the user's session id in a table and access an array of data from the user's session id? and why? What is more efficient? I will not be generating any reports.
I developed our current project architecture and started developing it on my own (reaching something like, revision 40). We're developing a simple subway routing framework and my design seemed to be done extremely well - several main models, corresponding views, main logic and data structures were modeled "as they shou...
I'm heading into my first job (i.e. they're bringing me on for a full position) in Software Development and am quite nervous about how the whole salary negotiation thing goes. Glassdoor.com says that my position for my (lack of) experience offers something ridiculously high like 85k. Salary.com says that Software Devel...
I have been asked to take a person in our IT department who has no programming experience but is a smart and capable person and help him move into programming at lets say an entry level developer supporting existing .Net applications. I definitely believe this person can do it but I am looking for the quickest way to g...
I'm pretty familiar with a B Tree, mainly having to keep the databases well fed with electricity, air conditioning, and harddrive space. I associate with a double (doubl[ie,ey]?) linked list. Today, one of the developers at lunch mentioned a R tree. I hopped on Wikipedia and started reading. It sounded an awful like a...
Someone in my company recently proposed changes to our core product that our managers feel should trigger what I guess my company considers a full QA cycle (i.e. testing the entire product suite from the ground up). Apparently our QA takes 12 weeks to do a full QA cycle for our product. My problem with this is that we ...
I've read in multiple answers that switch/case avoids "unnecessary" comparisons, but I never learned this in college, and I'm a little stumped on how the program would figure out which case to jump to without doing a comparison. Obviously, in the case of int switchVar=3; switch (switchVar) { case 0: ... case 1: ... cas...
I find that when someone asks what is the best way to learn how to program, people usually provide them with references to a bunch texts written by various authors. However I don't believe many people at all learn to program from books. I find that they are usually faced with a challenge and then use programming as a t...
Before I ask the question, let me first describe my thoughts about SQLite. I happen to like tools that are small, fast and, more importantly, have only the really necessary functionality. That's why I like SQLite and I like MS-SQL a bit less. For example: MS-SQL may have much more functionality, scalability, etc. etc....
I just recently learnt ruby on rails using ruby 1.9.2 and rails 3 using Michael Hartl's tutorial. I'm making an application which I wanted to host on my preexisting server. However, I found that they still do not support rails 3 as it breaks compatibility with mongrel. My question is: How difficult will it be to port m...
I am looking for an efficient way, that also doesn't come off as an insult, to introduce OOP concepts to existing team members? My teammates are not new to OO languages. We've been doing C++/C# for a long time so technology itself is familiar. However, I look around and without major infusion of effort (mostly in the...
I am working on a fairly large and buggy application - and due to the way it's written (I'll spare you details, but it violates rules in most areas you can think of), it is next to impossible developing it without major refactoring. Significant part of the app was authored by interns, n00bs etc.; but there has also bee...
Background: I'm an experienced developer and technical architect (C#, Delphi, Java, Clojure, Assembler, Perl, various esoteric functional programming languages) We need to hire some Ruby developers for a growing Ruby on Rails project I don't personally know much Ruby at all, but need to evaluate some candidates What'...
Can we control the changes on a special artifact while our configuration management tool doesn't work properly? Can we do it ourselves?
I was reading through the docs for vim, and noticed there's a shortcut, for example g?w would transform the next word using ROT13. I also know that you can change the encoding of a Python file to ROT13. Here's my question: Why? It seems like it wouldn't be that useful, aside from prank programs like Django FUNserver.
Some time ago, we were tasked with a project to come in and replace a customer's old Mainframe system with a new intranet ASP.NET solution using SQL Server as the back end. Part of this was a re-engineering of the business as well - essentially, as we change the system, we were to be thinking of how we can better do b...
A client has asked me to update his web app. At the last minute, he has expressed some concern about allowing me access to his database (and thus to sensitive client information), because this is the first time we have worked together and he doesn't know me. As far as I know, there is no way for me to work on this proj...
Recently, I was approached by a local ad agency with a job opportunity. They are bringing all web/interactive development in-house and adding to their development team. I'm growing sick of my cushy, yet boring corporate job, and am intrigued by the position. Having only worked for software shops where the primary busi...
Extremely, extremely subjective question here, but its something I've been struggling with for quite a while. I've seriously tried to become a reasonable PHP coder for the past several years. But I've really failed every time. I hate to describe myself as a beginner, b/c I've been designing websites (using WordPress, D...
We have an HTML designer who is not a developer but needs to modify .aspx files from our ASP.NET 2.0 projects from time to time in order to get CSS to work properly with them. Currently, this involves giving her the .aspx page by itself, which she opens and edits via Visual Studio 2008 (her computer used to be a devel...
I work at a Microsoft shop doing mainly web development. We had a client who asked us to review (improve) the data model for his web app, but said that he wants to develop his app in PHP (he knows "a guy" who can do it). When I asked him why he wants to go with PHP, he gave me the standard set of arguments from the 90'...
I am compiling a detailed history of the Pascal language, and there are a few details I am missing. There are so many features today that we take for granted. What features significantly contributed to the evolution of Pascal, and why were they significant? I'm looking for language features, not platform or framework f...
I was surprised when I heard that Pascal didn't originally have units. If I recall correctly they were introduced in Turbo Pascal 4. Did other pascal version have units prior to that? How long before other Pascal's got units?
Does Free Pascal introduce any significant language features over Turbo Pascal & then Delphi, or does it just introduce the Turbo Pascal & Delphi flavors of Pascal to more platforms?
Microsoft had a Pascal compiler called Quick Pascal. I've seen some conflicting reports about when it was available. Does anyone know for sure? Did it introduce any new language features over the alternatives, or was it just Microsoft's version?
I was reading in the side bar of the Java language wiki page and it says it was influenced by Pascal and Delphi. this isn't the fact anymore, there are no references to Delphi on the entire referenced wiki page as of this edit, probably should remove all references to Delph from this question as well At first glance Ja...
I am specifically looking for language influences (as opposed to framework). At first glance C# seems to be an evolution of C/C++ or Java. But we know C# has the same designer as Delphi, and he even acknowledged some similarities and said "good ideas don't just go away." The one example I see of something in C# that is...
As opposed to influence on the C# language, did Delphi influence the .NET Framework too? At first glance .NET is Microsoft's version of Java, but .NET has properties similar to Delphi. Are there other influences?
Microsoft charges thousands of dollars for most versions of Visual Studio. Compare this with companies like Apple and Google and with organizations like GNU and Eclipse that give away developer tools for free, it makes me wonder where the difference lies. The rationale behind Apple and Google giving away the tools for...
I have a boss that is not very technical. He can write some basic SQL, speak some dev lingo, but all in all not a pro dev. I get into trouble often, by giving him a lot of detail and asking him to make a decision as to which direction he wants to go. For example, recently he asked for a bunch of changes to go into...
In building a language history for Pascal I noticed that at some point languages changed from a strong line between the language and its common libraries to more of a blurry one. In the first few versions of Turbo Pascal there was no capability for reusable modules until version 4 introduced units. Later versions of Pa...
Possible Duplicate: Would you see any use of a Trilean (True, False, ??) Well first and foremost, I'm not a programmer, I am a civil engineer that does some programming and quite enjoy it. Second and Second most, I'd like to claim rights to this amazing invention and call it TROLLEAN or DASSOUKIEAN. Joking aside, on...
I am generally a PHP Developer that deals in a few different MVC frameworks. I am being tempted (like most) to break out of my comfortable LAMP environment in pursuit of a "prettier" and "more simple" language, attached to frameworks that are becoming more and more popular. I agree with most arguments to switching to ...
On my webpage, i have to generate some excel and pdf files but the user has to wait until the file is generated. the scenario is this: user press a link and waits until the files are generated and displayed as a links on the raports page. how can i 'tell' to the user to wait?
I asked in another question about where a good place to start learning programming was and I came to the conclusion with the many helpful answers, that I would like to go with Python. So now, would there be a benefit to using a .NET implementation like IronPython or should I just do Python? My understanding is I would ...
Should I develop on the latest and greatest 1.7 version of Joomla or stick with the well documented version of 1.5? I'm new to Joomla (and webDev in general), so I bumble around, search online, and ask those wiser then myself. The problem is that the answers are for version 1.5, and don't apply to 1.7, so I'm flounderi...
This is something that has bothering me for a while now. I guess there are a couple of obvious important things that should go into a comment, such as: The author(s) A description of the parameters (and their types, if we are in a dynamic language) A short description of what the method does, e.g. "Trims leading and t...
As an independent vendor being contracted to write a product for a company, is it reasonable to ship only the source code and user documentation while leaving out design documents, architecture diagrams, unit tests etc (basically anything else not strictly needed to run the product or extend it)? The goal is to make th...
In an attempt to not reinvent a wheel, I'm asking if anyone has ideas on a data homogeneity algorithm. A brief example: My data has several elements maybe like Number Color Fruit Letter There are around a 100 of these elements in an array. The algorithm needs to sort the elements so that any 2 entries with the sam...
In iPhone, Android, and other gaming platforms you can sometimes earn credit by installing other games, going to someones website, even signing up for a credit card. For iPhone, for example, there are entire networks set up for this kind of affiliate marketing. What is the industry term for this?
I work for a small electronics and support software company that just recently got a contract with a large company that's very strict on documentation (I do the support software, essentially Windows or browser applications). Upon reviewing the required documentation from the large company, I realize that I wear more ha...
I know ads can be profitable for some incredibly popular applications, but how do average applications fare? I am about to release an application and I think it will be pretty popular, but it's not the next Angry Birds. I guess there will be a few thousand users. Would a few thousand users that use the application abo...
Looking for books (published or upcoming) and frameworks (preferably free/open-source) for sequential tests. My understanding of sequential tests is that it is very similar to a Workflow System, with the following elements: A collection of Setup/Exercise/Verify routine-sets (suites) - same as in xUnit Optionally, a...
Git is an excellent version control system. If we exclude the fact that, it doesn't have an excellent GUI support, it's really good and fast. But the source controls like Clearcase has large support for enterprise customers. Companies are investing huge amount for source control servers and licesense. Of late most of ...
In the recent years, the hype around Git raised greatly. Everybody knows about Git, nobody knows about alternatives. Other ones like Mercurial seem to be unnoticed. Both have been released in 2005, and provide similar functionalities. Moreover, Mercurial is generally considered to be easier to use, more intuitive and h...
There are various types of quality that can be measured in software products, e.g. fitness for purpose (e.g. end use), maintainability, efficiency. Some of these are somewhat subjective or domain specific (e.g. good GUI design principles may be different across cultures or dependent on usage context, think military ver...
I am reading the source code of ObjectListView and there is a Munger class. What is Munger? Does Munger mean anything general in programming jargon? Afaik, the Munger in the source code wraps the methods to do map string to object properties through Reflection (C#). Thanks.