Search Results

Search found 22 results on 1 pages for 'obsessive'.

Page 1/1 | 1 

  • How to handle coworker with "obsessive refactoring disorder"

    - by ThuneGrill
    My coworker (who is very clever, but with severly limited inter-personal skills), keeps refactoring my code even when it is work in progress and assigned to me as a task. Whereas I fully subscribed to the idea of collective ownership of code, I find this extremely irritating, but attempts to have him stop seem to have no effect. My analysis of his personality is that he considers himself the best, and if it had not been for him, the codebase would have been in a mess. I should add that I am not a novice, I know my skills and I produce quality work. Some of the refactorings are indeed to the better, most are basically just introduction of a style that he likes better than mine. In addition, he has a almost child-like need to have the last word in any discussion and has never any word of praise for work done by co-workers. There is always something that he, the master, would have done differently. I feel this is strongly affecting the quality of my work-life. What should I do ?

    Read the article

  • Obsessive behaviors in sysadmins

    - by squillman
    I have been told by colleagues (mainly non-technical) that some of my admin behaviors border on / cross the line between normal and obsessive, which sometimes leads me to wonder how screwed up I really am (read "how screwed up everyone else really is"). What are your obsessive behaviors when it comes to your sysadmin tasks and job functions? What do you do religiously that would make you twitch if you didn't do it or that others just roll their eyes at? I have reasons for my actions. I want to prove to my coworkers that I'm not alone.

    Read the article

  • Is it bad to have an "Obsessive Refactoring Disorder"?

    - by Rachel
    I was reading this question and realized that could almost be me. I am fairly OCD about refactoring someone else's code when I see that I can improve it. For example, if the code contains duplicate methods to do the same thing with nothing more than a single parameter changing, I feel I have to remove all the copy/paste methods and replace it with one generic one. Is this bad? Should I try and stop? I try not to refactor unless I can actually make improvements to the code performance or readability, or if the person who did the code isn't following our standard naming conventions (I hate expecting a variable to be local because of the naming standard, only to discover it is a global variable which has been incorrectly named)

    Read the article

  • Is it bad to have an "Obsessive Refactoring Disorder"?

    - by Rachel
    I was reading this question and realized that could almost be me. I am fairly OCD about refactoring someone else's code when I see that I can improve it. For example, if the code contains duplicate methods to do the same thing with nothing more than a single parameter changing, I feel I have to remove all the copy/paste methods and replace it with one generic one. Is this bad? Should I try and stop? I try not to refactor unless I can actually make improvements to the code performance or readability, or if the person who did the code isn't following our standard naming conventions (I hate expecting a variable to be local because of the naming standard, only to discover it is a global variable which has been incorrectly named)

    Read the article

  • Am I the only one this anal / obsessive about code? [closed]

    - by Chris
    While writing a shared lock class for sql server for a web app tonight, I found myself writing in the code style below as I always do: private bool acquired; private bool disposed; private TimeSpan timeout; private string connectionString; private Guid instance = Guid.NewGuid(); private Thread autoRenewThread; Basically, whenever I'm declaring a group of variables or writing a sql statement or any coding activity involving multiple related lines, I always try to arrange them where possible so that they form a bell curve (imagine rotating the text 90deg CCW). As an example of something that peeves the hell out of me, consider the following alternative: private bool acquired; private bool disposed; private string connectionString; private Thread autoRenewThread; private Guid instance = Guid.NewGuid(); private TimeSpan timeout; In the above example, declarations are grouped (arbitrarily) so that the primitive types appear at the top. When viewing the code in Visual Studio, primitive types are a different color than non-primitives, so the grouping makes sense visually, if for no other reason. But I don't like it because the right margin is less of an aesthetic curve. I've always chalked this up to being OCD or something, but at least in my mind, the code is "prettier". Am I the only one?

    Read the article

  • Best way to Start Over on my Dreamhost server?

    - by obsessive
    I have made a mess of my Dreamhost slice and want to know if there's a way to clean install/fresh install/wipe everything and start over? Is there a shell script to do this or would I have to do it through the Dreamhost admin panel or even contact Dreamhost to get them to do it for me? Any advice is appreciated, I'm not sure the best way to proceed. Thanks!

    Read the article

  • Setting filesystem mounting umask on OS X

    - by Nick
    (Using Snow Leopard.) When I plug in a flash drive formatted with FAT32, the permissions on all files on the drive are set as 0666; between colored ls and my obsessive-compulsive nature, this is annoying. Is there any way to make it automatically mount with a different umask?

    Read the article

  • How to stop gold-plating and just be content to release working developments

    - by Andy Bowskill
    The development team that I'm a member of has recently adapted to work according to Agile practices. This has personally highlighted the fact that I can't stop myself gold-plating code (and documentation) and I consequently exceed original estimates, when I could've delivered solutions that meet the requirements much earlier. I think my ethic is bordering on the obsessive in that I become too attached to my code and am rarely content to release before I've refactored and perfected it to the nth degree. I am happy that I have realised this but how can I change my attitude/mentality to be content with my progress and release on-time instead?

    Read the article

  • How do you cope with change in open source frameworks that you use for your projects?

    - by Amy
    It may be a personal quirk of mine, but I like keeping code in living projects up to date - including the libraries/frameworks that they use. Part of it is that I believe a web app is more secure if it is fully patched and up to date. Part of it is just a touch of obsessive compulsiveness on my part. Over the past seven months, we have done a major rewrite of our software. We dropped the Xaraya framework, which was slow and essentially dead as a product, and converted to Cake PHP. (We chose Cake because it gave us the chance to do a very rapid rewrite of our software, and enough of a performance boost over Xaraya to make it worth our while.) We implemented unit testing with SimpleTest, and followed all the file and database naming conventions, etc. Cake is now being updated to 2.0. And, there doesn't seem to be a viable migration path for an upgrade. The naming conventions for files have radically changed, and they dropped SimpleTest in favor of PHPUnit. This is pretty much going to force us to stay on the 1.3 branch because, unless there is some sort of conversion tool, it's not going to be possible to update Cake and then gradually improve our legacy code to reap the benefits of the new Cake framework. So, as usual, we are going to end up with an old framework in our Subversion repository and just patch it ourselves as needed. And this is what gets me every time. So many open source products don't make it easy enough to keep projects based on them up to date. When the devs start playing with a new shiny toy, a few critical patches will be done to older branches, but most of their focus is going to be on the new code base. How do you deal with radical changes in the open source projects that you use? And, if you are developing an open source product, do you keep upgrade paths in mind when you develop new versions?

    Read the article

  • Want to tap into a niche market. Do I create new site or bolt on to existing site?

    - by nitbuntu
    Hi, After a lot of heard work and a few years of perseverance, I'm seeing regular sales on my website which have been steadily growing over the past year. However, the entrepreneur in me wants tap into a niche market which I've become very interested in. It's possible to bolt on this niche onto my existing site as an additional category, without it looking too out of place; my new category of products would also benefit from the ranking my current site gets. The kind of people who would purchase these new niche products, however, are very particular and obsessive about detail. So, for example, many Vegetarians would not eat in KFC even if they were to introduce a new range of Veggie burgers. So, I thought it best to create a new website and since my existing site was created using an 'old-school' shopping cart and there are many more up-to-date, feature-rich, ones available now, I wanted to use a different shopping cart system. My dilemma is that I already have 2 websites (1 b2c and another b2b site) and maintaining a 2nd b2c site would end up vastly increasing my workload and I fear that I would not be able to pay adequate attention to all the sites. Moreover, the additional customer service work (e.g. answering emails from many separate email accounts) could end up being too confusing and difficult to maintain. The easy answer would be to take on an employee, but I'm just not earning enough to justify this yet. If anyone has any tips or experience they'd like to share, which could help me answer this question, I'd be highly grateful.

    Read the article

  • What Counts for a DBA: Passion

    - by drsql
    One of my first questions, when interviewing for a DBA/Programmer position, is always: “Why do you want this job?” The answers I receive range from cheesy hyperbole (“I want to enhance your services with my vast knowledge”) to deadpan realism (“I have N kids who all have a hole in the front of their face where food goes"). Both answers are fine in their own way, at least displaying some self-confidence, humour and honesty, but once in a while, I'll hear the answer that is music to me ears... “I LOVE DATABASES!” Whenever I hear it, my nerves tingle in hopeful anticipation; have I found someone for whom working with database isn't just a job, but a passion? Inevitably, I'm often disappointed. What initially seemed like passion turns out to be rather shallow enthusiasm; the person is enthusiastic about working with databases in the same way he or she might be about eating a bag of Cajun spiced kettle chips; enjoyable, but not something to think about too deeply or take too seriously. Enthusiasm comes, and enthusiasm goes. I've seen countless technical forum users burst onto the scene in a blaze of frantic question-answering, only to fade away within days, never to be heard from again. Passion, however, is more of a longstanding commitment. The biographies of the great technologists and authors of the recent past are full of the sort of passion and engrossment that lead a person to write a novel non-stop for a fortnight with no sleep and only dog food to eat (Philip K. Dick), or refuse to leave the works of the first tunnel under the Thames, even though it was flooded (Brunel). In a similar (though more modest) way, my passion for working with databases has led me to acts that might cause someone for whom it was "just a job" to roll their eyes in disbelief. Most evenings you're more likely to find me reading a database book than watching TV. I've spent hundreds of hours of my spare time writing blogs and articles (some of which are only read by tens of people); I've spent hundreds of dollars travelling to conferences, paying my own flight and hotel expenses, so that I can share a little of what I know, and mix with some like-minded people. And I know I'm far from alone in this, in the SQL Server community. Passion isn't everything, of course, and it isn't always accompanied by any great skill, but in almost every case, that skill can be cultivated over time. If you are doing what you are passionate about, work turns into more than just a way to feed your kids; it becomes your hobby, entertainment, and preoccupation. And it is this passion that gives a DBA the obsessive stubbornness, the refusal to be beaten by even the most difficult problem, which is often so crucial. A final word of warning though: passion without limits can turn weird. Never let it get in the way of your wife, kids, bills, or personal hygiene.

    Read the article

  • #MIX Day 2 Keynote: Put the Phone Down and Listen

    - by andrewbrust
    MIX day 1’s keynote was all about Windows Phone 7 (WP7).  MIX day 2’s was a reminder that Microsoft has much more going on than a new mobile platform.  Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, Doug Purdy and others showed us lots of other good things coming from Microsoft, mostly in the developer stack, that we certainly shouldn’t overlook.  These included the forthcoming IE9, its new JavaScript compiling engine and support for HTML 5 that takes full advantage of the local PC resources, including the Graphics Processing Unit.  The announcements also included important additions to ASP.NET (and one subtraction, in the form of lighter-weight ViewState technology) including almost-obsessive jQuery support.  That support is so good that John Resig, creator of the jQuery project, came on stage to tell us so.  Then Scott Guthrie told us that Microsoft would be contributing code to Open Source jQuery project. This is not your father’s Microsoft, it would seem. But to me, the crown jewel in today’s keynote were the numerous announcements around the Open Data Protocol (OData).  OData is nothing more than the protocol side of “Astoria” (now known as WCF Data Services, and until recently called ADO.NET Data Services) separated out and opened up as a platform-neutral standard.  The 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was Microsoft’s vehicle for first announcing OData, as well as project “Dallas,” an Azure-based cloud platform for publishing commercial OData feeds.  And we had already known about “bridges” for Astoria (and thus OData) for PHP and Java.  We also knew that PowerPivot, Microsoft’s forthcoming self-service BI plug-in for Excel 2010, will consume OData feeds and then facilitate drill-down analysis of their data.  And we recently found out that SQL Reporting Services reports (in the forthcoming SQL Server 2008 R2) and SharePoint 2010 lists will be consumable in OData format as well. So what was left to announce?  How about OData clients for Palm webOS and Apple iPhone/Objective C?  How about the release to Open Source of .NET’s OData client?  Or the ability to publish any SQL Azure database as an OData service by simply checking a checkbox at deployment?  Maybe even a Silverlight tool (code-named “Houston”) to create SQL Azure databases (and then publish them as OData) right in the browser?  And what if you you could get at NetFlix’s entire catalog in OData format?  You can – just go to http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/ and see for yourself.  Douglas Purdy, who made these announcements said “we want OData to work on as many devices and platforms as possible.”  After all the cross-platform OData announcements made in about a half year’s time, it’s hard to dispute this. When Microsoft plays the data card, and plays it well, watch out, because data programmability is the company’s heritage.  I’ll be discussing OData at length in my April Redmond Review column.  I wrote that column two weeks ago, and was convinced then that OData was a big deal. Today upped the ante even more.  And following the Windows Phone 7 euphoria of yesterday was, I think, smart timing.  The phone, if it’s successful, will be because it’s a good developer platform play.  And developer platforms (as well as their creators) are most successful when they have a good data strategy.  OData is very Silverlight-friendly, and that means it’s WP7-friendly too.  Phone plus service-oriented data is a one-two punch.  A phone platform without data would have been a phone with no signal.

    Read the article

  • Exception Handling Frequency/Log Detail

    - by Cyborgx37
    I am working on a fairly complex .NET application that interacts with another application. Many single-line statements are possible culprits for throwing an Exception and there is often nothing I can do to check the state before executing them to prevent these Exceptions. The question is, based on best practices and seasoned experience, how frequently should I lace my code with try/catch blocks? I've listed three examples below, but I'm open to any advice. I'm really hoping to get some pros/cons of various approaches. I can certainly come up with some of my own (greater log granularity for the O-C approach, better performance for the Monolithic approach), so I'm looking for experience over opinion. EDIT: I should add that this application is a batch program. The only "recovery" necessary in most cases is to log the error, clean up gracefully, and quit. So this could be seen to be as much a question of log granularity as exception handling. In my mind's eye I can imagine good reasons for both, so I'm looking for some general advice to help me find an appropriate balance. Monolitich Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } public static void Step2(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } public static void Step3(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } } Delegated Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Obsessive-Compulsive Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Other approaches welcomed and encouraged. Above are examples only.

    Read the article

  • Is inconsistent formatting a sign of a sloppy programmer?

    - by dreza
    I understand that everyone has their own style of programming and that you should be able to read other people's styles and accept it for what it is. However, would one be considered a sloppy programmer if one's style of coding was inconsistent across whatever standard they were working against? Some example of inconsistencies might be: Sometimes naming private variables with _ and sometimes not Sometimes having varying indentations within code blocks Not aligning braces up i.e. same column if using start using new line style Spacing not always consistent around operators i.e. p=p+1, p+=1 vs other times p =p+1 or p = p + 1 etc Is this even something that as a programmer I should be concerned with addressing? Or is it such a minor nit picking thing that at the end of the day I should just not worry about it and worry about what the end user sees and whether the code works rather than how it looks while working? Is it sloppy programming or just over obsessive nit picking? EDIT: After some excellent comments I realized I may have left out some information in my question. This question came about after reviewing another colleagues code check-in and noticing some of these things and then realizing that I've seen these kind of in-consistencies in previous check-ins. It then got me thinking about my code and whether I do the same things and noticed that I typically don't etc I'm not suggesting his technique is either bad or good in this question or whether his way of doing things is right or wrong. EDIT: To answer some queries to some more good feed back. The specific instance this review occurred in was using Visual Studio 2010 and programming in c# so I don't think the editor would cause any issues. In fact it should only help I would hope. Sorry if I left that piece of info out and it effects any current answers. I was trying to be a bit more generic in understanding if this would be considered sloppy etc. And to add an even more specific example of a code piece I saw during reading of the check-in: foreach(var block in Blocks) { // .. some other code in here foreach(var movement in movements) { movement.Moved.Zero(); } // the un-formatted brace } Such a minor thing I know, but many small things add up(???), and I did have to double glance at the code at the time to see where everything lined up I guess. Please note this code was formatted appropriately before this check-in. EDIT: After reading some great answers and varying thoughts, the summary I've taken from this was. It's not necessarily a sign of a sloppy programmer however as programmers we have a duty (to ourselves and other programmers) to make the code as readable as possible to assist in further ongoing development. However it can hint at inadequacies which is something that is only possible to review on a case by case (person by person) basis. There are many reasons why this might occur. They should be taken in context and worked through with the person/people involved if reasonable. We have a duty to try and help all programmers become better programmers! In the good old days when development was done using good old notepad (or other simple text editing tool) this occurred much more frequently. However we have the assistance of modern IDE's now so although we shouldn't necessarily become OTT about this, it should still probably be addressed to some degree. We as programmers vary in our standards, styles and approaches to solutions. However it seems that in general we all take PRIDE in our work and as a trait it is something that can stand programmers apart. Making something to the best of our abilities both internal (code) and external (end user result) goes along way to giving us that big fat pat on the back that we may not go looking for but swells our heart with pride. And finally to quote CrazyEddie from his post below. Don't sweat the small stuff

    Read the article

  • What Counts For a DBA – Depth

    - by Louis Davidson
    SQL Server offers very simple interfaces to many of its features. Most people could open up SSMS, connect to a server, write a simple query and see the results. Even several of the core DBA tasks are deceptively straightforward. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to perform a basic database backup or run a trace (even using the newfangled Extended Events!). However, appearances can be deceptive, and often times it is really important that a DBA understands not just the basics of how to perform a task, but why we do a task, and how that task works. As an analogy, consider a child walking into a darkened room. Most would know that they need to turn on the light, and how to do it, so they flick the switch. But what happens if light fails to shine forth. Most would immediately tell you that you need to consider changing the light bulb. So you hop in the car and take them to the local home store and instruct them to buy a replacement. Confronted with a 40 foot display of light bulbs, how will they decide which of the hundreds of types of bulbs, of different types, fittings, shapes, colors, power and efficiency ratings, is the right choice? Obviously the main lesson the child is going to learn this day is how to use their cell phone as a flashlight so they don’t have to ask for help the next time. Likewise, when the metaphorical toddlers who use your database server have issues, they will instinctively know something is wrong, and may even have some idea what caused it, but will have no depth of knowledge to figure out the right solution. That is where the DBA comes in and attempts to save the day. However, when one looks beneath the shiny UI, SQL Server has its own “40 foot display of light bulbs”, in the form of the tremendous number of tools and the often-bewildering amount of information they can present to the DBA, to help us find issues. Unfortunately, resorting to guesswork, to trying different “bulbs” over and over, hoping to stumble on the answer. This is where the right depth of knowledge goes a long way. If we need to write a SELECT statement, then knowing the syntax and where to find the data is not enough. Knowledge of indexes and query plans is essential. Without it, we might hit on a query that “works”, but we are basically still a user, not a programmer, because we have no real control over our platform. Is that level of knowledge deep enough? Probably not, since knowledge of the underlying metadata and structures would be very useful in helping us make sense of any query plan. Understanding the structure of an index makes the “key lookup” operator not sound like what you do when someone tapes your car key to the ceiling. So is even this level of understanding deep enough? Do we need to understand the memory architecture used to process the query? It might be a comforting level of knowledge, and will doubtless come in handy at some point, but is not strictly necessary in most cases. Beyond that lies (more or less) full knowledge of SQL language and the intricacies of every step the SQL Server engine takes to process our query. My personal theory is that, as a professional, our knowledge of a given task should extend, at a minimum, one level deeper than is strictly necessary to perform the task. Anything deeper can be left to the ridiculously smart, or obsessive, or both. As an example. tasked with storing an integer value between 0 and 99999999, it’s essential that I know that choosing an Integer over Decimal(8,0) will likely offer performance benefits. It is then useful that I also understand the value of adding a CHECK constraint, to make sure the values are valid to the desired range; and comforting that I know a little about the underlying processors, registers and computer math. Anything further, I leave to the likes of Joe Chang, whose recent blog post on the topic offers depth by the bucketful!  

    Read the article

  • TextMate tips for Rails Development

    - by Ganesh Shankar
    Working on Rails code for a bit has started me on the spiral into obsessively customising my dev environment (I say obsessive as at the last Rails meetup I went to there was some guy who was raving about shaving milliseconds off each line of code and therefore upto half an hour a day... I hope I don't become that guy...) I spend most of my time in TextMate so it seemed like a great place to start the optimising... So far I've added a few TextMate bundles like Git Bundle, Project Plus and the theme from Railscasts. I've noticed some of the other TextMate users I've come into contact with using heaps of nifty keyboard shortcuts and other plugins to help make their dev environment more friendly. Looking around the net, I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of shortcuts and plugins available... So I was hoping to hear from other Rails developers out there: What are some good keyboard shortcuts and plugins that I should be aware of for TextMate with specific reference to Rails Development? I've read this question on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/99807/what-are-some-useful-textmate-shortcuts but I was wondering if there was something a bit more specific to Rails development.

    Read the article

  • Findbugs and comparing

    - by Rob Goodwin
    I recently started using the findbugs static analysis tool in a java build I was doing. The first report came back with loads of High Priority warnings. Being the obsessive type of person, I was ready to go knock them all out. However, I must be missing something. I get most of the warnings when comparing things. Such as the following code: public void setSpacesPerLevel(int value) { if( value >= 0) { ... produces a high priority warning at the if statement that reads. File: Indenter.java, Line: 60, Type: BIT_AND_ZZ, Priority: High, Category: CORRECTNESS Check to see if ((...) & 0) == 0 in sample.Indenter.setSpacesPerLevel(int) I am comparing an int to an int, seems like a common thing. I get quite a few of that type of error with similar simple comparisons. I have alot of other high priority warnings on what appears to be simple code blocks. Am I missing something here? I realize that static analysis can produce false positives, but the errors I am seeing seem too trivial of a case to be a false positive. This one has me scratching my head as well. for(int spaces = 0;spaces < spacesPerLevel;spaces++){... Which gives the following findbugs warning: File: Indenter.java, Line: 160, Type: IL_INFINITE_LOOP, Priority: High, Category: CORRECTNESS There is an apparent infinite loop in sample.Indenter.indent() This loop doesn't seem to have a way to terminate (other than by perhaps throwing an exception). Any ideas? So basically I have a handful of files and 50-60 high priority warnings similar to the ones above. I am using findbugs 1.3.9 and calling it from the findbugs ant task

    Read the article

  • Is MVVM pointless?

    - by joebeazelman
    Is orthodox MVVM implementation pointless? I am creating a new application and I considered Windows Forms and WPF. I chose WPF because it's future-proof and offer lots of flexibility. There is less code and easier to make significant changes to your UI using XAML. Since the choice for WPF is obvious, I figured that I may as well go all the way by using MVVM as my application architecture since it offers blendability, separation concerns and unit testability. Theoretically, it seems beautiful like the holy grail of UI programming. This brief adventure; however, has turned into a real headache. As expected in practice, I’m finding that I’ve traded one problem for another. I tend to be an obsessive programmer in that I want to do things the right way so that I can get the right results and possibly become a better programmer. The MVVM pattern just flunked my test on productivity and has just turned into a big yucky hack! The clear case in point is adding support for a Modal dialog box. The correct way is to put up a dialog box and tie it to a view model. Getting this to work is difficult. In order to benefit from the MVVM pattern, you have to distribute code in several places throughout the layers of your application. You also have to use esoteric programming constructs like templates and lamba expressions. Stuff that makes you stare at the screen scratching your head. This makes maintenance and debugging a nightmare waiting to happen as I recently discovered. I had an about box working fine until I got an exception the second time I invoked it, saying that it couldn’t show the dialog box again once it is closed. I had to add an event handler for the close functionality to the dialog window, another one in the IDialogView implementation of it and finally another in the IDialogViewModel. I thought MVVM would save us from such extravagant hackery! There are several folks out there with competing solutions to this problem and they are all hacks and don’t provide a clean, easily reusable, elegant solution. Most of the MVVM toolkits gloss over dialogs and when they do address them, they are just alert boxes that don’t require custom interfaces or view models. I’m planning on giving up on the MVVM view pattern, at least its orthodox implementation of it. What do you think? Has it been worth the trouble for you if you had any? Am I just a incompetent programmer or does MVVM not what it's hyped up to be?

    Read the article

  • nconf nagios config no services defined

    - by user1508056
    I've setup Nagios core on OSX 10.7 server via macports fine. It seems to load fine and the sample config files all copied over to /opt/local/etc/nagios/objects/ fine and are specified correctly in the nagios.cfg file. I then installed nconf manually and got it running without much fight. Then I clicked on "Generate Nagios config" in nconf and get 1 warning and 4 errors. When I expand the error box here what I see: Nagios Core 3.5.0 Copyright (c) 2009-2011 Nagios Core Development Team and Community Contributors Copyright (c) 1999-2009 Ethan Galstad Last Modified: 03-15-2013 License: GPL Website: http://www.nagios.org Reading configuration data... Read main config file okay... Read object config files okay... Running pre-flight check on configuration data... Checking services... Error: There are no services defined! Checked 0 services. Checking hosts... Error: There are no hosts defined! Checked 0 hosts. Checking host groups... Checked 0 host groups. Checking service groups... Checked 0 service groups. Checking contacts... Error: There are no contacts defined! Checked 0 contacts. Checking contact groups... Checked 0 contact groups. Checking service escalations... Checked 0 service escalations. Checking service dependencies... Checked 0 service dependencies. Checking host escalations... Checked 0 host escalations. Checking host dependencies... Checked 0 host dependencies. Checking commands... Checked 0 commands. Checking time periods... Checked 0 time periods. Checking for circular paths between hosts... Checking for circular host and service dependencies... Checking global event handlers... Checking obsessive compulsive processor commands... Checking misc settings... Warning: Nothing specified for illegal_macro_output_chars variable! Total Warnings: 1 Total Errors: 3 I've tried several different things (played with cache settings, changed file permissions/ownership, edited some config files manually, etc.) but nothing gets me past this step. The thing is, when I run 'sudo nagios -v /opt/local/etc/nagios/nagios.cfg' the output shows it is reading a number of services, a localhost, and a contact in the .cfg files...so I'm pretty confident those are ok and the problem is nconf isnt reading the correct .cfg files or something like that. Any ideas what to double check? I did lots of googling and found nothing on this specific issue--so either I'm special (I'm not) or am overlooking something really simple. The path to nagios binary is listed as /opt/local/bin/nagios, if that matters. Also, all the nagios files are owned by nagios:nagios, wheras nconf files are owned by user, with only the directories/files specified in the nconf docs belonging to the _www user and/or group (things like output, temp, config, etc.). Thanks.

    Read the article

  • Source-control 'wet-work'?

    - by Phil Factor
    When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event.  If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time.  As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again.  The new code I hastily tapped in  was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain  the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better.  Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch.  If you’ve never accidentally lost  your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch.  Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual:  Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version.  Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page.  It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code.  For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive.  There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions.  The developers were in despair.  Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend.  Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support.  Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro  and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible.   The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus.  The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer.  I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering  a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays.   If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again.  There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’,  where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own  source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway.  Was this an early  case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

    Read the article

  • Source-control 'wet-work'?

    - by Phil Factor
    When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event.  If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time.  As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again.  The new code I hastily tapped in  was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain  the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better.  Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch.  If you’ve never accidentally lost  your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch.  Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual:  Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version.  Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page.  It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code.  For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive.  There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions.  The developers were in despair.  Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend.  Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support.  Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro  and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible.   The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus.  The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer.  I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering  a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays.   If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again.  There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’,  where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own  source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway.  Was this an early  case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

    Read the article

  • Is there a better way to avoid an infinite loop using winforms?

    - by Hamish Grubijan
    I am using .Net 3.5 for now. Right now I am using a using trick to disable and enable events around certain sections of code. The user can change either days, hours, minutes or total minutes, and that should not cause an infinite cascade of events (e.g. minutes changing total, total changing minutes, etc.) While the code does what I want, there might be a better / more straight-forward way. Do you know of any? For brawny points: This control will be used by multiple teams - I do not want to make it embarrassing. I suspect that I do not need to reinvent the wheel when defining hours in a day, days in week, etc. Some other standard .Net library out there must have it. Any other remarks regarding code? This using (EventHacker.DisableEvents(this)) business - that must be a common pattern in .Net ... changing the setting temporarily. What is the name of it? I'd like to be able to refer to it in a comment and also read up more on current implementations. In the general case not only a handle to the thing being changed needs to be remembered, but also the previous state (in this case previous state does not matter - events are turned on and off unconditionally). Then there is also a possibility of multi-threaded hacking. One could also utilize generics to make the code arguably cleaner. Figuring all this out can lead to a multi-page blog post. I'd be happy to hear some of the answers. P.S. Does it seem like I suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder? Some people like to get things finished and move on; I like to keep them open ... there is always a better way. // Corresponding Designer class is omitted. using System; using System.Windows.Forms; namespace XYZ // Real name masked { interface IEventHackable { void EnableEvents(); void DisableEvents(); } public partial class PollingIntervalGroupBox : GroupBox, IEventHackable { private const int DAYS_IN_WEEK = 7; private const int MINUTES_IN_HOUR = 60; private const int HOURS_IN_DAY = 24; private const int MINUTES_IN_DAY = MINUTES_IN_HOUR * HOURS_IN_DAY; private const int MAX_TOTAL_DAYS = 100; private static readonly decimal MIN_TOTAL_NUM_MINUTES = 1; // Anything faster than once per minute can bog down our servers. private static readonly decimal MAX_TOTAL_NUM_MINUTES = (MAX_TOTAL_DAYS * MINUTES_IN_DAY) - 1; // 99 days should be plenty. // The value above was chosen so to not cause an overflow exception. // Watch out for it - numericUpDownControls each have a MaximumValue setting. public PollingIntervalGroupBox() { InitializeComponent(); InitializeComponentCustom(); } private void InitializeComponentCustom() { this.m_upDownDays.Maximum = MAX_TOTAL_DAYS - 1; this.m_upDownHours.Maximum = HOURS_IN_DAY - 1; this.m_upDownMinutes.Maximum = MINUTES_IN_HOUR - 1; this.m_upDownTotalMinutes.Maximum = MAX_TOTAL_NUM_MINUTES; this.m_upDownTotalMinutes.Minimum = MIN_TOTAL_NUM_MINUTES; } private void m_upDownTotalMinutes_ValueChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { setTotalMinutes(this.m_upDownTotalMinutes.Value); } private void m_upDownDays_ValueChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { updateTotalMinutes(); } private void m_upDownHours_ValueChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { updateTotalMinutes(); } private void m_upDownMinutes_ValueChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { updateTotalMinutes(); } private void updateTotalMinutes() { this.setTotalMinutes( MINUTES_IN_DAY * m_upDownDays.Value + MINUTES_IN_HOUR * m_upDownHours.Value + m_upDownMinutes.Value); } public decimal TotalMinutes { get { return m_upDownTotalMinutes.Value; } set { m_upDownTotalMinutes.Value = value; } } public decimal TotalHours { set { setTotalMinutes(value * MINUTES_IN_HOUR); } } public decimal TotalDays { set { setTotalMinutes(value * MINUTES_IN_DAY); } } public decimal TotalWeeks { set { setTotalMinutes(value * DAYS_IN_WEEK * MINUTES_IN_DAY); } } private void setTotalMinutes(decimal nTotalMinutes) { if (nTotalMinutes < MIN_TOTAL_NUM_MINUTES) { setTotalMinutes(MIN_TOTAL_NUM_MINUTES); return; // Must be carefull with recursion. } if (nTotalMinutes > MAX_TOTAL_NUM_MINUTES) { setTotalMinutes(MAX_TOTAL_NUM_MINUTES); return; // Must be carefull with recursion. } using (EventHacker.DisableEvents(this)) { // First set the total minutes this.m_upDownTotalMinutes.Value = nTotalMinutes; // Then set the rest this.m_upDownDays.Value = (int)(nTotalMinutes / MINUTES_IN_DAY); nTotalMinutes = nTotalMinutes % MINUTES_IN_DAY; // variable reuse. this.m_upDownHours.Value = (int)(nTotalMinutes / MINUTES_IN_HOUR); nTotalMinutes = nTotalMinutes % MINUTES_IN_HOUR; this.m_upDownMinutes.Value = nTotalMinutes; } } // Event magic public void EnableEvents() { this.m_upDownTotalMinutes.ValueChanged += this.m_upDownTotalMinutes_ValueChanged; this.m_upDownDays.ValueChanged += this.m_upDownDays_ValueChanged; this.m_upDownHours.ValueChanged += this.m_upDownHours_ValueChanged; this.m_upDownMinutes.ValueChanged += this.m_upDownMinutes_ValueChanged; } public void DisableEvents() { this.m_upDownTotalMinutes.ValueChanged -= this.m_upDownTotalMinutes_ValueChanged; this.m_upDownDays.ValueChanged -= this.m_upDownDays_ValueChanged; this.m_upDownHours.ValueChanged -= this.m_upDownHours_ValueChanged; this.m_upDownMinutes.ValueChanged -= this.m_upDownMinutes_ValueChanged; } // We give as little info as possible to the 'hacker'. private sealed class EventHacker : IDisposable { IEventHackable _hackableHandle; public static IDisposable DisableEvents(IEventHackable hackableHandle) { return new EventHacker(hackableHandle); } public EventHacker(IEventHackable hackableHandle) { this._hackableHandle = hackableHandle; this._hackableHandle.DisableEvents(); } public void Dispose() { this._hackableHandle.EnableEvents(); } } } }

    Read the article

1