Search Results

Search found 13692 results on 548 pages for 'bad practices'.

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

Page 102/548 | < Previous Page | 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109  | Next Page >

  • What are the Worst Software Project Failures Ever?

    - by Warren P
    Is there a good list of "worst software project failures ever" in the history of software development? For example in Canada a "gun registry" project spent around two billion dollars. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_registry). This is of course, insane, even if the final product "sort of worked". I have heard of an FBI Case file system which there have been several attempts to rewrite, all of them so far, failures. There is a book on the subject (Software Runaways). There doesn't seem to be be a software "boondoggle" list or "fiasco" list on Wikipedia that I can see. (Update: Therac-25 would be the 'winner' of this question, except that I was internally thinking more of Software projects that had as their deliverable, mainly software, as opposed to firmware projects like Therac-25, where the hardware and firmware together are capable of killing people. In terms of pure software monetary debacles, which was my intended question, there are several contenders.)

    Read the article

  • Is there a way to avoid spaghetti code over the years?

    - by Yoni Roit
    I've had several programming jobs. Each one with 20-50 developers, project going on for 3-5 years. Every time it's the same. Some programmers are bright, some are average. Everyone has their CS degree, everyone read design patterns. Intentions are good, people are trying hard to write good code but still after a couple of years the code turns into spaghetti. Changes in module A suddenly break module B. There are always these parts of code that no one can understand except for the person who wrote it. Changing infrastructure is impossible and backwards compatibility issues prevent good features to get in. Half of the time you just want to rewrite everything from scratch. And people more experienced than me treat this as normal. Is it? Does it have to be? What can I do to avoid this or should I accept it as a fact of life? Edit: Guys, I am impressed with the amount and quality of responses here. This site and its community rock!

    Read the article

  • How would you organize this Javascript?

    - by Anurag
    How do you usually organize complex web applications that are extremely rich on the client side. I have created a contrived example to indicate the kind of mess it's easy to get into if things are not managed well for big apps. Feel free to modify/extend this example as you wish - http://jsfiddle.net/NHyLC/1/ The example basically mirrors part of the comment posting on SO, and follows the following rules: Must have 15 characters minimum, after multiple spaces are trimmed out to one. If Add Comment is clicked, but the size is less than 15 after removing multiple spaces, then show a popup with the error. Indicate amount of characters remaining and summarize with color coding. Gray indicates a small comment, brown indicates a medium comment, orange a large comment, and red a comment overflow. One comment can only be submitted every 15 seconds. If comment is submitted too soon, show a popup with appropriate error message. A couple of issues I noticed with this example. This should ideally be a widget or some sort of packaged functionality. Things like a comment per 15 seconds, and minimum 15 character comment belong to some application wide policies rather than being embedded inside each widget. Too many hard-coded values. No code organization. Model, Views, Controllers are all bundled together. Not that MVC is the only approach for organizing rich client side web applications, but there is none in this example. How would you go about cleaning this up? Applying a little MVC/MVP along the way? Here's some of the relevant functions, but it will make more sense if you saw the entire code on jsfiddle: /** * Handle comment change. * Update character count. * Indicate progress */ function handleCommentUpdate(comment) { var status = $('.comment-status'); status.text(getStatusText(comment)); status.removeClass('mild spicy hot sizzling'); status.addClass(getStatusClass(comment)); } /** * Is the comment valid for submission */ function commentSubmittable(comment) { var notTooSoon = !isTooSoon(); var notEmpty = !isEmpty(comment); var hasEnoughCharacters = !isTooShort(comment); return notTooSoon && notEmpty && hasEnoughCharacters; } // submit comment $('.add-comment').click(function() { var comment = $('.comment-box').val(); // submit comment, fake ajax call if(commentSubmittable(comment)) { .. } // show a popup if comment is mostly spaces if(isTooShort(comment)) { if(comment.length < 15) { // blink status message } else { popup("Comment must be at least 15 characters in length."); } } // show a popup is comment submitted too soon else if(isTooSoon()) { popup("Only 1 comment allowed per 15 seconds."); } });

    Read the article

  • Code Analysis - Treat as Error

    - by Brian Schmitt
    Looking to enable the "Enable code Analysis on Build" feature in Visual Studio. Obviously the Rules are a best practice, and I am working with an existing code base that currently fails many of the rules. I am looking for input as to which rules are the most egregious and should be treated as an Error.

    Read the article

  • Exception design: Custom exceptions reading data from file?

    - by User
    I have a method that reads data from a comma separated text file and constructs a list of entity objects, let's say customers. So it reads for example, Name Age Weight Then I take these data objects and pass them to a business layer that saves them to a database. Now the data in this file might be invalid, so I'm trying to figure out the best error handling design. For example, the text file might have character data in the Age field. Now my question is, should I throw an exception such as InvalidAgeException from the method reading the file data? And suppose there is length restriction on the Name field, so if the length is greater than max characters do I throw a NameTooLongException or just an InvalidNameException, or do I just accept it and wait until the business layer gets a hold of it and throw exceptions from there? (If you can point me to a good resource that would be good too)

    Read the article

  • Newbie T-SQL dynamic stored procedure -- how can I improve it?

    - by Andy Jones
    I'm new to T-SQL; all my experience is in a completely different database environment (Openedge). I've learned enough to write the procedure below -- but also enough to know that I don't know enough! This routine will have to go into a live environment soon, and it works, but I'm quite certain there are a number of c**k-ups and gotchas in it that I know nothing about. The routine copies data from table A to table B, replacing the data in table B. The tables could be in any database. I plan to call this routine multiple times from another stored procedure. Permissions aren't a problem: the routine will be run by the dba as a timed job. Could I have your suggestions as to how to make it fit best-practice? To bullet-proof it? ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[copyTable2Table] @sdb varchar(30), @stable varchar(30), @tdb varchar(30), @ttable varchar(30), @raiseerror bit = 1, @debug bit = 0 as begin set nocount on declare @source varchar(65) declare @target varchar(65) declare @dropstmt varchar(100) declare @insstmt varchar(100) declare @ErrMsg nvarchar(4000) declare @ErrSeverity int set @source = '[' + @sdb + '].[dbo].[' + @stable + ']' set @target = '[' + @tdb + '].[dbo].[' + @ttable + ']' set @dropStmt = 'drop table ' + @target set @insStmt = 'select * into ' + @target + ' from ' + @source set @errMsg = '' set @errSeverity = 0 if @debug = 1 print('Drop:' + @dropStmt + ' Insert:' + @insStmt) -- drop the target table, copy the source table to the target begin try begin transaction exec(@dropStmt) exec(@insStmt) commit end try begin catch if @@trancount > 0 rollback select @errMsg = error_message(), @errSeverity = error_severity() end catch -- update the log table insert into HHG_system.dbo.copyaudit (copytime, copyuser, source, target, errmsg, errseverity) values( getdate(), user_name(user_id()), @source, @target, @errMsg, @errSeverity) if @debug = 1 print ( 'Message:' + @errMsg + ' Severity:' + convert(Char, @errSeverity) ) -- handle errors, return value if @errMsg <> '' begin if @raiseError = 1 raiserror(@errMsg, @errSeverity, 1) return 1 end return 0 END Thanks!

    Read the article

  • Best approach for coding ?

    - by ahmed
    What should or how should I decide the best approach for coding as a smart programmer. I have just started programming last year in VB, and I keep on listening this statement. But I never could find by myself to choose the best approach for coding. When I search for a coding example on internet I find different types of approach to achieve the same target. So help me finding the best approach. (asp.net,vb.net)

    Read the article

  • MVC Paging and Sorting Patterns: How to Page or Sort Re-Using Form Criteria

    - by CRice
    What is the best ASP.NET MVC pattern for paging data when the data is filtered by form criteria? This question is similar to: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1425000/preserve-data-in-net-mvc but surely there is a better answer? Currently, when I click the search button this action is called: [AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)] public ActionResult Search(MemberSearchForm formSp, int? pageIndex, string sortExpression) {} That is perfect for the initial display of the results in the table. But I want to have page number links or sort expression links re-post the current form data (the user entered it the first time - persisted because it is returned as viewdata), along with extra route params 'pageIndex' or 'sortExpression', Can an ActionLink or RouteLink (which I would use for page numbers) post the form to the url they specify? <%= Html.RouteLink("page 2", "MemberSearch", new { pageIndex = 1 })%> At the moment they just do a basic redirect and do not post the form values so the search page loads fresh. In regular old web forms I used to persist the search params (MemberSearchForm) in the ViewState and have a GridView paging or sorting event reuse it.

    Read the article

  • Revision histories and documenting changes

    - by jasonline
    I work on legacy systems and I used to see revision history of files or functions being modified every release in the source code, for example: // // Rev. No Date Author Description // ------------------------------------------------------- // 1.0 2009/12/01 johnc <Some description> // 1.1 2009/12/24 daveb <Some description> // ------------------------------------------------------- void Logger::initialize() { // a = b; // Old code, just commented and not deleted a = b + c; // New code } I'm just wondering if this way of documenting history is still being practiced by many today? If yes, how do you apply modifications on the source code - do you comment it or delete it completely? If not, what's the best way to document these revisions? If you use version control systems, does it follow that your source files contain pure source codes, except for comments when necessary (no revision history for each function, etc.)?

    Read the article

  • Is there a compelling reason to use quantifiers in Perl regular expressions instead of just repeatin

    - by Morinar
    I was performing a code review for a colleague and he had a regular expression that looked like this: if ($value =~ /^\d\d\d\d$/) { #do stuff } I told him he should change it to: if ($value =~ /^\d{4}$/) { #do stuff } To which he replied that he preferred the first for readability (I find the second more readable, but that's a religious debate I'll save for another day). My question: is there an actual benefit to one over the other?

    Read the article

  • Should I worry about reigning in namespace number/length/scope?

    - by Jay
    I've recently reorganized a solution-in-progress from 24 projects to 4. To keep the copious files organized in the "main" project, things are in folders in folders in folders. I think I've preserved a logical, discoverable arrangement of the solution content. As a result, of course, I end up with namespaces like AppName.DataAccess.NHibernate.Fluent.Mappings. Is there any compelling reason that I should care about flattening out the namespace hierarchy when my project has a somewhat deeply nested folder structure? (I am not concerned about resolving or managing using directives; I let ReSharper do all the heavy lifting here.)

    Read the article

  • Refering to javascript instance methods with a pound/hash sign

    - by Josh
    This question is similar to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/736120/why-are-methods-in-ruby-documentation-preceded-by-a-pound-sign I understand why in Ruby instance methods are proceeded with a pound sign, helping to differentiate talking about SomeClass#someMethod from SomeObject.someMethod and allowing rdoc to work. And I understand that the authors of PrototypeJS admire Ruby (with good reason) and so they use the hash mark convention in their documentation. My question is: is this a standard practice amongst JavaScript developers or is it just Prototype developers who do this? Asked another way, is it proepr for me to refer to instance methods in comments/documentation as SomeClass#someMethod? Or should my documentation refer to `SomeClass.someMethod?

    Read the article

  • How to record different authentication types (username / password vs token based) in audit log

    - by RM
    I have two types of users for my system, normal human users with a username / password, and delegation authorized accounts through OAuth (i.e. using a token identifier). The information that is stored for each is quite different, and are managed by different subsytems. They do however interact with the same tables / data within the system, so I need to maintain the audit trail regardless of whether human user, or token-based user modified the data. My solution at the moment is to have a table called something like AuditableIdentity, and then have the two types inheriting off that table (either in the single table, or as two seperate tables with 1 to 1 PK with AuditableIdentity. All operations would use the common AuditableIdentity PK for CreatedBy, ModifiedBy etc columns. There isn't any FK constraint on the audit columns, so any text can go in there, but I want an easy way to easily determine whether it was a human or system that made the change, and joining to the one AuditableIdentity table seems like a clean way to do that? Is there a best practice for this scenario? Is this an appropriate way of approaching the problem - or would you not bother with the common table and just rely on joins (to the two seperate un-related user / token tables) later to determine which user type matches which audit records?

    Read the article

  • How to insert an Array/Objet into SQL (bestpractice)

    - by Jason
    I need to store three items as an array in a single column and be able to quickly/easily modify that data in later functions. [---YOU CAN SKIP THIS PART IF YOU TRUST ME--] To be clear, I love and use x_ref tables all the time but an x_ref doesn't work here because this is not a one-to-many relationship. I am making a project management tool that among other things, assigns a user to a project and assigns hours to that project on a weekly basis, per user, sometimes for weeks many weeks into the future. Of course there are many projects, a project can have many team members, a team member can be involved with many projects at one time BUT its not one-to-many because a team member can be working many weeks on the same project but have different hours for different weeks. In other words, each object really is unique. Also/finally, this data can be changed at any time by any team-member - hence it needs to be easily to manipulate. Basically, I need to handle three values (the team member, the week we're talking about, and how many hours) dropped into a project row in the projects table (under the column for project team members) and treated as one item - a team member - that will actually be part of a larger array of all the team members involved on the project. [--END SKIP, START READING HERE :) --] So assuming that the application's general schema and relation tables aren't total crap and that we are in fact up against a wall in this one case to use an array/object as a value for this column, is there a best practice for that? Like a particular SQL data-type? A particular object/array format? CSV? JSON? XML? Most of the app is in C# but (for very odd reasons that I won't explain) we could really use any environment if there is a particular one that handles this well. For the moment, I am thinking either (webservice + JS/JSON) or PHP unserialize/serialize (but I am bit sketched out by the PHP solution because it seems a bit cumbersome when using ajax?) Thoughts anyone?

    Read the article

  • Perform Grouping of Resultsets in Code, not on Database Level

    - by NinjaBomb
    Stackoverflowers, I have a resultset from a SQL query in the form of: Category Column2 Column3 A 2 3.50 A 3 2 B 3 2 B 1 5 ... I need to group the resultset based on the Category column and sum the values for Column2 and Column3. I have to do it in code because I cannot perform the grouping in the SQL query that gets the data due to the complexity of the query (long story). This grouped data will then be displayed in a table. I have it working for specific set of values in the Category column, but I would like a solution that would handle any possible values that appear in the Category column. I know there has to be a straightforward, efficient way to do it but I cannot wrap my head around it right now. How would you accomplish it? EDIT I have attempted to group the result in SQL using the exact same grouping query suggested by Thomas Levesque and both times our entire RDBMS crashed trying to process the query. I was under the impression that Linq was not available until .NET 3.5. This is a .NET 2.0 web application so I did not think it was an option. Am I wrong in thinking that? EDIT Starting a bounty because I believe this would be a good technique to have in the toolbox to use no matter where the different resultsets are coming from. I believe knowing the most concise way to group any 2 somewhat similar sets of data in code (without .NET LINQ) would be beneficial to more people than just me.

    Read the article

  • Standardizing a Release/Tools group on a specific language

    - by grahzny
    I'm part of a six-member build and release team for an embedded software company. We also support a lot of developer tools, such as Atlassian's Fisheye, Jira, etc., Perforce, Bugzilla, AnthillPro, and a couple of homebrew tools (like my Django release notes generator). Most of the time, our team just writes little plugins for larger apps (ex: customize workflows in Anthill), long-term utility scripts (package up a release for QA), or things like Perforce triggers (don't let people check into a specific branch unless their change description includes a bug number; authenticate against Active Directory instead of Perforce's internal passwords). That's about the scale of our problems, although we sometimes tackle something slightly more sizable. My boss, who is reasonably technical, has asked us to standardize on one or two languages so we can more easily substitute for each other. He's advocating bash scripts and Perl, due to their universality and simplicity. I can see his point--we mostly do "glue", so why not use "glue" languages rather than saddle ourselves with something designed for much larger projects? Since some of the tools we work with are Java-based, we do need to use something that speaks JVM sometimes. (The path of least resistance for these projects is BeanShell and Groovy.) I feel a tremendous itch toward language advocacy, but I'm trying to avoid saying "We should use Python 'cause I like it and Perl is gross." Instead, I'm trying to come up with a good approach to defining our problem set: what problems do we solve with scripts? Would we benefit from a library of common functions by our team, or are most of our projects more isolated? What is it reasonable to expect my co-workers to learn? What languages give us the most ease of development and ease of modification? Can you folks suggest some useful ways to approach this problem, both for my own thinking process and to help me facilitate some brainstorming among my coworkers?

    Read the article

  • Double associative array or indexed + associative array

    - by clover
    I'm undecided what's the best-practice approach for what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to enter data into an array where the data will look like this: apple color: red price: 2 orange color: orange price: 3 banana color: yellow price: 2 pineapple color: yellow price: 5 When I get input, let's say green apple (notice it's a combo of color + name of fruit), I'm going to check if the name of fruit part exists in the array and display its data (if it exists). What's the right way to compose those arrays? How would I do an indexed array containing an associative array? (or would this be better as 2 nested associative arrays, I'm guessing not)

    Read the article

  • Common programming mistakes for Scala developers to avoid

    - by jelovirt
    In the spirit of Common programming mistakes for Java developers to avoid? Common programming mistakes for JavaScript developers to avoid? Common programming mistakes for .NET developers to avoid? Common programming mistakes for Haskell developers to avoid? Common programming mistakes for Python developers to avoid? Common Programming Mistakes for Ruby Developers to Avoid Common programming mistakes for PHP developers to avoid? what are some common mistakes made by Scala developers, and how can we avoid them? Also, as the biggest group of new Scala developers come from Java, what specific pitfalls they have to be aware of? For example, one often cited problem Java programmers moving to Scala make is use a procedural approach when a functional one would be more suitable in Scala. What other mistakes e.g. in API design newcomers should try to avoid.

    Read the article

  • "do it all" page structure and things to watch out for?

    - by Andrew Heath
    I'm still getting my feet wet in PHP (my 1st language) and I've reached the competency level where I can code one page that handles all sorts of different related requests. They generally have a structure like this: (psuedo code) <?php include 'include/functions.php'; IF authorized IF submit (add data) ELSE IF update (update data) ELSE IF list (show special data) ELSE IF tab switch (show new area) ELSE display vanilla (show default) ELSE "must be registered/logged-in" ?> <HTML> // snip <?php echo $output; ?> // snip </HTML> and it all works nicely, and quite quickly which is cool. But I'm still sorta feeling my way in the dark... and would like some input from the pros regarding this type of page design... is it a good long-term structure? (it seems easily expanded...) are there security risks particular to this design? are there corners I should avoid painting myself into? Just curious about what lies ahead, really...

    Read the article

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

< Previous Page | 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109  | Next Page >