Search Results

Search found 646 results on 26 pages for 'codebase'.

Page 11/26 | < Previous Page | 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18  | Next Page >

• Project Manager that wants to lock in time estimate with a signed contract

  - by sunpech

  At a previous employment, a project manager (PM) wasn't satisfied with the delivery time of the code on a project I was on. I was told by my project lead that that the PM was considering having me sign a contract to lock-in my time estimates I gave for tasks and delivery dates. The situation on the project was that we were working with new technologies, codebase, coding standards, and very prone-to-change requirements. I was learning new things and applying them the best I could on requirements that kept on changing. The requirements throughout the iterations grew by 2-3 times, with my estimate-to-complete growing by roughly 5-8 times. The only things that didn't change were the estimates and delivery dates. Yes, I did end up missing most deadlines. And I was working on some very new technologies that no one else on the entire development team could really help out on because they wouldn't be familiar with it. At least not easily. It seemed to me then, that the PM wanted his numbers to add up-- and thus wanted me to sign a contract to "ensure" that I would always deliver working code on time. I suppose with a signed contract the PM could use it against me if I couldn't deliver on time. I believe what happened next was that other project managers and/or project leads defended me, and didn't let this happen. My question is, should this raise a red flag about the manager? Is it common practice for a manager to lock-in time estimates of a software developer with a signed contract? Or in this case, try to. Please note, I was a full time employee, not an independent consultant. Update: I want to add that I did give new estimates weekly, but it seems the original estimates and delivery dates were what the PM was fixated on.

  Read the article

• Working with Legacy code #5: The blackhole.

  - by andrewstopford

  Someone creates a class or series of classes for something, the classes are big in size with large complicated methods. The effort is a sea of technical debt for the entire team but in the thick of the daily chaos it is lost. With out the coder talking to the team, with no team code policy and no code reviews (and action points) it remains. Pretty soon the team forget about that code. A few weeks\months\years goes by, some of the team may have left, some may remain but business asks for the team to add to that code. The team is now looking at a black hole, no one knows how it works, what it does, what it is for, it is a smelly hell hole and the deadline is fast approaching. The team now tries to change the code, with no approach at unit tests or refactoring in fear of breaking the black hole the team do just that and the business have just lost money. If you are faced with a black hole you need to look back over my series, even a black hole in what might seem like a clean unit tested application. Don't be fooled into thinking that legacy code does not apply to your code base.  The next stage is don't let blackholes in your codebase. Effective code reviews, team communication and good overal team coding policies will really help. Even if you are faced with a deadline do not let them appear, stop, take stock, what can be done and who can help. If you allow them through they will grow and grow and grow and the technical debt will hit you like a tidal wave soon enough,.  

  Read the article

• Manage ClickOnce releases for different parties

  - by Dirk Beckmann

  I'm struggling with release management of a piece of software. First some general information: It is a ClickOnce application I follow the release often practice There are about 30 parties served with this software I need full control which update will be delivered to which party Not each party is allowed to get the latest update/release Each party has multiple clients that are all allowed to get the latest update, served for the specific party So that's what my requirements are in a rough description. So let me explain what I was thinking about how to solve this. I would like to create a "deployment" website (asp.net) that will handle all the requests There are two endpoints one for download the client and one where the client checks for updates So each party has a separate endpoint like DeploymentSite/party1 and another for DeploymentSite/party2 The Application Files should still be stored centralized So I thought it would be manageable with mage.exe with the following steps Build application and store new release into Application Files Repository/Folder Get parties that should be updated (config file, database what ever) Run mage.exe to create a new application and deployment manifest for each party in the update list with new Application File Location (1.0.2) Actually I'm really struggling with this mage.exe staff. I can't create the appropriate files with the needed codebase. How to handle thes requirements?

  Read the article

• Why should I use Zend_Application?

  - by Billy ONeal

  I've been working on a Zend Framework application which currently does a bunch of things through Zend Application and a few resource plugins written for it. However, looking at this codebase now, it seems to me that using Zend_Application just makes things more complicated; and a plain, more "traditional" bootstrap file would do a better job of being transparent. This is even more the case because the individual components of Zend -- Zend_Controller, Zend_Navigation, etc. -- don't reference Zend_Application at all. Therefore they do things like "Well just call setRoute and be on your way," and the user is left scratching their head as to how to implement that in terms of the application.ini configuration file. This is not to say that one can't figure out what's going on by doing spelunking through the ZF source code. My problem with that approach is that it's to easy to depend on something that's an implementation detail, rather than a contract, and that all it seems to do is add an extra layer of indirection that one must wade through to understand an application. I look at pre ZF 1.8 example code, before Zend_Application existed, and everywhere I see plain bootstrap files that setup the MVC framework and get on their way. The code is clear and easy to understand, even if it is a bit repetitive. I like the DRY concept that Application gets you, but particularly when I'm assuming first people looking at the app's code aren't really familiar with Zend at all, I'm considering blowing away any dependence I have on Zend_Application and returning to a traditional bootstrap file. Now, my concern here is that I don't have much experience doing this, and I don't want to get rid of Zend_Application if it does something particularly important of which I am unaware, or something of that nature. Is there a really good reason I should keep it around?

  Read the article

• Writing cross-platforms Types, Interfaces and Classes/Methods in C++

  - by user827992

  I'm looking for the best solution to write cross-platform software, aka code that I write and that I have to interface with different libraries and platforms each time. What I consider the easiest part, correct me if I'm wrong, is the definition of new types, all I have to do is to write an hpp file with a list of typedefs, I can keep the same names for each new type across the different platforms so my codebase can be shared without any problem. typedefs also helps me to redefine a better scope for my types in my code. I will probably end up having something like this: include |-windows | |-types.hpp |-linux | |-types.hpp |-mac |-types.hpp For the interfaces I'm thinking about the same solution used for the types, a series of hpp files, probably I will write all the interfaces only once since they rely on the types and all "cross-platform portability" is ensured by the work done on the types. include | |-interfaces.hpp | |-windows | |-types.hpp |-linux | |-types.hpp |-mac | |-types.hpp For classes and methods I do not have a real answer, I would like to avoid 2 things: the explicit use of pointers the use of templates I want to avoid the use of the pointers because they can make the code less readable for someone and I want to avoid templates just because if I write them, I can't separate the interface from the definition. What is the best option to hide the use of the pointers? I would also like some words about macros and how to implement some OS-specifics calls and definitions.

  Read the article

• Record management system java web framework

  - by Kamil Tomšík

  We're currently reconsidering technologies and frameworks to get more agile with "simple" RMS CRUD-based projects. In short, short-living things like this Right now we have a custom extension on top of SmartGWT but after some time it has proven not to be flexible enough. I also personally dislike the java-js compilation process and the whole GWT codebase. Not only is the design ugly, it also makes certain low-level js things very complicated if not completely impossible. So what I'm looking for is: closest to web as possible, like JSF or possibly Tapestry, it is very important to be able get "low" and weave framework if necessary. Happens more often than we thought. datagrid capable - Ext.js & PrimeFaces looks pretty good, Vaadin does too. db-schema generators (optional, no matter in which way) If it were only on me, I'd probably stick to Ext.js + custom rest-based java solution, possibly generated from database schema (not sure about concrete tooling yet). I only have experience with vanilla Ext.js, vanilla GWT and JSF 2.0 / Seam, so it hard for me to judge or even propose other frameworks. What would be your proposition? What are the problems you've faced? What was your solution and how hard do you think it was to deal with them in "big picture"?

  Read the article

• Why do browsers have so many possible exploits?

  - by Beau Martínez

  When browsing I am ocassionally given warnings about pages that host malware "that could damage my computer". I am seriously perplexed as to why, in 2010, browsers still have possible exploits and can be cracked. My question is "Why?". I'm assuming it's because of the quick development that occured in the browser wars which were unsufficiently tested, but I'm unsure. Surely WebKit would have patched all the issues in KHTML, or Gecko sorted out the flaws in Netscape's engine, and the IE coders sorted through their codebase to eliminate possible flaws? (Somewhat related: http://superuser.com/questions/117770/which-browser-is-the-most-secure-research-and-practically-based.)

  Read the article

• RMS java web framework

  - by Kamil Tomšík

  We're currently reconsidering technologies and frameworks to get more agile with "simple" RMS CRUD-based projects. In short, short-living things like this Right now we have custom extension on top of SmartGWT but after some time it has proven not to be enough flexible. I also personally dislike that java-js compilation process and the whole GWT codebase. Not only its ugly designed, it also makes certain low-level js things very complicated if not completely impossible. So what I'm looking for is: closest to web as possible, like JSF or possibly Tapestry, it is very important to be able get "low" and weave framework if necessary. Happens more often than we thought. datagrid capable - Ext.js & PrimeFaces looks pretty good, Vaadin does too. db-schema generators (optional, no matter in which way) If it were only on me, I'd probably stick to Ext.js + custom rest-based java solution, possibly generated from database schema (not sure about concrete tooling yet) I only does have experience with vanilla Ext.js, vanilla GWT and JSF 2.0 / Seam, so it kinda hard for me to judge or even propose other frameworks. What would be your proposition? What are the problems you've faced, what was your solution and how hard do you think it was to deal with them in "big picture"?

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 27, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 27, 2010Popular ReleasesMahTweets for Windows Phone: Nightly 69: Latest nightly for build 69XamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery-WPF v1.2 (Runtime, Source): This is the first release of popular XamlQuery library for WPF. XamlQuery has already gained recognition among Silverlight developers.Math.NET Numerics: Beta 1: First beta of Math.NET Numerics. Only contains the managed linear algebra provider. Beta 2 will include the native linear algebra providers along with better documentation and examples.WatchersNET.SiteMap: WatchersNET.SiteMap 01.03.02: Whats NewNew Tax Filter, You can now select which Terms you want to Use.Minecraft GPS: Minecraft GPS 1.1: 1.1 Release New Features Compass! New style. Set opacity on main window to allow overlay of Minecraft.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-25: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Typps (formerly jiffycms) wysiwyg rich text HTML editor for ASP.NET AJAX: Typps 2.9: -When uploading files (not images), through the file uploader and the multi-file uploader, FileUploaded and MultiFileUploaded event handlers were reporting an empty event argument, this is fixed now. -Fixed also url field not updating when uploading a file ( not image)Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.8.5 Beta: - WBFS repair (default) options fixed - Transfer to image fixed - Settings ui widget names fixed - Some little bug fixes You need to reset the settings! Delete WiiBaFu's config file or registry entries on windows: Linux: ~/.config/WiiBaFu/wiibafu.conf Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WiiBaFu\wiibafu Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/com.wiibafu.wiibafu.plist Caution: This is a BETA version! Errors, crashes and data loss not impossible! Use in test environments only, not on productive syste...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.3: Added process count and world size calculation progress to the status bar. Added View->'Status Bar' menu item to show/hide the status bar. Status bar is automatically shown when loading a world. Added a prompt, when loading a world, to use or clear cached images.SQL Monitor: SQL Monitor 1.4: 1.added automatically load sql server instances 2.added friendly wait cursor 3.fixed problem with 4.0 fx 4.added exception handlingSexy Select: sexy select v0.4: Changes in v0.4 Added method : elements. This returns all the option elements that are currently added to the select list Added method : selectOption. This method accepts two values, the element to be modified and the selected state. (true/false)Deep Zoom for WPF: First Release: This first release of the Deep Zoom control has the same source code, binaries and demos as the CodeProject article (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/DeepZoom.aspx).Simple Service Locator: Simple Service Locator v0.12: The Simple Service Locator is an easy-to-use Inversion of Control library that is a complete implementation of the Common Service Locator interface. It solely supports code-based configuration and is an ideal starting point for developers unfamiliar with larger IoC / DI libraries New features in this release Collections that are registered using RegisterAll<T> can now be injected using automatic constructor injection. A new RegisterAll<T>(params T[]) method overload is added that allows ea...BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC: This is a Release Candidate version for BlogEngine.NET 2.0. The most current, stable version of BlogEngine.NET is version 1.6. Find out more about the BlogEngine.NET 2.0 RC here. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. To get started, be sure to check out our installation documentation and the installation screencast. If you are upgrading from a previous version, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. As this ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.156: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release adds a feature for aggregating the overall metrics in a folder full of NodeXL workbooks, adds geographical coordinates to the Twitter import features, and fixes a memory-related bug. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Please Note: There is a new option in the setup program to install for "Just Me" or "Everyone." Most people...VFPX: FoxBarcode v.0.11: FoxBarcode v.0.11 - Released 2010.11.22 FoxBarcode is a 100% Visual FoxPro class that provides a tool for generating images with different bar code symbologies to be used in VFP forms and reports, or exported to other applications. Its use and distribution is free for all Visual FoxPro Community. Whats is new? Added a third parameter to the BarcodeImage() method Fixed some minor bugs History FoxBarcode v.0.10 - Released 2010.11.19 - 85 Downloads Project page: FoxBarcodeDotNetAge -a lightweight Mvc jQuery CMS: DotNetAge 1.1.0.5: What is new in DotNetAge 1.1.0.5 ?Document Library features and template added. Resolve issues of templates Improving publishing service performance Opml support added. What is new in DotNetAge 1.1 ? D.N.A Core updatesImprove runtime performance , more stabilize. The DNA core objects model added. Personalization features added that allows users create the personal website, manage their resources, store personal data DynamicUIFixed the PageManager could not move page node bug. ...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.3.1 and demos: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form and Pager tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.24.6966: Fixed Updater; Fixed minor bugs;WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.1: Version: 2.0.0.1 (Milestone 1): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...New ProjectsCommunity Megaphone for Windows Phone: The Official CommunityMegaphone application for Windows Phone. Releases are in XAP format, allowing you to upload the compiled application into a device using the Windows Phone Application Deployment tool. Download the source code to learn how to build Windows Phone applications.Group positioning GPS: this is a project for a subject in the university geographic information systems, its about a group of gadjets that can know the position of the other devices in the same group.IIS HTTPS Binder: On IIS 7 that you can not create more than one HTTPS binding, even though you have more then one SSL certificate and you need HTTPS binding on different hosted websites. If you have one IP address you can bind only one SSL to chosen website. This small application can fix this.Inspired Faith Now Playing: A ClickOnce-deployed desktop application that sits in your application tray and notifies you when any of your favorite Messianic Jewish and Christian artists or songs play on the Inspired Faith online radio station (http://inspiredfaith.org)MA Manager: The goal of this software is to help manage a martial arts school through multiple clients and platforms. This allows instructors to easily track students progress overtime.MathModels: This project contains commonly used algorithm implementations in C# .netMyFlickr API: MyFlickr API is a library for developers allows them to call Flickr API from any .Net Application.NerdOnRails.DynamicProxy: a small dynamic-proxy implementation using the new dynamic object that was introduced with .Net 4.NerdOnRails.Injector: a small dependency injection framework for .netNHyperV: NHyperV is a C# Hyper-V programming model.Power Scheme Switcher: This is a very simple utility that exposes an icon in the system tray and allows you to quickly change the Power Plan Scheme from there. It is developed in c# with Vs 2010(WinForm)rcforms: Custom sharepoint forms exampleRobo Commander: This is a Lego NXT commander developed under Visual Studio. This console will have basic commands and uses the NXT++ libraries. Shared Genomics Project - Workbench Codebase: The Shared Genomics workbench enables a diverse user group of researchers to explore the associations between genetic and other factors in their datasets. It provides a graphical user interface to the analysis functions published in a sister Codeplex project i.e. MPI Codebase.SharePoint 2010 PowerShell v2 reference: This project hosts a complete PowerShell v2 reference for SharePoint 2010.Social PowerFlow: Experiments with PowerWF and the social network - integrating Windows Powershell and Windows Workflow Foundation with Facebook and TwitterTweetSayings: Twitter SayingsXamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery/WPF is a lightweight yet powerful library that enables rapid development in WPF. It simplifies several tasks like page/window traversing; finding controls by name, type, style, property value or position in control tree; event handling; animating and much more.XmlDSigEx XML Digital Signature Library: The XmlDSigEx library is an alternative to using the SignedXml classes in the .Net Framework. It addresses some of the shortcomings of the standard types particularly in regards to canonicalisation and the enveloped transform. It is currently under development.Yoi's Online Project: This is online storage for Yovi's project?????? ???? ???: ?????? ???? ?? ????? ??? ?????? ? ??????? ?? ???? ??? ????

  Read the article

• Are More Comments Better in High-Turnover Environments?

  - by joshin4colours

  I was talking with a colleague today. We work on code for two different projects. In my case, I'm the only person working on my code; in her case, multiple people work on the same codebase, including co-op students who come and go fairly regularly (between every 8-12 months). She said that she is liberal with her comments, putting them all over the place. Her reasoning is that it helps her remember where things are and what things do since much of the code wasn't written by her and could be changed by someone other than her. Meanwhile, I try to minimize the comments in my code, putting them in only in places with a unobvious workaround or bug. However, I have a better understanding of my code overall, and have more direct control over it. My opinion in that comments should be minimal and the code should tell most of the story, but her reasoning makes sense too. Are there any flaws in her reasoning? It may clutter the code but it ultimately could be quite helpful if there are many people working on it in the short- to medium-run.

  Read the article

• variables in batch files

  - by richzilla

  Hi All, Im trying to set up a batch file to automatically deploy a php app to a web server, and basically what i want is an entirely automated process where i would just give it a revision number from the repository and it would then export the files, upload via ftp and then update deployment info at the repo host (codebase). However, im starting from scratch here, and im wanting to know, how would i set up a batch file to accept a variable when it was run, for example typing myfile.bat /revision 42 would enable me to deploy revision 42 to my server. if anyone can point me in the right direction id be very appreciated.

  Read the article

• What is the correct UI interface to learn for creating Windows phone 8 apps? [closed]

  - by Robert Oschler

  I am a veteran Delphi 6 programmer transitioning to C# development. My first project is a open source library that will have a minimal user interface since it is meant to be used as a Component primarily on desktop PCs running Visual Studio. My next project is going to be a Windows 8 phone app and I intend for that platform to be my primary focus for future C# development, not the desktop. My concern is that I waste as little time as possible learning a presentation framework that will benefit or distract me from writing Windows 8 phone apps. The plethora of framework names I have already encountered include, WinForms, WPF (Windows Presentation Framework), Silverlight, Silverlight Mobile, Metro and there may be others. Given my goal outlined in the first paragraph above, I have a few questions: 1) Which of the frameworks should I use for the small amount of UI work I will do with the desktop Component project that will help me the most, or hurt me the least, when I move to Windows 8 phone app development? 2) Which is the correct framework to study for developing Windows 8 phone apps? 3) Any awesome tutorials, resources or books you have run into targeted towards veteran programmers from other platforms? I read about the Portable Library Tools on this Stack Overflow thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5522355/windows-phone-7-wpf-sharing-a-codebase But the reply by Simon Guindon seemed to indicate to me that it's not the best solution for writing a competitive Windows 8 phone app.

  Read the article

• Joomla 1.5 Media Manager sets incorrect file permissions when uploading

  - by Scott Mayfield

  Howdy all, I have a Joomla 1.5 installation running on Windows Server 2008, installed via the Web Platform Installer. When uploading images with the media manager (native uploader, not the flash bulk uploader), the files arrive on the server correctly, but are given incorrect permissions. Specifically, the IIS_IUSRS group is not given access to the file. I might be incorrect about what group/user is SUPPOSED to get access to the files, but so far, I've found that unless I give IIS_IUSRS access to the uploaded files, they won't appear on the site or in the media manager (appear as broken images). Once I give IIS_IUSRS permission to the files, they work fine. So far, all the research I've done has led me to linux specific fixes that involve either changing the umask on the server, or directly modifying the Joomla codebase to add an appropriate chmod command to the upload process, but I really don't want to modify Joomla directly. I have to believe there's a setting here somewhere that will do the job, either on the Joomla or Windows side of the equation. Any thoughts? Scott

  Read the article

• What is the best approach for inline code comments?

  - by d1egoaz

  We are doing some refactoring to a 20 years old legacy codebase, and I'm having a discussion with my colleague about the comments format in the code (plsql, java). There is no a default format for comments, but in most cases people do something like this in the comment: // date (year, year-month, yyyy-mm-dd, dd/mm/yyyy), (author id, author name, author nickname) and comment the proposed format for future and past comments that I want is: // {yyyy-mm-dd}, unique_author_company_id, comment My colleague says that we only need the comment, and must reformat all past and future comments to this format: // comment My arguments: I say for maintenance reasons, it's important to know when and who did a change (even this information is in the SCM). The code is living, and for that reason has a history. Because without the change dates it's impossible to know when a change was introduced without open the SCM tool and search in the long object history. because the author is very important, a change of authors is more credible than a change of authory Agility reasons, no need to open and navigate through the SCM tool people would be more afraid to change something that someone did 15 years ago, than something that was recently created or changed. etc. My colleague's arguments: The history is in the SCM Developers must not be aware of the history of the code directly in the code Packages gets 15k lines long and unstructured comments make these packages harder to understand What do you think is the best approach? Or do you have a better approach to solve this problem?

  Read the article

• Joomla 1.5 Media Manager sets incorrect file permissions when uploading

  - by Scott Mayfield

  Howdy all, I have a Joomla 1.5 installation running on Windows Server 2008, installed via the Web Platform Installer. When uploading images with the media manager (native uploader, not the flash bulk uploader), the files arrive on the server correctly, but are given incorrect permissions. Specifically, the IIS_IUSRS group is not given access to the file. I might be incorrect about what group/user is SUPPOSED to get access to the files, but so far, I've found that unless I give IIS_IUSRS access to the uploaded files, they won't appear on the site or in the media manager (appear as broken images). Once I give IIS_IUSRS permission to the files, they work fine. So far, all the research I've done has led me to linux specific fixes that involve either changing the umask on the server, or directly modifying the Joomla codebase to add an appropriate chmod command to the upload process, but I really don't want to modify Joomla directly. I have to believe there's a setting here somewhere that will do the job, either on the Joomla or Windows side of the equation. Any thoughts? Scott

  Read the article

• Joomla 1.5 Media Manager sets incorrect file permissions when uploading

  - by Scott Mayfield

  Howdy all, I have a Joomla 1.5 installation running on Windows Server 2008, installed via the Web Platform Installer. When uploading images with the media manager (native uploader, not the flash bulk uploader), the files arrive on the server correctly, but are given incorrect permissions. Specifically, the IIS_IUSRS group is not given access to the file. I might be incorrect about what group/user is SUPPOSED to get access to the files, but so far, I've found that unless I give IIS_IUSRS access to the uploaded files, they won't appear on the site or in the media manager (appear as broken images). Once I give IIS_IUSRS permission to the files, they work fine. So far, all the research I've done has led me to linux specific fixes that involve either changing the umask on the server, or directly modifying the Joomla codebase to add an appropriate chmod command to the upload process, but I really don't want to modify Joomla directly. I have to believe there's a setting here somewhere that will do the job, either on the Joomla or Windows side of the equation. Any thoughts? Scott

  Read the article

• Are there any actual case studies on rewrites of software success/failure rates?

  - by James Drinkard

  I've seen multiple posts about rewrites of applications being bad, peoples experiences about it here on Programmers, and an article I've ready by Joel Splosky on the subject, but no hard evidence of case studies. Other than the two examples Joel gave and some other posts here, what do you do with a bad codebase and how do you decide what to do with it based on real studies? For the case in point, there are two clients I know of that both have old legacy code. They keep limping along with it because as one of them found out, a rewrite was a disaster, it was expensive and didn't really work to improve the code much. That customer has some very complicated business logic as the rewriters quickly found out. In both cases, these are mission critical applications that brings in a lot of revenue for the company. The one that attempted the rewrite felt that they would hit a brick wall at some point if the legacy software didn't get upgraded at some point in the future. To me, that kind of risk warrants research and analysis to ensure a successful path. My question is have there been actual case studies that have investigated this? I wouldn't want to attempt a major rewrite without knowing some best practices, pitfalls, and successes based on actual studies. Aftermath: okay, I was wrong, I did find one article: Rewrite or Reuse. They did a study on a Cobol app that was converted to Java.

  Read the article

• Unit and Integration testing: How can it become a reflex

  - by LordOfThePigs

  All the programmers in my team are familiar with unit testing and integration testing. We have all worked with it. We have all written tests with it. Some of us even have felt an improved sense of trust in his/her own code. However, for some reason, writing unit/integration tests has not become a reflex for any of the members of the team. None of us actually feel bad when not writing unit tests at the same time as the actual code. As a result, our codebase is mostly uncovered by unit tests, and projects enter production untested. The problem with that, of course is that once your projects are in production and are already working well, it is virtually impossible to obtain time and/or budget to add unit/integration testing. The members of my team and myself are already familiar with the value of unit testing (1, 2) but it doesn't seem to help bringing unit testing into our natural workflow. In my experience making unit tests and/or a target coverage mandatory just results in poor quality tests and slows down team members simply because there is no self-generated motivation to produce these tests. Also as soon as pressure eases, unit tests are not written any more. My question is the following: Is there any methods that you have experimented with that helps build a dynamic/momentum inside the team, leading to people naturally wanting to create and maintain those tests?

  Read the article

• Why old (301) links stay on Google when breaking site down to multiple domains

  - by Sampo Sarrala

  Some background: We did have single site and single domain (let's call it mainsite.com) with product information, however things have changed since and product database has grown fast. So we decided to move some major products/manufacturers under their own domains (let's call one of them subsite.com) while still using our main database/codebase. What we've done: Added subsite.com domain for product 1 by Great Products Co. Some new nice looking front pages, info pages, etc. Detail pages that will use information from original db. Redirected product/group links from mainsite.com using 301 redirect. Verified that redirects works as expected. Waited some time for Google reindexing (over 30 days, I've heard it should be more than enough). Results: If I search our moved products from Google then it will found them and list them but with old links to our main page like mainsite.com/group/product1 but it should show link to new site subsite.com/product1. Links from Goole redirects as they should, as said redirects are verified [301]. Main question: Any reasons why Google would not follow 301 redirects and update links so that they will point to our new mfg/product site subsite.com?

  Read the article

• Advantages of Hudson and Sonar over manual process or homegrown scripts.

  - by Tom G

  My coworker and I recently got into a debate over a proposed plan at our workplace. We've more or less finished transitioning our Java codebase into one managed and built with Maven. Now, I'd like for us to integrate with Hudson and Sonar or something similar. My reasons for this are that it'll provide a 'zero-click' build step to provide testers with new experimental builds, that it will let us deploy applications to a server more easily, that tools such as Sonar will provide us with well-needed metrics on code coverage, Javadoc, package dependencies and the like. He thinks that the overhead of getting up to speed with two new frameworks is unacceptable, and that we should simply double down on documentation and create our own scripts for deployment. Since we plan on some aggressive rewrites to pay down the technical debt previous developers incurred (gratuitous use of Java's Serializable interface as a file storage mechanism that has predictably bit us in the ass) he argues that we can document as we go, and that we'll end up changing a large swath of code in the process anyways. I contend that having accurate metrics that Sonar (or fill in your favorite similar tool) provide gives us a good place to start for any refactoring efforts, not to mention general maintenance -- after all, knowing which classes are the most poorly documented, even if it's just a starting point, is better than seat-of-the-pants guessing. Am I wrong, and trying to introduce more overhead than we really need? Some more background: an alumni of our company is working at a Navy research lab now and suggested these two tools in particular as one they've had great success with using. My coworker and I have also had our share of friendly disagreements before -- he's more of the "CLI for all, compiles Gentoo in his spare time and uses Git" and I'm more of a "Give me an intuitive GUI, plays with XNA and is fine with SVN" type, so there's definitely some element of culture clash here.

  Read the article

• Problems to connect Java visualVM to a EC2-instance

  - by kasten

  I'm trying to profile a AWS EC2 instance via visualVM. The instance is in a securitygroup which allows all connections and i'm runing jstatd with a grant codebase "file:${java.home}/../lib/tools.jar" { permission java.security.AllPermission; }; policy on it. When i try to connect from my local machine with visulVM nothing happens. When i use jps i get the following response $ jps -l -m -v rmi://ec2-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.compute-1.amazonaws.com Error communicating with remote host: Connection refused to host: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx; nested exception is: java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out But i can ssh into the instance and use jps locally. Has anyone a pointer in which direction i can debug further?

  Read the article

• Have unit test generators helped you when working with legacy code?

  - by Duncan Bayne

  I am looking at a small (~70kLOC including generated) C# (.NET 4.0, some Silverlight) code-base that has very low test coverage. The code itself works in that it has passed user acceptance testing, but it is brittle and in some areas not very well factored. I would like to add solid unit test coverage around the legacy code using the usual suspects (NMock, NUnit, StatLight for the Silverlight bits). My normal approach is to start working through the project, unit testing & refactoring, until I am satisfied with the state of the code. I've done this many times in the past, and it's worked well. However, this time I'm thinking of using a test generator (in particular Pex) to create the test framework, then manually fleshing it out. My question is: have you used unit test generators in the past when commencing work on a legacy codebase, and if so, would you recommend them? My fear is that the generated tests will miss the semantic nuances of the code-base, leading to the dreaded situation of having tests for the sake of the coverage metric, rather than tests which clearly express the intended behaviour in code.

  Read the article

• Forum engine with full LDAP integration [closed]

  - by Andrian Nord

  We are looking for forum engine which may actually maintain user data into LDAP, maybe via mods. Core point is about ability to maintain the data, i.e. all user profile settings, like nickname, password, email, avatar, birthday and others (preferably configurable). One example of good ldap integration, level of which I'm expecting, is drupal's ldap integration, which allows to map any user's attribute into ldap and keeps it in sync with database. Year ago I've done a small research over existing Free&FOSS engines and find out few forum engines with LDAP integration, namely SFM, phpBB and something else. The most maintained solution were provided by phpBB3, which supports LDAP integration out-of-box, but it is unable to sync data with changes in LDAP server made by other software. Actually it wasn't even propagating changes back, I'm not saying about ability to map additional attributes (other than name/password/email). Also, I haven't found any forum with architecture which have proper abstraction over user settings, thus I doubt that this engines (including phpBB) are possible to mod such functionality without introducing dramatic changes into core codebase. More recent research showed that even some commercial software, like IPB is unable to keep it's database synced with LDAP directory and map additional attributes. In other words, all support I've seen so far is simple user creation upon first user's login, which is not good for us, as forum is not primary site and should not maintain it's own users base (to reduce risk of possible collisions). LDAP import is required due to many other services (ftp, email, jabber, drupal site) using same users base. Currently we have forum embedded into Drupal site, but we are unsatisfied with it's features. BTW, we are using Linux and this is not duplicate of this question, as it's author seems to be satisfied with behaviour described above. So, my question is: Are there any (preferably FOSS&free) forum engines that may import, export, keep in sync, or otherwise integrade with LDAP user database (preferably with ability to map additional fields to ldap attributes)?

  Read the article

• Why the recent shift to removing/omitting semicolons from Javascript?

  - by Jonathan

  It seems to be fashionable recently to omit semicolons from Javascript. There was a blog post a few years ago emphasising that in Javascript, semicolons are optional and the gist of the post seemed to be that you shouldn't bother with them because they're unnecessary. The post, widely cited, doesn't give any compelling reasons not to use them, just that leaving them out has few side-effects. Even GitHub has jumped on the no-semicolon bandwagon, requiring their omission in any internally-developed code, and a recent commit to the zepto.js project by its maintainer has removed all semicolons from the codebase. His chief justifications were: it's a matter of preference for his team; less typing Are there other good reasons to leave them out? Frankly I can see no reason to omit them, and certainly no reason to go back over code to erase them. It also goes against (years of) recommended practice, which I don't really buy the "cargo cult" argument for. So, why all the recent semicolon-hate? Is there a shortage looming? Or is this just the latest Javascript fad?

  Read the article

• How can I unit test rendering output?

  - by stephelton

  I've been embracing Test-Driven Development (TDD) recently and it's had wonderful impacts on my development output and the resiliency of my codebase. I would like to extend this approach to some of the rendering work that I do in OpenGL, but I've been unable to find any good approaches to this. I'll start with a concrete example so we know what kinds of things I want to test; lets say I want to create a unit cube that rotates about some axis, and that I want to ensure that, for some number of frames, each frame is rendered correctly. How can I create an automated test case for this? Preferably, I'd even be able to write a test case before writing any code to render the cube (per usual TDD practices.) Among many other things, I'd want to make sure that the cube's size, location, and orientation are correct in each rendered frame. I may even want to make sure that the lighting equations in my shaders are correct in each frame. The only remotely useful approach to this that I've come across involves comparing rendered output to a reference output, which generally precludes TDD practice, and is very cumbersome. I could go on about other desired requirements, but I'm afraid the ones I've listed already are out of reach.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18  | Next Page >