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  • Refactoring existing PHP Project. I need some advices

    - by b0x
    i have a small SAS ERP that was written some years ago using PHP. At that time, it didn't used any framework, but the code isn't a mess as i will explain more detailed in the following lines. Nowadays, the project grow and I’m now working with 3 more programmers. Often, they ask to me why we don’t migrate to a framework such Laravel. Although I'd love trying Laravel, I’m a small business and i don't have time/money to stop and spend a whole year building everything from scratch. I need to live and pay the bills. So, I've read a lot about this matter, and I decided that doing a refactoring is the best way to do it. Also, I'm not so sure that a framework will make things easy. Business goals are: Make the code easier to new hired programmers I must separate the "view", because: I want to release different versions of this product (using the same code), but under different brands and websites at the minimum cost (just changing view) Release different versions to fit mobile/tablet. Make different types of this product, seeling packages as if it were plugins. Develop custom packages for some costumers (like plugins/addon's that they can buy to put on the main application). Code goals: Introduce best pratices, standards for everyone Try to build my own MVC structure Improve validation of data/forms (today they are mixed in both ajax and classes) Create automated testing rotines, to quality assurance. My actual structure project: class\ extra\ hd\ logs\ public_html\ public_html\includes\ public_html\css|js|images\ class\ There are three types of classes. They are all “autoloaded” with something similar with PSR-0, but I don’t use namespaces. 1. class.Something.php Connects to Database using specific methods. I.e: Costumer-list(); It uses “class.Db.php”, that it’s an abstraction of mysqli on every method. 2. class.SomethingProc.php Do things that “join” things that come from “class.Something.php”. Like IF/ELSE, math operations. 3. class.SomethingHTML.php The classes with “HTML” suffix implements only static methods and HTML code only. A real life example: All the programmers need to use $cSomething ($c to class) and $arrSomething (to array). Costumer.php (view) <?php $cCosumter = new Costumer(); $arrCostumer = $cCostumer->list(); echo CostumerHTML::table($arrCostumer); ?> Extra\ Store 3rdparty projects/classes from others, such MPDF, PHPMailer, etc. Hd\ Store user’s fies outsite wwwroot dir. Logs\ Store phplogs and the system itself logs (We have a static Log::error() method, that we put in every method of every class) Public_html\ Stores the files that people use. Public_html\includes\ Store the main “config.php” file and all files that do “ajax things” ajax.Costumer.php, for example. Help is needed ;) So, as you can see we have some standards, and also for database things. But i want to write a manual of our rules. Something that i can give to any new programmer at my companie and he can go on. This is not totally a mess, but It could be better seeing the new practices. What could I do to separate this as MVC, to have multiple VIEW’s. Could you gimme some tips considering my goals? Keep im mind the different products/custom things for specific costumers without breaking the main application. URL for tutorials, books, etc. It would be nice. Thanks!

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  • Advice on refactoring PHP Project

    - by b0x
    I have a small SAS ERP that was written some years ago using PHP. At that time, it didn't use any framework, but the code isn't a mess. Nowadays, the project grows and I’m now working with 3 more programmers. Often, they ask to me why we don’t migrate to a framework such as Laravel. Although I'd love trying Laravel, I’m a small business and I don't have time nor money to stop and spend a whole year building everything from scratch. I need to live and pay the bills. So, I've read a lot about this matter, and I decided that doing a refactoring is the best way to do it. Also, I'm not so sure that a framework will make things easy. Business goals are: Make the code easier to new hired programmers Separate the "view", in order to: release different versions of this product (using the same code), but under different brands and websites at the minimum cost (just changing view) release different versions to fit mobile/tablet. Make different types of this product, selling packages as if they were plugins. Develop custom packages for some costumers (like plugins/addon's that they can buy to put on the main application). Code goals: Introduce best pratices, standards for everyone Try to build my own MVC structure Improve validation of data/forms (today they are mixed in both ajax and classes) Create automated testing routines for quality assurance. My current structure project: class\ extra\ hd\ logs\ public_html\ public_html\includes\ public_html\css|js|images\ class\ There are three types of classes. They are all “autoloaded” with something similar with PSR-0, but I don’t use namespaces. 1. class.Something.php Connects to Database using specific methods. I.e: Costumer-list(); It uses “class.Db.php”, that it’s an abstraction of mysql on every method. 2. class.SomethingProc.php Do things that “join” things that come from “class.Something.php”. Like IF/ELSE, math operations. 3. class.SomethingHTML.php The classes with “HTML” suffix implements only static methods and HTML code only. A real life example: All the programmers need to use $cSomething ($c to class) and $arrSomething (to array). Costumer.php (view) <?php $cCosumter = new Costumer(); $arrCostumer = $cCostumer->list(); echo CostumerHTML::table($arrCostumer); ?> Extra\ Store 3rdparty projects/classes from others, such MPDF, PHPMailer, etc. Hd\ Store user’s files outsite wwwroot dir. Logs\ Store phplogs and the system itself logs (We have a static Log::error() method, that we put in every method of every class) Public_html\ Stores the files that people use. Public_html\includes\ Store the main “config.php” file and all files that do “ajax things” ajax.Costumer.php, for example. Help is needed ;) So, as you can see we have some standards, and also for database things. But I want to write a manual of our rules. Something that I can give to any new programmer at my company and he can go on. This is not totally a mess, but it could be better seeing the new practices. What could I do to separate this as MVC, to have multiple views. Could you give me some tips considering my goals? Keep im mind the different products/custom things for specific costumers without breaking the main application. URL for tutorials, books, etc, would be nice.

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  • Investigating Strategies For Functional Decomposition

    - by Liam McLennan
    Introducing Functional Decomposition Before I begin I must apologise. I think I am using the term ‘functional decomposition’ loosely, and probably incorrectly. For the purpose of this article I use functional decomposition to mean the recursive splitting of a large problem into increasingly smaller ones, so that the one large problem may be solved by solving a set of smaller problems. The justification for functional decomposition is that the decomposed problem is more easily solved. As software developers we recognise that the smaller pieces are more easily tested, since they do less and are more cohesive. Functional decomposition is important to all scientific pursuits. Once we understand natural selection we can start to look for humanities ancestral species, once we understand the big bang we can trace our expanding universe back to its origin. Isaac Newton acknowledged the compositional nature of his scientific achievements: If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants   The Two Strategies For Functional Decomposition of Computer Programs Private Methods When I was working on my undergraduate degree I was taught to functionally decompose problems by using private methods. Consider the problem of painting a house. The obvious solution is to solve the problem as a single unit: public void PaintAHouse() { // all the things required to paint a house ... } We decompose the problem by breaking it into parts: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { // everything required to paint the undercoat } private void PaintTopcoat() { // everything required to paint the topcoat } The problem can be recursively decomposed until a sufficiently granular level of detail is reached: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { prepareSurface(); fetchUndercoat(); paintUndercoat(); } private void PaintTopcoat() { fetchPaint(); paintTopcoat(); } According to Wikipedia, at least one computer programmer has referred to this process as “the art of subroutining”. The practical issues that I have encountered when using private methods for decomposition are: To preserve the top level API all of the steps must be private. This means that they can’t easily be tested. The private methods often have little cohesion except that they form part of the same solution. Decomposing to Classes The alternative is to decompose large problems into multiple classes, effectively using a class instead of each private method. The API delegates to related classes, so the API is not polluted by the sub-steps of the problem, and the steps can be easily tested because they are each in their own highly cohesive class. Additionally, I think that this technique facilitates better adherence to the Single Responsibility Principle, since each class can be decomposed until it has precisely one responsibility. Revisiting my previous example using class composition: public class HousePainter { private undercoatPainter = new UndercoatPainter(); private topcoatPainter = new TopcoatPainter(); public void PaintAHouse() { undercoatPainter.Paint(); topcoatPainter.Paint(); } } Summary When decomposing a problem there is more than one way to represent the sub-problems. Using private methods keeps the logic in one place and prevents a proliferation of classes (thereby following the four rules of simple design) but the class decomposition is more easily testable and more compatible with the Single Responsibility Principle.

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  • Move over DFS and Robocopy, here is SyncToy!

    - by andywe
    Ever since Windows 2000, I have always had the need to replicate data to multiple endpoints with the same content. Until DFS was introduced, the method of thinking was to either manually copy the data location by location, or to batch script it with xcopy and schedule a task. Even though this worked (and still does today), it was cumbersome, and intensive on the network, especially when dealing with larger amounts of data. Then along came robocopy, as an internal tool written by an enterprising programmer at Microsoft. We used it quite a bit, especially when we could not use DFS in the early days. It was received so well, it made it into the public realm. At least now we could have the ability to determine what files had changed and only replicate those. Well, over time there has been evolution of this ideal. DFS is obviously the Windows enterprise class service to do this, along with BrancheCache..however you don’t always need or want the power of DFS, especially when it comes to small datacenter installations, or remote offices. I have specific data sets that are on closed or restricted networks, that either have a security need for this, or are in remote countries where bandwidth is a premium. FOr this, I use the latest evolution for one off replication names Synctoy. Synctoy is from Microsoft, seemingly released in 2009, that wraps a nice GUI around setting up a paired set of folders (remember the mobile briefcase from Windows 98?), and allowing you the choice of synchronization methods. 1 way, or 2 way. Simply create a paired set of folders on the source and destination, choose your options for content, exclude any file types you don’t want to replicate, and click run. Scheduling is even easier. MS has included a wrapper for doing just this so all you enter in your task schedule in the SynToyCMD.exe, a –R as an argument, and the time schedule. No more complicated command lines or scripts.   I find this especially useful when I use MS backup to back up a system volume, but only want subsets of backup information of a data share and ONLY when that dataset has changed. Not relying on full backups and incremental. An example of this is my application installation master share. I back this up with SyncToy because I do not need multiple backup copies..one copy elsewhere suffices to back it up. At home, very useful for your pictures, videos, music, ect..the backup is online and ready to access, not waiting for you to restore a backup file, and no need to institute a domain simply to have DFS.'   Do note there is a risk..if you accidently delete a file and do not catch this before the next sync, then depending on your SyncToy settings, you can indeed lose that file as the destination updates..so due diligence applies. I make it a rule to sync manly one way…I use my master share for making changes, and allow the schedule to follow suit. Any real important file I lock down as read only through file permissions so it cannot be deleted unless I intervene.   Check out the tool and have some fun! http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?DisplayLang=en&id=15155

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  • Questions to ask to ensure someone understands programming? (and iOS)

    - by Stephen J
    So, I've been tutoring my friend for 2 years. Most people learn programming on their own in 3-6 months, (sans algorithms). It's confusing 'cause he'll run anywhere I tell him to, understands how to read C and C++ honestly better than the average college student, and he'll modify and repeat anything I do... but for the love of god he doesn't move on to new things and he still has test anxiety. I've recently realized he's copied and toyed with existing, but not once gained an understanding of why. I was under the impression he was learning fast because he could write it, but when you say "Make a function that takes an NSString" and he says "How?" and I say "The same way you make ANY function that takes any parameter, NSString is just a type like int" and all I hear is "No, it's an NSString, it's a special thing." and we get into an arguing match 'cause I'm like "It's just a class like any other class, you've used them for months now" and blah... I've subconsciously avoided comprehension questions because of this. Anyway, if you have him copy a program and say "Just initialize it" "Where?" "I don't care, didLoad or initWithCoder or Awake from nib, anywhere it gets initialized" and "No, it has to be exactly where you had it!" "No it doesn't!" I'm sick of this, but he won't give up. So I'm done avoiding these yelling matches and becoming a sadist from now on. I would like some help in finding questions to ask him that force him to understand what he's doing. I'd like some help and any resources I can find. CQuestions looked like a good site, but now I need some iPhone stuff. For example: *What do properties do? How are they changed? How do you change the name of the getter? *Why are Booleans inefficent? What advantage does int have over a boolean and how does the bit-shift operator help? *What does Copy do to a string? *What's the difference between a view controller and a uiview? *Write a program from memory that displays blah on screen, and flashes each view one by one. From beginner up to intermediate, hobbyist with some algebra at most. I'm just looking for resources to work with. I left in backstory so you know to "twist" the questions so he doesn't know he's supposed to init a variable here or there, but has to figure it out, and learn why it goes "here" or that "anywhere is fine as long as it's". Sample programs, anything. I'm relatively open about this because, being a programmer, I seriously doubt he's the only one who has this issue. I'd like to know how others have overcome similar. What made things "click"? for you? Did you have a hard time finding answers on Google, and how did you learn a better way to find what you were looking for? (He's so exact, he'll search for how to write a checkers program with color X and Y inside a uiview, as his search string, instead of breaking it up into components, I need help with that too, and believe it is related). This type of problem has to remind one of us of someone they know. So, Exercises to force them to think? Ways we overcame this thing in the past? I greatly appreciate any help.

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  • Cream of the Crop

    - by KemButller
    JD Edwards has been working hard to ensure that you shouldn't have to work so hard! Yet there are still JD Edwards customers that may not be up to speed on all the new and or improved tools and utilities we have delivered, all designed to make your life easier. So today, I want to share what I consider to be the cream of the crop….those items that every customer should know about and leverage to make ERP life just a little bit (or A LOT) easier! These are my top picks, the cream of a very good crop! Explore and enjoy, and gain some of your time back to do with as you please. · www.runjde.com It’s where to go when you need to know! The Resource Kits available on www.runjde.com provide comprehensive Resource Kits (guides) by user type. The guides provide brief descriptions of the wide array of resources that are available to JD Edwards’s eco system and links to each of those resources. · My Oracle Support (MOS) Information Centers This link will take you to an index that is designed to provide you with simple and quick navigation to the available EnterpriseOne Information Centers. This index provides links to: · EnterpriseOne Application specific Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Tools and Technology Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Performance Information Center · EnterpriseOne 9.1 and 9.0 Information Centers Information Centers give Oracle the ability to aggregate content for a given focus area and present this content in categories for easy browsing by our customers. Information Centers offer a variety of focused dynamic content organized around one or more of the following tasks. · Overview · Use · Troubleshooting · Patching and Maintenance · Install and Configure · Upgrade · Optimize Performance · Security · Certify JD Edwards Newsletters Be in the know by reading the Global Customer Support Product Newsletters. They are PACKED with news and information covering a wide range of topics and news. It is a must read if you want to know what’s happening in the JD Edwards universe! Read the latest EntepriseOne newsletter Read the latest World newsletter Learn How to receive notification when a new newsletter edition is published Oracle Learning Library – (OLL) Oracle Learn Library is the place to go for easy access to JD Edwards Application and Tools training. For a comprehensive view of the training available for a specific product/functional area, explore the Knowledge Paths For Net Change (new feature) training, explore the TOI sessions (TOI stands for Transfer Of Information). Tip: Be sure to experiment with the search filters! · www.upgradejde.com The site designed to help customers and partners with the process of upgrading JD Edwards. The site is a wealth of information, tools and resources designed to assist in the evaluation, planning and execution steps required when upgrading. Of note is the wildly successful upgrade strategy known as “The Art of the Possible” wherein JD Edwards and many of our partners hold free workshops to teach customers how to conduct upgrades in 100 days or less. Equally important is the fact that on www.upgradejde.com, customers can gain visibility into planned enhancements using the Product and Technology Feature Catalogs. The catalogs are great for creating customer specific reports about the net change between older releases and current or planned releases. Examples of other key resources on www.upgradejde.com are the product data base changes between releases, extensibility guides, (formerly known as programmer’s guides), whitepapers, ROI calculators and much more!

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  • The long road to bug-free software

    - by Tony Davis
    The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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  • Representing Mauritius in the 2013 Bench Games

    Only by chance I came across an interesting option for professionals and enthusiasts in IT, and quite honestly I can't even remember where I caught attention of Brainbench and their 2013 Bench Games event. But having access to 600+ free exams in a friendly international intellectual competition doesn't happen to be available every day. So, it was actually a no-brainer to sign up and browse through the various categories. Most interestingly, Brainbench is not only IT-related. They offer a vast variety of fields in their Test Center, like Languages and Communication, Office Skills, Management, Aptitude, etc., and it can be a little bit messy about how things are organised. Anyway, while browsing through their test offers I added a couple of exams to 'My Plan' which I would give a shot afterwards. Self-assessments Actually, I took the tests based on two major aspects: 'Fun Factor' and 'How good would I be in general'... Usually, you have to pay for any kind of exams and given this unique chance by Brainbench to simply train this kind of tests was already worth the time. Frankly speaking, the tests are very close to the ones you would be asked to do at Prometric or Pearson Vue, ie. Microsoft exams, etc. Go through a set of multiple choice questions in a given time frame. Most of the tests I did during the Bench Games were based on 40 questions, each with a maximum of 3 minutes to answer. Ergo, one test in maximum 2 hours - that sounds feasible, doesn't it? The Measure of Achievement While the 2013 Bench Games are considered a worldwide friendly competition of knowledge I was really eager to get other Mauritians attracted. Using various social media networks and community activities it all looked quite well at the beginning. Mauritius was listed on rank #19 of Most Certified Citizens and rank #10 of Most Master Level Certified Nation - not bad, not bad... Until... the next update of the Bench Games Leaderboard. The downwards trend seemed to be unstoppable and I couldn't understand why my results didn't show up on the Individual Leader Board. First of all, I passed exams that were not even listed and second, I had better results on some exams listed. After some further information from the organiser it turned out that my test transcript wasn't available to the public. Only then results are considered and counted in the competition. During that time, I actually managed to hold 3 test results on the Individuals... Other participants were merciless, eh, more successful than me, produced better test results than I did. But still I managed to stay on the final score board: An 'exotic' combination of exam, test result, country and person itself Representing Mauritius and the Visual FoxPro community in that fun event. And although I mainly develop in Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP2 and C# using .NET Framework from 2.0 to 4.5 since a couple of years I still managed to pass on Master Level. Hm, actually my Microsoft Certified Programmer (MCP) exams are dated back in June 2004 - more than 9 years ago... Look who got lucky... As described above I did a couple of exams as time allowed and without any preparations, but still I received the following mail notification: "Thank you for recently participating in our Bench Games event.  We wanted to inform you that you obtained a top score on our test(s) during this event, and as a result, will receive a free annual Brainbench subscription.  Your annual subscription will give you access to all our tests just like Bench Games, but for an entire year plus additional benefits!" -- Leader Board Notification from Brainbench Even fun activities get rewarded sometimes. Thanks to @Brainbench_com for the free annual subscription based on my passed 2013 Bench Games Master Level exam. It would be interesting to know about the total figures, especially to see how many citizens of Mauritius took part in this year's Bench Games. Anyway, I'm looking forward to be able to participate in other challenges like this in the future.

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  • 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!  

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  • Modernizr Rocks HTML5

    - by Laila
    HTML5 is a moving target.  At the moment, we don't know what will be in future versions.  In most circumstances, this really matters to the developer. When you're using Adobe Air, you can be reasonably sure what works, what is there, and what isn't, since you have a version of the browser built-in. With Metro, you can assume that you're going to be using at least IE 10.   If, however,  you are using HTML5 in a web application, then you are going to rely heavily on Feature Detection.  Feature-Detection is a collection of techniques that tell you, via JavaScript, whether the current browser has this feature natively implemented or not Feature Detection isn't just there for the esoteric stuff such as  Geo-location,  progress bars,  <canvas> support,  the new <input> types, Audio, Video, web workers or storage, but is required even for semantic markup, since old browsers make a pigs ear out of rendering this.  Feature detection can't rely just on reading the browser version and inferring from that what works. Instead, you must use JavaScript to check that an HTML5 feature is there before using it.  The problem with relying on the user-agent is that it takes a lot of historical data  to work out what version does what, and, anyway, the user-agent can be, and sometimes is, spoofed. The open-source library Modernizr  is just about the most essential  JavaScript library for anyone using HTML5, because it provides APIs to test for most of the CSS3 and HTML5 features before you use them, and is intelligent enough to alter semantic markup into 'legacy' 'markup  using shims  on page-load  for old browsers. It also allows you to check what video Codecs are installed for playing video. It also provides media queries  and conditional resource-loading (formerly YepNope.js.).  Generally, Modernizr gives you the choice of what you do about browsers that don't support the feature that you want. Often, the best choice is graceful degradation, but the resource-loading feature allows you to dynamically load JavaScript Shims to replace the standard API for missing or defective HTML5 functionality, called 'PolyFills'.  As the Modernizr site says 'Yes, not only can you use HTML5 today, but you can use it in the past, too!' The evolutionary progress of HTML5  requires a more defensive style of JavaScript programming where the programmer adopts a mindset of fearing the worst ( IE 6)  rather than assuming the best, whilst exploiting as many of the new HTML features as possible for the requirements of the site or HTML application.  Why would anyone want the distraction of developing their own techniques to do this when  Modernizr exists to do this for you? Laila

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  • The long road to bug-free software

    - by Tony Davis
    The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in functional programming languages such as Haskell or, in the Microsoft world, F#. Though still on the periphery of mainstream programming, functional programming concepts are gradually seeping into the imperative C# language (for example, Lambda expressions have their root in functional programming). One of the more interesting concepts from functional programming languages is the use of formal methods, the lofty ideal behind which is bug-free software. The idea is that we write a specification that describes exactly how our function (say) should behave. We then prove that our function conforms to it, and in doing so have proved beyond any doubt that it is free from bugs. All programmers already use one form of specification, specifically their programming language's type system. If a value has a specific type then, in a type-safe language, the compiler guarantees that value cannot be an instance of a different type. Many extensions to existing type systems, such as generics in Java and .NET, extend the range of programs that can be type-checked. Unfortunately, type systems can only prevent some bugs. To take a classic problem of retrieving an index value from an array, since the type system doesn't specify the length of the array, the compiler has no way of knowing that a request for the "value of index 4" from an array of only two elements is "unsafe". We restore safety via exception handling, but the ideal type system will prevent us from doing anything that is unsafe in the first place and this is where we start to borrow ideas from a language such as Haskell, with its concept of "dependent types". If the type of an array includes its length, we can ensure that any index accesses into the array are valid. The problem is that we now need to carry around the length of arrays and the values of indices throughout our code so that it can be type-checked. In general, writing the specification to prove a positive property, even for a problem very amenable to specification, such as a simple sorting algorithm, turns out to be very hard and the specification will be different for every program. Extend this to writing a specification for, say, Microsoft Word and we can see that the specification would end up being no simpler, and therefore no less buggy, than the implementation. Fortunately, it is easier to write a specification that proves that a program doesn't have certain, specific and undesirable properties, such as infinite loops or accesses to the wrong bit of memory. If we can write the specifications to prove that a program is immune to such problems, we could reuse them in many places. The problem is the lack of specification "provers" that can do this without a lot of manual intervention (i.e. hints from the programmer). All this might feel a very long way off, but computing power and our understanding of the theory of "provers" advances quickly, and Microsoft is doing some of it already. Via their Terminator research project they have started to prove that their device drivers will always terminate, and in so doing have suddenly eliminated a vast range of possible bugs. This is a huge step forward from saying, "we've tested it lots and it seems fine". What do you think? What might be good targets for specification and verification? SQL could be one: the cost of a bug in SQL Server is quite high given how many important systems rely on it, so there's a good incentive to eliminate bugs, even at high initial cost. [Many thanks to Mike Williamson for guidance and useful conversations during the writing of this piece] Cheers, Tony.

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  • Why do I get "Invalid Column Name" errors in EF4?

    - by camainc
    I am trying to learn Entity Framework 4.0. Disclaimer 1: I am brand new to Entity Framework. I have successfully used LinqToSQL. Disclaimer 2: I am really a VB.Net programmer, so the problem could be in the C# code. Given this code snippet: public int Login(string UserName, string Password) { return _dbContext.Memberships .Where(membership => membership.UserName.ToLower() == UserName.ToLower() && membership.Password == Password) .SingleOrDefault().PrimaryKey; } Why do you suppose I get "Invalid column name" errors? {"Invalid column name 'UserName'.\r\nInvalid column name 'Password'.\r\nInvalid column name 'UserName'.\r\nInvalid column name 'Password'."} Those column names are spelled and cased correctly. I also checked the generated code for the entity in question, and those columns are properties in the entity. The intellisense and code completion also puts the column names into the expression just as they are here. I am stumped by this. Any help would be much appreciated. https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B-xLbzoqGvXvNjBmZmNjNDAtY2RhNC00NDA2LWIxNzMtYjhjNTYxMDIyZmZl&hl=en

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  • faster implementation of sum ( for Codility test )

    - by Oscar Reyes
    How can the following simple implementation of sum be faster? private long sum( int [] a, int begin, int end ) { if( a == null ) { return 0; } long r = 0; for( int i = begin ; i < end ; i++ ) { r+= a[i]; } return r; } EDIT Background is in order. Reading latest entry on coding horror, I came to this site: http://codility.com which has this interesting programming test. Anyway, I got 60 out of 100 in my submission, and basically ( I think ) is because this implementation of sum, because those parts where I failed are the performance parts. I'm getting TIME_OUT_ERROR's So, I was wondering if an optimization in the algorithm is possible. So, no built in functions or assembly would be allowed. This my be done in C, C++, C#, Java or pretty much in any other. EDIT As usual, mmyers was right. I did profile the code and I saw most of the time was spent on that function, but I didn't understand why. So what I did was to throw away my implementation and start with a new one. This time I've got an optimal solution [ according to San Jacinto O(n) -see comments to MSN below - ] This time I've got 81% on Codility which I think is good enough. The problem is that I didn't take the 30 mins. but around 2 hrs. but I guess that leaves me still as a good programmer, for I could work on the problem until I found an optimal solution: Here's my result. I never understood what is those "combinations of..." nor how to test "extreme_first"

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  • python unhashable type - posting xml data

    - by eterry28
    First, I'm not a python programmer. I'm an old C dog that's learned new Java and PHP tricks, but python looks like a pretty cool language. I'm getting an error that I can't quite follow. The error follows the code below. import httplib, urllib url = "pdb-services-beta.nipr.com" xml = '<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE SCB_Request SYSTEM "http://www.nipr.com/html/SCB_XML_Request.dtd"><SCB_Request Request_Type="Create_Report"><SCB_Login_Data CustomerID="someuser" Passwd="somepass" /><SCB_Create_Report_Request Title=""><Producer_List><NIPR_Num_List_XML><NIPR_Num NIPR_Num="8980608" /><NIPR_Num NIPR_Num="7597855" /><NIPR_Num NIPR_Num="10166016" /></NIPR_Num_List_XML></Producer_List></SCB_Create_Report_Request></SCB_Request>' params = {} params['xmldata'] = xml headers = {} headers['Content-type'] = 'text/xml' headers['Accept'] = '*/*' headers['Content-Length'] = "%d" % len(xml) connection = httplib.HTTPSConnection(url) connection.set_debuglevel(1) connection.request("POST", "/pdb-xml-reports/scb_xmlclient.cgi", params, headers) response = connection.getresponse() print response.status, response.reason data = response.read() print data connection.close Here's the error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Python27\tutorial.py", line 14, in connection.request("POST", "/pdb-xml-reports/scb_xmlclient.cgi", params, headers) File "C:\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 958, in request self._send_request(method, url, body, headers) File "C:\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 992, in _send_request self.endheaders(body) File "C:\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 954, in endheaders self._send_output(message_body) File "C:\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 818, in _send_output self.send(message_body) File "C:\Python27\lib\httplib.py", line 790, in send self.sock.sendall(data) File "C:\Python27\lib\ssl.py", line 229, in sendall v = self.send(data[count:]) TypeError: unhashable type My log file says that the xmldata parameter is empty. Any ideas?

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  • Negative ItemCount in SharePoint Document Library

    - by ccomet
    What can be done about negative numbers in library item counts? ItemCount is a read-only property, what are you supposed to do when it is drastically incorrect? Earlier last week, I was doing some testing involving the copying and moving of files and folders from one document library to another. I was transfering the items from our actual document library to a sandbox "Test" library that I used to run all sorts of object model and workflow testing in before migrating to the public lists and libraries. I noticed that with files, things worked correctly, but when I copied a folder that had a file inside it (using SPFolder.CopyTo()), the item count for the test library did not actually update. Since this testing was mostly playing around, I paid it little heed. Today I was back in the test library to test a different workflow (regarding PDF conversion). While I was there, I decided to delete the folder I left last week since I didn't need it anymore. And that's when I saw the item count for the list drop to -1 in the All Site Content View. When I deleted the new PDF I had just uploaded, it then dropped to -2! I even checked with the object model... getting an instance of the library I checked the ItemCount property... lo and behold it was also -2. Is there any process which runs in the background, kinda like the one that cleans up workflow history, which will correct this kind of issue? Or is a programmer expected to keep watch for this kind of situation and come up with calculations to compensate the "count penalty", as it were?

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  • Why were namespaces removed from ECMAScript consideration?

    - by Bob
    Namespaces were once a consideration for ECMAScript (the old ECMAScript 4) but were taken out. As Brendan Eich says in this message: One of the use-cases for namespaces in ES4 was early binding (use namespace intrinsic), both for performance and for programmer comprehension -- no chance of runtime name binding disagreeing with any earlier binding. But early binding in any dynamic code loading scenario like the web requires a prioritization or reservation mechanism to avoid early versus late binding conflicts. Plus, as some JS implementors have noted with concern, multiple open namespaces impose runtime cost unless an implementation works significantly harder. For these reasons, namespaces and early binding (like packages before them, this past April) must go. But I'm not sure I understand all of that. What exactly is a prioritization or reservation mechanism and why would either of those be needed? Also, must early binding and namespaces go hand-in-hand? For some reason I can't wrap my head around the issues involved. Can anyone attempt a more fleshed out explanation? Also, why would namespaces impose runtime costs? In my mind I can't help but see little difference in concept between a namespace and a function using closures. For instance, Yahoo and Google both have YAHOO and google objects that "act like" namespaces in that they contain all of their public and private variables, functions, and objects within a single access point. So why, then, would a namespace be so significantly different in implementation? Maybe I just have a misconception as to what a namespace is exactly.

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  • Algorithm design, "randomising" timetable schedule in Python although open to other languages.

    - by S1syphus
    Before I start I should add I am a musician and not a native programmer, this was undertook to make my life easier. Here is the situation, at work I'm given a new csv file each which contains a list of sound files, their length, and the minimum total amount of time they must be played. I create a playlist of exactly 60 minutes, from this excel file. Each sample played the by the minimum number of instances, but spread out from each other; so there will never be a period where for where one sound is played twice in a row or in close proximity to itself. Secondly, if the minimum instances of each song has been used, and there is still time with in the 60 min, it needs to fill the remaining time using sounds till 60 minutes is reached, while adhering to above. The smallest duration possible is 15 seconds, and then multiples of 15 seconds. Here is what I came up with in python and the problems I'm having with it, and as one user said its buggy due to the random library used in it. So I'm guessing a total rethink is on the table, here is where I need your help. Whats is the best way to solve the issue, I have had a brief look at things like knapsack and bin packing algorithms, while both are relevant neither are appropriate and maybe a bit beyond me.

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  • Building Dynamic Classes in Objective C

    - by kjell_
    I'm a somewhat competent ruby programmer. Yesterday I decided to finally try my hand with Apple's Cocoa frameworks. Help me see things the ObjC way? I'm trying to get my head around objc_allocateClassPair and objc_registerClassPair. My goal is to dynamically generate a few classes and then be able to use them as I would any other class. Does this work in Obj C? Having allocated and registered class A, I get a compile error when calling [[A alloc] init]; (it says 'A' Undeclared). I can only instantiate A using runtime's objc_getClass method. Is there any way to tell the compiler about A and pass it messages like I would NSString? A compiler flag or something? I have 10 or so other classes (B, C, …), all with the same superclass. I want to message them directly in code ([A classMethod], [B classMethod], …) without needing objc_getClass. Am I trying to be too dynamic here or just botching my implementation? It looks something like this… NSString *name = @"test"; Class newClass = objc_allocateClassPair([NSString class], [name UTF8String], 0); objc_registerClassPair(newClass); id a = [[objc_getClass("A") alloc] init]; NSLog(@"new class: %@ superclass: %@", a, [a superclass]); //[[A alloc] init]; blows up.

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  • Frame Buster Buster ... buster code needed

    - by Jeff Atwood
    Let's say you don't want other sites to "frame" your site in an <iframe>: <iframe src="http://yourwebsite.com"></iframe> So you insert anti-framing, frame busting JavaScript into all your pages: /* break us out of any containing iframes */ if (top != self) { top.location.replace(self.location.href); } Excellent! Now you "bust" or break out of any containing iframe automatically. Except for one small problem. As it turns out, your frame-busting code can be busted, as shown here: <script type="text/javascript"> var prevent_bust = 0 window.onbeforeunload = function() { prevent_bust++ } setInterval(function() { if (prevent_bust > 0) { prevent_bust -= 2 window.top.location = 'http://server-which-responds-with-204.com' } }, 1) </script> This code does the following: increments a counter every time the browser attempts to navigate away from the current page, via the window.onbeforeonload event handler sets up a timer that fires every millisecond via setInterval(), and if it sees the counter incremented, changes the current location to a server of the attacker's control that server serves up a page with HTTP status code 204, which does not cause the browser to nagivate anywhere My question is -- and this is more of a JavaScript puzzle than an actual problem -- how can you defeat the frame-busting buster? I had a few thoughts, but nothing worked in my testing: attempting to clear the onbeforeunload event via onbeforeonload = null had no effect adding an alert() stopped the process let the user know it was happening, but did not interfere with the code in any way; clicking OK lets the busting continue as normal I can't think of any way to clear the setInterval() timer I'm not much of a JavaScript programmer, so here's my challenge to you: hey buster, can you bust the frame-busting buster?

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  • "Best" language /architecture for browser-based app with ODBC and sockets? (subjective)

    - by mawg
    Sorry to ask a subjective question, but I would welcome some advice. I am an experienced programmer of embedded s/w, but haven't done much network programming, although I have done a fair bit of hobbyist PHP. Anyway, I have to develop what is probably a fairly general type of app, as shown in this crude diagram --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Browser / user interface Takes input from user form and writes data to d/b. | | Also gets data and updates browser contents when when d/b contents are changed | | because of info received over TCP/IP. | |________________________________________________________________________________| | ODBC | |_______________________________________________________________________________| | database | |_______________________________________________________________________________| | ODBC | |_______________________________________________________________________________| | Socket (TCP/IP) | | Send data out when d/b is updated from browser. | | Also, update d/b when data are received over TCP/IP. | |_______________________________________________________________________________| As I say, I imagine this to be a fairly typical architecture? Am I right? Then client is insisting on MSIE - unless I can show compelling technical reasons for FireFox or other then it will have to be MSIE (are there any compelling technical reasons?). So, with MIE (almost) a given, I had though to use PHP, since I know it, but the client seems awfully keen on Java (which ought to be OK since I am conversant with C++) it woudl seem to make sense to use the same language for the "upper" interface between the web pages (which that app generates) and the d/b, and for the "lower" interface between the d/b and the socket. (a single language means a single set of tools since text approach, etc) So, the (probably highly subjective) question is "which language shoudl I choose". As I say, the client is keen on Java. Any compelling reason why not? Is it generally a good choice for the sort of thing described here? Any other hints & tips gratefully appreciated (and up-voted): URLs, books, tool chain suggestions, etc, etc

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  • Best ways to teach a beginner to program?

    - by Justin Standard
    Original Question I am currently engaged in teaching my brother to program. He is a total beginner, but very smart. (And he actually wants to learn). I've noticed that some of our sessions have gotten bogged down in minor details, and I don't feel I've been very organized. (But the answers to this post have helped a lot.) What can I do better to teach him effectively? Is there a logical order that I can use to run through concept by concept? Are there complexities I should avoid till later? The language we are working with is Python, but advice in any language is welcome. How to Help If you have good ones please add the following in your answer: Beginner Exercises and Project Ideas Resources for teaching beginners Screencasts / blog posts / free e-books Print books that are good for beginners Please describe the resource with a link to it so I can take a look. I want everyone to know that I have definitely been using some of these ideas. Your submissions will be aggregated in this post. Online Resources for teaching beginners: A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python How to Think Like a Computer Scientist Alice: a 3d program for beginners Scratch (A system to develop programming skills) How To Design Programs Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Learn To Program Robert Read's How To Be a Programmer Microsoft XNA Spawning the Next Generation of Hackers COMP1917 Higher Computing lectures by Richard Buckland (requires iTunes) Dive into Python Python Wikibook Project Euler - sample problems (mostly mathematical) pygame - an easy python library for creating games Create Your Own Games With Python ebook Foundations of Programming for a next step beyond basics. Squeak by Example Recommended Print Books for teaching beginners Accelerated C++ Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner Code by Charles Petzold

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  • Javascript/Greasemonkey: search for something then set result as a value

    - by thewinchester
    Ok, I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to JS (I'm not the greatest programmer) so please be gentle - specially if my questions been asked already somewhere and I'm too stupid to find the right answer. Self deprecation out of the way, let's get to the question. Problem There is a site me and a large group of friends frequently use which doesn't display all the information we may like to know - in this case an airline bookings site and the class of travel. While the information is buried in the code of the page, it isn't displayed anywhere to the user. Using a Greasemonkey script, I'd like to liberate this piece of information and display it in a suitable format. Here's the psuedocode of what I'm looking to do. Search dom for specified element define variables Find a string of text If found Set result to a variable Write contents to page at a specific location (before a specified div) If not found Do nothing I think I've achieved most of it so far, except for the key bits of: Searching for the string: The page needs to search for the following piece of text in the page HEAD: mileageRequest += "&CLASSES=S,S-S,S-S"; The Content I need to extract and store is between the second equals (=) sign and the last comma ("). The contents of this area can be any letter between A-Z. I'm not fussed about splitting it up into an array so I could use the elements individually at this stage. Writing the result to a location: Taking that found piece of text and writing it to another location. Code so far This is what I've come up so far, with bits missing highlighted. buttons = document.getElementById('buttons'); ''Search goes here var flightClasses = document.createElement("div"); flightClasses.innerHTML = '<div id="flightClasses"> ' + '<h2>Travel classes</h2>' + 'For the above segments, your flight classes are as follows:' + 'write result here' + '</div>'; main.parentNode.insertBefore(flightClasses, buttons); If anyone could help me, or point me in the right direction to finish this off I'd appreciate it.

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  • Is there a perfect algorithm for chess?

    - by Overflown
    Dear Stack Overflow community, I was recently in a discussion with a non-coder person on the possibilities of chess computers. I'm not well versed in theory, but think I know enough. I argued that there could not exist a deterministic Turing machine that always won or stalemated at chess. I think that, even if you search the entire space of all combinations of player1/2 moves, the single move that the computer decides upon at each step is based on a heuristic. Being based on a heuristic, it does not necessarily beat ALL of the moves that the opponent could do. My friend thought, to the contrary, that a computer would always win or tie if it never made a "mistake" move (however do you define that?). However, being a programmer who has taken CS, I know that even your good choices - given a wise opponent - can force you to make "mistake" moves in the end. Even if you know everything, your next move is greedy in matching a heuristic. Most chess computers try to match a possible end game to the game in progress, which is essentially a dynamic programming traceback. Again, the endgame in question is avoidable though. -- thanks, Allan Edit: Hmm... looks like I ruffled some feathers here. That's good. Thinking about it again, it seems like there is no theoretical problem with solving a finite game like chess. I would argue that chess is a bit more complicated than checkers in that a win is not necessarily by numerical exhaustion of pieces, but by a mate. My original assertion is probably wrong, but then again I think I've pointed out something that is not yet satisfactorily proven (formally). I guess my thought experiment was that whenever a branch in the tree is taken, then the algorithm (or memorized paths) must find a path to a mate (without getting mated) for any possible branch on the opponent moves. After the discussion, I will buy that given more memory than we can possibly dream of, all these paths could be found.

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  • Metaprogramming - self explanatory code - tutorials, articles, books

    - by elena
    Hello everybody, I am looking into improving my programming skils (actually I try to do my best to suck less each year, as our Jeff Atwood put it), so I was thinking into reading stuff about metaprogramming and self explanatory code. I am looking for something like an idiot's guide to this (free books for download, online resources). Also I want more than your average wiki page and also something language agnostic or preferably with Java examples. Do you know of such resources that will allow to efficiently put all of it into practice (I know experience has a lot to say in all of this but i kind of want to build experience avoiding the flow bad decisions - experience - good decisions)? EDIT: Something of the likes of this example from the Pragmatic Programmer: ...implement a mini-language to control a simple drawing package... The language consists of single-letter commands. Some commands are followed by a single number. For example, the following input would draw a rectangle: P 2 # select pen 2 D # pen down W 2 # draw west 2cm N 1 # then north 1 E 2 # then east 2 S 1 # then back south U # pen up Thank you!

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  • Focussing on Style Sheets and Cross Browser Compatibility.

    - by Sam
    Hello everyone, Let me begin this topic by explaining my background experience with web design. I have always been more of a back end programmer, with PHP and SQL and things. However I do have a shallow background with HTML and CSS. The problem is, I don't know it all. What I do know is, when it comes to designing (not back end dirty work) I understand basic CSS properties and I also understand HTML and I can usually throw together a sloppy web page with the two and a couple bazillion DIV tags. Anyways.. The problem I always have encountered is that when I design a website in a browser such as IE7 (and then it looks perfect on IE7), and then look at it on IE8 or IE6 or Mozilla (etc.) it gets all spacey and ugly and looks totally different than the way it should look on IE7. Question one: Basically, what I am asking everyone is what route should I take to learn how to properly build the website? Build as in put it togehter with CSS standards and HTML standards that will make my site look the same on every brwoser. (Not only learning standards but where can I learn to properly write my code?) Where is a strong free resource I can use to learn how to these things? Question two: How do I properly code my website? Do I use all external style sheets to make dynamic page design simplistic or do I hard code some things into the DIV tags on each page? What is proper? Oh, and if anyone has any tutorials on how to properly design a complete layout feel free to throw it in a response somewhere. Thank you for taking the time to read my questions, and hopefully you will understand what I am trying to get out to everyone. I need to get on the right route of the designing side of web programming so that I will know how to create successful websites in the future. Thank you, Sam Pardee

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