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• Oral Tradition Check: Two Hundred Meanings for "NULL" in SQL

  - by Thomas L Holaday

  Two decades ago, the topic of "NULL" came up in conversation with a scholarly colleague. As I remember it, he said that C.J.Date, in an essay critical of commercial implementations of SQL, had listed over two hundred meanings for NULL. To my regret, I did not persist the details; but finding that list has since been on my Bucket List. Has anyone else heard this legend? Was it perhaps not Date, but another critic of commercial implementations of SQL?

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• Pronunciation of "char"

  - by Zannjaminderson

  I know there's another question on here already about pronunciation here, but it's got a whole list of programming terms. I'm just interested in finding out how everybody pronounces just one thing - "char". I personally like "care" as in the first syllable of "character", since that's what it represents, but in past experience I've found there are far more people who say "char" as in "char-broiled", and some who say "car". Sorry to start a holy war, but I'm curious.

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• How do you educate your teammates without seeming condescending or superior?

  - by Dan Tao

  I work with three other guys; I'll call them Adam, Brian, and Chris. Adam and Brian are bright guys. Give them a problem; they will figure out a way to solve it. When it comes to OOP, though, they know very little about it and aren't particularly interested in learning. Pure procedural code is their MO. Chris, on the other hand, is an OOP guy all the way -- and a cocky, condescending one at that. He is constantly criticizing the work Adam and Brian do and talking to me as if I must share his disdain for the two of them. When I say that Adam and Brian aren't interested in learning about OOP, I suspect Chris is the primary reason. This hasn't bothered me too much for the most part, but there have been times when, looking at some code Adam or Brian wrote, it has pained me to think about how a problem could have been solved so simply using inheritance or some other OOP concept instead of the unmaintainable mess of 1,000 lines of code that ended up being written instead. And now that the company is starting a rather ambitious new project, with Adam assigned to the task of getting the core functionality in place, I fear the result. Really, I just want to help these guys out. But I know that if I come across as just another holier-than-thou developer like Chris, it's going to be massively counterproductive. I've considered: Team code reviews -- everybody reviews everybody's code. This way no one person is really in a position to look down on anyone else; besides, I know I could learn plenty from the other members on the team as well. But this would be time-consuming, and with such a small team, I have trouble picturing it gaining much traction as a team practice. Periodic e-mails to the team -- this would entail me sending out an e-mail every now and then discussing some concept that, based on my observation, at least one team member would benefit from learning about. The downside to this approach is I do think it could easily make me come across as a self-appointed expert. Keeping a blog -- I already do this, actually; but so far my blog has been more about esoteric little programming tidbits than straightforward practical advice. And anyway, I suspect it would get old pretty fast if I were constantly telling my coworkers, "Hey guys, remember to check out my new blog post!" This question doesn't need to be specifically about OOP or any particular programming paradigm or technology. I just want to know: how have you found success in teaching new concepts to your coworkers without seeming like a condescending know-it-all? It's pretty clear to me there isn't going to be a sure-fire answer, but any helpful advice (including methods that have worked as well as those that have proved ineffective or even backfired) would be greatly appreciated. UPDATE: I am not the Team Lead on this team. Chris is. UPDATE 2: Made community wiki to accord with the general sentiment of the community (fancy that).

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• Does Open Source lead to bad coding?

  - by David Conde

  I have a thought that I tried asking at SO, but didnt seem like the appropriate place. I think that source sites like Google Code, GitHub, SourceForge... have played a major role in the history of programming. However, I found that there is another bad thing to these kind of sites and that is you may just "copy" code from almost anyone, not knowing if it is good(tested) source or not. This line of thought has taken me to believe that source code websites tend to lead many developers (most likely unexperienced) to copy/paste massive amounts of code, which I find just wrong. I really dont know how to focus the question well, but basic thought would be: Is this ok? Is Open Source contributing to that or I'm just seeing ghosts... Hope people get interested because I think this is an important theme.

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• Shuffling algorithm with no "self-mapping"?

  - by OregonTrail

  To randomly shuffle an array, with no bias towards any particular permutation, there is the Knuth Fischer-Yeats algorithm. In Python: #!/usr/bin/env python import sys from random import randrange def KFYShuffle(items): i = len(items) - 1 while i > 0: j = randrange(i+1) # 0 <= j <= i items[j], items[i] = items[i], items[j] i = i - 1 return items print KFYShuffle(range(int(sys.argv[1]))) There is also Sattolo's algorithm, which produces random cycles. In Python: #!/usr/bin/env python import sys from random import randrange def SattoloShuffle(items): i = len(items) while i > 1: i = i - 1 j = randrange(i) # 0 <= j <= i-1 items[j], items[i] = items[i], items[j] return items print SattoloShuffle(range(int(sys.argv[1]))) I'm currently writing a simulation with the following specifications for a shuffling algorithm: The algorithm is unbiased. If a true random number generator was used, no permutation would be more likely than any other. No number ends up at its original index. The input to the shuffle will always be A[i] = i for i from 0 to N-1 Permutations are produced that are not cycles, but still meet specification 2. The cycles produced by Sattolo's algorithm meet specification 2, but not specification 1 or 3. I've been working at creating an algorithm that meets these specifications, what I came up with was equivalent to Sattolo's algorithm. Does anyone have an algorithm for this problem?

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• Vim key mappings / plugin XCode?

  - by Daniel Upton

  I'm a developer who mostly does web stuff in ruby and C#.. I'd like to start tinkering with iOS and Mac development, Over the last few month i've been trying to get fluent in one set of key bindings (vi / vim because it just feels right).. I have the awesome ViEmu installed for visual studio on windows which gives me a ton of the vim awesomeness side by side with visual studio power toys.. Is there anything like this for xcode? I know i could set up MacVim as the default editor but i'm not too interested in this as it means losing all of xcode's cocoa awareness.. The other option of course would be to go for the lowest common denominator and switch to emacs (as the mac keybindings are based massively on emacs) but lets not think about that for too long. :P

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• Would knowing Python help with creating iPhone applications?

  - by Josh

  Here is what the apple site says: With Snow Leopard, Mac OS X makes it easy to use scripting languages as full application development tools. Snow Leopard ships with support for the RubyCocoa Bridge and the PyObjC bridge. These two bridges give developers access not only to system APIs, but to Cocoa frameworks such as AppKit and Core Data, enabling you to build fully native Mac OS X applications in Ruby or Python. The RubyCocoa and PyObjC bridges allow you to freely mix code written in Objective-C with code written in the scripting language. You can quickly build prototypes and then optimise by implementing performance-critical pieces in Objective-C. How could Python help in this case?

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• Is commented out code really always bad?

  - by nikie

  Practically every text on code quality I've read agrees that commented out code is a bad thing. The usual example is that someone changed a line of code and left the old line there as a comment, apparently to confuse people who read the code later on. Of course, that's a bad thing. But I often find myself leaving commented out code in another situation: I write a computational-geometry or image processing algorithm. To understand this kind of code, and to find potential bugs in it, it's often very helpful to display intermediate results (e.g. draw a set of points to the screen or save a bitmap file). Looking at these values in the debugger usually means looking at a wall of numbers (coordinates, raw pixel values). Not very helpful. Writing a debugger visualizer every time would be overkill. I don't want to leave the visualization code in the final product (it hurts performance, and usually just confuses the end user), but I don't want to loose it, either. In C++, I can use #ifdef to conditionally compile that code, but I don't see much differnce between this: /* // Debug Visualization: draw set of found interest points for (int i=0; i<count; i++) DrawBox(pts[i].X, pts[i].Y, 5,5); */ and this: #ifdef DEBUG_VISUALIZATION_DRAW_INTEREST_POINTS for (int i=0; i<count; i++) DrawBox(pts[i].X, pts[i].Y, 5,5); #endif So, most of the time, I just leave the visualization code commented out, with a comment saying what is being visualized. When I read the code a year later, I'm usually happy I can just uncomment the visualization code and literally "see what's going on". Should I feel bad about that? Why? Is there a superior solution? Update: S. Lott asks in a comment Are you somehow "over-generalizing" all commented code to include debugging as well as senseless, obsolete code? Why are you making that overly-generalized conclusion? I recently read Robert Glass' "Clean Code", which says: Few practices are as odious as commenting-out code. Don't do this!. I've looked at the paragraph in the book again (p. 68), there's no qualification, no distinction made between different reasons for commenting out code. So I wondered if this rule is over-generalizing (or if I misunderstood the book) or if what I do is bad practice, for some reason I didn't know.

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• Why are SW engineering interviews disproportionately difficult?

  - by stackoverflowuser2010

  First, some background on me. I have a PhD in CS and have had jobs both as a software engineer and as an R&D research scientist, both at Very Large Corporations You Know Very Well. I recently changed jobs and interviewed for both types of jobs (as I have done in the past). My observation: SW engineer job interviews are way, way disproportionately more difficult than CS researcher job interviews, but the researcher job is higher paying, more competitive, more rewarding, more interesting, and has a higher upside. Here's a typical interview loop for researcher: Phone interview to see if my research is in alignment with the lab's researcher In-person, give presentation on my recent research for one hour (which represents maybe 9 month's worth of work), answer questions In-person one-on-one interviews with about 5 researchers, where they ask me very reasonable questions on my work/publications/patents, including: technical questions, where my work fits into related work, and how I can extend my work to new areas Here's a typical interview loop for SW engineer: Phone interview where I'm asked algorithm questions and maybe do some coding. Pretty standard. In-person interviews at the whiteboard where they drill the F*** out of you on esoteric C++ minutia (e.g. how does a polymorphic virtual function call work), algorithms (make all-pairs-shortest-path algorithm work for 1B vertices), system design (design a database load balancer), etc. This goes on for six or seven interviews. Ridiculous. Why would anyone be willing to put up with this? What is the point of asking about C++ trivia or writing code to prove yourself? Why not make the SE interview more like the researcher interview where you give a talk about what you've done? How are technical job interviews for other fields, like physics, chemistry, civil engineering, mechanical engineering?

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• If Scheme is untyped, how can it have numbers and lists?

  - by Dokkat

  Scheme is said to be just an extension of the Untyped Lambda Calculus (correct me if I am wrong). If that is the case, how can it have Lists and Numbers? Those, to me, look like 2 base types. So I'd say Racket is actually an extension of the Simply Typed Lambda Calculus. No? Question: Is Scheme's type system actually based or more similar to Simply Typed or Untyped Lambda Calculus? In what ways does it differ from Untyped and or Simply Typed Lambda Calculus? (The same question is valid for "untyped" languages such as Python and JavaScript - all of which look like they have base types to me.)

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• Help with complex MVVM (multiple views)

  - by jsjslim

  I need help creating view models for the following scenario: Deep, hierarchical data Multiple views for the same set of data Each view is a single, dynamically-changing view, based on the active selection Depending on the value of a property, display different types of tabs in a tab control My questions: Should I create a view-model representation for each view (VM1, VM2, etc)? 1. Yes: a. Should I model the entire hierarchical relationship? (ie, SubVM1, HouseVM1, RoomVM1) b. How do I keep all hierarchies in sync? (e.g, adding/removing nodes) 2. No: a. Do I use a huge, single view model that caters for all views? Here's an example of a single view Figure 1: Multiple views updated based on active room. Notice Tab control Figure 2: Different active room. Multiple views updated. Tab control items changed based on object's property. Figure 3: Different selection type. Entire view changes

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• Avoid GPL violation by moving library out of process

  - by Andrey

  Assume there is a library that is licensed under GPL. I want to use it is closed source project. I do following: Create small wrapper application around that GPL library that listens to socket, parse messages and call GPL library. Then returns results back. Release it's sources (to comply with GPL) Create client for this wrapper in my main application and don't release sources. I know that this adds huge overhead compared to static/dynamic linking, but I am interested in theoretical way.

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• REST or Non-REST on Internal Services

  - by tyndall

  I'm curious if others have chosen to implement some services internally at their companies as non-REST (SOAP, Thrift, Proto Buffers, etc...) as a way to auto-generate client libraries/wrappers? I'm on a two year project. I will be writing maybe 40 services over that period with my team. 10% of those services definitely make sense as REST services, but the other 90% feel more like they could be done in REST or RPC style. Of these 90%, 100% will be .NET talking to .NET. When I think about all the effort to have my devs develop client "wrappers" for REST services I cringe. WADL or RSDL don't seem to have enough mindshare. Thoughts? Any good discussions of this "internal service" issue online? If you have struggled with this what general rules for determining REST or non-REST have you used?

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• JavaScript or PHP based WYSIWYG vector based image editor

  - by Jeroen Pluimers

  For a PHP based site of a client, I'm looking for a vector based image editor that allows: end user creation of vectored images consisting of objects supports upload of bitmap images to be used as objects inside the vector image supports adding text objects to add to the vector image, and change properties (font name, font style, font size) of the text objects preferably supports layering or grouping of objects inside the vector image integrates nicely with a PHP based site (so a PHP or JavaScript library is preferred) can store the vector image in SVG, EPS or PDF Both commercial and FOSS solutions are OK. Any idea where to find such a library? --jeroen

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• MVC Pattern, ViewModels, Location of conversion.

  - by Pino

  I've been working with ASP.Net MVC for around a year now and have created my applications in the following way. X.Web - MVC Application Contains Controller and Views X.Lib - Contains Data Access, Repositories and Services. This allows us to drop the .Lib into any application that requires it. At the moment we are using Entity Framework, the conversion from EntityO to a more specific model is done in the controller. This set-up means if a service method returns an EntityO and then the Controller will do a conversion before the data is passed to a view. I'm interested to know if I should move the conversion to the Service so that the app doesn't have Entity Objects being passed around.

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• Multithreded UI desktop application issues

  - by igor

  I am involved into development a rich UI project: desktop windows application. Application uses asynchronous invocations and in its turn it should be ready to process external messages (events). The problem is clear: at first time it was built as a simple prototype and it was not stress tested and all was fine. Then application was grown: the number of calls to server and number of events from server are high and performance is low. What is more users noticed that sometimes performance is extremal low. Asynchronous invocations based on thread pool (BeginInvoke, EndInvoke), external events are going from WCF service (.NET 3.5). My goal is synchronization of all tasks and putting priorities to every executions in desktop application. My question is: is there any practice how to reach my goal: patterns, task priority list, others? What should I do at first, second and next times? Thanks

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• Writing a new programming language - when and how to bootstrap datastructures?

  - by OnResolve

  I'm in the process of writing my own programming language which, thus far, has been going great in terms of what I set out to accomplish. However, now, I'd like to bootstrap some pre-existing data structures and/or objects. My problem is that I'm not really sure on how to begin. When the compiler begins do I splice in these add-ins so their part of the scope of the application? If I make these in some core library, my concern is how I distribute the library in addition to the compiler--or are they part of the compiler? I get that there are probably a number of plausible ways to approach this, but I'm having trouble with the setting my direction. If it helps, the language is on top of the .NET core (i.e it compiles to CLR code). Any help or suggestions are very much appreciated!

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• Different database for Membership and our web data or use just one?

  - by Jesus Rodriguez

  Is better to keep our Membership stuff on the DefaultConnection and create another connection (another database) for our data? Or just one database for all? If I have a MyAppContext and I want migrations for that context, It seems that I cannot have migrations for UserContext (In other words, I can just migrate one context) So, having two different databases I can migrate or the users (maybe membership migration is weird) or the web data. Or, I can mix the UserContext and MyAppContext in one UserAndAppContext and migrate all in one place, but this mixing also seems weird. What's the normal way to do this, one or two databases and what should be migrated?

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• Codeigniter + JQuery + Processing.js to replace a Delphi App

  - by Peter Turner

  So, I've got a mandate to make our aged trillion lined Delphi app web based and it needs to make heavy use of the <canvas> element (HTML5 compatibility doesn't seem to be a big issue since we can just make our clients use a compatible browser the way we'd make them use a compatible version of Windows in the win32 environment). The Delphi app in question is almost completely database driven and will still pretty much continue to be developed as the main product. What I am tasked with is pretty much recreating a scaled down version of the program that performs the major functions of the whole program. I couldn't find any frameworks that simulate windows forms using the canvas element, I'm assuming this is probably by design since it is easier just to use HTML, well, be that as it may, I still think it would be cool to have a few of my cool controls on the web (TRichView and TVirtualTree, etc...) So my question is, to anyone who has tried this before, A.) What can we use for an IDE to code this web app (I just use emacs, but no one else in my company does)? B.) Is it a good idea to mix PHP and Processing.JS? It seems like I'm using a lot of AJAX to get anything to happen. 3 calls just for one dialog box to pop up, Loads the HTML for the dialog, Loads the XML to populate the database info on the form Loads the processing.js PJS file which draws the database info to the canvas. Is three a lot, do people usually combine all their gets into one?

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• Transferring at a large software company: ask boss before or after?

  - by ZNZ

  Out of college I joined a large, well-known software company's consulting arm. I've gained lots of experience with some of the company's products but would like to start doing more development work rather than implementation work (traveling less would be nice, too!). The company has some product development positions that I think I could be a good fit for, but I'm unsure of how to bring it up with my manager. After a bit Googling, there are many conflicted answers on how best to handle transferring departments. When should I tell my current manager that I am interested in pursuing other positions in the company? Before or after applying?

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• New to Java and Spring. What are some good design principles for an inexperienced java developer like me?

  - by Imtiaz Ahmad

  I am learning Java and have written a few small useful programs. I am new to spring but have managed to understand the concept of dependency injection for decoupling. I'm trying to applying that in my development work in an enterprise setting. What are the 3 most important design patterns I should master (not for interview purposes but ones that I will use every day in as a good java developer)? Also what are some good java design considerations and practices in coding specifically in Java? My goal is write good decoupled and coherent programs that are easy to maintain that don't make me standout as a java rookie. Stuff like not beginning my package names with com. have already made me precariously visible in my team. But they know I have 2 years of coding experience and its not in java.

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• Backend devs put down by user stories

  - by Szili

  I planned to slice in backend development into to the user stories vertically. But a backend guy on our team started to complain that this makes their work invisible. My answer was that at the sprint planning and review meetings we discuss backend tasks in front of stakeholders so it makes it visible, and maintaining a high quality during the project will result a slower startin pace than other teams, but we will have a stable velocity during the project. And velocity is highly visible to stakeholders. He still insist having stories like: "As a developer I need to have a domain layer so I can encapsulate business logic." How can I solve the issue before it pollutes the team? The root of the issue is that our management systematically consider backend work as invisible and call backed devs miners, or other pejorative terms.

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• Standard way of allowing general XML data

  - by Greg Jackson

  I'm writing a data gathering and reporting application that takes XML files as input, which will then be read, processed, and stored in a strongly-typed database. For example, an XML file for a "Job" might look like this: <Data type="Job"> <ID>12345</ID> <JobName>MyJob</JobName> <StartDate>04/07/2012 10:45:00 AM</StartDate> <Files> <File name="a.jpeg" path="images\" /> <File name="b.mp3" path="music\mp3\" /> </Files> </Data> I'd like to use a schema to have a standard format for these input files (depending on what type of data is being used, for example "Job", "User", "View"), but I'd also like to not fail validation if there is extra data provided. For example, perhaps a Job has additional properties such as "IsAutomated", "Requester", "EndDate", and so on. I don't particularly care about these extra properties. If they are included in the XML, I'll simply ignore them when I'm processing the XML file, and I'd like validation to do the same, without having to include in the schema every single possible property that a customer might provide me with. Is there a standard way of providing such a schema, or of allowing such a general XML file that can still be validated without resorting to something as naïve (and potentially difficult to deal with) as the below? <Data type="Job"> <Data name="ID">12345</Data> . . . <Data name="Files"> <Data name="File"> <Data name="Filename">a.jpeg</Data> <Data name="path">images</Data> . . . </Data> </Data>

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• Right approach to convert a word document that contains forms in a web app

  - by carlo

  I would know if someone can suggest a good approach to convert a word document that contains forms in a web app, specifically in an application built with WaveMaker.(but I'm curious also with a general approach not strictly dependent on the technology that I have mentioned). For example, if I have a page in a word document, that maps the fields of a user entity, what could be my "programmer approach" to convert it without much use of copy-paste, but with a dynamic methodology ?

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• Data Storage Options

  - by Kenneth

  When I was working as a website designer/engineer I primarily used databases for storage of much of my dynamic data. It was very easy and convenient to use this method and seemed like a standard practice from my research on the matter. I'm now working on shifting away from websites and into desktop applications. What are the best practices for data storage for desktop applications? I ask because I have noticed that most programs I use on a personal level don't appear to use a database for data storage unless its embedded in the program. (I'm not thinking of an application like a word processor where it makes sense to have data stored in individual files as defined by the user. Rather I'm thinking of something more along the lines of a calendar application which would need to store dates and event info and such where accessing that information would be much easier if stored in a database... at least as far as my experience would indicate.) Thanks for the input!

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