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  • What is the worst programming mistake you have made?

    - by George Edison
    Most of us are not perfect. (Well, except Jon Skeet) Have you made a terrible mistake that you would like to share? The idea is that we could all learn from our mistakes and by collecting them together here, we can avoid some common ones and discover some no-so-common ones we may have overlooked. Oh, and this question is CW, of course. Edit: This question is different than http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1928002/what-is-the-worst-programming-mistake-you-have-ever-seen because we are sharing our own mistakes. Edit again: And this one http://stackoverflow.com/questions/130965/what-is-the-worst-code-youve-ever-written is different too - it asks for code. My question does not have that restriction!

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  • Code Golf: Diamond Pattern

    - by LiraNuna
    The challenge The shortest code by character count to output a a pattern of diamonds according to the input. The input is composed of 3 positive numbers representing the size of the diamond and the size of the grid. A diamond is made from the ASCII characters / and \ with spaces. A diamond of size 1 is: /\ \/ The size of the grid consists from width and height of number of diamonds. Test cases Input: 1 6 2 Output: /\/\/\/\/\/\ \/\/\/\/\/\/ /\/\/\/\/\/\ \/\/\/\/\/\/ Input: 2 2 2 Output: /\ /\ / \/ \ \ /\ / \/ \/ /\ /\ / \/ \ \ /\ / \/ \/ Input 4 1 3 Output: /\ /\ /\ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \/ \/ \ \ /\ /\ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \/ \/ \/ Code count includes input/output (i.e full program).

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  • Should I use `!IsGood` or `IsGood == false`?

    - by chills42
    I keep seeing code that does checks like this if (IsGood == false) { DoSomething(); } or this if (IsGood == true) { DoSomething(); } I hate this syntax, and always use the following syntax. if (IsGood) { DoSomething(); } or if (!IsGood) { DoSomething(); } Is there any reason to use '== true' or '== false'? Is it a readability thing? Do people just not understand Boolean variables? Also, is there any performance difference between the two?

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  • Are there any well known algorithms to detect the presence of names?

    - by Rhubarb
    For example, given a string: "Bob went fishing with his friend Jim Smith." Bob and Jim Smith are both names, but bob and smith are both words. Weren't for them being uppercase, there would be less indication of this outside of our knowledge of the sentence. Without doing grammar analysis, are there any well known algorithms for detecting the presence of names, at least Western names?

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  • Code Golf: Banknote calculator

    - by paxdiablo
    This question was posted by a C beginner and it was an exercise to calculate, given a dollar value input by the user, the minimum number of bills (or banknotes, depending on your locale) needed to reach that dollar value. So, if the user entered 93, the output would be: $20 bills = 4 $10 bills = 1 $5 bills = 0 $1 bills = 3 Finally succumbing to the phenomenon (it's a slow day here), I thought this would be ripe for a game of Code Golf. For fairness, the input prompt needs to be (note the "_" at the end is a space): Enter a dollar amount:_ I think I've covered all the bases: no identical question, community wiki. I won't be offended if it gets shut down though - of course, I'll never be able to complain about these types of questions again, for fear of being labelled a hypocrite :-) Okay, let's see what you can come up with. Here's a sample run: Enter a dollar amount: 127 $20 bills = 6 $10 bills = 0 $5 bills = 1 $1 bills = 2

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  • Is there an equivalent in Scala to Python's more general map function?

    - by wheaties
    I know that Scala's Lists have a map implementation with signature (f: (A) => B):List[B] and a foreach implementation with signature (f: (A) => Unit):Unit but I'm looking for something that accepts multiple iterables the same way that the Python map accepts multiple iterables. I'm looking for something with a signature of (f: (A,B) => C, Iterable[A], Iterable[B] ):Iterable[C] or equivalent. Is there a library where this exists or a comparable way of doing similar?

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  • What is "elegant" code?

    - by Breton
    I see a lot of lip service and talk about the most "elegant" way to do this or that. I think if you spend enough time programming you begin to obtain a sort of intuitive feel for what it is we call "elegance". But I'm curious. Even if we can look at a bit of code, and say instinctively "That's elegant", or "That's messy", I wonder if any of us really understands what that means. Is there a precise definition for this "elegance" we keep referring to? If there is, what is it? Now, what I mean by a precise definition, is a series of statements which can be used to derive questions about a peice of code, or a program as a whole, and determine objectively, or as objectively as possible, whether that code is "elegant" or not. May I assert, that perhaps no such definition exists, and it's all just personal preference. In this case, I ask you a slightly different question: Is there a better word for "elegance", or a better set of attributes to use for judging code quality that is perhaps more objective than merely appealing to individual intuition and taste? Perhaps code quality is a matter of taste, and the answer to both of my questions is "no". But I can't help but feel that we could be doing better than just expressing wishy washy feelings about our code quality. For example, user interface design is something that to a broad range of people looks for all the world like a field of study that oughtta be 100% subjective matter of taste. But this is shockingly and brutally not the case, and there are in fact many objective measures that can be applied to a user interface to determine its quality. A series of tests could be written to give a definitive and repeatable score to user interface quality. (See GOMS, for instance). Now, okay. is Elegance simply "code quality" or is it something more? Is it something that can be measured? Or is it a matter of taste? Does our profession have room for taste? Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions altogether. Help me out here. Bonus Round If there is such a thing as elegance in code, and that concept is useful, do you think that justifies classifying the field of programming as an "Art" capital A, or merely a "craft". Or is it just an engineering field populated by a bunch of wishful thinking humans? Consider this question in the light of your thoughts about the elegance question. Please note that there is a distinction between code which is considered "art" in itself, and code that was written merely in the service of creating an artful program. When I ask this question, I ask if the code itself justifies calling programming an art. Bounty Note I liked the answers to this question so much, I think I'd like to make a photographic essay book from it. Released as a free PDF, and published on some kind of on demand printing service of course, such as "zazz" or "tiggle" or "printley" or something . I'd like some more answers, please!

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  • Is it immoral to write crappy code even if readability and correctness is not a requirement?

    - by mafutrct
    There are cases when crappy (i.e. unreadable and buggy) code is not much of a problem. For instance, imagine you need to generate a big text file that mostly follows a simple pattern with a few very complex exceptions. What do you do? You quickly write a simple algorithm and insert the exceptional bits in the output manually to save 4 hours. The code is unreadable, and the output is flawed, but it's still the correct way since it is way faster. But let's get this straight: I hate bad code. I've had to read and work with code that caused my stomach to hurt. I care a lot about good code. And actually, I caught myself thinking that it is immoral to write bad code even though the dirty approach is sometimes superior. I was surprised by myself and found my idea to be very irrational. Did you ever experience this? Should I just get rid of this stupid idea and use the most efficient approach to coding?

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  • Defend zero-based arrays

    - by DrJokepu
    A question asked here recently reminded me of a debate I had not long ago with a fellow programmer. Basically he argued that zero-based arrays should be replaced by one-based arrays since arrays being zero based is an implementation detail that originates from the way arrays and pointers and computer hardware work, but these sort of stuff should not be reflected in higher level languages. Now I am not really good at debating so I couldn't really offer any good reasons to stick with zero-based arrays other than they sort of feel like more appropriate. I am really interested in the opinions of other developers, so I sort of challenge you to come up with reasons to stick with zero-based arrays!

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  • Is C# fast enough for games

    - by Matt
    Will a game written in C# have any speed issues after long periods of play, like for 24 hours at a time? I'm specifically talking about a 2D RPG similar to old Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games. I know that languages like Python will slow down too much, curious how C# would stand.

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  • Is Polyglot programming important?

    - by Kb
    Trying to learn more about Polyglot programming. What is it exactly and is it important? Look like it is cross platform coding and interoperability across platforms... I found this article by Ted Neward (Thoughtworks) interesting.

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  • Why scala not allowing '$' identifier in case statement?

    - by Alex R
    this works as expected scala 3 match { case x:Int = 2*x } res1: Int = 6 why does this fail? scala 3 match { case $x:Int = 2*$x } :1: error: '=' expected but ':' found. 3 match { case $x:Int = 2*$x } ^ scala 3 match { case `$x`:Int = 2*$x } :1: error: '=' expected but ':' found. 3 match { case `$x`:Int = 2*$x } ^ scala 3 match { case `$x` : Int = 2*$x } :1: error: '=' expected but ':' found. 3 match { case `$x` : Int = 2*$x } '$' is supposed to be a valid identifier character, as demonstrated here: scala var y = 1 y: Int = 1 scala var $y = 2 $y: Int = 2 Thanks

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  • Generate colors between red and green for a power meter?

    - by Simucal
    I'm writing a java game and I want to implement a power meter for how hard you are going to shoot something. I need to write a function that takes a int between 0 - 100, and based on how high that number is, it will return a color between Green (0 on the power scale) and Red (100 on the power scale). Similar to how volume controls work: What operation do I need to do on the Red, Green, and Blue components of a color to generate the colors between Green and Red? So, I could run say, getColor(80) and it will return an orangish color (its values in R, G, B) or getColor(10) which will return a more Green/Yellow rgb value. I know I need to increase components of the R, G, B values for a new color, but I don't know specifically what goes up or down as the colors shift from Green-Red. Progress: I ended up using HSV/HSB color space because I liked the gradiant better (no dark browns in the middle). The function I used was (in java): public Color getColor(double power) { double H = power * 0.4; // Hue (note 0.4 = Green, see huge chart below) double S = 0.9; // Saturation double B = 0.9; // Brightness return Color.getHSBColor((float)H, (float)S, (float)B); } Where "power" is a number between 0.0 and 1.0. 0.0 will return a bright red, 1.0 will return a bright green. Java Hue Chart: Thanks everyone for helping me with this!

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  • Why doesn't VB.NET 9 have Automatic Properties like C# 3??

    - by Chris Pietschmann
    Would having a nice little feature that makes it quicker to write code like Automatic Properties fit very nicely with the mantra of VB.NET? Something like this would work perfect: Public Property FirstName() As String Get Set End Property UPDATE: VB.NET 10 (coming with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0) will have Automatic Properties. Here's a link that shows a little info about the feature: http://geekswithblogs.net/DarrenFieldhouse/archive/2008/12/01/new-features-in-vb.net-10-.net-4.0.aspx In VB.NET 10 Automatic Properties will be defines like this: Public Property CustomerID As Integer

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  • Derivative of a Higher-Order Function

    - by Claudiu
    This is in the context of Automatic Differentiation - what would such a system do with a function like map, or filter - or even one of the SKI Combinators? Example: I have the following function: def func(x): return sum(map(lambda a: a**x, range(20))) What would its derivative be? What will an AD system yield as a result? (This function is well-defined on real-number inputs).

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  • Generate all unique substrings for given string

    - by Yuval A
    Given a string s, what is the fastest method to generate a set of all its unique substrings? Example: for str = "aba" we would get substrs={"a", "b", "ab", "ba", "aba"}. The naive algorithm would be to traverse the entire string generating substrings in length 1..n in each iteration, yielding an O(n^2) upper bound. Is a better bound possible? (this is technically homework, so pointers-only are welcome as well)

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  • Am I immoral for using a variable name that differs from its type only by case?

    - by Jason Baker
    For instance, take this piece of code: var person = new Person(); or for you Pythonistas: person = Person() I'm told constantly how bad this is, but have yet to see an example of the immorality of these two lines of code. To me, person is a Person and trying to give it another name is a waste of time. I suppose in the days before syntax highlighting, this would have been a big deal. But these days, it's pretty easy to tell a type name apart from a variable name. Heck, it's even easy to see the difference here on SO. Or is there something I'm missing? If so, it would be helpful if you could provide an example of code that causes problems.

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  • What was "The Next Big Thing" when you were just starting out in programming?

    - by Andrew
    I'm at the beginning of my career and there are lots of things which are being touted as "The Next Big Thing". For example: Dependency Injection (Spring, etc) MVC (Struts, ASP.NET MVC) ORMs (Linq To SQL, Hibernate) Agile Software Development These things have probably been around for some time, but I've only just started out. And don't get me wrong, I think these things are great! So, what was "The Next Big Thing" when you were starting out? When was it? Were people sceptical of it at first? Why? Did you think it would catch on? Did it pan out and become widely accepted/used? If not, why not? EDIT It's been nearly a week since I first posted this question and I can safely say that I did not expect such explosive interest. I asked the question so that I could gain a perspective of what kinds of innovations in programming people thought were most important when they were starting out. At the time of writing this I have read ~95% of all answers. To answer a few questions, the "Next Big Things" I listed are ones that I am currently really excited about and that I had not really been exposed to until I started working. I'm hoping to implement some or all of these in the near future at my current workplace. To many people they are probably old news. In regards to the "is this a real question" debate, I can see that obviously hasn't been settled yet. I feel bad whenever I read a comment saying that these kinds of questions take away from the real meaning of SO. I'm not wholly convinced that it doesn't. On the other hand, I have seen a lot of comments saying what a great question it is. Anyway, I have chosen "The Internet!" as my answer to this question. I don't think (in my very humble opinion, and, it seems many SOers opinions) that many things related to programming can compare. Nowadays every business and their dog has a website which can do anything from simply supplying information to purchasing goods halfway around the world to updating your blog. And of course, all these businesses need people like us. Thanks to everyone for all the great answers!

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  • Rot13 for numbers.

    - by dreeves
    EDIT: Now a Major Motion Blog Post at http://messymatters.com/sealedbids The idea of rot13 is to obscure text, for example to prevent spoilers. It's not meant to be cryptographically secure but to simply make sure that only people who are sure they want to read it will read it. I'd like to do something similar for numbers, for an application involving sealed bids. Roughly I want to send someone my number and trust them to pick their own number, uninfluenced by mine, but then they should be able to reveal mine (purely client-side) when they're ready. They should not require further input from me or any third party. (Added: Note the assumption that the recipient is being trusted not to cheat.) It's not as simple as rot13 because certain numbers, like 1 and 2, will recur often enough that you might remember that, say, 34.2 is really 1. Here's what I'm looking for specifically: A function seal() that maps a real number to a real number (or a string). It should not be deterministic -- seal(7) should not map to the same thing every time. But the corresponding function unseal() should be deterministic -- unseal(seal(x)) should equal x for all x. I don't want seal or unseal to call any webservices or even get the system time (because I don't want to assume synchronized clocks). (Added: It's fine to assume that all bids will be less than some maximum, known to everyone, say a million.) Sanity check: > seal(7) 482.2382 # some random-seeming number or string. > seal(7) 71.9217 # a completely different random-seeming number or string. > unseal(seal(7)) 7 # we always recover the original number by unsealing.

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  • How to find two most distant points?

    - by depesz
    This is a question that I was asked on a job interview some time ago. And I still can't figure out sensible answer. Question is: you are given set of points (x,y). Find 2 most distant points. Distant from each other. For example, for points: (0,0), (1,1), (-8, 5) - the most distant are: (1,1) and (-8,5) because the distance between them is larger from both (0,0)-(1,1) and (0,0)-(-8,5). The obvious approach is to calculate all distances between all points, and find maximum. The problem is that it is O(n^2), which makes it prohibitively expensive for large datasets. There is approach with first tracking points that are on the boundary, and then calculating distances for them, on the premise that there will be less points on boundary than "inside", but it's still expensive, and will fail in worst case scenario. Tried to search the web, but didn't find any sensible answer - although this might be simply my lack of search skills.

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