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• OOW 2012: Kings of Leon & Pearl Jam - Appreciation Event

  - by Mike Dietrich

  June 15, 1992 - that was actually the day when Pearl Jam played their first concert in Serenadenhof in my hometown, Nürnberg. Oups ... that's over 20 years ago ... So I was so happy to get a ticket to this year's OOW 2012 appreciation event on Treasure Island. Every year it amazes me over and over again how the organizers manage it logistically to bring almost 40,000 people to and back from the island. Food was ... I would say fairly ok ... and beer (as always) is not - actually even though I'm not a beer drinker I wouldn't call it beer.  Kings of Leon did start. I like them a lot and owe their 2008 album Only By Night. That was a good start to warm up the crowd. And then Pearl Jam took over - and ... wooooooow ... they are such a great live band. First of all as far as I understood they were donating the money they've got for that gig to an NGO. And Eddie Vedder's voice is simply striking ... I had shivers running down my spine. They played a good excerpt of their +20 years career closing down with Alive at the very end. It seemed to everybody that the band had real fun playing there - and it was sooooo good. Thanks a lot to the person who did organize me a ticket Catching my bus back to my hotel area down at Fisherman's Wharf worked well - but I must have fallen asleep 5 minutes after we've left the parking lot. The next thing I did recognize was the bus driver pushing the breaks at Northpoint. What a wonderful night ...

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• 2D platformers: why make the physics dependent on the framerate?

  - by Archagon

  "Super Meat Boy" is a difficult platformer that recently came out for PC, requiring exceptional control and pixel-perfect jumping. The physics code in the game is dependent on the framerate, which is locked to 60fps; this means that if your computer can't run the game at full speed, the physics will go insane, causing (among other things) your character to run slower and fall through the ground. Furthermore, if vsync is off, the game runs extremely fast. Could those experienced with 2D game programming help explain why the game was coded this way? Wouldn't a physics loop running at a constant rate be a better solution? (Actually, I think a physics loop is used for parts of the game, since some of the entities continue to move normally regardless of the framerate. Your character, on the other hand, runs exactly [fps/60] as fast.) What bothers me about this implementation is the loss of abstraction between the game engine and the graphics rendering, which depends on system-specific things like the monitor, graphics card, and CPU. If, for whatever reason, your computer can't handle vsync, or can't run the game at exactly 60fps, it'll break spectacularly. Why should the rendering step in any way influence the physics calculations? (Most games nowadays would either slow down the game or skip frames.) On the other hand, I understand that old-school platformers on the NES and SNES depended on a fixed framerate for much of their control and physics. Why is this, and would it be possible to create a patformer in that vein without having the framerate dependency? Is there necessarily a loss of precision if you separate the graphics rendering from the rest of the engine? Thank you, and sorry if the question was confusing.

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• Basket Analysis with #dax in #powerpivot and #ssas #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  A few days ago I published a new article on DAX Patterns web site describing how to implement Basket Analysis in DAX. This topic is a very classical one and is also covered in the many-to-many revolution white paper. It has been also discussed in several blog posts, listed here in historical order: Simple Basket Analysis in DAX by Chris Webb PowerPivot, basket analysis and the hidden many to many by Alberto Ferrari Applied Basket Analysis in Power Pivot using DAX by Gerhard Brueckl As usual, in DAX Patterns we try to present the required DAX formulas in a way that is easy to adapt to specific models. We also try to show a good implementation from a performance point of view. Further optimizations are always possible in DAX. However, in order to keep the model simple to adapt in different scenarios, we avoid presenting optimizations that would require particular assumptions or restrictions on the data model. I hope you will find the Basket Analysis pattern useful. Even if you do not need it today, reading the DAX formula is a good exercise to check your knowledge of evaluation contexts in DAX. For example, describing how does it work the following expression is not a trivial task! [Orders with Both Products] := CALCULATE (     DISTINCTCOUNT ( Sales[SalesOrderNumber] ),     CALCULATETABLE (         SUMMARIZE ( Sales, Sales[SalesOrderNumber] ),         ALL ( Product ),         USERELATIONSHIP ( Sales[ProductCode], 'Filter Product'[Filter ProductCode] )     ) ) The good news is that you can use the patterns even if you do not really understand all the details of the DAX formulas you are using! Any feedback on this new pattern is very welcome.

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• Examples of 2D side-scrollers that achieve open non-linear feel?

  - by Milosz Falinski

  I'm working on a 2.5D platformer prototype that aims for an open feel while maintaining familiar core mechanics. Now, there's some obvious challenges with creating a non constricted feel in a spatially constricted environment. What I'm interested in, is examples of how game designers deal with the "here's a level, beat the bad guys/puzzles to get to the next level" design that seems so natural to most platformers (eg. Mario/Braid/Pid/Meat Boy to name a few). Some ideas for achieving openness I've come across include: One obvious successful example is Terraria, which achieves openness simply through complexity and flexibility of the game-system Another example that comes to mind is Cave Story. Game is non-linear, offers multiple choices and side-stories Mario, Rayman and some other 'classics' with a top-down level selection. I actually really dislike this as it never did anything for me emotionally and just seems like a bit of a lazy way to do things. Note: I've not actually had much experience with most of the 'classical' console platformers, apart from the obvious Marios/Zeldas/Metroids, since I've grown up on adventure games. By that I mean, it's entirely possible that I simply missed some games that solve the problem really well and are by some considered obvious 'classics'.

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• Share on: FB, Tweet, Digg, Linkedin, Delicious, My mother, ... it's just on fashion, or some real value?

  - by Marco Demaio

  Nowadays your site is not in fashion if you don't show at least a couple of share buttons like these: Is this just fashion, or do people actually get something good out of it? When I say "something good" I mostly mean something that you could measure, and not just the feeling that was good. Maybe I can better explain with an example: did you notice (in some way) that many people clicked on those links to share your page/s on those web 2.0 social sites? And in such a case on which social networks did you see they mostly share your pages? BTW I'm not talking about Google PR, i know all web 2.0 social sites use nofollow everywhere and even hidden links, so they are useless by themselves for PR. UPDATE: According to this video, Google's Alter Ego says that they now use in some way data from social sites in ranking. If this is true, it's obvious that the Share on button for FB, Tweet, etc are definitely of some values. But again my question is more about what you noticed in your real experience to be a direct benefit of adding those type of "Share On" links on your webisite? I.e. did you see more traffic coming in form FB, or some users who bought your products because of FB or Twitter? Or any other benefits? Thanks

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• I don't know C. And why should I learn it?

  - by Stephen

  My first programming language was PHP (gasp). After that I started working with JavaScript. I've recently done work in C#. I've never once looked at low or mid level languages like C. The general consensus in the programming-community-at-large is that "a programmer who hasn't learned something like C, frankly, just can't handle programming concepts like pointers, data types, passing values by reference, etc." I do not agree. I argue that: Because high level languages are easily accessible, more "non-programmers" dive in and make a mess In order to really get anything done in a high level language, one needs to understand the same similar concepts that most proponents of "learn-low-level-first" evangelize about. Some people need to know C; those people have jobs that require them to write low to mid-level code. I'm sure C is awesome, and I'm sure there are a few bad programmers who know C. Why the bias? As a good, honest, hungry programmer, if I had to learn C (for some unforeseen reason), I would learn C. Considering the multitude of languages out there, shouldn't good programmers focus on learning what advances us? Shouldn't we learn what interests us? Should we not utilize our finite time moving forward? Why do some programmers disagree with this? I believe that striving for excellence in what you do is the fundamental deterministic trait between good programmers and bad ones. Does anyone have any real world examples of how something written in a high level language—say Java, Pascal, PHP, or Javascript—truely benefitted from a prior knowledge of C? Examples would be most appreciated.

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• I need advice on laptop purchase for university [closed]

  - by Systemic33

  I'm currently in University studying Computer Science/IT/Information Technology. And this first year i've managed to do with the laptop I had; an ASUS Eee PC 1000H with a 10.1" screen. But this is getting way too underpowered and small for programming more than just quick programming introduction excercises. So I'm looking to buy a more suitable laptop. It's not supposed to be a desktop replacement though, since I've got a pretty good desktop already with a 24" monitor. So the kinda laptop I want to buy is one suited for university. If this bears any significance, I'm working in Java atm, but I will likely work with lots of other things incl. web development. I'm looking to spend about $1700 plus/minus. And it should be powerful/big enough for working on programming projects as well as the usual university stuff like MATLAB, Maple, etc out "in the field", and sometimes for maybe a week when visiting my parents. What I'm looking at right now is the ASUS Zenbook UX31A with the 1920 x 1080 resolution on 13.3" IPS display. But I'm kinda nervous that this will be too petite for programming. In essence i'm looking for a powerfull computer, that has good enough battery, and looks good. I would love suggestions or any type of feedback, either with maybe a better choice, or input on how its like programming on 13" laptops. Very much thanks in advance for anyone who even went through all that! PS. I don't want a mac, or my inner karma would commit Seppuku xD But experiences from working on the 13" Macbook Air would kinda be equivalent to the Zenbook i'm considering, so I would love to hear that. tl;dr The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog ;)

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• How to hire support people?

  - by Martin

  I manage a tech support team at a mid-sized software company. We are the last line of support, so issues that we can't fix need to be escalated to the development team. When I joined the company, our team wasn't capable of much beyond using a specific set of troubleshooting steps to solve known issues and escalating anything else to the developers. It's always been a goal of mine for our team to shoulder as much of the support burden as possible without ever bothering a developer. Over the past few years, I, along with several new hires I've made, have made pretty good progress in that direction. We've coded our own troubleshooting tools which now ship with several of our products. When users have never-before-seen issues, we analyze stack traces and troubleshoot down to the code level, and if we need to submit a bug, half the time we've already identified in the code where in the code the bug is and offered a patch to fix it. Here's the problem I've always had: finding support people capable of the work I've described above is really difficult. I've hired 3 people in the past 3 years, and I've probably looked at several thousand resumes and conducted several hundred phone screens to do so. I know it's pretty well accepted that hiring good people is tough in the tech industry, but it seems that support is especially difficult -- there are clearly thousands of people walking around calling themselves support analysts, but 99%+ of them seemingly aren't capable of anything beyond reading a script. I'm curious if anyone has experience recruiting the sort of folks I'm talking about, and if you have any suggestions to share. We've tried all sorts of things -- different job titles/descriptions, using headhunters, etc. And while we've managed to hire a few good folks, it's basically taken us a year to find an appropriate candidate for each opening we've had, and I can't help but wonder if there's something we could be doing differently.

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• Animating DOM elements vs refreshing a single Canvas

  - by mgibsonbr

  A few years ago, when the HTML Canvas element was still kinda fresh, I wrote a small game in a rather "unusual" way: each game element had its own canvas, and frequently animated elements even had multiple canvases, one for each animation sprite. This way, the translation would be done by manipulating the DOM position of the canvases, while the sprite animation would consist of altering the visibility of the already drawn canvases. (z-indexes, of course, were the tricky part) It worked like a charm: even in IE6 with excanvas it showed a decent performance, and everything was rather consistent between browsers, including some smartphones. Now I'm thinking in writing a larger game engine in the same fashion, so I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea to do so in the current context (with all the advances in browsers and so on). I know I'm trading memory for time, so this needs to be customizable (even at runtime) for each machine the game will be running. But I believe using separate canvases would also help to avoid the game "freezing" on CPU spikes, since the translation would still happen even if the redraws lag for a while. Besides, the browsers' rendering engines are already optimized in may ways, so I'm guessing this scheme would also reduce the load on the CPU (in contrast to doing everything in JavaScript - specially the less optimized ones). It looks good in my head, but I'd like to hear the opinion of more experienced people before proceeding further. Is there any known drawback of doing this? I'm particulartly unexperienced in dealing with the GPU, so I wonder whether this "trick" would nullify any benefit of using a single, big canvas. Or maybe on modern devices it's overkill (though I'm skeptic about the claims that canvas+js - especially WebGL - will ever be a good alternative to native code). Any thoughts?

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• Fuzzing for Security

  - by Sylvain Duloutre

  Yesterday, I attended an internal workshop about ethical hacking. Hacking skills like fuzzing can be used to quantitatively assess and measure security threats in software.  Fuzzing is a software testing technique used to discover coding errors and security loopholes in software, operating systems or networks by injecting massive amounts of random data, called fuzz, to the system in an attempt to make it crash. If the program contains a vulnerability that can leads to an exception, crash or server error (in the case of web apps), it can be determined that a vulnerability has been discovered.A fuzzer is a program that generates and injects random (and in general faulty) input to an application. Its main purpose is to make things easier and automated.There are typically two methods for producing fuzz data that is sent to a target, Generation or Mutation. Generational fuzzers are capable of building the data being sent based on a data model provided by the fuzzer creator. Sometimes this is simple and dumb as sending random bytes, swapping bytes or much smarter by knowing good values and combining them in interesting ways.Mutation on the other hand starts out with a known good "template" which is then modified. However, nothing that is not present in the "template" or "seed" will be produced.Generally fuzzers are good at finding buffer overflow, DoS, SQL Injection, Format String bugs etc. They do a poor job at finding vulnerabilites related to information disclosure, encryption flaws and any other vulnerability that does not cause the program to crash.  Fuzzing is simple and offers a high benefit-to-cost ratio but does not replace other proven testing techniques.What is your computer doing over the week-end ?

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• What's the relationship between meta-circular interpreters, virtual machines and increased performance?

  - by Gomi

  I've read about meta-circular interpreters on the web (including SICP) and I've looked into the code of some implementations (such as PyPy and Narcissus). I've read quite a bit about two languages which made great use of metacircular evaluation, Lisp and Smalltalk. As far as I understood Lisp was the first self-hosting compiler and Smalltalk had the first "true" JIT implementation. One thing I've not fully understood is how can those interpreters/compilers achieve so good performance or, in other words, why is PyPy faster than CPython? Is it because of reflection? And also, my Smalltalk research led me to believe that there's a relationship between JIT, virtual machines and reflection. Virtual Machines such as the JVM and CLR allow a great deal of type introspection and I believe they make great use it in Just-in-Time (and AOT, I suppose?) compilation. But as far as I know, Virtual Machines are kind of like CPUs, in that they have a basic instruction set. Are Virtual Machines efficient because they include type and reference information, which would allow language-agnostic reflection? I ask this because many both interpreted and compiled languages are now using bytecode as a target (LLVM, Parrot, YARV, CPython) and traditional VMs like JVM and CLR have gained incredible boosts in performance. I've been told that it's about JIT, but as far as I know JIT is nothing new since Smalltalk and Sun's own Self have been doing it before Java. I don't remember VMs performing particularly well in the past, there weren't many non-academic ones outside of JVM and .NET and their performance was definitely not as good as it is now (I wish I could source this claim but I speak from personal experience). Then all of a sudden, in the late 2000s something changed and a lot of VMs started to pop up even for established languages, and with very good performance. Was something discovered about the JIT implementation that allowed pretty much every modern VM to skyrocket in performance? A paper or a book maybe?

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• Arguments for a coding standard?

  - by acidzombie24

  A few friends and i are planning to work on a project together and we want a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT coding standard. We do NOT want to use the coding standard the libraries/language uses. Its our project and we want to mess around. So i came here to ask what you guys think are good standards and arguments for it (or what not to do and arguments against it). The styles i remember most are Upper casing the entire word Camel and Pascal casing Using '_' to separate each word pre or postfixing letters or words (i hate m for member but i think IsCond() is a good func name. SomethingException as a postfix example) Using '_' at the start or end of words Brace placement. On a new or same line? I know of libs that use Pascal casing on all public and protected members. But would you ever get confused if something is a func, var or even property if the lang supports it? What about if you decide a public member to be private (or vice versa) wouldnt that great a lot of fix up work or inconsistencies? Is prefixing C to every class a good idea? I ask what do you think and why?

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• Questions about Code Reviews

  - by bamboocha

  My team plans to do Code Review and asked me to make a concept what and how we are going to make our Code Reviews. We are a little group of 6 team members. We use an SVN repository and write programs in different languages (mostly: VB.NET, Java, C#), but the reviews should be also possible for others, yet not defined. Basically I am asking you, how are you doing it, to be more precise I made a list of some questions I got: 1. Peer Meetings vs Ticket System? Would you tend to do meetings with all members, rather than something like a ticket system, where the developer can add a new code change and some or all need to check and approve it? 1. What tool? I made some researches on my own and it showed that Rietveld seems to be the program to use for non-git solutions. Do you agree/disagree and why? 2. A good workflow to follow? 3. Are there good ways to minimize the effort for those meetings even more? 4. What are good questions, every code reviewer should follow? I already made a list with some questions, what would you append/remove? are there any magic numbers in the code? do all variable and method names make sense and are easily understandable? are all querys using prepared statement? are all objects disposed/closed when they are not needed anymore? 5. What are your general experiences with it? What's important? Things to consider/prevent/watch out?

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• How does one rein in the complexities of web development ?

  - by Rahul

  I have been a server-side programmer for most of my career and have only recently started spending more time on web development. I am amazed at the number of things I need to master in order to write a decent web application. Just to list down a few tools/technologies I need to learn, Server side programming language (Java/JSP, ASP, PHP, Ruby or something else) A decent web framework (for any medium to big size application). HTML & CSS Javascript Javascript library (JQuery/ExtJS etc. primarily for AJAX). Good to know even if not necessary. At least a basic knowledge of web design - layouts, colors, fonts etc. A good understanding of web security. A good understanding of Performance/scalability issues. Testing, browser compatibility issues etc. The list goes on. So, my question to seasoned web developers is - How do you guys manage to learn and keep yourself updated on so many things? While developing a web application, how do you handle the complexities involved in these areas and yet manage to write an application that is well designed, user friendly, secure, performant and scalable. As a web developer, does one have to be a jack of all trades or should one specialize in one or two areas and leave the rest to other members of the team ?

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• Ways to break the "Syndrome of the perfect programmer"

  - by Rushino

  I am probably not the only one that feel that way. But I have what I tend to call "The syndrome of the perfect programmer" which many might say is the same as being perfectionist but in this case it's in the domain of programming. However, the domain of programming is a bit problematic for such a syndrome. Have you ever felt that when you are programming you're not confident or never confident enought that your code is clean and good code that follows most of the best practices ? There so many rules to follow that I feel like being overwhelmed somehow. Not that I don't like to follow the rules of course I am a programmer and I love programming, I see this as an art and I must follow the rules. But I love it too, I mean I want and I love to follow the rules in order to have a good feeling of what im doing is going the right way.. but I only wish I could have everything a bit more in "control" regarding best practices and good code. Maybe it's a lack of organization? Maybe it's a lack of experience? Maybe a lack of practice? Maybe it's a lack of something else someone could point out? Is there any way to get rid of that syndrome somehow ?

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• Evaluating a Programmer for Startup

  - by HelpJ

  Hi, I have sorted through the previous questions and couldn't find a specific answer to the following (and thank you in advance): I have fully developed my idea on paper and am looking to move forward with it, create it, and grow it. Since I am non-technical, I am looking to either partner or employ (I would pay for his/her services) for a very talented and well-rounded programmer to help create and develop the project. I am looking for someone that can act as a IT manager/CTO and get the job done while I use my resources to develop and deploy the strategy, deal with the business side of things, raise capital, grow, etc. However, due to my lack of IT knowledge, it is always hard for me to differentiate between a good and bad programmer and therefore only find out if he/she is good or not when it is too late. So my question that I have been asking everyone around me is "How do I assess whether the programmer is good or not if I cannot evaluate them myself?" and "Is there any website that reviews and rates programmers?" I have asked many to refer me to talented programmers but all are either not local (important for me to work side by side with them), happily employed or working on their own startup. I have also asked these programmers to help me find others but none seem to be able to help. Any help would be extremely appreciated. Thank you so much, HelpJ

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• django & postgres linux hosting (with SSH access) recommendations

  - by Justin Grant

  We're looking for a good place to host our custom Django app (a fork of OSQA) and its postgresql backend. Requirements include: Linux Python 2.6 or (ideally) Python 2.7 Django 1.2 Postgres 8.4 or later DB backup/restore handled by the hoster, not us OS & dev-platform-stack patching/maintenance handled by the hoster, not us SSH access (so we can pull source code from GitHub, so we can install python eggs, etc.) ability to set up cron jobs (e.g. to send out dail email updates) ability to send up to 10K emails/day good performance (not ganged up with a zillion other sites on one CPU, not starved for RAM) FTP or SCP access to web logs dedicated public IP SSL support Costs under $1000/month for a relatively small site (<5M pageviews/month) Good customer service We already have a prototype site running on EC2 on top of a Bitnami DjangoStack. The problem is that we have to patch the OS, patch postgres, etc. We'd really prefer a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, like Heroku offers for Rails apps, where all we need to worry about is deploying our code instead of worrying about system software patching and maintenance. Google App Engine is closest to what we're looking for, but they don't offer relational DB access (not yet at least). Anyone have a recommendation?

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• MOSC Bits - Personalized Profile

  - by Irina Donaldson - Moderator -Oracle

  It is a good idea to have a unique profile in MOSC. Your activities there are better recognized and might even become a well known brand! This leads to recognition and trust. My Oracle Support Communities (MOSC)  is a well established platform where experiences are shared. Reputation and trust are the basis for the quality of all communication there. A personalized  profile can help to build up a good reputation. Besides the experience counter, a good name, details about your location and business experience are valuable details. Although a little bit hidden, the profile's avatar can be customized, too. The profile's avatar is an eye catcher and can act as an unique visual representation for  you.  How to add / modify MOSC profile avatar (picture, icon)  ?    Don't look in Edit Profile section. After login, click on  your profile's name on top right.   This lists all public information as part of the Bio section. Select the Activity tab. The Change Avatar link is on same level at far right. A list of predefined symbolic pictures is populated. Choose from the list of existing pictures or try Add Another to upload an image file from your local computer (JPG, PNG, GIF, or BMP only, maximum file size of 2.0 MB). Note: New added images can be used only after running through a review process. Usually after one business day they can be selected for your personal avatar.

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• Prevent oversteering catastrophe in racing games

  - by jdm

  When playing GTA III on Android I noticed something that has been annoying me in almost every racing game I've played (maybe except Mario Kart): Driving straight ahead is easy, but curves are really hard. When I switch lanes or pass somebody, the car starts swiveling back and forth, and any attempt to correct it makes it only worse. The only thing I can do is to hit the brakes. I think this is some kind of oversteering. What makes it so irritating is that it never happens to me in real life (thank god :-)), so 90% of the games with vehicles inside feel unreal to me (despite probably having really good physics engines). I've talked to a couple of people about this, and it seems either you 'get' racing games, or you don't. With a lot of practice, I did manage to get semi-good at some games (e.g. from the Need for Speed series), by driving very cautiously, braking a lot (and usually getting a cramp in my fingers). What can you do as a game developer to prevent the oversteering resonance catastrophe, and make driving feel right? (For a casual racing game, that doesn't strive for 100% realistic physics) I also wonder what games like Super Mario Kart exactly do differently so that they don't have so much oversteering? I guess one problem is that if you play with a keyboard or a touchscreen (but not wheels and pedals), you only have digital input: gas pressed or not, steering left/right or not, and it's much harder to steer appropriately for a given speed. The other thing is that you probably don't have a good sense of speed, and drive much faster than you would (safely) in reality. From the top of my head, one solution might be to vary the steering response with speed.

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• Live chat solutions

  - by Lèse majesté

  What good live chat/live help solutions are available (preferably for use on a site hosted on a LAMP stack and free)? I'm looking for a way to allow our sales and customer service reps to talk directly with visitors to our site. I've looked at phpopenchat, but it looks very unpolished. The only other free live chat app I've come across looked egregious. The aesthetics and UI design alone made me shudder to think what the underlying code might look like. This isn't a critical feature, and it wouldn't be hard to code up myself, so I'm not really looking for commercial software or paid services (unless there's a really compelling reason to use them). I'm just wondering if any other webmasters have come across a satisfactory free/open source solution for providing live customer support on their website. As a side note, live voice chat would also be an option, but it has to be be designed (or customizable) for customer support rather than a public chatroom. Edit: Looking at the responses, it looks like there probably aren't going to be many free solutions for this type of business-oriented chat solution, so feel free to post answers even if they are commercial solutions as long as they're a good value. Also feel free to post any alternate live support solutions (such as the Skype recommendation) that could be in someway integrated with a website. This will give me a good lay of the land for what people are actually using for live support, and I think will be more helpful to others reading this question.

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• What kind of website or coding is suitable and safe for an artist's website

  - by Dan S

  I have a web design project that is related to a singer, and I used Joomla for my previous project and designed good music websites. But for this project I cannot find a suitable template to edit and use. As the website is so simple and does not have any special functionality, I'm thinking about creating a website with just simple CSS, html and jQuery. I'm Good at them and can make a perfect look but I am not sure about the security. In Joomla I use different security plugins but do not know about a client-side scripting. So generally I need your ideas, about the following questions: - Is Joomla and generally CMS a good option for a music website? - How famous artists' website is base on? CMS or Client-side scripting? - Do you recommend to create it manually without using and CMS or template? - An do you suggest WordPress for this type of websites? (The website will have these pages: Biography, News, Music (with a music player), Photos, videos and contacts). That's it! Thank you for all your responds, I had a look at Joomla and the only template I chose is This One which seems very simple, and I am worry about module position, because it seems does not have any module position at all. I tried to contact the provider but did not get any respond. Does anyone know about its module position, I mean is there any way to find them? An is it possible to create a 2-3 module positions? Also I had a look at ThemeForest's WordPress templates and it has such a great template. I think WordPress is more active in creating artistic templates. But is it secure and professional to use this CMS for a singer who is kinda famous it his country? I am talking about a template like this. Share your opinions guys.

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• How to present a stable data model in a public API that allows internal data structures to be changed without breaking the public view of the data?

  - by Max Palmer

  I am in the process of developing an application that allows users to write C# scripts. These scripts allow users to call selected methods and to access and manipulate data in a document. This works well, however, in the development version, scripts access the document's (internal) data structures directly. This means that if we were to change the internal data model/structure, there is a good chance that someone's script will no longer compile. We obviously want to prevent this breaking change from happening, but still want to allow the user to write sensible C# code (whilst not restricting how we develop our internal data model as a result). We therefore need to decouple our scripting API and its data structures from our internal methods and data structures. We've a few ideas as to how we might allow the user to access a what is effectively a stable public version of the document's internal data*, but I wanted to throw the question out there to someone who might have some real experience of this problem. NB our internal document's data structure is quite complex and it could be quite difficult to wrap. We know we want to expose as little as possible in our public API, especially as once it's out there, it's out there for good. Can anyone help? How do scripting languages / APIs decouple their public API and data structures from their internal data structures? Is there no real alternative to having to write a complex interaction layer? If we need to do this, what's a good approach or pattern for wrapping complex data structures that include nested objects, including collections? I've looked at the API facade pattern, which looks like it's trying to address these kinds of issues, but are there alternatives? *One idea is to build a data facade that is kept stable across versions of our application. The facade exposes a set of facade data objects that are used in the script code. These maintain backwards compatibility and wrap access to our internal document's data model.

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• With Choice Comes Complexity

  - by BuckWoody

  "Complex" may be defined as "Having many steps, details or parts." Many of Microsoft's products, including SQL Server, can be complex. I'm stating what most data professionals already know - there's usually multiple ways to do things in SQL Server. For instance, to import some data into a table you can use graphical tools, SQLCMD, bcp, SQL Server Integration Services, BULK INSERT, even PowerShell, just to name a few tools at your disposal. That's really not the issue, though. The bigger issue is that there are normally multiple thought-processes, or methods, that you have available for a task. That's both a strength and a weakness. If things were more simple, you would have fewer choices. Sometimes that's a good thing. Just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. However, your particular situation may not fit that tool or process, so having more options increases your ability to get your job done the way you need to do it. On the other hand, that's more for you to learn, which is harder. There's another side of this benefit/difficulty that you need to be aware of. Even if you're quite good at what you do, keep in mind that the way you know how to do something may not be the only way to do it. Keep your mind open to new possibilities, and most importantly - to new knowledge. SQL Server professionals teach me something new every day. So embrace the complexity - on balance, it's a good thing! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Masters vs. PhD - long [closed]

  - by Sterling

  I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully having people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the most important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I can't even really accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have at once obviously, but just to know I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money…get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long…not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the "publish or perish" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say "I made this" rather than "I managed a group of people that made this." I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. I When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry…just some really great new application or system…there is a shelf-life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, "The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will." Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years…I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help.

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• Is there such a thing as a super programmer? [closed]

  - by Muhammad Alkarouri

  Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to "normal" experienced/great programmers? Also. how do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer? Both in case he actually is or if he isn't? Edit: Interesting inputs all round, thanks. A few things can be gleaned: A few definitions emerged. Disregarding too localised definitions (that identified the authors or their acquaintance as super programmers), I liked a couple definitions: Thorbjørn's definition: a person who does the equivalent of a good team consistently for a long time. Free Electron, linked from Henry's answer. A very productive person, of exceptional abilities. The explanation is a good read. A Free Electron can do anything when it comes to code. They can write a complete application from scratch, learn a language in a weekend, and, most importantly, they can dive into a tremendous pile of spaghetti code, make sense of it, and actually getting it working. You can build an entire businesses around a Free Electron. They’re that good. Contrasting with the last definition, is the point linked to by James about the myth of the genius programmer (video). The same idea is expressed as egoless programming in rwong's comment. They present opposite opinions as whether to optimise for such a unique programmer or for a team. These definitions are definitely different, so I would appreciate it if you have an input as to which is better. Or add your own if you want of course, though it would help to say why it is different from those.

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