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• Do "if" statements affect in the time complexity analysis?

  - by FranXh

  According to my analysis, the running time of this algorithm should be N2, because each of the loops goes once through all the elements. I am not sure whether the presence of the if statement changes the time complexity? for(int i=0; i<N; i++){ for(int j=1; j<N; j++){ System.out.println("Yayyyy"); if(i<=j){ System.out.println("Yayyy not"); } } }

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• When is someone else's code I use from the internet "mine"?

  - by robault

  I'm building a library from methods that I've found on the internet. Some are free to use or modify with no requirements, others say that if I leave a comment in the code it's okay to use, others say when I use the code I have to attribute the use of someone's code in my application (in the credits for my app I guess). What I've been doing is reorganizing classes, renaming methods, adding descriptions (code comments), renaming the parameters and names inside the methods to something meaningful, optimizing loops if applicable, changing return types, adding try/catch/throw blocks, adding parameter checks and cleaning up resources in the methods. For example; I didn't come up with the algorithm for blurring a Bitmap but I've taken the basic example of iterating through the pixels and turned it into a decent library method (applying the aforementioned modifications). I understand how to go about building it now myself but I didn't actually hit the keystrokes to make it and I couldn't have come up with it before learning from their example. What about code people get in answers on Stackoverflow or examples from Codeproject? At what point can I drop their requirements because at n% their code became mine? FWIW I intend on using the libraries to create products that I will sell.

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• Why is my quick sort so slow?

  - by user513075

  Hello, I am practicing writing sorting algorithms as part of some interview preparation, and I am wondering if anybody can help me spot why this quick sort is not very fast? It appears to have the correct runtime complexity, but it is slower than my merge sort by a constant factor of about 2. I would also appreciate any comments that would improve my code that don't necessarily answer the question. Thanks a lot for your help! Please don't hesitate to let me know if I have made any etiquette mistakes. This is my first question here. private class QuickSort implements Sort { @Override public int[] sortItems(int[] ts) { List<Integer> toSort = new ArrayList<Integer>(); for (int i : ts) { toSort.add(i); } toSort = partition(toSort); int[] ret = new int[ts.length]; for (int i = 0; i < toSort.size(); i++) { ret[i] = toSort.get(i); } return ret; } private List<Integer> partition(List<Integer> toSort) { if (toSort.size() <= 1) return toSort; int pivotIndex = myRandom.nextInt(toSort.size()); Integer pivot = toSort.get(pivotIndex); toSort.remove(pivotIndex); List<Integer> left = new ArrayList<Integer>(); List<Integer> right = new ArrayList<Integer>(); for (int i : toSort) { if (i > pivot) right.add(i); else left.add(i); } left = partition(left); right = partition(right); left.add(pivot); left.addAll(right); return left; } }

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• Should a programmer take writing lessons to enhance code expressiveness?

  - by Jose Faeti

  Given that programmers are authors and write code to express abstract thoughts and concepts, and good code should be read by other programmers without difficulties and misunderstandings, should a programmer take writing lessons to write better code? Abstracting concepts and real world problems/entities is an important part of writing good code, and a good mastery of the language used for coding should allow the programmer to express his thoughts more easily, or in a better way. Besides, when trying to write or rewrite some code to make it better, much time can be spent in deciding the names for functions, variables or data structures. I think this could also help to avoid writing code with more than one meaning, often cause of misunderstanding between different programmers. Code should always express clearly its function unambiguously.

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• how many types of code signing certificates do I need?

  - by gerryLowry

  in Canada, website SSL certificates can be had for as low as US$10. unfortunately, code signing certificates cost about 10 time as much, one website mentions Vista compatibility ... this seems strange because my assumption is they must support XP, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003, and Server 2008 or they would be useless. https://secure.ksoftware.net/code_signing.html US$99 Support Platforms Microsoft Authenticode. Sign any Microsoft executable format (32 and 64 bit EXE, DLL, OCX, DLL or any Active X control). Signing hardware drivers is not currently supported. Abode AIR. Sign any Adobe AIR application. Java. Sign any JAR applet Microsoft Office. Sign any MS Office Macro or VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) file. Mozilla. Sign any Mozilla Object file. The implication is that a single code signing certificate can do ALL of the above. ksoftware actually discounts Commodo certificates and the Commode website is unclear. QUESTION: Will ONE code signing certificate be enough or do I need one for Microsoft executables, and a second for things like Word and Excel macros? my main goal is to sign things like vs2008 code snippets so that I can export them securely; however, I would like to be able to use the same code signing certificate for signing other items too. Thank you ~~ regards, Gerry (Lowry)

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• Is there any tool to standardize format of C++ code?

  - by BillyONeal

  Hello, all :) I'm looking for a tool that works on Windows to reformat some C++ code in my codebase. Essentially, I've got some code I wrote a while ago that I'd like to use, but it doesn't match the style I'm using in a more recent project. What's the best way to reformat C++ code in a standard manner? Billy3

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• Where does complexity bloat from?

  - by AareP

  Many of our design decisions are based on our gut feeling about how to avoid complexity and bloating. Some of our complexity-fears are true, we have plenty of painful experience on throwing away deprecated code. Other times we learn that some particular task isn't really that complex as we though it to be. We notice for example that upkeeping 3000 lines of code in one file isn't that difficult... or that using special purpose "dirty flags" isn't really bad OO practice... or that in some cases it's more convenient to have 50 variables in one class that have 5 different classes with shared responsibilities... One friend has even stated that adding functions to the program isn't really adding complexity to your system. So, what do you think, where does bloated complexity creep from? Is it variable count, function count, code line count, code line count per function, or something else?

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• New release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available for download - March 2011

  - by Jialiang

  A new release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available on March 8th. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62267#DownloadId=215627 You can download individual code samples or browse code samples grouped by technology in the updated code sample index. If it’s the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please read this Microsoft News Center article http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jan11/01-13codeframework.mspx, or watch the introduction video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO5Li3APU58, or read the introduction on our homepage http://1code.codeplex.com/. -------------- New Silverlight code samples CSSLTreeViewCRUDDragDrop Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215808 The code sample was created by Amit Dey. It demonstrates a custom TreeView with added functionalities of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) and drag-and-drop operations. Silverlight TreeView control with CRUD and drag & drop is a frequently asked programming question in Silverlight  forums. Many customers also requested this code sample in our code sample request service. We hope that this sample can reduce developers' efforts in handling this typical programming scenario. The following blog article introduces the sample in detail: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codefx/archive/2011/02/15/silverlight-treeview-control-with-crud-and-drag-amp-drop.aspx. CSSL4FileDragDrop and VBSL4FileDragDrop Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215809 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215810 The code sample demonstrates the new drag&drop feature of Silverlight 4 to implement dragging picures from the local file system to a Silverlight application.   Sometimes we want to change SiteMapPath control's titles and paths according to Query String values. And sometimes we want to create the SiteMapPath dynamically. This code sample shows how to achieve these goals by handling SiteMap.SiteMapResolve event. CSASPNETEncryptAndDecryptConfiguration, VBASPNETEncryptAndDecryptConfiguration Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215027 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215106 In this sample, we encrypt and decrypt some sensitive information in the config file of a web application by using the RSA asymmetric encryption. This project contains two snippets. The first one demonstrates how to use RSACryptoServiceProvider to generate public key and the corresponding private key and then encrypt/decrypt string value on page. The second part shows how to use RSA configuration provider to encrypt and decrypt configuration section in web.config of web application. connectionStrings section in plain text: Encrypted connectionString:  Note that if you store sensitive data in any of the following configuration sections, we cannot encrypt it by using a protected configuration provider <processModel> <runtime> <mscorlib> <startup> <system.runtime.remoting> <configProtectedData> <satelliteassemblies> <cryptographySettings> <cryptoNameMapping> CSASPNETFileUploadStatus Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215028 I believe ASP.NET programmers will like this sample, because in many cases we need customers know the current status of the uploading files, including the upload speed and completion percentage and so on. Under normal circumstances, we need to use COM components to accomplish this function, such as Flash, Silverlight, etc. The uploading data can be retrieved in two places, the client-side and the server-side. For the client, for the safety factors, the file upload status information cannot be got from JavaScript or server-side code, so we need COM component, like Flash and Silverlight to accomplish this, I do not like this approach because the customer need to install these components, but also we need to learn another programming framework. For the server side, we can get the information through coding, but the key question is how to tell the client results. In this case, We will combine custom HTTPModule and AJAX technology to illustrate how to analyze the HTTP protocol, how to break the file request packets, how to customize the location of the server-side file caching, how to return the file uploading status back to the client and so on . CSASPNETHighlightCodeInPage, VBASPNETHighlightCodeInPage Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215029 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215108 This sample imitates a system that needs display the highlighted code in an ASP.NET page . As a matter of fact, sometimes we input code like C# or HTML in a web page and we need these codes to be highlighted for a better reading experience. It is convenient for us to keep the code in mind if it is highlighted. So in this case, the sample shows how to highlight the code in an ASP.NET page. It is not difficult to highlight the code in a web page by using String.Replace method directly. This  method can return a new string in which all occurrences of a specified string in the current instance are replaced with another specified string. However, it may not be a good idea, because it's not extremely fast, in fact, it's pretty slow. In addition, it is hard to highlight multiple keywords by using String.Replace method directly. Sometimes we need to copy source code from visual studio to a web page, for readability purpose, highlight the code is important while set the different types of keywords to different colors in a web page by using String.Replace method directly is not available. To handle this issue, we need to use a hashtable variable to store the different languages of code and their related regular expressions with matching options. Furthermore, define the css styles which used to highlight the code in a web page. The sample project can auto add the style object to the matching string of code. A step-by-step guide illustrating how to highlight the code in an ASP.NET page: 1. the HighlightCodePage.aspx page Choose a type of language in the dropdownlist control and paste the code in the textbox control, then click the HighLight button. 2.  Display the highlighted code in an ASP.NET page After user clicks the HighLight button, the highlighted code will be displayed at right side of the page.        CSASPNETPreventMultipleWindows Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215032 This sample demonstrates a step-by-step guide illustrating how to detect and prevent multiple windows or tab usage in Web Applications. The sample imitates a system that need to prevent multiple windows or tabs to solve some problems like sharing sessions, protect duplicated login, data concurrency, etc. In fact, there are many methods achieving this goal. Here we give a solution of use JavaScript, Sample shows how to use window.name property check the correct links and throw other requests to invalid pages. This code-sample use two user controls to make a distinction between base page and target page, user only need drag different controls to appropriate web form pages. so user need not write repetitive code in every page, it will make coding work lightly and convenient for modify your code.  JSVirtualKeyboard Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215093 This article describes an All-In-One framework sample that demonstrates a step-by-step guide illustrating how to build a virtual keyboard in your HTML page. Sometimes we may need to offer a virtual keyboard to let users input something without their real keyboards. This scenario often occurs when users will enter their password to get access to our sites and we want to protect the password from some kinds of back-door software, a Key-logger for example, and we will find a virtual keyboard on the page will be a good choice here. To create a virtual keyboard, we firstly need to add some buttons to the page. And when users click on a certain button, the JavaScript function handling the onclick event will input an appropriated character to the textbox. That is the simple logic of this feature. However, if we indeed want a virtual keyboard to substitute for the real keyboard completely, we will need more advanced logic to handle keys like Caps-Lock and Shift etc. That will be a complex work to achieve. CSASPNETDataListImageGallery Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62261#DownloadId=215267 This code sample demonstrates how to create an Image Gallery application by using the DataList control in ASP.NET. You may find the Image Gallery is widely used in many social networking sites, personal websites and E-Business websites. For example, you may use the Image Gallery to show a library of personal uploaded images on a personal website. Slideshow is also a popular tool to display images on websites. This code sample demonstrates how to use the DataList and ImageButton controls in ASP.NET to create an Image Gallery with image navigation. You can click on a thumbnail image in the Datalist control to display a larger version of the image on the page. This sample code reads the image paths from a certain directory into a FileInfo array. Then, the FileInfo array is used to populate a custom DataTable object which is bound to the Datalist control. This code sample also implements a custom paging system that allows five images to be displayed horizontally on one page. The following link buttons are used to implement a custom paging system:   •     First •     Previous •     Next •     Last Note We recommend that you use this method to load no more than five images at a time. You can also set the SelectedIndex property for the DataList control to limit the number of the thumbnail images that can be selected. To indicate which image is selected, you can set the SelectedStyle property for the DataList control. VBASPNETSearchEngine Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215112 This sample shows how to implement a simple search engine in an ASP.NET web site. It uses LIKE condition in SQL statement to search database. Then it highlights keywords in search result by using Regular Expression and JavaScript. New Windows General code samples CSCheckEXEType, VBCheckEXEType Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215045 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215120 The sample demonstrates how to check an executable file type.  For a given executable file, we can get 1 whether it is a console application 2 whether it is a .Net application 3 whether it is a 32bit native application. 4 The full display name of a .NET application, e.g. System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089, processorArchitecture=MSIL New Internet Explorer code samples CSIEExplorerBar, VBIEExplorerBar Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215060 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215133 The sample demonstrates how to create and deploy an IE Explorer Bar which could list all the images in a web page. CSBrowserHelperObject, VBBrowserHelperObject Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215044 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215119 The sample demonstrates how to create and deploy a Browser Helper Object,  and the BHO in this sample is used to disable the context menu in IE. New Windows Workflow Foundation code samples CSWF4ActivitiesCorrelation Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215085 Consider that there are two such workflow instances:       start                                   start          |                                           | Receive activity      Receive activity         |                                           | Receive2 activity      Receive2 activity         |                                           | A WCF request comes to call the second Receive2 activity. Which one should take care of the request? The answer is Correlation. This sample will show you how to correlate two workflow service to work together. -------------- New ASP.NET code samples CSASPNETBreadcrumbWithQueryString Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215022

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• How do you overcome your own coding biases when handed legacy code?

  - by Bryan M.

  As programmers, we often take incredible pride in our skills and hold very strong opinions about what is 'good' code and 'bad' code. At any given point in our careers, we've probably had some legacy system dropped in our laps, and thought 'My god, this code sucks!' because it didn't fit into our notion of what good code should be, despite the fact that it may have well been perfectly functional, maintainable code. How do you prepare yourself mentally when trying to get your head around another programmer's work?

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• Which things instantly ring alarm bells when looking at code? [closed]

  - by FinnNk

  I attended a software craftsmanship event a couple of weeks ago and one of the comments made was "I'm sure we all recognize bad code when we see it" and everyone nodded sagely without further discussion. This sort of thing always worries me as there's that truism that everyone thinks they're an above average driver. Although I think I can recognize bad code I'd love to learn more about what other people consider to be code smells as it's rarely discussed in detail on people's blogs and only in a handful of books. In particular I think it'd be interesting to hear about anything that's a code smell in one language but not another. I'll start off with an easy one: Code in source control that has a high proportion of commented out code - why is it there? was it meant to be deleted? is it a half finished piece of work? maybe it shouldn't have been commented out and was only done when someone was testing something out? Personally I find this sort of thing really annoying even if it's just the odd line here and there, but when you see large blocks interspersed with the rest of the code it's totally unacceptable. It's also usually an indication that the rest of the code is likely to be of dubious quality as well.

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• How do I maintain a really poorly written code base?

  - by onlineapplab.com

  Recently I got hired to work on existing web application because of NDA I'm not at liberty to disclose any details but this application is working online in sort of a beta testing stage before official launch. We have a few hundred users right now but this number is supposed to significantly increase after official launch. The application is written in PHP (but it is irrelevant to my question) and is running on a dual xeon processor standalone server with severe performance problems. I have seen a lot of bad PHP code but this really sets new standards, especially knowing how much time and money was invested in developing it. it is as badly coded as possible there is PHP, HTML, SQL mixed together and code is repeated whenever it is necessary (especially SQL queries). there are not any functions used, not mentioning any OOP there are four versions of the app (desktop, iPhone, Android + other mobile) each version has pretty much the same functionality but was created by copying the whole code base, so now there are some differences between each version and it is really hard to maintain the database is really badly designed, which is causing severe performance problems also for fixing some errors in PHP code there is a lot of database triggers used which are updating data on SELECT and on INSERT so any testing is a nightmare Basically, any sin of a bad programming you can imagine is there for example it is not only possible to use SQL injections in literally every place but you can log into app if you use a login which doesn't exist and an empty password. The team which created this app is not working on it any more and there is an outsourced team which suggested that there are some problems but was never willing to deal with the elephant in the room partially because they've got a very comfortable contract and partially due to lack of skills (just my opinion). My job was supposed to be fixing some performance problems and extending existing functionality but first thing I was asked to do was a review of the existing code base. I've made my review and it was quite a shock for the management but my conclusions were after some time finally confirmed by other programmers. Management made it clear that it is not possible to start rewriting this app from scratch (which in my opinion should be done). We have to maintain its operable state and at the same time fix performance errors and extend the functionality. My question is, as I don't want just to patch the existing code, how to transform this into properly written app while keeping the existing code working at the same time? My plan is: Unify four existing versions into common code base (fixing only most obvious errors). Redesign db and use triggers to populate it with data (so data will be maintained in two formats at the same time) All new functionality will be written as separate project. Step by step transfer existing functionality into the new project After some time everything will be in the new project Some explanation about #2, right now it is practically impossible to make any updates in existing db any change requires reviewing whole code and making changes in many places. Is such plan feasible at all? Another solution is to walk away and leave the headache to someone else.

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• Basis for claim that the number of bugs per line of code is constant regardless of the language used

  - by Matt R

  I've heard people say (although I can't recall who in particular) that the number of bugs per line of code is roughly constant regardless of what language is used. What is the research that backs this up? Edited to add: I don't have access to it, but apparently the authors of this paper "asked the question whether the number of bugs per lines of code (LOC) is the same for programs written in different programming languages or not."

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• QR Codes for Files on Google Code

  - by Synetech inc.

  Hi, When you download files from Google Code now (example), in addition to the text version of the SHA1 hash, it includes a QR code of it. The device that the file was downloaded to is the one that has to hash the file. But, if it can download the file (ie, has access to the webpage), it also has access to the text version of the hash, so the QR code seems completely useless—and more work to decode when the raw text is available. How would reading the hash into a mobile phone allow you to verify the file you download to the computer? Or if you download the file to the phone, how would you use the phone to take a picture of the QR code displayed on the webpage on its own screen? Does anyone know what the point to the QR code is or how you would use it to verify the downloaded file (I don’t mean QR codes in general, but specifically in this context).

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• What to watch out for when writing code at an Interview?

  - by Philip

  Hi, I have read that at a lot of companies you have to write code at an interview. On the one hand I see that it makes sense to ask for a work sample. On the other hand: What kind of code do you expect to be written in 5 minutes? And what if they tell me "Write an algorithm that does this and that" but I cannot think of a smart solution or even write code that doesn't semantically work? I am particularly interested in that question because I do not have that much commercial programming experience, 2 years part-time, one year full-time. (But I am interested in programming languages since nearly 15 years though usually I was more concentrated in playing with the language rather than writing large applications...) And actually I consider my debugging and problem solving skills much better than my coding skills. I sometimes see myself not writing the most beautiful code when looking back, but on the other hand I often come up with solutions for hard problems. And I think I am very good at optimizing, fixing, restructuring existing code, but I have problems with writing new applications from scratch. The software design sucks... ;-) Therefore I don't feel comfortable when thinking about this code writing situation at an interview... So what do the interviewers expect? What kind of information about my code writing are they interested in? Philip

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• Rawr Code Clone Analysis&ndash;Part 0

  - by Dylan Smith

  Code Clone Analysis is a cool new feature in Visual Studio 11 (vNext).  It analyzes all the code in your solution and attempts to identify blocks of code that are similar, and thus candidates for refactoring to eliminate the duplication.  The power lies in the fact that the blocks of code don't need to be identical for Code Clone to identify them, it will report Exact, Strong, Medium and Weak matches indicating how similar the blocks of code in question are.   People that know me know that I'm anal enthusiastic about both writing clean code, and taking old crappy code and making it suck less. So the possibilities for this feature have me pretty excited if it works well - and thats a big if that I'm hoping to explore over the next few blog posts. I'm going to grab the Rawr source code from CodePlex (a World Of Warcraft gear calculator engine program), run Code Clone Analysis against it, then go through the results one-by-one and refactor where appropriate blogging along the way.  My goals with this blog series are twofold: Evaluate and demonstrate Code Clone Analysis Provide some concrete examples of refactoring code to eliminate duplication and improve the code-base Here are the initial results:   Code Clone Analysis has found: 129 Exact Matches 201 Strong Matches 300 Medium Matches 193 Weak Matches Also indicated is that there was a total of 45,181 potentially duplicated lines of code that could be eliminated through refactoring.  Considering the entire solution only has 109,763 lines of code, if true, the duplicates lines of code number is pretty significant. In the next post we’ll start examining some of the individual results and determine if they really do indicate a potential refactoring.

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• How do you stay productive when dealing with extremely badly written code?

  - by gaearon

  I don't have much experience in working in software industry, being self-taught and having participated in open source before deciding to take a job. Now that I work for money, I also have to deal with some unpleasant stuff, which is normal of course. Recently I was assigned to add logging to a large SharePoint project which is written by some programmer who obviously was learning to code on the job. After 2 years of collaboration, the client switched to our company, but the damage was done, and now somehow I need to maintain this code. Not that the code was too hard to read. Despite problems - each project has one class with several copy-pasted methods, enormous if nestings, Systems Hungarian, undisposed connections — it's still readable. However, I found myself absolutely unproductive despite working on something as simple as adding logging. Basically, I just need to go through the code step by step and add some trace calls. However, the idiocy of the code is so annoying that I get tired within 10 minutes of starting. In the beginning, I used to add using constructs, reduce nesting by reversing if's, rename the variables to readable names—but the project is large, and eventually I gave up. I know this is not the task I should be doing, but at least reducing the mess gave me some kind of psychological reward so I could keep going. Now the trick stopped working, and I still have 60% of my work to do. I started having headaches after work, and I no longer get the feeling of satisfaction I used to get - which would usually allow me to code for 10 hours straight and still feel fresh. This is not just one big rant, for I really do have an actual question: Is there a way to stay productive and not to fight the windmills? Is there some kind of psychological trick to stay focused on the task, instead of thinking “How stupid is that?” each time I see another clever trick by the previous programmer? The problem with adding logging is that I actually have to understand what the code does, and doing so hurts my brain in an unpleasant fashion.

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• Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code?

  - by Donnied

  This question is phrased in a very specific way - it asks for references. There was a similar question posted which was closed because it was considered a duplicate to a good code question. The Programmers FAQ points out that answers should have references - or its just an unproductive sharing of (seemingly) baseless opinions. There is a difference between shortest code and most elegant code. This becomes clear in several seminal texts: Dijkstra, E. W. (1972). The humble programmer. Communications of the ACM, 15(10), 859–866. Kernighan, B. W., & Plauger, P. J. (1974). Programming style: Examples and counterexamples. ACM Comput. Surv., 6(4), 303–319. Knuth, D. E. (1984). Literate programming. The Computer Journal, 27(2), 97–111. doi:10.1093/comjnl/27.2.97 They all note the importance of clarity over brevity. Kernighan & Plauger (1974) provide descriptions of "good" code, but "good code" is certainly not synonymous with "elegant". Knuth (1984) describes the impo rtance of exposition and "excellence of style" to elegant programs. He cites Hoare - who describes that code should be self documenting. Dijkstra (1972) indicates that beautiful programs optimize efficiency but are not opaque. This sort of conversation is qulaitatively different than a random sharing of opinions. Therefore, the question - Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code? "Which *reference*" is not subjective - anything else will most likely shut the thread down, so please supply *references* not opinions.

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• How would you react if someone told you your code is a mess?

  - by newbie

  I am a good programmer, or so I thought before. I always love to program. And I want to learn many things about programming to make me a better programmer. I studied programming for 1 year and now I am working as a programmer for almost 2 years. So in short, I have almost 3 years programming experience. Our team is composed of 5 programmers, and 4 of us are new, 1 has more than 3 year experience. We've been working for a program for almost a year now and nobody ever review my code and I was given a page to work with. We never had a code review and we are all new so we don't know what is a clean code looks like. I think programmers learn by themselves? We deployed our program to the program without thorough testing. Now it is tight and we need an approval and code review first before we make changes with the code. For the first time, someone reviews my code and he says it is a mess. I feel so sad and hurt. I really love programming and making them say something like that really hurts me. I really want to improve myself. But it seems like I'm not a genius programmer like in the movies. Can you give me advise on how to be better? Have you ever experience something criticizing your code and you feel really hurt? What do you do on those events.. Thank you

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• Copy-and-Pasted Test Code: How Bad is This?

  - by joshin4colours

  My current job is mostly writing GUI test code for various applications that we work on. However, I find that I tend to copy and paste a lot of code within tests. The reason for this is that the areas I'm testing tend to be similar enough to need repetition but not quite similar enough to encapsulate code into methods or objects. I find that when I try to use classes or methods more extensively, tests become more cumbersome to maintain and sometimes outright difficult to write in the first place. Instead, I usually copy a big chunk of test code from one section and paste it to another, and make any minor changes I need. I don't use more structured ways of coding, such as using more OO-principles or functions. Do other coders feel this way when writing test code? Obviously I want to follow DRY and YAGNI principles, but I find that test code (automated test code for GUI testing anyway) can make these principles tough to follow. Or do I just need more coding practice and a better overall system of doing things? EDIT: The tool I'm using is SilkTest, which is in a proprietary language called 4Test. As well, these tests are mostly for Windows desktop applications, but I also have tested web apps using this setup as well.

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• Merge sort versus quick sort performance

  - by Giorgio

  I have implemented merge sort and quick sort using C (GCC 4.4.3 on Ubuntu 10.04 running on a 4 GB RAM laptop with an Intel DUO CPU at 2GHz) and I wanted to compare the performance of the two algorithms. The prototypes of the sorting functions are: void merge_sort(const char **lines, int start, int end); void quick_sort(const char **lines, int start, int end); i.e. both take an array of pointers to strings and sort the elements with index i : start <= i <= end. I have produced some files containing random strings with length on average 4.5 characters. The test files range from 100 lines to 10000000 lines. I was a bit surprised by the results because, even though I know that merge sort has complexity O(n log(n)) while quick sort is O(n^2), I have often read that on average quick sort should be as fast as merge sort. However, my results are the following. Up to 10000 strings, both algorithms perform equally well. For 10000 strings, both require about 0.007 seconds. For 100000 strings, merge sort is slightly faster with 0.095 s against 0.121 s. For 1000000 strings merge sort takes 1.287 s against 5.233 s of quick sort. For 5000000 strings merge sort takes 7.582 s against 118.240 s of quick sort. For 10000000 strings merge sort takes 16.305 s against 1202.918 s of quick sort. So my question is: are my results as expected, meaning that quick sort is comparable in speed to merge sort for small inputs but, as the size of the input data grows, the fact that its complexity is quadratic will become evident? Here is a sketch of what I did. In the merge sort implementation, the partitioning consists in calling merge sort recursively, i.e. merge_sort(lines, start, (start + end) / 2); merge_sort(lines, 1 + (start + end) / 2, end); Merging of the two sorted sub-array is performed by reading the data from the array lines and writing it to a global temporary array of pointers (this global array is allocate only once). After each merge the pointers are copied back to the original array. So the strings are stored once but I need twice as much memory for the pointers. For quick sort, the partition function chooses the last element of the array to sort as the pivot and scans the previous elements in one loop. After it has produced a partition of the type start ... {elements <= pivot} ... pivotIndex ... {elements > pivot} ... end it calls itself recursively: quick_sort(lines, start, pivotIndex - 1); quick_sort(lines, pivotIndex + 1, end); Note that this quick sort implementation sorts the array in-place and does not require additional memory, therefore it is more memory efficient than the merge sort implementation. So my question is: is there a better way to implement quick sort that is worthwhile trying out? If I improve the quick sort implementation and perform more tests on different data sets (computing the average of the running times on different data sets) can I expect a better performance of quick sort wrt merge sort? EDIT Thank you for your answers. My implementation is in-place and is based on the pseudo-code I have found on wikipedia in Section In-place version: function partition(array, 'left', 'right', 'pivotIndex') where I choose the last element in the range to be sorted as a pivot, i.e. pivotIndex := right. I have checked the code over and over again and it seems correct to me. In order to rule out the case that I am using the wrong implementation I have uploaded the source code on github (in case you would like to take a look at it). Your answers seem to suggest that I am using the wrong test data. I will look into it and try out different test data sets. I will report as soon as I have some results.

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• What would be the time complexity of counting the number of all structurally different binary trees?

  - by ktslwy

  Using the method presented here: http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/110/BinaryTrees.html#java 12. countTrees() Solution (Java) /** For the key values 1...numKeys, how many structurally unique binary search trees are possible that store those keys? Strategy: consider that each value could be the root. Recursively find the size of the left and right subtrees. */ public static int countTrees(int numKeys) { if (numKeys <=1) { return(1); } else { // there will be one value at the root, with whatever remains // on the left and right each forming their own subtrees. // Iterate through all the values that could be the root... int sum = 0; int left, right, root; for (root=1; root<=numKeys; root++) { left = countTrees(root-1); right = countTrees(numKeys - root); // number of possible trees with this root == left*right sum += left*right; } return(sum); } } I have a sense that it might be n(n-1)(n-2)...1, i.e. n!

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• Big O Complexity of a method

  - by timeNomad

  I have this method: public static int what(String str, char start, char end) { int count=0; for(int i=0;i<str.length(); i++) { if(str.charAt(i) == start) { for(int j=i+1;j<str.length(); j++) { if(str.charAt(j) == end) count++; } } } return count; } What I need to find is: 1) What is it doing? Answer: counting the total number of end occurrences after EACH (or is it? Not specified in the assignment, point 3 depends on this) start. 2) What is its complexity? Answer: the first loops iterates over the string completely, so it's at least O(n), the second loop executes only if start char is found and even then partially (index at which start was found + 1). Although, big O is all about worst case no? So in the worst case, start is the 1st char & the inner iteration iterates over the string n-1 times, the -1 is a constant so it's n. But, the inner loop won't be executed every outer iteration pass, statistically, but since big O is about worst case, is it correct to say the complexity of it is O(n^2)? Ignoring any constants and the fact that in 99.99% of times the inner loop won't execute every outer loop pass. 3) Rewrite it so that complexity is lower. What I'm not sure of is whether start occurs at most once or more, if once at most, then method can be rewritten using one loop (having a flag indicating whether start has been encountered and from there on incrementing count at each end occurrence), yielding a complexity of O(n). In case though, that start can appear multiple times, which most likely it is, because assignment is of a Java course and I don't think they would make such ambiguity. Solving, in this case, is not possible using one loop... WAIT! Yes it is..! Just have a variable, say, inc to be incremented each time start is encountered & used to increment count each time end is encountered after the 1st start was found: inc = 0, count = 0 if (current char == start) inc++ if (inc > 0 && current char == end) count += inc This would also yield a complexity of O(n)? Because there is only 1 loop. Yes I realize I wrote a lot hehe, but what I also realized is that I understand a lot better by forming my thoughts into words...

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• Is there a shorthand term for O(n log n)?

  - by jemfinch

  We usually have a single-word shorthand for most complexities we encounter in algorithmic analysis: O(1) == "constant" O(log n) == "logarithmic" O(n) == "linear" O(n^2) == "quadratic" O(n^3) == "cubic" O(2^n) == "exponential" We encounter algorithms with O(n log n) complexity with some regularity (think of all the algorithms dominated by sort complexity) but as far as I know, there's no single word we can use in English to refer to that complexity. Is this a gap in my knowledge, or a real gap in our English discourse on computational complexity?

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• How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?

  - by KyelJmD

  How would one know if the code he has created is easily maintainable and readable? Of course in your point of view (the one who actually wrote the code) your code is readable and maintainable, but we should be true to ourselves here. How would we know if we've written pretty messy and unmaintainable code? Are there any constructs or guidelines to know if we have developed a messy piece of software?

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• What is the oldest living piece of unaltered production code? [closed]

  - by user1598390

  It's come to my mind that parts of the code in, say, Unix, has maybe passed unaltered from one version or flavor into another. Maybe some pieces of the source code of the ls command is the same, unaltered, than was written years ago. Have any of you read or learn about this ? What would be the oldest living piece of unaltered production code still running, passing from version through version of a program or system ? Will the code we write outlive us for decades ?

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