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• How to better explain complex software process in software specs?

  - by Lostsoul

  I'm really struggling with my software specs. I am not a professional programmer but enjoy doing it for fun and made some software that I want to sell later but I'm not happy with the code quality. So I wanted to hire a real developer to rewrite my software in a more professional way so it will be maintainable by other developers in the future. I read and found some sample specs and made my own by applying their structure to my document and wanted to get my developer friend to read it and give me advice. After an hour and a half he understood exactly what I was trying to do and how I did it(my algorithms,stack,etc.). How can I get better at explaining things to developers? I add many details and explanations for everything(including working code) but I'm unsure the best way I can learn to pass detailed domain knowledge(my software applies big data, machine learning, graph theory to finance). My end goal is to get them to understand as much as possible from the document and then ask anything they do not understand, but right now it seems they need to extract alot of information from me. How can I get better at communicating domain knowledge to developers?

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• PHP I am pulling my hair out trying to find the best! [closed]

  - by darga33

  PULLING MY HAIR OUT I have heard of Martin Fowler's book PoEAA and the other book Head First OOA OOD but those are not in PHP. I DESPERATELY WANT TO READ THEM, but ONLY in PHP utilizing SOLID principles! Does anyone know of the absolute best, most recent PHP book that utilizes the SOLID principles and GRASP, and all the other best practices? I want to learn from the best possible source! Not beginner books! I already understand OOP. This seems like an almost impossible question to find the answer to and so I thought, hey, might as well post on stackexchange!! Surely someone out there must know!!!!!!!!!! Or if noone knows Maybe they know of an open source application that utilizes these principles that is relatively small that is not a framework. Something that I can go through every single class, and spend time understanding the insides and outs of how the program was developed. Thanks so much in advance! I really really really really appreciate it!

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• Efficient Algorithm for Recording gameplay's objects positions

  - by Scorch

  So, I have a game idea in mind, and for that I need to record the game around the player. I'me not talking about recording it as video, but rather recording the scene objects, and their positions within the game, and then render them, giving the player the ability to go back and forth, to stop time and move around. I've made a prototype with some data structures in C#, since this is going to be the programming language we'll be using in our game, but if we want the player to be able to go back just five minutes back with the data of just 100 NPC's, it takes almost 1GB of RAM. Right now, I'm just storing a Doubly linked list, each item with the object position. In the game, I'll need to store even more data in each node, so I need something even more ligher. Of course, this algorithm is zero optimized, but still, that is a lot. The alternatives would be create the NPC's that aren't really important to the game when the user is viewing the past, but I don't really like it very much for the sake of realism. I wonder if there is a better way to store this? Thanks in advance, Scorch

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• Is it a good idea to dynamically position and size controls on a form or statically set them?

  - by CrystalBlue

  I've worked mostly with interface building tools such as xCode's Interface Builder and Visual Studio's environment to place forms and position them on screens. But I'm finding that with my latest project, placing controls on the form through a graphical interface is not going to work. This more has to do with the number of custom controls I have to create that I can't visually see before hand. When I first tackled this, I began to position all of my controls relative to the last ones that I created. Doing this had its own pros and cons. On the one hand, this gave me the opportunity to set one number (a margin for example) and when I changed the margin, the controls all sized correctly to one another (such as shortening controls in the center while keeping controls next to the margin the same). But this started to become a spiders-web of code that I knew wouldn't go very far before getting dangerous. Change one number and everything re sizes, but remove one control and you've created many more errors and size problems for all the other controls. It became more surgery then small changes to controls and layout. Is there a good way or maybe a preferred way to determine when I should be using relative or absolute positioning in forms?

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• How can I better manage far-reaching changes in my code?

  - by neuviemeporte

  In my work (writing scientific software in C++), I often get asked by the people who use the software to get their work done to add some functionality or change the way things are done and organized right now. Most of the time this is just a matter of adding a new class or a function and applying some glue to do the job, but from time to time, a seemingly simple change turns out to have far-reaching consequences that require me to redesign a substantial amount of existing code, which takes a lot of time and effort, and is difficult to evaluate in terms of time required. I don't think it has as much to do with inter-dependence of modules, as with changing requirements (admittedly, on a smaller scale). To provide an example, I was thinking about the recently-added multi-user functionality in Android. I don't know whether they planned to introduce it from the very beginning, but assuming they didn't, it seems hard to predict all the areas that will be affected by the change (apps preferences, themes, need to store account info somehow, etc...?), even though the concept seems simple enough, and the code is well-organized. How do you deal with such situations? Do you just jump in to code and then sort out the cruft later like I do? Or do you do a detailed analysis beforehand of what will be affected, what needs to be updated and how, and what has to be rewritten? If so, what tools (if any) and approaches do you use?

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• When creating a GUI wizard, should all pages/tabs be of the same size? [closed]

  - by Job

  I understand that some libraries would force me to, but my question is general. If I have a set of buttons at the bottom: Back, Next, Cancel?, (other?), then should their location ever change? If the answer is no, then what do I do about pages with little content? Do I stretch things? Place them in the lone upper left corner? According to Steve Krug, it does not make sense to add anything to GUI that does not need to be there. I understand that there are different approaches to wizards - some have tabs, others do not. Some tabs are lined horizontally at the top; others - vertically on the left. Some do not show pages/tabs, and are simply sequences of dialogs. This is probably a must when the wizard is "non-linear", e.g. some earlier choices can result in branching. Either way the problem is the same - sacrifice on the consistency of the "big picture" (outline of the page/tab + location of buttons), or the consistency of details (some tabs might be somewhat packed; others having very little content). A third choice, I suppose is putting extra effort in the content in order to make sure that organizing the content such that it is more or less evenly distributed from page to page. However, this can be difficult to do (say, when the very first tab contains only a choice of three things, and then branches off from there; there are probably other examples), and hard to maintain this balance if any of the content changes later. Can you recommend a good approach? A link to a relevant good blog post or a chapter of a book is also welcome. Let me know if you have questions.

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• Is it correct to add booleans in order to count the number of true values in a vector?

  - by gerrit

  Is it conceptually correct to sum a vector of booleans? From a mathematical point of view, I would argue it's not: True + True != 2. But it's quite practical to do so still! Example using the vectorised Python library numpy: In [1]: X = rand(10) In [2]: large = X>0.6 In [3]: large.dtype Out[3]: dtype('bool') In [4]: large.sum() Out[4]: 7 I don't like it, but it's very practical. Is this a good practice? Update: the aim is to count the number of true values in a vector.

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• Use constructor or setter method?

  - by user633600

  I am working on a UI code where I have an Action class, something like this - public class MyAction extends Action { public MyAction() { setText("My Action Text"); setToolTip("My Action Tool tip"); setImage("Some Image"); } } When this Action class was created it was pretty much assumed that the Action class wont be customizable (in a sense- its text, tooltip or image will be not be changed anywhere in the code). Of late, now we are in need of changing the action text at some location in code. So I suggested my co-worker to remove the hardcoded action text from the constructor and accept it as an argument, so that everybody is forced to pass the action text. Something like this code below - public class MyAction extends Action { public MyAction(String actionText) { setText(actionText); setTooltip("My Action tool tip); setImage("My Image"); } } He however thinks that since setText() method belongs to base class. It can be flexibly used to pass the action text wherever action instance is created. That way, there is no need to change the existing MyAction class. So his code would look something like this. MyAction action = new MyAction(); //this creates action instance with the hardcoded text action.setText("User required new action text"); //overwrite the exisitng text. I am not sure if that is a correct way to deal with problem. I think in above mentioned case user is anyway going to change the text, so why not force him while constructing the action. The only benefit I see with the original code is that user can create Action class without much thinking about setting text.

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• Where, in an object oriented system should you, if at all, choose (C-style) structs over classes?

  - by Anto

  C and most likely many other languages provide a struct keyword for creating structures (or something in a similar fashion). These are (at least in C), from a simplified point of view like classes, but without polymorphism, inheritance, methods, and so on. Think of an object-oriented (or multi paradigm) language with C-style structs. Where would you choose them over classes? Now, I don't believe they are to be used with OOP as classes seem to replace their purposes, but I wonder if there are situations where they could be preferred over classes in otherwise object-oriented programs and in what kind of situations. Are there such situations?

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• What is the most concise, unambiguous syntax for operator associated methods (for overloading etc.) that doesn't pollute the namespace?

  - by Doug Treadwell

  Python tends to add double underscores before its built-in or overloadable operator methods, like __add(), whereas C++ requires declaring overloaded operators as operator + (Thing& thing) { /* code */ } for example. Personally I like the operator syntax because it seems to be more explicit and keeps these operator overloading methods separated from other methods without introducing weird prefix notation. What are your thoughts? Also, what about the case of built-in methods that are needed for the programming language to work properly? Is name mangling (like adding __ prefix or sys or something) the best solution here? What do you think about having another type of method declaration, like ... "system method" for lack of creativity at the moment. So there would be two kinds of declarations: int method_name() { ... } system int method_name() { ... } ... and the call would need to be different to distinguish between them. obj.method_name(); vs obj:method_name(); perhaps, assuming a language where : can be unambiguously used in this situation. obj.method_name() vs obj.(system method_name)() Sure, the latter is ugly, but the idea is to make the common case simple and system stuff should be kept out of the way. Maybe the Objective-C notation of method calls? [obj method_name]? Are there more alternatives? Please make suggestions.

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• What kind of programs/solutions can only be written with OOP or are too hard to achieve without it?

  - by user1598390

  Paraphrasing a recent question: What is Object Oriented Programming ill-suited for? I would like to ask the opposite question: What kind of programs cannot be written unless you use OOP? What kind of programs are not recommended to be written using non-OOP techniques? What kind of programs need OOP in order to even be written? What kind of programs would be too hard to write without OOP ? The answer to this question can help sell the idea of OOP to project leaders that have no special interest in code quality. At least they could buy the idea if one shows them the kind of things that are not even possible unless you use OOP.

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• share code between check and process methods

  - by undu

  My job is to refactor an old library for GIS vector data processing. The main class encapsulates a collection of building outlines, and offers different methods for checking data consistency. Those checking functions have an optional parameter that allows to perform some process. For instance: std::vector<Point> checkIntersections(int process_mode = 0); This method tests if some building outlines are intersecting, and return the intersection points. But if you pass a non null argument, the method will modify the outlines to remove the intersection. I think it's pretty bad (at call site, a reader not familiar with the code base will assume that a method called checkSomething only performs a check and doesn't modifiy data) and I want to change this. I also want to avoid code duplication as check and process methods are mostly similar. So I was thinking to something like this: // a private worker std::vector<Point> workerIntersections(int process_mode = 0) { // it's the equivalent of the current checkIntersections, it may perform // a process depending on process_mode } // public interfaces for check and process std::vector<Point> checkIntersections() /* const */ { workerIntersections(0); } std::vector<Point> processIntersections(int process_mode /*I have different process modes*/) { workerIntersections(process_mode); } But that forces me to break const correctness as workerIntersections is a non-const method. How can I separate check and process, avoiding code duplication and keeping const-correctness?

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• HTTP PHP Authentication and Android

  - by edc598

  I am working on a website for which I hope to have an application for as well. Because of this, I am creating PHP API's which will go into my Database and serve specific data based on the method/function called. I want to protect these API's from misuse however, and I plan on implementing Authentication Digest to do so. However one of the OS's I want to support is Android. And I know that a malicious user would be able to reverse engineer the Android app and figure out my authentication scheme. I am left wondering: 1. Is there a better way to protect these API's from misuse? 2. Is there a way to prevent a malicious user from reverse engineering the app and potentially seeing the source code for it, enabling them to see my authentication scheme? 3. If none of these are preventable, then is my only option to have a Username/Password cred specifically for the Android app, and when eventually hacked, change the creds and issue an update for the app? I apologize if this is not the place to post such a question. Still pretty new to StackOverflow. Thanks in advance for any insight, it would be quite helpful.

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• Moving multiple objects on a map

  - by Dave

  I have multiple objects on my isometric game, for example, NPC's doing path finding automatically to walk around the map. Now there could be any number of them from 0 to infinity (hypthetical as no PC could handle that). My question is: is simply looping each one individually the smartest way to animate them all? Surely as the number of units increases you will notice a lag occuring on units near the end of loop still "waiting" for their next animation movement. The alternative is a swarm algorithm to move all objects together. Is that a smarter idea or do both situations apply depending on the circumstances of the game?

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• Is there a better way to organize my module tests that avoids an explosion of new source files?

  - by luser droog

  I've got a neat (so I thought) way of having each of my modules produce a unit-test executable if compiled with the -DTESTMODULE flag. This flag guards a main() function that can access all static data and functions in the module, without #including a C file. From the README: -- Modules -- The various modules were written and tested separately before being coupled together to achieve the necessary basic functionality. Each module retains its unit-test, its main() function, guarded by #ifdef TESTMODULE. `make test` will compile and execute all the unit tests, producing copious output, but importantly exitting with an appropriate success or failure code, so the `make test` command will fail if any of the tests fail. Module TOC __________ test obj src header structures CONSTANTS ---- --- --- --- -------------------- m m.o m.c m.h mfile mtab TABSZ s s.o s.c s.h stack STACKSEGSZ v v.o v.c v.h saverec_ f.o f.c f.h file ob ob.o ob.c ob.h object ar ar.o ar.c ar.h array st st.o st.c st.h string di di.o di.c di.h dichead dictionary nm nm.o nm.c nm.h name gc gc.o gc.c gc.h garbage collector itp itp.c itp.h context osunix.o osunix.c osunix.h unix-dependent functions It's compile by a tricky bit of makefile, m:m.c ob.h ob.o err.o $(CORE) itp.o $(OP) cc $(CFLAGS) -DTESTMODULE $(LDLIBS) -o $@ $< err.o ob.o s.o ar.o st.o v.o di.o gc.o nm.o itp.o $(OP) f.o where the module is compiled with its own C file plus every other object file except itself. But it's creating difficulties for the kindly programmer who offered to write the Autotools files for me. So the obvious way to make it "less weird" would be to bust-out all the main functions into separate source files. But, but ... Do I gotta?

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• Best Way to Handle Meta Information in a SQL Database

  - by danielhanly.com

  I've got a database where I want to store user information and user_meta information. The reason behind setting it up in this way was because the user_meta side may change over time and I would like to do this without disrupting the master user table. If possible, I would like some advice on how to best set up this meta data table. I can either set it as below: +----+---------+----------+--------------------+ | id | user_id | key | value | +----+---------+----------+--------------------+ | 1 | 1 | email | [email protected] | | 2 | 1 | name | user name | | 3 | 1 | address | test address | ... Or, I can set it as below: +----+---------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------+ | id | user_id | email | name | address | +----+---------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------+ | 1 | 1 | [email protected] | user name | test address | Obviously, the top verison is more flexible, but the bottom version is space saving and perhaps more efficient, returning all the data as a single record. Which is the best way to go about this? Or, am I going about this completely wrong and there's another way I've not thought of?

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• Chapters Two, Three, and Four

  - by drsql

  I am trying to blog all of the chapters of the book, but due to deadlines and a lot of shuffling about, I never got around it for these three chapters, two of which I have added since I wrote the original table of contents. All of these contain mostly material from previous editions of the book, updated a good amount, but nothing tremendously different if you had memorized the material from the previous edition. As such, the pre-writing blog ritual wasn’t as necessary (for me at least) as it is going...(read more)

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• Managing different utility classes between engine and libraries

  - by hayer

  I'm currently in updating some engine code (which does not work, so it is more like creating a engine). I've decided to swap over to SFML (instead of my own crappy renderer, window manager, and audio), Box2D (since I need physics, but have none), and some small utilities I've built myself. The problem is that each of the project mentioned over use different types for things like Vector2, etc. So to the question: is it a good idea to replace Box2D and SFML vectors with my own vector class (which is one of my better implementations)? My idea then was to have a separate .lib with all my classes that should be shared between all the projects in the solution.

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• Should I use my real name in my open source project?

  - by Jardo

  I developed a few freeware programs in the past which I had signed with my pseudonym Jardo. I'm now planning to release my first open source project and was thinking of using my full real name in the project files (as the "author"). I thought it would be good to use my name as my "trademark" so if someone (perhaps a future headhunter) googles my name, they'll find my projects. But on the other side, I feel a bit paranoid about disclosing my name (in the least case I could be getting a lot of spam to my email, its not that hard to guess your private email from your name). What do you think can be "dangerous" on disclosing your full name? What are the pros and cons? Do you use your real name or a pseudonym in your projects? I read this question: What are the advantages and disadvantages to using your real name online? but that doesn't apply to me bacause it's about using your real name online (internet discussions, profiles, etc.) where I personally see no reason to use my real name... And there is also this question: Copyrighting software, templates, etc. under real name or screen name? which deals with creating a business or a brand which also doesn't apply to me because I will never sell/give away my open source project and if someone else joins in, they can write their name as co-author without any problems...

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• A separate solution for types, etc?

  - by hayer

  I'm currently in progress updating some engine-code(which does not work, so it is more like creating a engine). I've decided to swap over to SFML(instead of my own crappy renderer, window manager, and audio), Box2d(since I need physics, but have none), and some small utils I've built myself. The problem is that each of the project mentioned over use different types for things like Vector2, etc. So to the question; Is it a good idea to replace box2d and SFML vectors with my own vector class? (Which is one of my better implementations) My idea then was to have a seperate .lib with all my classes that should be shared between all the projects in the solution.

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• How do you go from a so so programmer to a great one? [closed]

  - by Cervo

  How do you go from being an okay programmer to being able to write maintainable clean code? For example David Hansson was writing Basecamp when in the process he created Rails as part of writing Basecamp in a clean/maintainable way. But how do you know when there is value in a side project like that? I have a bachelors in computer science, and I am about to get a masters and I will say that colleges teach you to write code to solve problems, not neatly or anything. Basically you think of a problem, come up with a solution, and write it down...not necessarily the most maintainable way in the world. Also my first job was in a startup, and now my third is in a small team in a large company where the attitude was/is get it done yesterday (also most of my jobs are mainly database development with SQL with a few ASP.NET web pages/.NET apps on the side). So of course cut/paste is more favored than making things more cleanly. And they would rather have something yesterday even if you have to rewrite it next month rather than to have something in a week that lasts for a year. Also spaghetti code turns up all over the place, and it takes very smart people to write/understand/maintain spaghetti code...However it would be better to do things so simple/clean that even a caveman/woman could do maintenance. Also I get very bored/unmotivated having to go modify the same things cut/pasted in a few locations. Is this the type of skill that you need to learn by working with a serious software organization that has an emphasis on maintenance and maybe even an architect who designs a system architecture and reviews code? Could you really learn it by volunteering on an open source project (it seems to me that a full time programmer job is way more practice than a few hours a week on an open source project)? Is there some course where you can learn this? I can attest that graduate school and undergraduate school do not really emphasize clean software at all. They just teach the structures/algorithms and then send you off into the world to solve problems. Overall I think the first thing is learning to write clean/maintainable code within the bounds of the project in order to become a good programmer. Then the next thing is learning when you need to do a side project (like a framework) to make things more maintainable/clean even while you still deliver things for the deadline in order to become a great programmer. For example, you are making an SQL report and someone gives you 100 calculations for individual columns. At what point does it make sense to construct a domain specific language to encode the rules in simply and then generate all the SQL as opposed to cut/pasting the query from the table a bunch of times and then adjusting each query to do the appropriate calculations. This is the type of thing I would say a great programmer would know. He/she would maybe even know ways to avoid the domain specific language and to still do all the calculations without creating an unmaintainable mess or a ton of repetitive code to cut/paste everywhere.

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• Is there such a thing these days as programming in the small?

  - by WeNeedAnswers

  With all the programming languages that are out there, what exactly does it mean to program in the small and is it still possible, without the possibility of re-purposing to the large. The original article which mentions in the small was dated to 1975 and referred to scripting languages (as glue languages). Maybe I am missing the point, but any language that you can built components of code out of, I would regard to being able to handle "in the large". Is there a confusion on what Objects are and do they really figure as being mandatory to being able to handle "the large". Many have argued that this is the true meaning of "In the large" and that the concepts of objects are best fit for the job.

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• What to do if I hate C++ header files?

  - by BlaXpirit

  I was always confused about header files. They are so strange: you include .h file which doesn't include .cpp but .cpp are somehow compiled too. NOTE: I UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ABOUT THE HEADERS, PLEASE DON'T TELL ME I'M STUPID OR SHOULD USE OTHER LANGUAGE Recently I joined a team project, and of course, both .h and .cpp are used. I understand that this is very important, but I can't live with copy-pasting every function declaration in each of multiple classes we have. How do I handle the 2-file convention efficiently? Are there any tools to help with that, or automatically change one file that looks like example below to .h and .cpp? (specifically for MS VC++ 2010) class A { ... Type f(Type a,Type b) { //implementation here, not in another file! } ... }; Type f(Type a) { //implementation here } ...

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• Full Text Search Strategy For My Website

  - by Hosea146

  I have a website that allows users to search for items in various categories. Each category is a separate area (page) of my website. For example, some categories might be cars, bikes, books etc. At the moment a user has to search for an item by going to the page (for example, cars) and searching for the car they want. I would like to allow the user to search for anything on my site, from my main home page. At the moment, each page (category) has its own set of tables, and I don't really want to turn Full Text Search on for each table (20+ of them) and search each table individually when a search is done. This is going to be slow and tedious. What I'm thinking of doing is creating a single table that will hold all searchable information for each category of item (when an item is saved in its respective table, I would copy all searchable information over to my 'Search' table). I would then turn Full Text Search on for that table, and search that table. Does this sound reasonable? Is there a better way? I've never used Full Text Search before, so this is new to me.

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• engine for responsive gameplay

  - by zaftcoAgeiha

  Many games have been praised for its responsive gameplay, where each user action input correspond to a quick and precise character movement (eg: super meat boy, shank...) What makes those games responsive? and what prevents other games from achieving the same? How much of it is due to the game framework used to queue mouse/keyboard events and render/update the game and how much is attributed to better coding?

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