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Is it bad to have an "Obsessive Refactoring Disorder"?

- by Rachel

I was reading this question and realized that could almost be me. I am fairly OCD about refactoring someone else's code when I see that I can improve it. For example, if the code contains duplicate methods to do the same thing with nothing more than a single parameter changing, I feel I have to remove all the copy/paste methods and replace it with one generic one. Is this bad? Should I try and stop? I try not to refactor unless I can actually make improvements to the code performance or readability, or if the person who did the code isn't following our standard naming conventions (I hate expecting a variable to be local because of the naming standard, only to discover it is a global variable which has been incorrectly named)

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What resources do you recommend for learning more about TCP/IP, networking, and related areas?

- by mkelley33

As a relatively-new Python programmer, I'm finding more and more that networking as it relates to the web and web development is becoming increasingly important to understand. When I was an active C# ASP.NET programmer making smaller websites with less responsibility this knowledge seemed less important, since there was often a "networking" guy performing any tasks beyond acquiring a domain name for a client. Which books, websites, presentations, articles, or other resources would you recommend so that I best understand what's happening between the time a user types a URL and receives the rendered HTML? Thanks!

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Why are PHP function signatures so inconsistent?

- by Shamim Hafiz

I was going through some PHP functions and I could not help notice the following: <?php function foo(&$var) { } foo($a); // $a is "created" and assigned to null $b = array(); foo($b['b']); var_dump(array_key_exists('b', $b)); // bool(true) $c = new StdClass; foo($c->d); var_dump(property_exists($c, 'd')); // bool(true) ?> Notice the array_key_exists() and property_exists() function. In the first one, the property name(key for an array) is the first parameter while in the second one it is the second parameter. By intuition, one would expect them to have similar signature. This can lead to confusion and the development time may be wasted by making corrections of this type. Shouldn't PHP, or any language for that matter, consider making the signatures of related functions consistent?

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Is C and Python enough?

- by gruszczy

I am very proficient in Python (including Django), which I use for most tasks. I am also quite confident with C; I am maintaining small file system in userspace written in C. Yet when I am browsing job offers I see everywhere Java/C# and sometimes C++. I have coded profesionally in C++ for half a year in a gaming company, but I don't consider myself a pro. Also I simply despise Java and C#, which I would prefer not to touch ever. But it seems to me, that I am at very unfavorable position, when it comes to career. I am browsing careers.stackoverflow.com and I don't see and pure python or C offers. I would like to find a new job abroad in about 6 months. If I find some python offer, it means doing web development (not my favorite job). Does it mean, that I have to quickly start improving my C++ skills, if I wish to find a satisfying job? What would you suggest me? EDIT Learning new technologies is not an issue. Company I am working in is an integrator. Basically every new project requires learning new technologies, sometimes custom made. During last two years I was writing SQLs by hand, using LDAP, writing GUI in Qt, working on large scale DBMS prototype, making our internal help desk system use gsm modem or writing own report system. In previous job I had to learn from basics everything what I could about games development, because I knew nothing and chose this job only because of the challene it posed. I am all about embracing new technologies. I have used Java in the past and simply didn't like it. It's dull and boring. Doesn't let me do anything cool. I have recently seen some C# in action and seems similar. I don't like it. It's like German. I don't like speaking German.

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Builder Pattern: When to fail?

- by skiwi

When implementing the Builder Pattern, I often find myself confused with when to let building fail and I even manage to take different stands on the matter every few days. First some explanation: With failing early I mean that building an object should fail as soon as an invalid parameter is passed in. So inside the SomeObjectBuilder. With failing late I mean that building an object only can fail on the build() call that implicitely calls a constructor of the object to be built. Then some arguments: In favor of failing late: A builder class should be no more than a class that simply holds values. Moreover, it leads to less code duplication. In favor of failing early: A general approach in software programming is that you want to detect issues as early as possible and therefore the most logical place to check would be in the builder class' constructor, 'setters' and ultimately in the build method. What is the general concensus about this?

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Is there any practical use for the empty type in Common Lisp?

- by Pedro Rodrigues

The Common Lisp spec states that nil is the name of the empty type, but I've never found any situation in Common Lisp where I felt like the empty type was useful/necessary. Is it there just for completeness sake (and removing it wouldn't cause any harm to anyone)? Or is there really some practical use for the empty type in Common Lisp? If yes, then I would prefer an answer with code example. For example, in Haskell the empty type can be used when binding foreign data structures, to make sure that no one tries to create values of that type without using the data structure's foreign interface (although in this case, the type is not really empty).

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Javascript: Safely upload a client data file

- by Jeffrey Sweeney

I'm (still) working on a template-based XML editing program. It's a GUI-based XML editor that only allows users to add certain tags and attributes based off the requirements. You can see the current version here for an idea. Now, I'd like to allow users to upload their own data templates, but I'm concerned about potential XSS hacks. Currently, the template file is in Javascript object literal notation, which unsurprisingly is a security nightmare if the user can upload their own. I was thinking of using XML instead, but is there an even better alternative?

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What are some good Photo and Artwork APIs?

- by Ryan T

We had an idea for starting a ecards service and were looking into the possibility of populating our site using photo/artwork APIs. Due to legal reasons, Flikr probably won't work, although I've started to scour the web for other options. Basically we just need two functions the user should be able to browse the site's collection and choose a picture we should be able to recall and render a specific picture on our site. From there we should have no problem building our application. The main obstacle is that we're lacking content at the moment. I haven't been able to find too many examples of this being done, so I was wondering if anyone here might know people who have done something similar to what we're trying to do, or know of any leads that might be able to help us out. Suggestions for other APIs that are out there, or forums/communities that might be able to point us in the right direction are also welcome.

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What happened to GremCheck? Is there a viable replacement?

- by goober

I was a big fan of an app called "GremCheck" that was out a while back, that seems to have disappeared. It was a JavaScript included in a master page that placed an icon at the bottom of the page. It was used during testing. You could define your own tests, and the box could pop up per page and viewers would answer the questions you define (such as "Does this page have the correct title?", "Is the Grammar Correct", "Does the design look consistent"). This was useful for end-user tests groups and quick testing for developers if time was squeezed on full functional testing. Anyone know where GremCheck went, if I can get to it, and if there's anything out there that does something similar?

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Programming by dictation?

- by Andrew M

ie. you speak out the code, and someone else across the room types it in Anyone tried this? Obviously the person taking the dictation would need to be a coder too, so you didn't have to explain everything and go into tedious detail (not 'open bracket, new line...' but more like 'create a new class called myParser that takes three arguments, first one is...'). I thought of it because sometimes I'm too easily distracted at my computer. Surrounded by buttons, instant gratification a click away, the world at my fingertips. To get stuff done, I want to get away, write my code on paper. But that would mean losing access to necessary resources, and necessitate tedious typing-up later on. The solution? Dictate. Pros: no chance to check reddit, stackexchange, gmail, etc. code while you pace the room, lie down, play billiards, whatever train your brain to think more abstractedly (have to visualize things if you can't just see the screen) skip the tedious details (closing brackets etc.) the typist gets to shadow a more experienced programmer and learn how they work the typist can provide assistance/suggestions external pressure of typist expecting instructions, urging you to stay focussed Cons might be too hard might not work any better rather inefficient use of assisting programmer need to find/pay someone to do this

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How to explain pointers to a Java/VB programmer

- by Skeith

I am writing a game and my friend has offered to help me as it is a RPG and will take a long time to do the "scripting" bit of the game. The problem is IMO he's not that good a programmer :( (add flame war here). He has only programmed in Java and VB and keeps saying really stupid things to me like "Why don't you drag and drop an onClick event" to design my UI when I'm using DirectX. I tried explaining pointers to him but his response was, if it's just a variable that holds a memory address, why don't you just use an int? I create an instance of an attack class and give the creature a pointer to it so if several creatures use the same attack there is only one instance of it. He keeps saying why not put if statements in the creature class for every attack class and set true for the ones that are there. He has programmed mainly in VB and a little in Java just to learn OOP. How can I explain advanced C++ concepts like pointers and memory management to him? He just doesn't understand there are no super functions like form.show in C++.

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How to sync files between local dir and remote dir without using an IDE?

- by Moe Sweet

I'm running windows 7 and I have a working dir in my PC. I have my staging server that I only have FTPS (Explicit) access to. What I want... Everytime I change something in my local dir, I want my remote dir synced via FTPS method alone. SVN, CVS, GIT is not an option. I tried notepad++, eclipse and Netbeans and all couldn't work. In general, I don't want to rely on an IDE to achieve this task. And I don't want to install anything funny like rsync and I don't want to write scripts.

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Why PHP Function Naming so Inconsistent?

- by Shamim Hafiz

I was going through some PHP functions and I could not help notice the following: <?php function foo(&$var) { } foo($a); // $a is "created" and assigned to null $b = array(); foo($b['b']); var_dump(array_key_exists('b', $b)); // bool(true) $c = new StdClass; foo($c->d); var_dump(property_exists($c, 'd')); // bool(true) ?> Notice the array_key_exists() and property_exists() function. In the first one, the property name(key for an array) is the first parameter while in the second one it is the second parameter. By intuition, one would expect them to have similar signature. This can lead to confusion and the development time may be wasted by making corrections of this type. Shouldn't PHP, or any language for that matter, consider making the signatures of related functions consistent?

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Continuous integration - build Debug and Release every time?

- by Darian Miller

Is it standard practice when setting up a Continuous Integration server to build a Debug and Release version of each project? Most of the time developers code with a Debug mode project configuration set enabled and there could be different library path configurations, compiler defines, or other items configured differently between Debug/Release that would cause them to act differently. I configured my CI server to build both Debug & Release of each project and I'm wondering if I'm just overthinking it. My assumption is that I'll do this as long as I can get quick feedback and once that happens, then push the Release off to a nightly build perhaps. Is there a 'standard' way of approaching this?

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Scrum and Google Docs burndown chart

- by Michal Minicki

There is a tutorial on how to create a burndown chart for Scrum in the Google Docs application: http://www.scrumology.net/2011/05/03/how-to-create-a-burndown-chart-in-google-docs/ The problem I see with it though is, it has only a place to update progress once per sprint but the burndown is supposed to be updated with daily progress, right? How can one modify this chart to be able to put daily progress on it?

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Advice: The first-time interviewer's dilemna

- by shan23

I've been working in my first job for about 2 years now, and I've been "asked" to interview a potential teammate (whom I might have to mentor as well) on pretty short notice (2 days from now). Initially, I had been given a free rein(or so I thought, and hence agreed), but today, I've been told "not to pose bookish questions" - implying I can only ask basic programming puzzles and stuff similar to the 'fizbuzz' question. I strongly believe that not knowing basic algorithmic notations(the haziest ideas of space/time complexities) or the tiniest idea of regular expressions would make working with the guy very difficult for anyone. I know i'm asking for a lot here, but according to you, what would be a comprehensive way to test out the absolutely basic requirements of a CS guy(he has 2 yrs of exp) without sounding too pedantic/bookish etc ? It seems it would be legit to ask C questions/simple puzzles only....but I really do want to have something a bit different from "finding loops in linked lists" that has kind of become the opening statement of most techie interviews !! This is a face-to-face interview with about an hour or more of time - I looked at Steve's basic phone-screen questions, and I was wondering if there exists a guide on "basic face-to-face interview questions" that I can use(or compile from the community's answers here). EDIT: The position is mostly for a kernel level C programming job, with some smattering of C++ required for writing the test framework.

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What do you do when you realize your job requires you to do something out of your depth?

- by Billy ONeal

For a large software project recently, I was really out of my depth. And I did actually know this; and that the only reason I was employed was mostly a lack of other qualified candidates. The job was to build a large application on top of PHP/MySQL, a system I had little experience with. (I did advise the employer of this beforehand -- I've been spoiled by C# ASP.NET/MVC and MSSQL Server) The main reason I applied was location, location, location -- on campus jobs which actually have any programming component are relatively rare. For almost a year and a half I've slogged through this, and I think I can say I know (at least somewhat) what I'm doing now. I've made some mistakes, torn out some hair, and moved on. (I'm still working on this system nowadays, but I no longer feel completely lost) In the future though, I'd like to keep my personal and professional self a little healthier than what occurred in this case. So I'm curious -- what's the best way to handle a situation like this?

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Which Java web framework do you recommend for intranet webapp (not content website)?

- by pregzt

I'm about to start development of small purpose build intranet web application for small software vendor. It will be administration console of the server managing licenses for off-the-shelf software installed by users. There will be a few users who need to be able to sign in, issue a batch of license codes, revoke some, renew outdated, resolve issues, etc. Bear in mind that my customer requires Java for this solution. I'm seasoned Java programmer and before I used different frameworks to implement webapps, mainly Apache Struts in the past and Spring MVC recently. I was wondering what else could you recommend for such specific intranet webapp. I looked at using Google Web Toolkit (possibly with SmartGWT) Ext JS for fancy widgets in UI and REST back-end in SpringMVC SpringMVC with JQueryUI Could you please think of any piece of recommendation with regard to the choice I'm going to made?

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data handling with javascript

- by Vincent Warmerdam

Python has a very neat package called pandas which allows for quick data transformation; tables, aggregation, that sort of thing. A lot of these types of functionality can also be found in the python itertools module. The plyR package in R is also very similar. Usually one woud use this functionality to produce a table which is later visualized with a plot. I am personally very fond of d3, and I would like to allow the user to first indicate what type of data aggregation he wants on the dataset before it is visualized. The visualisation in question involves making a heatmap where the user gets to select the size of the bins of the heatmap beforehand (I want d3 to project this through leaflet). I want to visually select the ideal size of the bins for the heatmap. The way I work now is that I take the dataset, aggregate it with python and then manually load it in d3. This is a process that takes a lot of human effort and I was wondering if the data aggregation can be done through the javascript of the browser. I couldn't find a package for javascript specifically built for data, suggesting (to me) that this is a bad idea and that one should not use javascript for the data handling. Is there a good module/package for javascript to handle data aggregation? Is it a good/bad idea to do the data aggregation in javascript (performance wise)?

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Setter Validation can affect performance?

- by TiagoBrenck

Whitin a scenario where you use an ORM to map your entities to the DB, and you have setter validations (nullable, date lower than today validation, etc) every time the ORM get a result, it will pass into the setter to instance the object. If I have a grid that usually returns 500 records, I assume that for each record it passes on all validations. If my entity has 5 setter validations, than I have passed in 2.500 validations. Does those 2.500 validations will affect the performance? If was 15.000 validation, it will be different? In my opinion, and according to this answer (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4893558/calling-setters-from-a-constructor/4893604#4893604), setter validation is usefull than constructors validation. Is there a way to avoid unecessary validation, since I am safe that the values I send to DB when saving the entity wont change until I edit it on my system?

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Newbie seeking advice on programming in general

- by user974685

need some of you to remember back to a time when you might have been bad at programming... Been at my new job (as a software developer) for a couple of months now, passed probation period. Have very little programming experience (C++ only) and am currently working with asp.net MVC and silverlight. So there's a website the company has been working on and I am joining the effort to make it better, iron out bugs etc. The problem is - learning about a system/website which has already been made, via visual studio. I ALWAYS feel HUGELY overwhelmed, never knowing which part of this line should I look up, and generally having lots of trouble getting the big picture. Visual studio itself is something I'm finding it difficult to get to grips with, let alone the asp.net framework. I get the impression that because my coworkers have more experience than me, they are getting all the good jobs, and I am left with crap to do - stuff which is not even vaguely programming. Meaning they are learning/creating more, and I am learning/creating near nothing. I'm getting demoralised, and too scared to say anything. I'm not stupid, I've read and practiced plenty of the fundamental programming concepts...I'm just bloody scared of this damn framework. I look at it and just feel paralyzed. The result is that I keep asking the older veteran guy of questions, and he is getting irritated, and would rather give me easy/mindless/non programming jobs to avoid wasting time with helping me out. Then when I don't understand something, I'm hesitating about whether or not I should ask him yet, and trying to decide if it would be a waste of time. I'm the kind of person who picks things up slowly, but with a lot of attention to detail. The former I think is making me look incompetent though. Anyone get where I'm coming from please say something helpful....I'm scared of losing my job in a few months or something...

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How advanced are author-recognition methods?

- by Nick Rtz

From a written text by an author if a computer program analyses the text, how much can a computer program tell today about the author of some (long enough to be statistically significant) texts? Can the computer program even tell with "certainty" whether a man or a woman wrote this text based solely on the contents of the text and not an investigation such as ip numbers etc? I'm interested to know if there are algorithms in use for instance to automatically know whether an author was male or female or similar characteristics of an author that a computer program can decide based on analyses of the written text by an author. It could be useful to know before you read a message what a computer analyses says about the author, do you agree? If I for instance get a longer message from my wife that she has had an accident in Nigeria and the computer program says that with 99 % probability the message was written by a male author in his sixties of non-caucasian origin or likewise, or by somebody who is not my wife, then the computer program could help me investigate why a certain message differs in characteristics. There can also be other uses for instance just detecting outliers in a geographically or demographically bounded larger data set. Scam detection is the obvious use I'm thinking of but there could also be other uses. Are there already such programs that analyse a written text to tell something about the author based on word choice, use of pronouns, unusual language usage, or likewise?

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How to deal with colleagues refuse to follow practices?

- by Adrian Shum

I was discussing with another colleague about what we should be used when an DB entity is referring to another. I don't think there is any good reason to break the practice of putting the Primary Key in the referring entity. However, one of my colleague says: "You should use a surrogate key in the entity, but it is better to put the human-readable natural key in the referring entity. As long it is unique, it is fine and it is easier when you are doing support or maintenance job" I know it will works, but obviously it is not a good practice you are putting a non-PK unique column as "foreign key", just for gaining a bit of ease in writing SQL during support as we can have less table join. Though I mentioned the his approach is conceptual incorrect, and causing problem too practically etc, he seems rather trade off correctness in data model in exchange of ease of maintenance. And he said: "I know it is not good practice, but good practice is not golden rule" Honestly I feel frustrated when dealing with something like this. I know there are always case that we should break some rule or practice, but doubtless it is not such case now. What will you when you are facing situation like this? Please assume yourself being a senior developer which is expected to contribute in misc development direction and convention.

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Why was Objective-C popularity so sudden on TIOBE index?

- by l46kok

I'd like to ask a question that is pretty similar to the one being asked here, but for Objective-C. According to TIOBE rankings, the rise of popularity of Objective-C is unprecedented. This is obviously tied to the popularity of Apple products, but I feel like this might be a hasty conclusion to make since it doesn't really explain the stagnant growth of Java (1. There are way more Android O/S devices distributed worldwide, 2. Java is used in virtually every platform one can imagine) Now I haven't programmed in Objective-C at all, but I'd like to ask if there are any unique features or advantages about the language itself compared to other prevalent languages such as C++, Java, C#, Python etc. What are some other factors that contributed into the rise of Objective-C in this short span of time?

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"My stuff" vs. "Your stuff" in UI texts

- by JD Isaacks

When refering to a users stuff should you use My or Your, for example: My Cart | My Account | My Wishlist Or Your Cart | Your Account | Your Wishlist I found this article that argues for the use of your. It says flikr does this. It also says MySpace and MyYahoo are wrong. I also noticed today that Amazon uses the term Your. However, I have heard they are the masters at testing variations and finding the best one, so what you see on their site might be the best variation, or simply something they are currently testing. I personally like the way my looks better, but thats just my opinion. What do you think? What will hever the better impact on customers? Does it really even matter?

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