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  • Creative Technical Interview Questions for Developers

    - by John Shedletsky
    I do a good number of in-person technical interviews for new developers. I like to ask technical questions where I ask people to either code something up or develop an algorithm to solve a task. I feel my current repertoire is uninspired. In my opinion, the ideal interview question has these qualities: Multiple solutions, where some are obviously better than others, and some that involve subtle trade-offs (discussing tradeoffs is a good way to gauge someone's experience, in my opinion). Novelty - asking the "insert this element into a linked list" question is only good for weeding out people who never did their homework. Elegant - I like questions where the core problem isn't hidden in a lot of details. Everyone should be able to understand the problem, even if everyone can't solve it on the whiteboard. Elegant questions are difficult without involving undue amounts of "domain knowledge" or getting too narrow. Have you been on either side of an interview where someone (maybe you!) asked a particularly good programming or algorithms question?

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  • Who writes the words? A rant with graphs.

    - by Roger Hart
    If you read my rant, you'll know that I'm getting a bit of a bee in my bonnet about user interface text. But rather than just yelling about the way the world should be (short version: no UI text would suck), it seemed prudent to actually gather some data. Rachel Potts has made an excellent first foray, by conducting a series of interviews across organizations about how they write user interface text. You can read Rachel's write up here. She presents the facts as she found them, and doesn't editorialise. The result is insightful, but impartial isn't really my style. So here's a rant with graphs. My method, and how it sucked I sent out a short survey. Survey design is one of my hobby-horses, and since some smartarse in the comments will mention it if I don't, I'll step up and confess: I did not design this one well. It was potentially ambiguous, implicitly excluded people, and since I only really advertised it on Twitter and a couple of mailing lists the sample will be chock full of biases. Regardless, these were the questions: What do you do? Select the option that best describes your role What kind of software does your organization make? (optional) In your organization, who writes the text on your software user interfaces? (for example: button names, static text, tooltips, and so on) Tick all that apply. In your organization who is responsible for user interface text? Who "owns" it? The most glaring issue (apart from question 3 being a bit broken) was that I didn't make it clear that I was asking about applications. Desktop, mobile, or web, I wouldn't have minded. In fact, it might have been interesting to categorize and compare. But a few respondents commented on the seeming lack of relevance, since they didn't really make software. There were some other issues too. It wasn't the best survey. So, you know, pinch of salt time with what follows. Despite this, there were 100 or so respondents. This post covers the overview, and you can look at the raw data in this spreadsheet What did people do? Boring graph number one: I wasn't expecting that. Given I pimped the survey on twitter and a couple of Tech Comms discussion lists, I was more banking on and even Content Strategy/Tech Comms split. What the "Others" specified: Three people chipped in with Technical Writer. Author, apparently, doesn't cut it. There's a "nobody reads the instructions" joke in there somewhere, I'm sure. There were a couple of hybrid roles, including Tech Comms and Testing, which sounds gruelling and thankless. There was also, an Intranet Manager, a Creative Director, a Consultant, a CTO, an Information Architect, and a Translator. That's a pretty healthy slice through the industry. Who wrote UI text? Boring graph number two: Annoyingly, I made this a "tick all that apply" question, so I can't make crude and inflammatory generalizations about percentages. This is more about who gets involved in user interface wording. So don't panic about the number of developers writing UI text. First off, it just means they're involved. Second, they might be good at it. What? It could happen. Ours are involved - they write a placeholder and flag it to me for changes. Sometimes I don't make any. It's also not surprising that there's so much UX in the mix. Some of that will be people taking care, and crafting an understandable interface. Some of it will be whatever text goes on the wireframe making it into production. I'm going to assume that's what happened at eBay, when their iPhone app purportedly shipped with the placeholder text "Some crappy content goes here". Ahem. Listing all 17 "other" responses would make this post lengthy indeed, but you can read them in the raw data spreadsheet. The award for the approach that sounds the most like a good idea yet carries the highest risk of ending badly goes to whoever offered up "External agencies using focus groups". If you're reading this, and that actually works, leave a comment. I'm fascinated. Who owned UI text Stop. Bar chart time: Wow. Let's cut to the chase, and by "chase", I mean those inflammatory generalizations I was talking about: In around 60% of cases the person responsible for user interface text probably lacks the relevant expertise. Even in the categories I count as being likely to have relevant skills (Marketing Copywriters, Content Strategists, Technical Authors, and User Experience Designers) there's a case for each role being unsuited, as you'll see in Rachel's blog post So it's not as simple as my headline. Does that mean that you personally, Mr Developer reading this, write bad button names? Of course not. I know nothing about you. It rather implies that as a category, the majority of people looking after UI text have neither communication nor user experience as their primary skill set, and as such will probably only be good at this by happy accident. I don't have a way of measuring those frequency of those accidents. What the Others specified: I don't know who owns it. I assume the project manager is responsible. "copywriters" when they wish to annoy me. the client's web maintenance person, often PR or MarComm That last one chills me to the bone. Still, at least nobody said "the work experience kid". You can see the rest in the spreadsheet. My overwhelming impression here is of user interface text as an unloved afterthought. There were fewer "nobody" responses than I expected, and a much broader split. But the relative predominance of developers owning and writing UI text suggests to me that organizations don't see it as something worth dedicating attention to. If true, that's bothersome. Because the words on the screen, particularly the names of things, are fundamental to the ability to understand an use software. It's also fascinating that Technical Authors and Content Strategists are neck and neck. For such a nascent discipline, Content Strategy appears to have made a mark on software development. Or my sample is skewed. But it feels like a bit of validation for my rant: Content Strategy is eating Tech Comms' lunch. That's not a bad thing. Well, not if the UI text is getting done well. And that's the caveat to this whole post. I couldn't care less who writes UI text, provided they consider the user and don't suck at it. I care that it may be falling by default to people poorly disposed to doing it right. And I care about that because so much user interface text sucks. The most interesting question Was one I forgot to ask. It's this: Does your organization have technical authors/writers? Like a lot of survey data, that doesn't tell you much on its own. But once we get a bit dimensional, it become more interesting. So taken with the other questions, this would have let me find out what I really want to know: What proportion of organizations have Tech Comms professionals but don't use them for UI text? Who writes UI text in their place? Why this happens? It's possible (feasible is another matter) that hundreds of companies have tech authors who don't work on user interfaces because they've empirically discovered that someone else, say the Marketing Copywriter, is better at it. And once we've all finished laughing, I'll point out that I've met plenty of tech authors who just aren't used to thinking about users at the point of need in the way UI text and embedded user assistance require. If you've got what I regard, perhaps unfairly, as the bad kind of tech author - the old-school kind with the thousand-page pdf and the grammar obsession - if you've got one of those then you probably are better off getting the UX folk or the copywriters to do your UI text. At the very least, they'll derive terminology from user research.

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  • In the Aggregate: How Will We Maintain Legacy Systems? [closed]

    - by Jim G.
    NEW YORK - With a blast that made skyscrapers tremble, an 83-year-old steam pipe sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable. July 2007 Story About a Burst Steam Pipe in Manhattan We've heard about software rot and technical debt. And we've heard from the likes of: "Uncle Bob" Martin - Who warned us about "the consequences of making a mess". Michael C. Feathers - Who gave us guidance for 'Working Effectively With Legacy Code'. So certainly the software engineering community is aware of these issues. But I feel like our aggregate society does not appreciate how these issues can plague working systems and applications. As Steve McConnell notes: ...Unlike financial debt, technical debt is much less visible, and so people have an easier time ignoring it. If this is true, and I believe that it is, then I fear that governments and businesses may defer regular maintenance and fortification against hackers until it is too late. [Much like NYC and the steam pipes.] My Question: Is there a way that we can avoid the software equivalent of NYC and the steam pipes?

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  • VMWare Server - Writing files to virtual hard drive performance

    - by Ardman
    We have just moved our infrastructure from physical servers to virtual machines. Everything is running great and we are happy with the result of the move. We have identified one problem, and that is reading/writing performance. We have an application that compiles files and writes to disk. This is considerably slower on the new virtual machines compared to the physical machines. Is there a performance bottleneck when writing to a virtual hard drive compared to a physical hard drive?

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  • VMWare - Writing files to virtual hard drive performance

    - by Ardman
    We have just moved our infrastructure from physical servers to virtual machines. Everything is running great and we are happy with the result of the move. We have identified one problem, and that is reading/writing performance. We have an application that compiles files and writes to disk. This is considerably slower on the new virtual machines compared to the physical machines. Is there a performance bottleneck when writing to a virtual hard drive compared to a physical hard drive?

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  • Drag-to-disc CD or DVD writing software?

    - by Jeremy Rudd
    I just came to know about packet writing, which enables files to be written to disc one-by-one, instead of "burning" a whole disc all at once. After some initial searches all I've come up with is: Roxio Creator - includes DirectCD Nero Suite - includes InCD I'm looking for a functional CD/DVD packet writing software for Windows, without the extra bloat. Do you know of any?

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  • SQL Server Certification - a database platform primer for your career path

    - by ssqa.net
    When you need to upgrade your knowledge then training is required, at the same time certifications will help you to keep up on what you have learned! There is a big debate on the web about whether certifications are important in your career or not, the bottomline is if you do not know the stuff or unable to answer few basic technical questions, it does'nt matter how many certifications you have then you will not get the job, well I'm not starting the same discussion here. But in the recent...(read more)

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  • Revision Methodology for Developer Post as Entry Level

    - by Demla Pawan
    I had revised all basic concepts of my computer science ciriculum like: Core Java(basics),SQL(basics),C++(basics),XHTML,PHP(basics),Datastructures(basics) and what I need to do,and How to do, as their may be fault in my preparation methods for revision session's, So can Anybody suggest Methodology to revise those technical things,to which you are not in touch at present, but you can write basic programs or have used 1-2 years ago. And also can U suggest some Quick revision links on Net for various technologies mentioned above.

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  • Idea for a user friendly/non technical RAD tool for performing queries and reports on Database

    - by pierocampanelli
    I am investigating for a tool that allows a user to perform in a user friendly way queries to database for extracting datas and creating reports. Primary requirement is that we can't know queries users are going to do. So we need to design a flexible UI allowing them to specify in a non technical way. My question is: do you know any tool that does something similar? Have you some inspiring user interface?

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  • Books on hiring technical people?

    - by Mark Gibaud
    I've just finished reading "Smart, and Gets Things Done" and while entertaining and byte-sized ;-) I found it a little US-centric and slightly less applicable to workplaces that are "only" above-average instead of rockstar--at-work places. I'm looking for more books on how to hire technical people. The only other one that has been recommended is Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers... Can anyone recommend any more?

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  • What was your the most impressive technical programming achievement performed to impress a romantic

    - by DVK
    OK, so the archetypal human story is for a guy to go out and impress the girl with some wonderful achievement like slaying a dragon or building a monument or conquering neighboring tribe. This being enlightened 21st century on SO, let's morph this into a: StackOverflower performing a feat of programming to impress a romantic interest. There are two ways to do this: Technical achievement: Impressing a person with suitable background/understanding of programming with actual coding powerss you displayed. A dumb movie example would be that kid in "Hackers" move showing off his hacking skills in front of Angeline Jolie. Artistic achievement: Impressing a person with a result of running said code, whether they understand just how incredible the code itself is. An example is the animated ANSI rose (for a guy who actually wrote the ANSI code) This question is only about the first kind (technical achievements) - e.g. the person of interest was presented with impressive code/design that (s)he was able to properly appreciate. Rules (what doesn't qualify): The target audience must have been a person of romantic interest (prospective or present significant other or random hook-up). E.g. showing your program to your sister who's also a software developer doesn't count. The achievement must have been done specifically with the goal to impress such a person. However, it is OK if the achievement was done to impress a generic qualifying person, not someone specific. Although... if you write code to impress girls in general, I'd say "get a better idea of the opposite sex" The achievement must have been done with the goal of impressing the person. In other words, if you would have done it without romantic interest's knowledge anyway, it doesn't count. As examples, the following does not count: programming for your job. Programming for a coding contest. Open Source program that you'd have done anyway. The precise nature of the awesomeness of the achievement is somewhat irrelevant - from learning entire J2EE in 2 days to writing fancy game engine to implementing Python compiler in LOGO. As long as it's programming/software development related. The achievement should preferably be something other people would rank highly as well. If your date was impressed with your skill at calculating Fibonacci sequence without recursive function calls, it doesn't mean most developers will be. But it does mean you need to start finding better things to do on dates ;)

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  • As3: Plotting text as in technical drawings

    - by Cambiata
    Hi! Flash/Actionscript 3 lack the possibility to "draw" text to a displayobject graphics - a textfield has to be created, added and set. This is rather clumsy and time consuming. In the wait for simple and stable alternatives (for example http://lab.polygonal.de/2009/12/15/font-rendering-with-the-fp10-drawing-api/), is there a class or library for simply plotting text strings using graphical primitives (lines), something like the text is "drawn" on plotted technical drawings?

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  • Is speed reading good for technical / programming books?

    - by Ekkapop
    I will register as graduate student, and my friend has suggested I attend a speed reading class. (He is MBA student). I don't know whether it is good to attend this course or not, but at this moment almost of my textbook required time to think about its content. Has anyone applied speed reading with technical books? Is it good to attend this course?

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  • Resources on technical GUI design

    - by Thomas Lötzer
    Hi, I am looking for recommendations on resources (both books and websites) on designing GUI applications. By designing I mean the technical design (when and how to use data binding, when should MVC/MVP be used, what functionality should go into the model, the view, the controller/presenter, how can different parts of the UI best be kept in sync ...), not the screen design of which button goes where or how the interaction with the user should take place. Thanks, Thomas

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  • How to do more programming/technical stuff?

    - by Bell
    I working as an IT consultant and I am currently doing functional stuff like requirements gathering, documentations and writing test specs etc. I kind of sick of this kind of job scope and wish to do more programming/ design / technical stuff. Because I get more satisfaction doings the things rather than telling other to do Anyone in the same dilemma as me and any suggestions on how to get on with working life?

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  • SDK for writing DVD's

    - by Matt Warren
    I need to add DVD writing functionality to an application I'm working on. However it needs to be able to write out files that are being grabbed "live" from a camera, over a long period of time. I can't wait until all the files are captured before I start writing them to the DVD, I need to write them out in chunks as I go along. I've looked at IMAPI v2, but the main problems seems to be that you need to point it to all the files you plan to write out to disk before you start the burning process. I know it has to concept of "sessions", which means you can write to the DVD in several parts, before you finally "close" it. But I was wondering if there were any other DVD writing SDK's that allow you to be constantly writing files to a DVD and in particular files that are only in memory. It would be more efficient if I didn't have to write the captured images out to hard before they are burned to DVD. The solution needs to work under .NET on Windows XP and vista

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  • Print Any Document Type with AutoVue Document Print Services

    - by [email protected]
    The newly released AutoVue Document Print Services allow development organizations to automate and process high volume printing operations, of both business and technical document types, within their broader enterprise applications. For many organizations, their printing processes are challenged by the fact that they can only print a small subset of the documents required by their enterprise users. By integrating AutoVue Document Print Services, and deploying them in conjunction with their existing print server solutions, organizations can address that challenge and automate the printing of virtually any document type required in any business process, greatly extending the value of their print server solutions, and improving business processes and workforce productivity. For further details, check out the AutoVue Document Print Services datasheet.

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  • Associate Tech Support to Code Development [on hold]

    - by Abhay
    I have been selected for the first phase selection criteria of a company called CITRIX for the role of Associate Tech Support. Now, we have to undergo a 3 months in-depth technical training (most probably no certificate) and will only get the job on getting through the final test which includes selecting 50% of the total selected candidates in the first phase. Actually, I want to get in the field of coding and there lies my passion. Is there any way i can into any development department of this or any other company using my current profile which i can get into ?? Actually, i was wondering whether to go for the training or go for any java based course (6 months) for certification ??? Please note : The Company is not asking for any bonds

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  • How much to charge for being available for support?

    - by Tvrdy
    I am working in small development firm, our main products are ASP.NET and SQL server based. We are deploying a new version of our product and client wants 4-hour response time technical support. Some of this support time will fall outside regular business hours and our boss asked us how much should we charge for being available outside regular business hours? Is it 50% of our hourly fee, 20% ? Any suggestion is appreciated, he is pushing us to speak up and I don't have any idea. I don't want to underprice my free time. Thanks.

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