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• Am I deluding myself? Business analyst transition to programmer

  - by Ryan

  Current job: Working as the lead business analyst for a Big 4 firm, leading a team of developers and testers working on a large scale re-platforming project (4 onshore dev, 4 offshore devs, several onshore/offshore testers). Also work in a similar capacity on other smaller scale projects. Extent of my role: Gathering/writing out requirements, creating functional specifications, designing the UI (basically mapping out all front-end aspects of the system), working closely with devs to communicate/clarify requirements and come up with solutions when we hit roadblocks, writing test cases (and doing much of the testing), working with senior management and key stakeholders, managing beta testers, creating user guides and leading training sessions, providing key technical support. I also write quite a few macros in Excel using VBA (several of my macros are now used across the entire firm, so there are maybe around 1000 people using them) and use SQL on a daily basis, both on the SQL compact files the program relies on, our SQL Server data and any Access databases I create. The developers feel that I am quite good in this role because I understand a lot about programming, inherent system limitations, structure of the databases, etc so it's easier for me to communicate ideas and come up with suggestions when we face problems. What really interests me is developing software. I do a fair amount of programming in VBA and have been wanting to learn C# for awhile (the dev team uses C# - I review code occasionally for my own sake but have not had any practical experience using it). I'm interested in not just the business process but also the technical side of things, so the traditional BA role doesn't really whet my appetite for the kind of stuff I want to do. Right now I have a few small projects that managers have given me and I'm finding new ways to do them (like building custom Access applications), so there's a bit here and there to keep me interested. My question is this: what I would like to do is create custom Excel or Access applications for small businesses as a freelance business (working as a one-man shop; maybe having an occasional contractor depending on a project's complexity). This would obviously start out as a part-time venture while I have a day job, but eventually become a full-time job. Am I deluding myself to thinking I can go from BA/part-time VBA programmer to making a full-time go of a freelance business (where I would be starting out just writing custom Excel/Access apps in VBA)? Or is this type of thing not usually attempted until someone gains years of full-time programming experience? And is there even a market for these types of applications amongst small businesses (and maybe medium-sized) businesses?

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• Of which bad practice is require calling functions in order a sign?

  - by stijn

  Sometimes I find myself writing comments on class methods like this: class A : public Base { public: /** * Sets variable; * should be called before ImplementsInterfaceMtehod(), * else has no effect. */ void SetSomeVariable( var_type value ); virtual void ImplementsInterfaceMethod(); } The callers of Base::ImplementsInterfaceMethod obviously do not know about the variable, and should not. But the users of A should set the variable if they want it to take effect. It is not required to set the variable (else it could be a parameter for the constructor), so I cannot throw exceptions in ImplementsInterfaceMethod if it is not set. Is this a sign of some typical bad practice? Is there a better way than writing a comment as shown to deal with this?

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar's Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a 'perfect storm' of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one's work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven't far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it's a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it's more important not to let such fears lead to writer's block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn't always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what's involved in getting an application that is 'done' ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we'd love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to 'throw your hat into the ring', drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• How do you stop yourself from programming?

  - by dan

  Lately I've started earning enough off my software to not have to do consulting to support myself. So I work full time designing and writing my own software products. The problem is that there are no boundaries between my work and my life any more. When I mostly did consulting, I was weary enough of work at the end of the workday to go home and do other things. But now, I sit down to program in the morning, and before I know it it's 11pm and I'm still writing software and not bored or tired at all. I have to force myself to go to sleep. I feel happy and fulfilled, but objectively, I know I need more balance and variety in my life. Any tips or suggestions on how to pull yourself away from the console?

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• Windows2Linux Porting

  Recently I faced one very interesting task. I had to port an application from one platform (Windows) to another (Linux). It is an interesting topic. First, knowledge of several platforms and writing the code for them is a good experience for every developer. Secondly, writing an application for different platforms makes it widespread and needed by many. So, I would like to share my impressions concerning this process. This article is intended for everybody who wants to write a cross-platform application.

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• Case convention- Why the variation between languages?

  - by Jason

  Coming from a Java background, I'm very used to camelCase. When writing C, using the underscore wasn't a big adjustment, since it was only used sparingly when writing simple Unix apps. In the meantime, I stuck with camelCase as my style, as did most of the class. However, now that I'm teaching myself C# in preparation for my upcoming Usability Design class in the fall, the PascalCase convention of the language is really tripping me up and I'm having to rely on intellisense a great deal in order to make sure the correct API method is being used. To be honest, switching to the PascalCase layout hasn't quite sunk in the muscle memory just yet, and that is frustrating from my point of view. Since C# and Java are considered to be brother languages, as both are descended from C++, why the variation in the language conventions? Was it a personal decision by the creators based on their comfort level, or was it just to play mindgames with new introductees to the language?

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• My father wants to learn PHP-MySQL to port his application. What I should do to help?

  - by adijiwa

  My father is a doctor/physician. About 15 years ago he started writing an application to handle his patient's medical records in his clinic at home. The app has the ability to input patient's medical records (obviously), search patients by some criteria, manage medicine stocks, output receipt to printer, and some more CRUDs. He wrote it in dBase III+. A few years later he migrated to FoxPro 2.6 for DOS and finally in a few more years he rewrote his app in Visual FoxPro 9. And now (actually two years ago) he wants to rewrite it in PHP, but he don't know how. The Visual FoxPro version of this app is still running and has no serious problem except sometimes it performs slowly. Usually there are 1-5 concurrent users. The binary and database files are shared via windows share. He did all the coding as a hobby and for free (it is for his own clinic after all). He also use this app in two other offices he managed. Some reasons of why he wants to rewrite in PHP-MySQL: He wants to learn Easier to deploy (?) Easier client setup, need only a browser What should I do to help my father? How should he start? I explored some options: I let my father learn PHP and MySQL (and HTML (and JavaScript?)) from scratch. I create/bundle framework. I'm thinking on bundling CodeIgniter and a web UI framework (any suggestion?) especially to reduce effort on writing presentation codes. What do you think? tl;dr My father (a doctor) wants to rewrite his Visual FoxPro app in PHP-MySQL. He knows very little of PHP and MySQL but he wants to learn. What should I do to help? How should he start? Some facts: My father is 50 years old. His first encounter with a PC is in early 1980s. It was IBM PC with Intel 8088. He knows BASIC. He taught me how to use DOS and how to program with BASIC. The other language he knows fairly well is dBase/FoxPro. I got my bachelor CS degree last year. I know the internals of my father's app because sometime he wants me to help him writing his app. Sorry for my english.

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• guest blogging, recipricle links & nofollow

  - by sam

  When writing a guest blog for a site and in the blog post i write i link back to my self, that counts as an imbound link. Writing something on my blog, like "have a look at this post i wrote for _" made that a link the links would be recipricle, correct ? thus cancling each other out.. If i was to to make the link back to my article a nofollow link then would i still get the link juice ? If i write guest blog post and the site want to also write a guest blog on my site later on whats the best way to handle it as wont these both cancel each other out and have no effect ?

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• Learning low latency C++ and Java?

  - by user997112

  I'm currently in a role where I dont get to write any C++ or Java. However, the role is good because provides me with exposure to the business side (i'm interested in finance). Eventually I would like to get into high frequency trading infrastructure. Therefore, outside of work hours i'd like to maximise the knowledge I can gain about high performance Java and C++. I already have the Java Performance Tuning book, which is ok but not impressive. Can people recommend anymore latency blogs/books/websites for learning about making C++/C/Java or even Unix very fast? Or perhaps making the network parts of the OS (if re-writing Unix components) faster? EDIT: Or perhaps we could make this THE thread for advice on writing fast code

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• Good Blog Software

  - by Darren Young

  Hi, Inspired from an earlier question regarding starting a blog, I have decided to start one myself. I only have 4 months commercial experience in C#, but I am hoping to use my blog as a tool for further learning. Maybe such things as researching and writing about a different design pattern each week, a tricky aspect of C# that I don't yet fully understand, etc, etc. My question is, can somebody recommend any good blog sites suited for writing text and code? Is there any that allow the use of code tags or similar for formatting? Thanks,

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• What to learn for a pure practical developer to get better?

  - by ChrisRamakers

  I'm a self taught developer that currently has more than enough experience to hold up against my colleagues waving with their degrees, yet I feel that I'm lacking some important skills to advance further into being a senior level professional in a leading role. More specific in the engineering, planning and designing aspect of software. I've touched the surface of UML, ERM/ERD, have experienced both waterfall and scrum projectmanagement, ... yet I feel there is something missing as every time I start on a new project I don't know where to begin. Should I start diagramming and how? should I start writing an xx page document describing the project on a technical level first, should I dive head first into writing the first tests and code or pseudo-code? I would like to know what, in my case, would be the best way forward, to learn how I can tackle this problem in the future and get better at leading and starting a project. There is not much i don't know about my technical tools and languages but when it gets abstract i'm in trouble.

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• How can a programmer refine their skills in non-visual ways?

  - by Martin Josefsson

  I feel like when I am not writing, I am reading. When I come home from my programming job I write and read software and about software. The problem is though, both reading and writing requires my eyes to be focused. That doesn't work when I'm biking, cooking shopping for groceries. Sometime I use text-to-speech programs to listen to blogs, but I feel like there could be more. What ways can a software developer learn more without requiring eye focus? How to blind coders learn the craft?

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• How often should saving to disk occur in an automatically saving text editor?

  - by lelandmiller

  I am developing a simple text editor and would like the application to save the text automatically. In other words, the user would never have to press a save button. I have seen other applications that do this, and was wondering how often is it safe to write files to disk? From a user experience standpoint, it seems that the more frequently this happens the better, but I am worried about performance and possible disk wear (especially on writes to SSDs). It seems like the operating system disk caching might help avoid these problems, but I also don't know if its safe to rely on that for an application like this. I was planning on writing the whole document to disk at each save, but this just seems terribly inefficient if the OS ends up writing it to disk to frequently, but relying on program unload may lose data in the case of a crash. Does anyone have any experience dealing with this that might be able to help?

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• Can you recommend a good test plan template?

  - by Ethel Evans

  Can you recommend a good test plan template for an agile testing team? I know there are templates for testing on the web and have already looked at some found by search engines, but I could really use something lightweight and something that has already been tried by skilled testers and is known to work well. Many templates I've seen give me the feeling that writing test documents is expected to be a third of the work that those testers are doing, but my team really prefers to use less documentation and more actual test writing. We use a wiki for documentation, so an approach that lends itself to living documents would be great. My hope is that using a more structured approach to test planning will increase the usefulness of my test plan while reducing the effort to create it by allowing me to think about the tests, and not the format and structure of the plan. My workplace does not have something already on hand, so whatever I start doing might be adopted by the company.

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• Why not write all tests at once when doing TDD? [closed]

  - by RichK

  Possible Duplicate: Why not write all tests at once when doing TDD? The Red - Green - Refactor cycle for TDD is well established and accepted. We write one failing unit test and make it pass as simply as possible. What are the benefits to this approach over writing many failing unit tests for a class and make them all pass in one go. The test suite still protects you against writing incorrect code or making mistakes in the refactoring stage, and code coverage should be just as high, so what's the harm? Sometimes it's easier to write all the tests first as a form of 'brain dump' to quickly write down all the expected behavior in one go.

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• Which database to use for quickly and pygtk

  - by usher

  I'm writing application using quickly Pygtk and glade. this application should have database connection (such as MySQL) for reading and writing data from the local or outsourcing machine \ server. However, in my machine there is MySQL installed, but when releasing the app it sould be installed on another ubuntu machine, which may not have mysql and moreover not the same database with the required database name and structure.... So my questions are: Is it a good choice using mysql as database 1.2 If not what is? Is it posible to embeding mysql or other database program during the installation from ubuntu software center? 2.2 If it's posible: hwo(any tutorial?) Where to store secure data outside the mysql (or whatever) for conecting the database every time a user launch the application

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• Which is more effective in coding? Reducing line of code and execution of code?

  - by Ayyappan.Anbalagan

  I have this doubt many years. I am wring some code to achieve some functionality. For example I am writing 20 lines of code to achieve the functionality and my co worker writing the code for the same functionality with just 5 lines. Since he used some looping statement to achieve that, but that code will execute around 30 to 50 times. So which is best way of coding? As per my knowledge I always try to reduce coding length as much I can.

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• Why not write all tests at once when doing TDD?

  - by RichK

  The Red - Green - Refactor cycle for TDD is well established and accepted. We write one failing unit test and make it pass as simply as possible. What are the benefits to this approach over writing many failing unit tests for a class and make them all pass in one go. The test suite still protects you against writing incorrect code or making mistakes in the refactoring stage, so what's the harm? Sometimes it's easier to write all the tests first as a form of 'brain dump' to quickly write down all the expected behavior in one go.

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• Is there a repository of game logic algorithms?

  - by New2This

  I'm writing my first 2D game, and I'm writing some tracking logic for the computer enemies. Basic follow-the-player tracking was easy, but ineffectual. Too easy to escape. So I'm trying to implement some more sophisticated flanking and other tactics, and (as expected) it's pretty tricky. This is a topic I know nothing about. I'm going to keep trying, but it'd be awesome to have some examples or tips to work off of. Is there any place that has a decent set of pseudocode AI algorithms, or tips or advice on the subject, e.g. for 2D tracking?

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• Checking the File is write Protected (Read only) – VC++ MFC

  While writing some contents into a file through code, you need to check whether the file is already exist and is read only.

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• More complex learning source for C# .NET [closed]

  - by Leron

  By complex I don't mean more difficult but including a larger area of possibilities cover. I've started a few years ago with PHP and the transition from learning the syntax of the language and the basic logical structures to working with databases, including JavaScript and so on was very short. And now I'm more interested in studying working with languages like Java/C#. Recently I spend a lot of time reading and writing some simple console applications, I've read almost 2K pages for C# programming and still don't know how to connect to database for example. Just for info I'm interested in web development, socket programing and live streaming, don't know if I'm exceeding myself too much writing that but despite that I want to find some books/internet sources where I can extend my current knowledge of C#/.NET, start using database queries, maybe try something more complicated webwise.

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• What are steps in making an operating system in C ? [duplicate]

  - by ps06756

  This question already has an answer here: Compiler/OS Design - Where to start [closed] 3 answers I am trying to make an my own OS. This is for educational purpose only, so that I get to understand the internals as well as get a good idea of low level programming. I have some prior application development experience in C#/python/C++/C. I am a noob in assembly language(very less experience and knowledge). I understand that in writing an operating system,we can't go without assembly language. Currently, I have just printed a string in assembly language in the boot sector using qemu and BIOS interrupts. What I want is that, can someone specifically point out the steps that I need to follow to make my operating systems run C programs. So that, I can start writing my OS in C. Any other piece of advice to help a newbie, regarding the same is also welcome. Although, I have looked into many os development related tutorials/websites, I can't seem to find this information anywhere.

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• What is the best way to INSERT a large dataset into a MySQL database (or any database in general)

  - by Joe

  As part of a PHP project, I have to insert a row into a MySQL database. I'm obviously used to doing this, but this required inserting into 90 columns in one query. The resulting query looks horrible and monolithic (especially inserting my PHP variables as the values): INSERT INTO mytable (column1, colum2, ..., column90) VALUES ('value1', 'value2', ..., 'value90') and I'm concerned that I'm not going about this in the right way. It also took me a long (boring) time just to type everything in and testing writing the test code will be equally tedious I fear. How do professionals go about quickly writing and testing these queries? Is there a way I can speed up the process?

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• 27 vidéos techniques des Qt DevDays 2005, 2006 et 2008 sont désormais rendues publiques par Qt eLear

  L'équipe eLearning de Qt a depuis quelques temps cherché à récupérer des vidéos techniques issues des conférences des anciens QtDevDays dans l'optique de les faire partager à tout le monde. C'est aujourd'hui chose faite avec la publication en ligne de 27 présentations techniques ce qui correspond à 22h30min de vidéos. Les sujets traités sont toujours valides aujourd'hui, même si le framework a évolué au fil des années. 2005 :All About Qt Widgets Effective Graphics Programming Practical Model/View Programming Threaded Programming with Qt - Good Practise Writing Custom Styles with QStyle Writing plugin applications with Qt 2006 :Advanced Item Views...

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• Site Suspended -message at my site and Facebook fan page? [on hold]

  - by Jere_Sumell

  I'm writing blog at Wordpress, and bought Domain park for it for a shorter web address for my readers who I redirect to my blog. Yesterday there was a first time message titled "Account Suspended due to registration information verification failure". I've never changed my contact information at my Web Host, and my contact Information has not been changed. I have Fan page on Facebook too, that my readers' could follow my blog easier, and there was same kind of message on my Facebook site too. Can you tell me, what's going on? I've not been broking any terms of use at my host, and writing good language on my blog. I think it's a some kind of hacker -thing? Is there nothing else to do than contact my web host that they can fix the problem? Can they? I Contacted last night my host, but got no answer yet.

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