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  • Which web site gives the most accurate indication of a programmer's capabilities?

    - by Jerry Coffin
    If you were hiring programmers, and could choose between one of (say) the top 100 coders on topcoder.com, or one of the top 100 on stackoverflow.com, which would you choose? At least to me, it would appear that topcoder.com gives a more objective evaluation of pure ability to solve problems and write code. At the same time, despite obvious technical capabilities, this person may lack any hint of social skills -- he may be purely a "lone coder", with little or no ability to help/work with others, may lack mentoring ability to help transfer his technical skills to others, etc. On the other hand, stackoverflow.com would at least appear to give a much better indication of peers' opinion of the coder in question, and the degree to which his presence and useful and helpful to others on the "team". At the same time, the scoring system is such that somebody who just throws up a lot of mediocre (or even poor answers) will almost inevitably accumulate a positive total of "reputation" points -- a single up-vote (perhaps just out of courtesy) will counteract the effects of no fewer than 5 down-votes, and others are discouraged (to some degree) from down-voting because they have to sacrifice their own reputation points to do so. At the same time, somebody who makes little or no technical contribution seems unlikely to accumulate a reputation that lands them (even close to) the top of the heap, so to speak. So, which provides a more useful indication of the degree to which this particular coder is likely to be useful to your organization? If you could choose between them, which set of coders would you rather have working on your team?

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  • Should a project start with the client or the server?

    - by MadBurn
    Pretty simple question with a complex answer. Should a project start with the client or the server, and why? Where should a single programmer start a client/server project? What are the best practices and what are the reasons behind them? If you can't think of any, what reasons do you use to justify why you would choose to start one before the other? Personally, I'm asking this question because I'm finishing up specs for a project I will be doing for myself on the side for fun. But now that I'm finishing this phase, I'm wondering "ok, now where do I begin?" Since I've never done a project like this by myself, I'm not sure where I should start. In this project, my server will be doing all the heavy lifting and the client will just be sending updates, getting information from the server, and displaying it. But, I don't want that to sway the answer as I'm looking for more of an in depth and less specific answer that would apply to any project I begin in the future.

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  • How much time takes to a new language like D to become popular? [closed]

    - by Adrián Pérez
    I was reading about new languages for me to learn and I find very good comments about D, like it's the new C or what C++ should have been. Knowing that many people say wonders about the language, I'm wondering how much time usually takes to a language to become popular. This is, having libraries ported or written natively for this language and being used in serious software development. I have read about the history of Java, and Python to figure it out, but may be they are too high level complexity to say their development could take the same time as will take for D.

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  • Generalise variable usage inside code

    - by Shirish11
    I would like to know if it is a good practice to generalize variables (use single variable to store all the values). Consider simple example Strings querycre,queryins,queryup,querydel; querycre = 'Create table XYZ ...'; execute querycre ; queryins = 'Insert into XYZ ...'; execute queryins ; queryup = 'Update XYZ set ...'; execute queryup; querydel = 'Delete from XYZ ...'; execute querydel ; and Strings query; query= 'Create table XYZ ... '; execute query ; query= 'Insert into XYZ ...'; execute query ; query= 'Update XYZ set ...'; execute query ; query= 'Delete from XYZ ...'; execute query ; In first case I use 4 strings each storing data to perform the actions mentioned in their suffixes. In second case just 1 variable to store all kinds the data. Having different variables makes it easier for someone else to read and understand it better. But having too many of them makes it difficult to manage. Also does having too many variables hamper my performance?

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  • How is intermediate data organized in MapReduce?

    - by Pedro Cattori
    From what I understand, each mapper outputs an intermediate file. The intermediate data (data contained in each intermediate file) is then sorted by key. Then, a reducer is assigned a key by the master. The reducer reads from the intermediate file containing the key and then calls reduce using the data it has read. But in detail, how is the intermediate data organized? Can a data corresponding to a key be held in multiple intermediate files? What happens when there is too much data corresponding to one key to be held by a single file? In short, how do intermediate partitions differ from intermediate files and how are these differences dealt with in the implementation?

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  • What is the meaning of 'high cohesion'?

    - by Max
    I am a student who recently joined a software development company as an intern. Back at the university, one of my professors used to say that we have to strive to achieve "Low coupling and high cohesion". I understand the meaning of low coupling. It means to keep the code of separate components separately, so that a change in one place does not break the code in another. But what is meant by high cohesion. If it means integrating the various pieces of the same component well with each other, I dont understand how that becomes advantageous. What is meant by high cohesion? Can an example be explained to understand its benefits?

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  • Celko's SQL Stumper: Eggs in one Basket

    Joe Celko returns with another stumper to celebrate Easter. Unsurprisingly, this involves eggs. More surprising is the nature of the puzzle: This time, the puzzle is one of designing a database rather than a query. DDL as well as the DML.

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  • What are approaches for analyzing the cost-benefits of a development methodology?

    - by Garrett Hall
    There are many development practices (TDD, continuous integration, cowboy-coding), principles (SOLID, layers of abstraction, KISS), and processes (RUP, Scrum, XP, Waterfall). I have learned you can't follow any of these blindly, but have to consider context and ROI (return on investment). My question is: How do you know whether you are getting a good ROI by following a particular methodology? Metrics, guesstimation, experience? Do analytical methods exist? Or is this just the million-dollar question in software engineering that has no answer?

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  • How to shift development culture from tech fetish to focusing on simplicity and getting things done?

    - by Serge
    Looking for ways to switch team/individual culture from chasing latest fads, patterns, and all kinds of best practices to focusing on finding quickest and simplest solutions and shipping features. My definition of "tech fetish": Chasing latest fads, applying new technologies and best practices without considering product/project impact, focusing on micro optimization, creating platforms and frameworks instead of finding simple and quick ways to ship product features. Few examples of culture differences: From "Spent a day on trying to map database query with five complex joins in NHibernate" to "Wrote a SQL query and used DataReader to pull data in" From "Wrote super-fast JSON parser in C++" to "Used Python to parse JSON response and call C++ code" From "Let's use WCF because it supports all possible communication standards" to "REST is simple text-based format, let's stick with it and use simple HTTP handlers"

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  • How can I optimize my development machines files/dirs?

    - by LuxuryMode
    Like any programmer, I've got a lot of stuff on my machine. Some of that stuff is projects of my own, some are projects I'm working on for my employer, others are open-source tools and projects, etc. Currently, I have my files organized as follows: /Code --/development (things I'm sort of hacking on plus maybe libraries used in other projects) --/scala (organized by language...why? I don't know!) --/android --/ruby --/employer_name -- /mobile --/android --/ios --/open-source (basically my forks that I'm pushing commits back upstream from) --/some-awesome-oss-project --/another-awesome-one --/tools random IDE settings sprinkled in here plus some other apps As you can see, things are kind of a mess here. How can I keep things organized in some sort of coherent fashion?

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  • Languages like Tcl that have configurable syntax?

    - by boost
    I'm looking for a language that will let me do what I could do with Clipper years ago, and which I can do with Tcl, namely add functionality in a way other than just adding functions. For example in Clipper/(x)Harbour there are commands #command, #translate, #xcommand and #xtranslate that allow things like this: #xcommand REPEAT; => DO WHILE .T. #xcommand UNTIL <cond>; => IF (<cond>); ;EXIT; ;ENDIF; ;ENDDO LOCAL n := 1 REPEAT n := n + 1 UNTIL n > 100 Similarly, in Tcl I'm doing proc process_range {_for_ project _from_ dat1 _to_ dat2 _by_ slice} { set fromDate [clock scan $dat1] set toDate [clock scan $dat2] if {$slice eq "day"} then {set incrementor [expr 24 * 60]} if {$slice eq "hour"} then {set incrementor 60} set method DateRange puts "Scanning from [clock format $fromDate -format "%c"] to [clock format $toDate -format "%c"] by $slice" for {set dateCursor $fromDate} {$dateCursor <= $toDate} {set dateCursor [clock add $dateCursor $incrementor minutes]} { # ... } } process_range for "client" from "2013-10-18 00:00" to "2013-10-20 23:59" by day Are there any other languages that permit this kind of, almost COBOL-esque, syntax modification? If you're wondering why I'm asking, it's for setting up stuff so that others with a not-as-geeky-as-I-am skillset can declare processing tasks.

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  • At $20/month Windows Azure host my website with 99.97% uptime

    - by Gopinath
    Couple of years ago a reliable and decent performing Windows hosting was not affordable to many enthusiastic developers who want to try a startup idea or build a hobby site. I tried to start an ASP.NET website few years ago to provide services like – Mobile Tracing, Vehicle Tracing. But due to high cost of Windows hosting I developed those services using PHP (not an easy task for .NET developer) and hosted on them Linux servers.  But with recent evolution of Windows Azure, hosting ASP.NET websites on highly reliable servers is affordable. Today anyone can host a high responsive and available ASP.NET website for just $20/month using Windows Azure. My website coziie.com is running on Windows Azure and serves close to quarter millions visitors a month with 99.97% of uptime and most of the page load times are less than 3 seconds. All I spend to run this website is just around $20, if you translate it to India rupees its roughly Rs.1000. The web sever of coziie.com is powered by a single Extra Small Web role instance and the backend is powered by a SQL Azure instance. Azure is quite impressive to provide 99.97% of uptime. Response times during peak are around 3 seconds and on nomarl loads it is around 1.5 seconds. Here is the report of uptime provided by Royal Pingdom over last one year For just $20/month Windows Azure takes care of the following apart from hosting Patches up Windows OS to the latest version Upgrades ASP.NET to the latest version – coziie.com is running on ASP.NET MVC 3 and soon I’ll upgrade it to ASP.NET MVC 4 Hosts data on latest and best version Sql Server database SQL Azure maintains 3 copies of database and automatically recovers in case of server failures and disasters. I never worry about database backups/restore. Provides staging environment for deploying applications for testing purpose and move them to production – I upgrade  twice a month on average With Windows Azure I no longer focus on server maintenance or data backups. They are taken up by Microsoft team and I just focus on building my website. Wish there is a low cost Linux version of Windows Azure so that I can stop worrying about server maintenance of this blog!! If you are looking for a Windows hosting, look no further than Windows Azure. If you find $20/month is a bit expensive to start with you may explore Azure Website (sort of shared hosted environment) which is free to start with and as your traffic grows you can move to paid hosting.

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  • What is the difference between industrial development and open source development?

    - by Ida
    Intuitively, I think open source development should be much more "casual" than industrial development process (like in Microsoft). Because for OSS development: Duty separation is not that strict than in big companies (maybe developers == testers in open source development?) People come in and out of the open source community, much more frequently than in big companies However, above are just my guesses. I really want to know more about the major difference between the open source and industrial development. Is their division of duty totally different (e.g., is there a leader/manager-like role in open source development?)? Maybe it is their communication style that differs a lot? Or their workflow? Please share your opinions. Thanks a lot!

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  • Which is preferable? To know jQuery well, or to know JavaScript well? [closed]

    - by Marwan
    I'm quite familiar with using jQuery, but I've come to feel like a bit of a dummy using it, as my knowledge of JavaScript itself is rather poor. So I'm considering abandoning jQuery and spending time working in straight JS... perhaps even creating my own framework as a learning experience. Does this make sense though? Is there any real point to obtaining more than a passing knowledge of JavaScript when jQuery allows me to accomplish so much, so quickly?

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  • Asynchronously returning a hierarchal data using .NET TPL... what should my return object "look" like?

    - by makerofthings7
    I want to use the .NET TPL to asynchronously do a DIR /S and search each subdirectory on a hard drive, and want to search for a word in each file... what should my API look like? In this scenario I know that each sub directory will have 0..10000 files or 0...10000 directories. I know the tree is unbalanced and want to return data (in relation to its position in the hierarchy) as soon as it's available. I am interested in getting data as quickly as possible, but also want to update that result if "better" data is found (better means closer to the root of c:) I may also be interested in finding all matches in relation to its position in the hierarchy. (akin to a report) Question: How should I return data to my caller? My first guess is that I think I need a shared object that will maintain the current "status" of the traversal (started | notstarted | complete ) , and might base it on the System.Collections.Concurrent. Another idea that I'm considering is the consumer/producer pattern (which ConcurrentCollections can handle) however I'm not sure what the objects "look" like. Optional Logical Constraint: The API doesn't have to address this, but in my "real world" design, if a directory has files, then only one file will ever contain the word I'm looking for.  If someone were to literally do a DIR /S as described above then they would need to account for more than one matching file per subdirectory. More information : I'm using Azure Tables to store a hierarchy of data using these TPL extension methods. A "node" is a table. Not only does each node in the hierarchy have a relation to any number of nodes, but it's possible for each node to have a reciprocal link back to any other node. This may have issues with recursion but I'm addressing that with a shared object in my recursion loop. Note that each "node" also has the ability to store local data unique to that node. It is this information that I'm searching for. In other words, I'm searching for a specific fixed RowKey in a hierarchy of nodes. When I search for the fixed RowKey in the hierarchy I'm interested in getting the results FAST (first node found) but prefer data that is "closer" to the starting point of the hierarchy. Since many nodes may have the particular RowKey I'm interested in, sometimes I may want to get a report of ALL the nodes that contain this RowKey.

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  • How to deal with tautology in comments?

    - by Tamás Szelei
    Sometimes I find myself in situations when the part of code that I am writing is (or seems to be) so self-evident that its name would be basically repeated as a comment: class Example { /// <summary> /// The location of the update. /// </summary> public Uri UpdateLocation { get; set; }; } (C# example, but please refer to the question as language-agnostic). A comment like that is useless; what am I doing wrong? Is it the choice of the name that is wrong? How could I comment parts like this better? Should I just skip the comment for things like this?

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  • What is the most efficient way to study multiple languages, frameworks, and APIs as a developer?

    - by Akromyk
    I know there are those out there who have read a slurry of books on a specific technology and only code in that one particular language, but this question is aimed at those who need bounce around between using multiple technologies and yet still manage to be productive. What is the most efficient way to study multiple languages, frameworks, and APIs as a developer without becoming a cheap swiss army knife? And how much time should one dedicate to a particular subject before moving to another?

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  • What is the philosophy/reasoning behind C#'s Pascal-casing method names?

    - by Nocturne
    I'm just starting to learn C#. Coming from a background in Java, C++ and Objective-C, I find C#'s Pascal-casing its method-names rather unique, and a tad difficult to get used to at first. What is the reasoning and philosophy behind this? I'm guessing it is because of C# properties. Unlike in Objective-C, where method names can be exactly the same as an instance variables, this is not the case with C#. I would guess one of the goals with properties (as it is with most of the languages that support it) is to make properties truly indistinguishable from variables and methods. So, one can have an "int x" in C#, and the corresponding property becomes X. To ensure that properties and methods are indistinguishable, all method names I'm guessing are also therefore expected to start with an uppercase letter. (This is just my hypothesis based on what I know of C# so far—I'm still learning). I'm very curious to know how this curious guideline came into being (given that it's not something one sees in most other languages where method names are expected to start with a lowercase letter) (EDIT: By Pascal-casing, I mean PascalCase (which is basically camelCase but starting with a capital letter). Method names typically start with a lowercase letter in most languages)

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  • Is it bad practice to output from within a function?

    - by Nick
    For example, should I be doing something like: <?php function output_message($message,$type='success') { ?> <p class="<?php echo $type; ?>"><?php echo $message; ?></p> <?php } output_message('There were some errors processing your request','error'); ?> or <?php function output_message($message,$type='success') { ob_start(); ?> <p class="<?php echo $type; ?>"><?php echo $message; ?></p> <?php return ob_get_clean(); } echo output_message('There were some errors processing your request','error'); ?> I understand they both achieve the same end result, but are there benefits doing one way over the other? Or does it not even matter?

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  • Are there currently any modern, standardized, aptitude test for software engineering?

    - by Matthew Patrick Cashatt
    Background I am a working software engineer who is in the midst of seeking out a new contract for the next year or so. In my search, I am enduring several absurd technical interviews as indicated by this popular question I asked earlier today. Even if the questions I was being asked weren't almost always absurd, I would be tired nonetheless of answering them many times over for various contract opportunities. So this got me thinking that having a standardized exam that working software professionals could take would provide a common scorecard that could be referenced by interviewers in lieu of absurd technical interview questions (i.e. nerd hazing). Question Is there a standardized software engineering aptitude test (SEAT??) available for working professionals to take? If there isn't a such an exam out there, what questions or topics should be covered? An additional thought Please keep in mind, if suggesting a question or topic, to focus on questions or topics that would be relevant to contemporary development practices and realistic needs in the workforce as that would be the point of a standard aptitude test. In other words, no clown traversal questions.

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  • Is "watermarking" code with random trailing whitespace a good way to detect plagiarism?

    - by paperjam
    Consider this: int f(int x) { return 2 * x * x; } and this int squareAndDouble(int y) { return 2*y*y; } If you found these in independent bodies of code, you might give the two programmers the benefit of the doubt and assume they came up with more-or-less the same function independently. But look at the whitespace at the end of each line of code. Same pattern in both. Surely evidence of copying. On a larger piece of code, correlation of random whitespace at line ends would be irrefutable evidence of a shared origin. Now aside from the obvious weaknesses: e.g. visible or obvious in some editors, easily removed, I was wondering if it was worth deploying something like this in my open source project. My industry has a history of companies ripping off open source projects.

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  • Why do memory-managed languages retain the `new` keyword?

    - by Channel72
    The new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# creates a new instance of a class. This syntax seems to have been inherited from C++, where new is used specifically to allocate a new instance of a class on the heap, and return a pointer to the new instance. In C++, this is not the only way to construct an object. You can also construct an object on the stack, without using new - and in fact, this way of constructing objects is much more common in C++. So, coming from a C++ background, the new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# seemed natural and obvious to me. Then I started to learn Python, which doesn't have the new keyword. In Python, an instance is constructed simply by calling the constructor, like: f = Foo() At first, this seemed a bit off to me, until it occurred to me that there's no reason for Python to have new, because everything is an object so there's no need to disambiguate between various constructor syntaxes. But then I thought - what's really the point of new in Java? Why should we say Object o = new Object();? Why not just Object o = Object();? In C++ there's definitely a need for new, since we need to distinguish between allocating on the heap and allocating on the stack, but in Java all objects are constructed on the heap, so why even have the new keyword? The same question could be asked for Javascript. In C#, which I'm much less familiar with, I think new may have some purpose in terms of distinguishing between object types and value types, but I'm not sure. Regardless, it seems to me that many languages which came after C++ simply "inherited" the new keyword - without really needing it. It's almost like a vestigial keyword. We don't seem to need it for any reason, and yet it's there. Question: Am I correct about this? Or is there some compelling reason that new needs to be in C++-inspired memory-managed languages like Java, Javascript and C#?

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  • What's a good starting point to learn about JIT compilers?

    - by davidk01
    I've spent the past few months learning about stack based virtual machines, parsers, compilers, and some elementary things about hardware architecture. I've also written a few parsers and compilers for C like languages to understand the generic parser/compiler pipeline. Now I'd like to take my understanding further by learning about optimizing compilers and JIT compilers but I'm having a hard time finding material at the right level. I don't yet understand enough to dive into a code base like PyPy or LuaJIT but I also know more than what most introductory compiler books have to offer. So what are some good books for an intermediate beginner like to me to look into?

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  • What are some good game development programs for kids?

    - by John Giotta
    I know a very bright little boy who excels in math, but at home he's glued to his Nintendo DS. When I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up he said "Make video games!" I remember a few years there was mention of a MIT software called Scratch and thought maybe this kid can do want he wants to do. Has anyone used any of the "game development" for kids softwares out there? Can you recommend any?

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  • Parallel.For Inconsistency results

    - by ni Gue ???
    I am using VB.net to write a parallel based code. I use Parallel.For to generate pairs of 500 objects or in combination C(500,2) such as the following code; but I found that it didn't always generate all combinations which should be 124750 (shown from variable Counter). No other thread was runing when this code was run. I am using a Win-7 32 Bit desktop with Intel Core i5 CPU [email protected], 3.33 GHz and RAM 2GB. What's wrong with the code and how to solve this problem? Thank You. Dim Counter As Integer = 0 Parallel.For(0, 499, Sub(i) For j As Integer = i + 1 To 499 Counter += 1 Console.Write(i & ":" & j) Next End Sub) Console.Writeline("Iteration number: " & Counter)

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