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• How do I convince my team that a requirements specification is unnecessary if we adopt user-stories?

  - by Nupul

  We are planning to adopt user-stories to capture stakeholder 'intent' in a lightweight fashion rather than a heavy SRS (software requirements specifications). However, it seems that though they understand the value of stories, there is still a desire to 'convert' the stories into an SRS-like language with all the attributes, priorities, input, outputs, source, destination etc. User-stories 'eliminate' the need for a formal SRS like artifact to begin with so what's the point in having an SRS? How should I convince my team (who are all very qualified CS folks by the way - both by education and practice) that the SRS would be 'eliminated' if we adopted user-stories for capturing the functional requirements of the system? (NFRs etc can be captured too, but that's not the intent of the question). So here's my 'work-flow' argument: Capture initial requirements as user-stories and later elaborate them to use-cases (which are required to be documented at a low level i.e. describing interactions with the UI prototypes/mockups and are a deliverable post deployment). Thus going from user-stories to use-cases rather than user-stories to SRS to use-cases. How are you all currently capturing user-stories at your workplace (if at all) and how do you suggest I 'make a case' for absence of SRS in presence of user-stories?

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• Empirical Evidence of Popularity of Git and Mercurial

  - by ana

  It's 2012! Mercurial and Git are both still strong. I understand the trade-offs of both. I also understand everyone has some sort of preference for one or the other. That's fine. I'm looking for some information on level of usage of both. For example, on stackoverflow.com, searching for Git gets you 12000 hits, Mercurial gets you 3000. Google Trends says it's 1.9:1.0 for Git. What other empirical information is available to estimate the relative usage of both tools?

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• Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

  - by Jeff Atwood

  GMail has this feature where it will warn you if you try to send an email that it thinks might have an attachment. Because GMail detected the string see the attached in the email, but no actual attachment, it warns me with an OK / Cancel dialog when I click the Send button. We have a related problem on Stack Overflow. That is, when a user enters a post like this one: my problem is I need to change the database but I don't won't to create a new connection. example: DataSet dsMasterInfo = new DataSet(); Database db = DatabaseFactory.CreateDatabase("ConnectionString"); DbCommand dbCommand = db.GetStoredProcCommand("uspGetMasterName"); This user did not format their code as code! That is, they didn't indent by 4 spaces per Markdown, or use the code button (or the keyboard shortcut ctrl+k) which does that for them. Thus, our system is accreting a lot of edits where people have to go in and manually format code for people that are somehow unable to figure this out. This leads to a lot of bellyaching. We've improved the editor help several times, but short of driving over to the user's house and pressing the correct buttons on their keyboard for them, we're at a loss to see what to do next. That's why we are considering a Google GMail style warning: Did you mean to post code? You wrote stuff that we think looks like code, but you didn't format it as code by indenting 4 spaces, using the toolbar code button or the ctrl+k code formatting command. However, presenting this warning requires us to detect the presence of what we think is unformatted code in a question. What is a simple, semi-reliable way of doing this? Per Markdown, code is always indented by 4 spaces or within backticks, so anything correctly formatted can be discarded from the check immediately. This is only a warning and it will only apply to low-reputation users asking their first questions (or providing their first answers), so some false positives are OK, so long as they are about 5% or less. Questions on Stack Overflow can be in any language, though we can realistically limit our check to, say, the "big ten" languages. Per the tags page that would be C#, Java, PHP, JavaScript, Objective-C, C, C++, Python, Ruby. Use the Stack Overflow creative commons data dump to audit your potential solution (or just pick a few questions in the top 10 tags on Stack Overflow) and see how it does. Pseudocode is fine, but we use c# if you want to be extra friendly. The simpler the better (so long as it works). KISS! If your solution requires us to attempt to compile posts in 10 different compilers, or an army of people to manually train a bayesian inference engine, that's ... not exactly what we had in mind.

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• Optimize strategies for xml parsing?

  - by Future2020

  I am looking for general optimization tips and guidelines for xml parsing. One of the optimization strategies is of course selecting the "right" parser. A detailed comparison between the available parsers for ios can be found here http://www.raywenderlich.com/553/how-to-chose-the-best-xml-parser-for-your-iphone-project. However, I am currently trying to investigate general guidelines and tips on how to optimize by payloads to increase the performance as possible. This question is similar to (a question I have posted in the context of ios) but I have not got a sufficient answer. So this question is not in the context of any particular programming language.

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• Good resources and tools for modern, heavy JavaScript development?

  - by Matt Greer

  I am interested in doing some projects that involve heavy use of JavaScript. Namely HTML5 based canvas games, potentially using node.js as well. I am interested in learning modern best practices, tools and resources for JavaScript. JavaScript is tough to research because you end up wading through a lot of really outdated material, hailing from the times that "JavaScript" was a four letter word. If you are heavily involved in JavaScript programming... What text editor or IDE do you use? What unit testing framework do you use? Do you use Selenium, or something else? What other tools do you use? What communities exist that discuss recent advents in JavaScript? What books do you read/refer to? What blogs do you read?

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• How can I improve my error checking and handling?

  - by Google

  Lately I have been struggling to understand what the right amount of checking is and what the proper methods are. I have a few questions regarding this: What is the proper way to check for errors (bad input, bad states, etc)? Is it better to explicitly check for errors, or use functions like asserts which can be optimized out of your final code? I feel like explicitly checking clutters a program with a lot of extra code which shouldn't be executed in most situations anyway-- and not to mention most errors end up with an abort/exit failure. Why clutter a function with explicit checks just to abort? I have looked for asserts versus explicit checking of errors and found little to truly explain when to do either. Most say 'use asserts to check for logic errors and use explicit checks to check for other failures.' This doesn't seem to get us very far though. Would we say this is feasible: Malloc returning null, check explictly API user inserting odd input for functions, use asserts Would this make me any better at error checking? What else can I do? I really want to improve and write better, 'professional' code.

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• Memory concerns while plotting escape from DLL Hell in Delphi

  - by Peter Turner

  I work on a program with about 50 DLLs that are loaded from one executable, it's an old organically grown program where the only rationale for creating a new DLL is that one previously didn't exist to fill a given need. (and namespaces didn't exist in Delphi so it never crossed our mind to make dll1.main.pas, dll2.main.pas or something even more unique) What we want to do is consolidate all these DLLs into one executable, since none of them are used out of the program, there shouldn't be much of a problem. The concern my boss has is that if we did this, the memory overhead for terminal server clients would go through the roof. So, I've stepped through enough initialization code to know that lots of stuff is done every time a DLL is loaded in to memory, but say I've got a project with about 4000 files, and 50 dlls, 10 of which are probably utilized by any one user in any one session of the program. The 50 dlls are about 2/3rds form files, if not more, but beyond that there's not a lot of other resources being loaded (only a few embedded pictures, icons, cursors, etc..). If I loaded all these files in to memory, how much memory is used per unit? how much is used per class? How do I keep the overhead down? and what is the biggest project one can reasonably expect to build with Delphi? This tidbit won't help answering, but I think it might clarify what my boss is worried about, we currently start our program at about 18megs, normal working conditions are usually less than 40 megs, he thinks it could climb as high as 120 megs.

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• PHP Riak in place update

  - by WojonsTech

  From what I can see, when using Riak to update an object, I first need to load the object into PHP, then edit the object, then store the object back to the Riak database. I was wondering if there is a way to update a bucket without pulling it into PHP first. That way, it would save on the network I/O and latency of pulling it into the PHP script. Can objects be edited directly on the Riak side of things? Edit: Is there away to push data to the end of a raik object, so if i have an object that is numeric array can i make a push to add subject that i know its not there or no in place updates what so ever

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• Scala factory pattern returns unusable abstract type

  - by GGGforce

  Please let me know how to make the following bit of code work as intended. The problem is that the Scala compiler doesn't understand that my factory is returning a concrete class, so my object can't be used later. Can TypeTags or type parameters help? Or do I need to refactor the code some other way? I'm (obviously) new to Scala. trait Animal trait DomesticatedAnimal extends Animal trait Pet extends DomesticatedAnimal {var name: String = _} class Wolf extends Animal class Cow extends DomesticatedAnimal class Dog extends Pet object Animal { def apply(aType: String) = { aType match { case "wolf" => new Wolf case "cow" => new Cow case "dog" => new Dog } } } def name(a: Pet, name: String) { a.name = name println(a +"'s name is: " + a.name) } val d = Animal("dog") name(d, "fred") The last line of code fails because the compiler thinks d is an Animal, not a Dog.

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• What is the best way to design a table with an arbitrary id?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  I have the need to create a table with a unique id as the PK. The ID is a surrogate key. Originally, I had a natural key, but requirement changes have undermined this idea. Then, I considered adding an auto incrementing identity. But, this presents problems. A. I can't specify my own ID. B. The ID's are difficult to reset. Both of these together make it difficult to copy over this table with new data or move the table across domains, e.g. Dev to QA. I need to refer to these ID's from the front end, JavaScript...so they must not change. So, the only way I am aware of to meet all these challenges is to make a GUID ID. This way, I can overwrite the ID's when I need to or I can generate a new one without concern for order (E.G. an int based id would require I know the last inserted ID). Is a GUID the best way to accomplish my goals? Considering that a GUID is a string and joining on a string is an expensive task, is there a better way?

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• Rights and use of developed software

  - by Nils Munch

  I have been working on a piece of software for a company, that they wish to resell. There was an mail-based agreement upon a flat hourly rate for my work, and eager me chose to accept a rather low fee. Due to the stress and tempo of the task, a direct contract was never formed or signed. The software was developed locally on my machine, and I was pretty much alone with it, except by excellent help from StackOverflow when I got stuck. Now, the software is nearing completion, I suddenly hear that they have hired a new developer to make the same piece of software as me, and that I was expected to resign within long. Confused I ask around, and realize that the CEO of the company had informed the rest of the company that I was terminally ill and had cancer, and was expected to leave the company soon. Since I'm perfectly healthy, this confused me even more, until I realized what was going on. When I confronted my boss with this, I was no longer seen as a member of the company, and I left the same day, never to return. Later, I raised the question about my missing pay, since I had been working for quite a bit, and not received any payment for my software. I saw that they had already sold a fair copy of my software, and since it's not exactly sold cheap, the company should have plenty of gold to pay me. The company refused, and said that they owned the software, and everything it contained. That was a lot of drama, but my question is this: Who has the rights to the software ? The source code had my personal watermarks and copyrights inprinted, but they have since simply deleted it. The company claim that they have all the rights, because they have a website made about the product, where they write that they have "All rights reserved" in the bottom. My instinct tells me that if a company buys a service like this, and then refuses to pay their developer, then they should not be allowed to keep, and much less resell the product. I have not signed any agreements about giving the company the use of this product, I have made it in my own time and without help from the rest of the company. This all takes place in Denmark, Europe, but I would guess that the rules about this is somewhat universal. Im not the strongest person to legal-talk, so I might be wrong.

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• Etymology of software project names [closed]

  - by Benoit

  I would like to have a reference community wiki here in order to know what etymology software name have or why they are named that way. I was wondering why Imagemagick's mogrify was named this way. Today I wondered the same for Apache Lucene. It would be handy to have a list here. Could we extend such a list? Let me start and let you edit it please. I will ask for this to be community wiki. For each entry please link to an external reference. GNU Emacs: stand for “Editor MACroS”. Apache Lucene: Armenian name Imagemagick mogrify: from “transmogrify”. Thanks.

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• Databases and the CI server

  - by mlk

  I have a CI server (Hudson) which merrily builds, runs unit tests and deploys to the development environment but I'd now like to get it running the integration tests. The integration tests will hit a database and that database will be consistently being changed to contain the data relevant to the test in question. This however leads to a problem - how do I make sure the database is not being splatted with data for one test and then that data being override by a second project before the first set of tests complete? I am current using the "hope" method, which is not working out too badly at the moment, but mostly due to the fact that we only have a small number of integration tests set up on CI. As I see it I have the following options: Test-local (in memory) databases I'm not sure if any in-memory databases handle all the scaryness of Oracles triggers and packages etc, and anything less I don't feel would be a worth while test. CI Executor-local databasesA fair amount of work would be needed to set this up and keep 'em up to date, but defiantly an option (most of the work is already done to keep the current CI database up-to-date). Single "integration test" executorLikely the easiest to implement, but would mean the integration tests could fall quite far behind. Locking the database (or set of tables) I'm sure I've missed some ways (please add them). How do you run database-based integration tests on the CI server? What issues have you had and what method do you recommend? (Note: While I use Hudson, I'm happy to accept answers for any CI server, the ideas I'm sure will be portable, even if the details are not). Cheers,      Mlk

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• Looking for a simple to use email server that can be programmatically (preferably remotely) used

  - by sr2222

  I've been poking around the internet for much of the day, but I can't seem to find a good server to fit my needs. What I need is a simple to use and deploy (pref open source) lightweight email server that I can create users on programmaticly that has IMAP or POP support. I'd prefer something with an existing service interface, but if I have to write a REST API on top of an easy to use API, that's acceptable. The purpose of this tool will be to allow a test automation framework to create new email accounts and retrieve email sent to those addresses. I need text, html, and possibly attachment support as well. Perhaps it's my noobishness, but I can't really suss out the details from the documentation on the servers available out there to figure out which fit my needs.

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• When is an object oriented program truly object oriented?

  - by Syed Aslam

  Let me try to explain what I mean: Say, I present a list of objects and I need to get back a selected object by a user. The following are the classes I can think of right now: ListViewer Item App [Calling class] In case of a GUI application, usually click on a particular item is selection of the item and in case of a command line, some input, say an integer representing that item. Let us go with command line application here. A function lists all the items and waits for the choice of object, an integer. So here, I get the choice, is choice going to conceived as an object? And based on the choice, return back the object in the list. Does writing this program like the way explained above make it truly object oriented? If yes, how? If not, why? Or is the question itself wrong and I shouldn't be thinking along those lines?

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• When does "proper" programming no longer matter?

  - by Kai Qing

  I've been a full time programmer for about 8 years now. Web based mostly, ranging in weird jobs for clients. Never anything I "want" to do. So my experience is limited to what I've been contracted to do, having no real incentive to master anything in particular. So here's my scenario and ultimately what I wonder about... I've been building an android game in my spare time. It's using the libgdx library so quite a bit of the heavy lifting is done for me. I don't read much of the docs cause unless it's in tutorial format I will just not care, and ultimately most of my questions have already been asked on stackoverflow. I get along fine and my game works as expected... Suspiciously well, even. So much so that I wonder why one should bother to be "proper" when coding if the end result is ultimately the same. To be more specific, I used a hashtable because I wanted something close to an associative array. Human readable key values. In other places to achieve similar things, I use a vector. I know libgdx has vector2 and vector3 classes, but I've never used them. When I come across weird problems and search stackoverflow for help, I see a lot of people just reaming the questions that use a certain datatype when another one is technically "proper." Like using an ArrayList because it does not require defined bounds versus re-defining an int[] with new known boundaries. Or even something trivial like this: for(int i = 0; i < items.length; i ++) { // do something } I know it evaluates item.length on every iteration. I just don't care. I know items will never be more than 15 to 20 items. So why bother caring if I evaluate items.length on every iteration? So I wonder - why does everyone get all up in arms over this? Who cares if I use a less efficient datatype to get the job done? I ran some tests to see how the app performs using the lazy, get it done fast and don't look back method I just described versus the proper, follow the tutorial and use the exact data types suggested by the community. The results: Same thing. Average 45 fps. I opened every app on the phone and galaxy tab. Same deal. No difference. My game is pretty graphic intensive. It's not like it's just a simple thing. I expected it to perform kind of badly since I don't care to optimize image assets or... well, you probably get the idea. I'm making the game for fun. As a joke, really. But in doing so I'm working outside the normal scope of my job, which is to always follow the rules and do it the right way. So to say, I am without bounds here and this has caused me to wonder why I ever really care to be "proper" So I guess my question to you is this: Is there a threshold when it no longer matters to be proper? Is there a lasting, longer term consequence to the lazy, get it done and don't look back route? Is it ok to say - "so long as it gets the job done, I don't care?" Disclaimer: When I program my game, I am almost always drunk. I do it to remember why I got into this stuff to begin with because the monotony of client based web work will make you hate being a programmer. I'm having a blast and my game is not crashing, tests well, performs well, looks good on all devices so far and has no noticeable negative impact on any of my testing devices. I expected failure because I was being so drunkenly careless with my code, but to my surprise, it had no noticeable impact. I am now starting to question the need to be careful. Help me regain the ability to care! ... or explain why it's not a bad thing to not care. Secondary disclaimer: I am aware of the benefits of maintainability. For myself and others. Agreed. But it's not like someone happening across my inefficient int[] loop won't know what it does. As an experienced programmer those kinds of things are just clear on sight. I document the complex stuff for myself knowing I was drunk and will probably need a reminder. Those notes would clarify any confusion for someone who might ever gaze upon my ridiculous game - though the reality is that either I maintain it myself or it fades into time. I'm ok with that. But if it doesn't slow the device down, or crash, then crossing the t's and dotting the i's might actually require more time than it's worth.

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• Design of input files reading when it comes to defaults/transformations

  - by Stefano Borini

  Suppose you have an application that reads an input file, on a language that does not support the concept of None. The input is read, parsed, and the contents are stored on a structure for later use. Now, in general you want to keep into account transformation of the data from the input, such as adding default values when not specified, or adding full path information to relative path specified in the input. There are two different strategies to achieve this. The first strategy is to perform these transformations at input file reading time. In practice, you put all the intelligence into the input parser, and your application has no logic to deal with unexpected circumstances, such as an unspecified value. You lose the information of what was specified and what wasn't, but you gain in black-boxing the details. Your "running code" needs that information in any case and in a proper form, and is not concerned if it's the default or a user-specified information. The second strategy is to have the file reader a real one-to-one mapper from the file to a memory-stored object, with no intelligent behavior. unspecified values are not filled (which may however be a problem in languages not supporting None) and data is stored verbatim from the file. The intelligence for recovery must now go into the "running code", which must check what was specified in the file, eventually fall back to a default, or modify the input properly before using it. I would like to know your opinion on these two approaches, and in particular which one you found the most frequently implemented.

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• Androids development life cycle model query [closed]

  - by Andrew Rose

  I have been currently researching Google and their approach to marketing the Android OS. Primarily using an open source technique with the Open Hand Alliance and out souring through third-party developers. I'm now keen to investigate their approach using various development life cycle models in the form of waterfall, spiral, scrum, agile etc. And i'm just curious to have some feedback from professionals and what approach they think Google would use to have a positive effect on their business. Thanks for your time Andy Rose

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• What is the best way to do development with git?

  - by marlene

  I have been searching the web for best practices, but don't see anything that is consistent. If you have an excellent development process that includes successful releases of your product as well as hotfixes/patches and maintenance releases and you use git. I would love to hear how you use git to accomplish this. Do you use branches, tags, etc? How do you use them? I am looking for details, please.

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• Generic log analyzer that produces reports

  - by Eugene

  About 600 customers use our application. We have very detailed logs for everything that happens in the application, from changes in the data model, memory and CPU/GPU usage to clicks on the UI elements. We want to be able to parse the logs coming from these customers and analyze them to understand how users use our application and what happens internally in the application. Is there a log analyzer that can produce such reports automatically?

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• What deployment framework to use?

  - by jeruki

  We are trying to figure out what deployment method/framework to use with a python application, it has a basic wsgi server to make some REST resources available and a set of static web pages with the interface that are served through apache. The situation is as follows: My team works in isolated parts of the program and sometimes together in specific modules, we have different testing servers and one master server, we all work locally, sync the code using git, and then run a bash script that copies the files from the windows machines to the indicated linux server(using ssh) and then restarts the app. After thinking about it this doesn't seem to be the right way to do it, the script overwrites all the files in the server with the local files everytime. We want to be able to work in the same server without the worry of overwriting other people's code and we need to deploy to different servers to avoid restarting the service while others work with it and in the near future we need to deploy to the master or several clones of the master server when the application reaches a more mature state. We found serveral options capistrano, kwate, chef or fortress, even fleet but we wanted to have opinions from people that has used them to be sure it is what we need. So this are the main questions: Are these the kind of programs we should be looking at to achive a safe concurrent deployment process? Which one have you used/recommend and why? do you think it would help in our actual situation? Thank you so much for your feedback and advice on this.

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• How to better integrate a unix development environment into Windows

  - by SKenz

  I'm mostly a Windows user but I do most of my development (essentially web development) using unix tools and software. I've been going back and forth between using a dedicated lubuntu virtual machine on Virtualbox and using some tools directly in windows (msgit, python, django), but none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory. I'd like to hear of ways other devs use to better integrate a unix workflow into windows. For instance tighter integration between a linux and vm and windows. The vagrant demo showed how a VM could work off of a windows project folder and I found that nice. I'd like to hear of other tools and tips that would help mimic the workflow one can find on OS X (of course I understand that it cannot be as tightly integrated on Windows as it doesn't have the same unix underpinnings). PS: I have tried cygwin as well EDIT for clarifications about What I find lacking (thanks to axblount for pointing that out) : unix tools like msys et al do not work as well as their native unic counterparts. Many scripts, installers require further configuration or do not work at all. For instance getting virtualenvwrapper to work is not very straightforward. virtualbox: ideally I would like to use windows software (photoshop, sublime text 2) seamlessly with linux. I mostly use a FTP client atm to move over files edited on the windows side which is a tedious process.

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• What is a widely accepted term for a string variable that would probably contain a file path and file name?

  - by Peter Turner

  For functions that need to index files in a directory and rename them FileName0001, FileName0002, etc... I often need to write a function that splits the file name from the file path and rename the file. When I put the file name and file path back together, I don't have a very good name for the variable that contains both of them and I usually just wind up concatenating them every time I want to use them (usually using them as parameters for functions labeled either filename or filepath) so I never really know what I'm doing until I notice a lot of files being written in the same directory as my binaries. Anyway, what do I call a file name and a file path? I don't want to call it File, because that usually means the binary information behind the file. I don't want to call it URI because that usually means I've got some sort of protocol, which I don't. I just want a good way to denote "c:\somedir\somedir\somedir\somefile.txt" so as to deconfuse this mess I've just realized I'm in. Please don't just list your personal preference. I think an excellent answer should "'site its sources". (as in, provide a link to a repository with a good example of the code being used as I described)

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• How to TDD test that objects are being added to a collection if the collection is private?

  - by Joshua Harris

  Assume that I planned to write a class that worked something like this: public class GameCharacter { private Collection<CharacterEffect> _collection; public void Add(CharacterEffect e) { ... } public void Remove(CharacterEffect e) { ... } public void Contains(CharacterEffect e) { ... } } When added an effect does something to the character and is then added to the _collection. When it is removed the effect reverts the change to the character and is removed from the _collection. It's easy to test if the effect was applied to the character, but how do I test that the effect was added to _collection? What test could I write to start constructing this class. I could write a test where Contains would return true for a certain effect being in _collection, but I can't arrange a case where that function would return true because I haven't implemented the Add method that is needed to place things in _collection. Ok, so since Contains is dependent on having Add working, then why don't I try to create Add first. Well for my first test I need to try and figure out if the effect was added to the _collection. How would I do that? The only way to see if an effect is in _collection is with the Contains function. The only way that I could think to test this would be to use a FakeCollection that Mocks the Add, Remove, and Contains of a real collection, but I don't want _collection being affected by outside sources. I don't want to add a setEffects(Collection effects) function, because I do not want the class to have that functionality. The one thing that I am thinking could work is this: public class GameCharacter<C extends Collection> { private Collection<CharacterEffect> _collection; public GameCharacter() { _collection = new C<CharacterEffect>(); } } But, that is just silly making me declare what some private data structures type is on every declaration of the character. Is there a way for me to test this without breaking TDD principles while still allowing me to keep my collection private?

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• Can anyone recommend online .Net training courses?

  - by james

  I am looking for peoples experiences with paid for online .Net training courses. In your experience, are these an able replacement for in-person training? Are they better than the many free ones provided on MSDN and the like? Are there any specific paid for ones you'd recommend? I usually prefer general book/web research myself, I have one specific provider in mind that looks really good, but I'll omit this for fear of advertising :)

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