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  • How do software projects go over budget and under-deliver?

    - by Carlos
    I've come across this story quite a few times here in the UK: NHS Computer System Summary: We're spunking £12 Billion on some health software with barely anything working. I was sitting the office discussing this with my colleagues, and we had a little think about. From what I can see, all the NHS needs is a database + middle tier of drugs/hospitals/patients/prescriptions objects, and various GUIs for doctors and nurses to look at. You'd also need to think about security and scalability. And you'd need to sit around a hospital/pharmacy/GPs office for a bit to figure out what they need. But, all told, I'd say I could knock together something with that kind of structure in a couple of days, and maybe throw in a month or two to make it work in scale. * If I had a few million quid, I could probably hire some really excellent designers to make a maintainable codebase, and also buy appropriate hardware to run the system on. I hate to trivialize something that seems to have caused to much trouble, but to me it looks like just a big distributed CRUD + UI system. So how on earth did this project bloat to £12B without producing much useful software? As I don't think the software sounds so complicated, I can only imagine that something about how it was organised caused this mess. Is it outsourcing that's the problem? Is it not getting the software designers to understand the medical business that caused it? What are your experiences with projects gone over budget, under delivered? What are best practices for large projects? Have you ever worked on such a project? EDIT *This bit seemed to get a lot of attention. What I mean is I could probably do this for say, 30 users, spending a few tens of thousands of pounds. I'm not including stuff I don't know about the medical industry and government, but I think most people who've been around programming are familiar with that kind of database/front end kind of design. My point is the NHS project looks like a BIG version of this, with bells and whistles, notably security. But surely a budget millions of times larger than mine could provide this?

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  • What would be the Query to get exact same result like Windows 7 start menu search for Programs using Windows Search service?

    - by Somnath
    I would like to implement the same search application like Windows 7 using microsoft.search.interop.dll, C#. Currently I'm using System.Kind property to retrieve information regarding the programs from Windows Search but the results set does not look same like Windows 7 search. Order of items are different. SELECT TOP 3 System.ItemNameDisplay, System.DateAccessed FROM SystemIndex WHERE System.ItemNameDisplay LIKE 'ad%' AND (System.Kind='Program') What would be the Query to get exact same result like Windows 7 start menu search for Programs? As an example : search token = 'ad' Windows 7 search result Adobe Reader 9, Add a device, Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Search Result from my code Adobe ImageReady 7.0 , Adobe Photoshop 7.0 , Adobe Reader 9

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  • Whatchamacallit: You know how there are breadcrumbs and sliders and whatnot

    - by Richard
    What do you call it when a web site (especially corporate/retail) has a series of rows with thumbnails, each with a little caption/description beneath explaining some benefit or feature of a product or service. Is there a name for this? I'm building a theme that incorporates this kind of design and I was hoping there is some kind of shorthand for this design feature. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out one of the links below. http://themeforest.net/item/revolution-minimalist-business-html-template/full_screen_preview/2295335 http://themes.two2twelve.com/preview?theme=freshserve

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  • Index independent character comparison within text blocks

    - by Michael IV
    I have the following task: developing a program where there is a block of sample text which should be typed by user. Any typos the user does during the test are registered. Basically, I can compare each typed char with the sample char based on caret index position of the input, but there is one significant flaw in such a "naive" approach. If the user typed mistakenly more letters than a whole string has, or inserted more white spaces between the string than should be, then the rest of the comparisons will be wrong because of the index offsets added by the additional wrong insertions. I have thought of designing some kind of parser where each string (or even a char ) is tokenized and the comparisons are made "char-wise" and not "index-wise," but that seems to me like an overkill for such a task. I would like to get a reference to possibly existing algorithms which can be helpful in solving this kind of problem.

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  • Can not print after upgrading from 12.x to 14.04

    - by user318889
    After upgrading from V12.04 to V14.04 I am not able to print. I am using an HP LaserJet 400 M451dn. The printer troubleshooter told me that there is no solution to the problem. This is the output of the advanced diagnositc output. (Due to limited space I cut the output!) Can anybody tell me what is going wrong. I am using the printer via USB ? Page 1 (Scheduler not running?): {'cups_connection_failure': False} Page 2 (Is local server publishing?): {'local_server_exporting_printers': False} Page 3 (Choose printer): {'cups_dest': , 'cups_instance': None, 'cups_queue': u'HP-LaserJet-400-color-M451dn', 'cups_queue_listed': True} Page 4 (Check printer sanity): {'cups_device_uri_scheme': u'hp', 'cups_printer_dict': {'device-uri': u'hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_400_color_M451dn?serial=CNFF308670', 'printer-info': u'Hewlett-Packard HP LaserJet 400 color M451dn', 'printer-is-shared': True, 'printer-location': u'Pinatubo', 'printer-make-and-model': u'HP LJ 300-400 color M351-M451 Postscript (recommended)', 'printer-state': 4, 'printer-state-message': u'', 'printer-state-reasons': [u'none'], 'printer-type': 8556636, 'printer-uri-supported': u'ipp://localhost:631/printers/HP-LaserJet-400-color-M451dn'}, 'cups_printer_remote': False, 'hplip_output': (['', '\x1b[01mHP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.14.6)\x1b[0m', '\x1b[01mDevice Information Utility ver. 5.2\x1b[0m', '', 'Copyright (c) 2001-13 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP', 'This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.', 'This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it', 'under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.', '', '', '\x1b[01mhp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_400_color_M451dn?serial=CNFF308670\x1b[0m', '', '\x1b[01mDevice Parameters (dynamic data):\x1b[0m', '\x1b[01m Parameter Value(s) \x1b[0m', ' ---------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------', ' back-end hp ', " cups-printers ['HP-LaserJet-400-color-M451dn'] ", ' cups-uri hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_400_color_M451dn?serial=CNFF308670 ', ' dev-file ', ' device-state -1 ', ' device-uri hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_400_color_M451dn?serial=CNFF308670 ', ' deviceid ', ' error-state 101 ', ' host ', ' is-hp True ', ' panel 0 ', ' panel-line1 ', ' panel-line2 ', ' port 1 ', ' serial CNFF308670 ', ' status-code 5002 ', ' status-desc ', '\x1b[01m', 'Model Parameters (static data):\x1b[0m', '\x1b[01m Parameter Value(s) \x1b[0m', ' ---------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------', ' align-type 0 ', ' clean-type 0 ', ' color-cal-type 0 ', ' copy-type 0 ', ' embedded-server-type 0 ', ' fax-type 0 ', ' fw-download False ', ' icon hp_color_laserjet_cp2025.png ', ' io-mfp-mode 1 ', ' io-mode 1 ', ' io-support 6 ', ' job-storage 0 ', ' linefeed-cal-type 0 ', ' model HP_LaserJet_400_color_M451dn ', ' model-ui HP LaserJet 400 Color m451dn ', ' model1 HP LaserJet 400 Color M451dn ', ' monitor-type 0 ', ' panel-check-type 0 ', ' pcard-type 0 ', ' plugin 0 ', ' plugin-reason 0 ', ' power-settings 0 ', ' ppd-name lj_300_400_color_m351_m451 ', ' pq-diag-type 0 ', ' r-type 0 ', ' r0-agent1-kind 4 ', ' r0-agent1-sku CE410A/CE410X ', ' r0-agent1-type 1 ', ' r0-agent2-kind 4 ', ' r0-agent2-sku CE411A ', ' r0-agent2-type 4 ', ' r0-agent3-kind 4 ', ' r0-agent3-sku CE413A ', ' r0-agent3-type 5 ', ' r0-agent4-kind 4 ', ' r0-agent4-sku CE412A ', ' r0-agent4-type 6 ', ' scan-src 0 ', ' scan-type 0 ', ' status-battery-check 0 ', ' status-dynamic-counters 0 ', ' status-type 3 ', ' support-released True ', ' support-subtype 2202411 ', ' support-type 2 ', ' support-ver 3.12.2 ', " tech-class ['Postscript'] ", " tech-subclass ['Normal'] ", ' tech-type 4 ', ' usb-pid 3882 ', ' usb-vid 1008 ', ' wifi-config 0 ', '\x1b[01m', 'Status History (most recent first):\x1b[0m', '\x1b[01m Date/Time Code Status Description User Job ID \x1b[0m', ' -------------------- ----- ---------------------------------------- -------- --------', ' 08/21/14 00:07:25 5012 Device communication error richard 0 ', ' 08/20/14 13:42:44 500 Started a print job richard 4214 ', '', '', 'Done.', ''], ['\x1b[35;01mwarning: No display found.\x1b[0m', '\x1b[31;01merror: hp-info -u/--gui requires Qt4 GUI support. Entering interactive mode.\x1b[0m', '\x1b[31;01merror: Unable to communicate with device (code=12): hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_400_color_M451dn?serial=CNFF308670\x1b[0m', '\x1b[31;01merror: Error opening device (Device not found).\x1b[0m', ''], 0), 'is_cups_class': False, 'local_cups_queue_attributes': {'charset-configured': u'utf-8', 'charset-supported': [u'us-ascii', u'utf-8'], 'color-supported': True, 'compression-supported': [u'none', u'gzip'], 'copies-default': 1, 'copies-supported': (1, 9999), 'cups-version': u'1.7.2', 'device-uri': u'hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_400_color_M451dn?serial=CNFF308670', 'document-format-default': u'application/octet-stream', 'document-format-supported': [u'application/octet-stream', u'application/pdf', u'application/postscript', u'application/vnd.adobe-reader-postscript', u'application/vnd.cups-command', u'application/vnd.cups-pdf', u'application/vnd.cups-pdf-banner', u'application/vnd.cups-postscript', u'application/vnd.cups-raw', u'application/vnd.samsung-ps', u'application/x-cshell', u'application/x-csource', u'application/x-perl', u'application/x-shell', u'image/gif', u'image/jpeg', u'image/png', u'image/tiff', u'image/urf', u'image/x-bitmap', u'image/x-photocd', u'image/x-portable-anymap', u'image/x-portable-bitmap', u'image/x-portable-graymap', u'image/x-portable-pixmap', u'image/x-sgi-rgb', u'image/x-sun-raster', u'image/x-xbitmap', u'image/x-xpixmap', u'image/x-xwindowdump', u'text/css', u'text/html', u'text/plain'], 'finishings-default': 3, 'finishings-supported': [3], 'generated-natural-language-supported': [u'en-us'], 'ipp-versions-supported': [u'1.0', u'1.1', u'2.0', u'2.1'], 'ippget-event-life': 15, 'job-creation-attributes-supported': [u'copies', u'finishings', u'ipp-attribute-fidelity', u'job-hold-until', u'job-name', u'job-priority', u'job-sheets', u'media', u'media-col', u'multiple-document-handling', u'number-up', u'output-bin', u'orientation-requested', u'page-ranges', u'print-color-mode', u'print-quality', u'printer-resolution', u'sides'], 'job-hold-until-default': u'no-hold', 'job-hold-until-supported': [u'no-hold', u'indefinite', u'day-time', u'evening', u'night', u'second-shift', u'third-shift', u'weekend'], 'job-ids-supported': True, 'job-k-limit': 0, 'job-k-octets-supported': (0, 470914416), 'job-page-limit': 0, 'job-priority-default': 50, 'job-priority-supported': [100], 'job-quota-period': 0, 'job-settable-attributes-supported': [u'copies', u'finishings', u'job-hold-until', u'job-name', u'job-priority', u'media', u'media-col', u'multiple-document-handling', u'number-up', u'output-bin', u'orientation-requested', u'page-ranges', u'print-color-mode', u'print-quality', u'printer-resolution', u'sides'], 'job-sheets-default': (u'none', u'none'), 'job-sheets-supported': [u'none', u'classified', u'confidential', u'form', u'secret', u'standard', u'topsecret', u'unclassified'], 'jpeg-k-octets-supported': (0, 470914416), 'jpeg-x-dimension-supported': (0, 65535), 'jpeg-y-dimension-supported': (1, 65535), 'marker-change-time': 0, 'media-bottom-margin-supported': [423], 'media-col-default': u'(unknown IPP value tag 0x34)', 'media-col-supported': [u'media-bottom-margin', u'media-left-margin', u'media-right-margin', u'media-size', u'media-source', u'media-top-margin', u'media-type'], 'media-default': u'iso_a4_210x297mm', 'media-left-margin-supported': [423], 'media-right-margin-supported': [423],

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  • What do I need to do, to get placed in any software company?

    - by Anto Aravinth
    I'm doing my 3rd year CSE Engineering. I guess this is the right time to ask this question! As in the next year, I'm going to do projects, "get my hands dirty". And there is only few days left out, as I know many people in Stack Overflow are working in Software field, I thought to ask these question. Does the project that I'm doing in my final year need to be excellent? If so, what kind of project to do? And how do you say that the project is excellent or not? Writing the code is very fun and serious at times. But the code should have a good algorithm? And mostly in any software companies interview, what kind of question they ask? Not but not the least, mastering in any particular language speaks in interviews?

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  • Where to find clients who are willing to pay top dollar for highly reliable code?

    - by Robin Green
    I'm looking to find clients who are willing to pay a premium above usual contractor rates, for software that is developed with advanced tools and techniques to eliminate certain classes of bugs. However, I have little experience of contracting, and relatively few contacts. It's important to state that the kind of tools and techniques I'm thinking of (e.g. formal verification) are used commercially extremely rarely, as far as I'm aware. There is kind of a continuum of approaches to higher reliability, with basic testing and basic static typing at one end and full-blown formal verification at the other, but the methods I'm thinking of are towards the latter end of the spectrum.

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  • What are the pro/cons of Unity3D as a choice to make games ?

    - by jokoon
    We are doing our school project with Unity3d, since they were using Shiva the previous year (which seems horrible to me), and I wanted to know your point of view for this tool. Pros: multi platform, I even heard Google is going to implement it in Chrome everything you need is here scripting languages makes it a good choice for people who are not programming gurus Cons: multiplayer ? proprietary, you are totally dependent of unity and its limit and can't extend it it's less "making a game from scratch" C++ would have been a cool thing I really think this kind of tool is interesting, but is it worth it to use at school for a project that involves more than 3 programming persons ? What do we really learn in term of programming from using this kind of tool (I'm ok with python and js, but I hate C#) ? We could have use Ogre instead, even if we were learning direct x starting january...

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  • Software license restricting commercial usage like CC BY-NC-SA

    - by Nick
    I want to distribute my software under license like Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - Share Alike license, i.e. Redistribution of source code and binaries is freely. Modified version of program have to be distributed under the same license. Attribution to original project should be supplied to. Restrict any kind of commercial usage. However CC does not recommend to use their licenses for software. Is there this kind of software license I could apply? Better if public license, but as far as I know US laws says that only EULA could restrict usage of received copy?

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  • Would you use (a dialect of) LISP for a real-world application? Where and why?

    - by Anto
    LISP (and dialects such as Scheme, Common LISP and Clojure) haven't gained much industry support even though they are quite decent programming languages. (At the moment though it seems like they are gaining some traction). Now, this is not directly related to the question, which is would you use a LISP dialect for a production program? What kind of program and why? Usages of the kind of being integrated into some other code (e.g. C) are included as well, but note that it is what you mean in your answer. Broad concepts are preferred but specific applications are okey as well.

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  • How can I quantify the amount of technical debt that exists in a project?

    - by Erik Dietrich
    Does anyone know if there is some kind of tool to put a number on technical debt of a code base, as a kind of code metric? If not, is anyone aware of an algorithm or set of heuristics for it? If neither of those things exists so far, I'd be interested in ideas for how to get started with such a thing. That is, how can I quantify the technical debt incurred by a method, a class, a namespace, an assembly, etc. I'm most interested in analyzing and assessing a C# code base, but please feel free to chime in for other languages as well, particularly if the concepts are language transcendent.

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  • "Never to forget information" for programmers [closed]

    - by Milan
    Hi there! I'm new to programming and I would like to make a list of most important pieces of knowledge of programming and CS that would be useful no matter what specific programming language I would use in the future. For instance, if I would make this kind of list for Law studies, there would be stuff like Articles of Constitution etc. Those pieces of information I would put in Anki, and repeat it from time to time. Speaking in terms of CS and programming I mean on the most useful: mathematical theorems algorithms (examples of elegant solutions, comparison of two solutions etc.) pieces of code anything else that is vital (and very handy) to have in mind Do you think that making this kind of knowledge list makes sense?

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  • Installing windows after ubuntu is installed (need to create ntfs partition too)

    - by Brent Roose
    I prefer Ubuntu to work on, but for some applications for school, I need windows. I've done some research and have a few problems: I only have one hard drive which is formatted as ext4, not ntfs. Many people say I have to use Gparted to create an ntfs partition to install windows on, the only problem is that I need to unmount my drive to do this, which isn't possible I think because I only have one. I thought about mounting my HDD as a slave on a windows laptop but I don't manage to partition it with windows partition manager, so I think I need some kind of tool. which one? next problem I'll probably have is that I won't be able to boot ubuntu after installing windows because grub will be removed from my MBR. are there any good guides around here? I've used some kind of tool before, but it crashed my whole HDD so I had to fully format it.

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  • Two Weeks As A Software Estimation Rule of Thumb?

    - by Todd Williamson
    I saw a blog posting that spoke to me: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-estimate-software.html Oddly, this is the kind of estimate that I tend to do on smaller projects. Just about everything is "two weeks" as that is comfortably far enough out. I once had an instructor walk us through how to create a more detailed estimate, wherein we already had the requirements up front, etc. and even after all the careful tabulation and such the final instruction was "Now that you have all this documentation go ahead and double it." Agile practitioners seem to like two weeks also as a sprint length. Is there something magical about two weeks? Is it a hrair number for our psyches or some other kind of crutch? Do you have an immediate default fall-back schedule strategy when you are pressed for an initial delivery date?

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  • In an Entity-Component-System Engine, How do I deal with groups of dependent entities?

    - by John Daniels
    After going over a few game design patterns, I have settle with Entity-Component-System (ES System) for my game engine. I've reading articles (mainly T=Machine) and review some source code and I think I got enough to get started. There is just one basic idea I am struggling with. How do I deal with groups of entities that are dependent on each other? Let me use an example: Assume I am making a standard overhead shooter (think Jamestown) and I want to construct a "boss entity" with multiple distinct but connected parts. The break down might look like something like this: Ship body: Movement, Rendering Cannon: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled Core: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled, Disabling (er...destroying) all other entities in the ship group My goal would be something that would be identified (and manipulated) as a distinct game element without having to rewrite subsystem form the ground up every time I want to build a new aggregate Element. How do I implement this kind of design in ES System? Do I implement some kind of parent-child entity relationship (entities can have children)? This seems to contradict the methodology that Entities are just empty container and makes it feel more OOP. Do I implement them as separate entities, with some kind of connecting Component (BossComponent) and related system (BossSubSystem)? I can't help but think that this will be hard to implement since how components communicate seem to be a big bear trap. Do I implement them as one Entity, with a collection of components (ShipComponent, CannonComponents, CoreComponent)? This one seems to veer way of the ES System intent (components here seem too much like heavy weight entities), but I'm know to this so I figured I would put that out there. Do I implement them as something else I have mentioned? I know that this can be implemented very easily in OOP, but my choosing ES over OOP is one that I will stick with. If I need to break with pure ES theory to implement this design I will (not like I haven't had to compromise pure design before), but I would prefer to do that for performance reason rather than start with bad design. For extra credit, think of the same design but, each of the "boss entities" were actually connected to a larger "BigBoss entity" made of a main body, main core and 3 "Boss Entities". This would let me see a solution for at least 3 dimensions (grandparent-parent-child)...which should be more than enough for me. Links to articles or example code would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.

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  • Are there non-programming related activities akin to solving programming problems ?

    - by julien
    I'm talking about particular activities, for which you can draw parallels with the specific kind of reasonning needed when solving programming problems. Counter examples are activities that would help in almost any situation, like : take a shower or any other, somewhat passive activities, which are only helpful in triggering this sort of asynchronous problem solving our brain does exercise, because you brain simply works better when you're fit EDIT : It seems this question was quite misunderstood. I wasn't asking about what you can do when stuck on a problem but rather, what kind of activities you have in you spare time that you think help you, more or less directly, solving programing problems.

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  • Reduce weight in healthy way - Day 2

    - by krnites
    My second day of reducing weight and it seems most of the blog are correct in saying that you can reduce weight if your calorie consumption is less than what you burn. In one day I have lost 1 lbs without doing anything. My current weight is 177.4 lbs. Yesterday I ate small portion of dinner that I used to eat that also around 7 PM. Normally I eat my dinner around 10 PM and withing 2 hour of eating I go for sleep, but yesterday I ate around 7 PM and went for sleep only after 12.On my second day I have eaten noodles and 3 eggs in breakfast and sesame chicken ( I love it) and fried rice in lunch, I still have not gone for running but had plan to go for running and then swimming. I hope it will at least burn the calories that I had taken. On some site it was written that a normal men body needs around 2000 Calorie a day. So if I am eating less than 2000 calorie ( noodles + 3 eggs = 400+200, rice + sesame chicken = 1300, total = 1900) and burning around 300 calorie, my total calorie intake will be 1600 which is less than what my body needs. So most probably by tomorrow I should come under 176 lb bracket.Apart from counting the calorie that I am taking in everyday and approx number of calorie that I am burning everyday, I had also starting tracking my physical activities on my mobile. I have got a beautiful Samsung Focus S Windows 7.5 mobile. And after browsing through the market I have downloaded couple of health Apps.1. 6 Week training - this has set of exercise and lets you choose the number of sets you want to do for all exercise. Its focus on your core muscles.2. Fast food Calories - This apps has all the fast food chain listed and give the calorie count of each of the food item available on there menu. Like for Burger King's French Fries Large (Salted) contains 500 Calorie.3. Gym Pocket Guide - Contains instructions for different kind of exercise and tells a right way of doing them.4.  RunSat - kind of GPS based application. Its mark the distance you have run, shows the path you have taken on a map, total calorie burnt, laps completed. I love this apps.5. Stop Watch I also have noticed that If I am running in GYM and have television in front of me where a movie or serial is going on which I like,  I normally didn't notice the time. Most of the time running on treadmill is very boring, but if some music video is playing or some kind of sitcom is going, I can run for  a hour or half.So on day 2 I have lost 1 lbs and had learnt that calorie intake should be less then calorie burnt for a given day.

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  • Investigating a big C++ project from its source code [closed]

    - by user827992
    Possible Duplicate: What is the best method to start understanding BIG project source code? I have a project that I would like to dissect to learn something new from it. This project is about 200 megabytes. For me, it is just impossible to open every cpp and hpp file and read each and every one. I also don't know what is the best approach in this case. Many people on the internet are looking for an UML tool to generate some kind of graph. I think that UML works well when you are starting a project and you want to express the business logic of your classes and methods. In my opinion UML is totally useless when studying a project only from its source code. Also UML is an OO language, in a large sized C++ project I find a lot of stuff that is not an object and can express some other kind of paradigm. Can you name a tool or a class of software that can help with this?

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  • Doing practice jobsearch/technical interviews?

    - by Beekguk
    I graduated college last year & I've never gone through the interview process - my current programming position evolved out of projects I did in school, but in a few months I'm making a clean break and moving across the country so I'm going to have to face a "grown-up" jobsearch. I'm kind of scared of technical interviews - I think I'm pretty good at my job and my hobby programming projects ... but what if it turns out I'm part of that group that thinks they're qualified, but really just cause despair at the state of education in the hearts of interviewers? So, I'm thinking of doing a "practice" job hunt in my current city to get an idea of what it's like and what kind of experience/expertise employers are really looking for. Is this a dick move ethically (applying to/interviewing for jobs I can't take)? If so, is there another good way to prepare for technical interviews, especially those little trick puzzle-type questions?

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  • When someone deletes a shared data source in SSRS

    - by Rob Farley
    SQL Server Reporting Services plays nicely. You can have things in the catalogue that get shared. You can have Reports that have Links, Datasets that can be used across different reports, and Data Sources that can be used in a variety of ways too. So if you find that someone has deleted a shared data source, you potentially have a bit of a horror story going on. And this works for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday theme, hosted by Nick Haslam, who wants to hear about horror stories. I don’t write about LobsterPot client horror stories, so I’m writing about a situation that a fellow MVP friend asked me about recently instead. The best thing to do is to grab a recent backup of the ReportServer database, restore it somewhere, and figure out what’s changed. But of course, this isn’t always possible. And it’s much nicer to help someone with this kind of thing, rather than to be trying to fix it yourself when you’ve just deleted the wrong data source. Unfortunately, it lets you delete data sources, without trying to scream that the data source is shared across over 400 reports in over 100 folders, as was the case for my friend’s colleague. So, suddenly there’s a big problem – lots of reports are failing, and the time to turn it around is small. You probably know which data source has been deleted, but getting the shared data source back isn’t the hard part (that’s just a connection string really). The nasty bit is all the re-mapping, to get those 400 reports working again. I know from exploring this kind of stuff in the past that the ReportServer database (using its default name) has a table called dbo.Catalog to represent the catalogue, and that Reports are stored here. However, the information about what data sources these deployed reports are configured to use is stored in a different table, dbo.DataSource. You could be forgiven for thinking that shared data sources would live in this table, but they don’t – they’re catalogue items just like the reports. Let’s have a look at the structure of these two tables (although if you’re reading this because you have a disaster, feel free to skim past). Frustratingly, there doesn’t seem to be a Books Online page for this information, sorry about that. I’m also not going to look at all the columns, just ones that I find interesting enough to mention, and that are related to the problem at hand. These fields are consistent all the way through to SQL Server 2012 – there doesn’t seem to have been any changes here for quite a while. dbo.Catalog The Primary Key is ItemID. It’s a uniqueidentifier. I’m not going to comment any more on that. A minor nice point about using GUIDs in unfamiliar databases is that you can more easily figure out what’s what. But foreign keys are for that too… Path, Name and ParentID tell you where in the folder structure the item lives. Path isn’t actually required – you could’ve done recursive queries to get there. But as that would be quite painful, I’m more than happy for the Path column to be there. Path contains the Name as well, incidentally. Type tells you what kind of item it is. Some examples are 1 for a folder and 2 a report. 4 is linked reports, 5 is a data source, 6 is a report model. I forget the others for now (but feel free to put a comment giving the full list if you know it). Content is an image field, remembering that image doesn’t necessarily store images – these days we’d rather use varbinary(max), but even in SQL Server 2012, this field is still image. It stores the actual item definition in binary form, whether it’s actually an image, a report, whatever. LinkSourceID is used for Linked Reports, and has a self-referencing foreign key (allowing NULL, of course) back to ItemID. Parameter is an ntext field containing XML for the parameters of the report. Not sure why this couldn’t be a separate table, but I guess that’s just the way it goes. This field gets changed when the default parameters get changed in Report Manager. There is nothing in dbo.Catalog that describes the actual data sources that the report uses. The default data sources would be part of the Content field, as they are defined in the RDL, but when you deploy reports, you typically choose to NOT replace the data sources. Anyway, they’re not in this table. Maybe it was already considered a bit wide to throw in another ntext field, I’m not sure. They’re in dbo.DataSource instead. dbo.DataSource The Primary key is DSID. Yes it’s a uniqueidentifier... ItemID is a foreign key reference back to dbo.Catalog Fields such as ConnectionString, Prompt, UserName and Password do what they say on the tin, storing information about how to connect to the particular source in question. Link is a uniqueidentifier, which refers back to dbo.Catalog. This is used when a data source within a report refers back to a shared data source, rather than embedding the connection information itself. You’d think this should be enforced by foreign key, but it’s not. It does allow NULLs though. Flags this is an int, and I’ll come back to this. When a Data Source gets deleted out of dbo.Catalog, you might assume that it would be disallowed if there are references to it from dbo.DataSource. Well, you’d be wrong. And not because of the lack of a foreign key either. Deleting anything from the catalogue is done by calling a stored procedure called dbo.DeleteObject. You can look at the definition in there – it feels very much like the kind of Delete stored procedures that many people write, the kind of thing that means they don’t need to worry about allowing cascading deletes with foreign keys – because the stored procedure does the lot. Except that it doesn’t quite do that. If it deleted everything on a cascading delete, we’d’ve lost all the data sources as configured in dbo.DataSource, and that would be bad. This is fine if the ItemID from dbo.DataSource hooks in – if the report is being deleted. But if a shared data source is being deleted, you don’t want to lose the existence of the data source from the report. So it sets it to NULL, and it marks it as invalid. We see this code in that stored procedure. UPDATE [DataSource]    SET       [Flags] = [Flags] & 0x7FFFFFFD, -- broken link       [Link] = NULL FROM    [Catalog] AS C    INNER JOIN [DataSource] AS DS ON C.[ItemID] = DS.[Link] WHERE    (C.Path = @Path OR C.Path LIKE @Prefix ESCAPE '*') Unfortunately there’s no semi-colon on the end (but I’d rather they fix the ntext and image types first), and don’t get me started about using the table name in the UPDATE clause (it should use the alias DS). But there is a nice comment about what’s going on with the Flags field. What I’d LIKE it to do would be to set the connection information to a report-embedded copy of the connection information that’s in the shared data source, the one that’s about to be deleted. I understand that this would cause someone to lose the benefit of having the data sources configured in a central point, but I’d say that’s probably still slightly better than LOSING THE INFORMATION COMPLETELY. Sorry, rant over. I should log a Connect item – I’ll put that on my todo list. So it sets the Link field to NULL, and marks the Flags to tell you they’re broken. So this is your clue to fixing it. A bitwise AND with 0x7FFFFFFD is basically stripping out the ‘2’ bit from a number. So numbers like 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, etc, whose binary representation ends in either 11 or 10 get turned into 0, 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, etc. We can test for it using a WHERE clause that matches the SET clause we’ve just used. I’d also recommend checking for Link being NULL and also having no ConnectionString. And join back to dbo.Catalog to get the path (including the name) of broken reports are – in case you get a surprise from a different data source being broken in the past. SELECT c.Path, ds.Name FROM dbo.[DataSource] AS ds JOIN dbo.[Catalog] AS c ON c.ItemID = ds.ItemID WHERE ds.[Flags] = ds.[Flags] & 0x7FFFFFFD AND ds.[Link] IS NULL AND ds.[ConnectionString] IS NULL; When I just ran this on my own machine, having deleted a data source to check my code, I noticed a Report Model in the list as well – so if you had thought it was just going to be reports that were broken, you’d be forgetting something. So to fix those reports, get your new data source created in the catalogue, and then find its ItemID by querying Catalog, using Path and Name to find it. And then use this value to fix them up. To fix the Flags field, just add 2. I prefer to use bitwise OR which should do the same. Use the OUTPUT clause to get a copy of the DSIDs of the ones you’re changing, just in case you need to revert something later after testing (doing it all in a transaction won’t help, because you’ll just lock out the table, stopping you from testing anything). UPDATE ds SET [Flags] = [Flags] | 2, [Link] = '3AE31CBA-BDB4-4FD1-94F4-580B7FAB939D' /*Insert your own GUID*/ OUTPUT deleted.Name, deleted.DSID, deleted.ItemID, deleted.Flags FROM dbo.[DataSource] AS ds JOIN dbo.[Catalog] AS c ON c.ItemID = ds.ItemID WHERE ds.[Flags] = ds.[Flags] & 0x7FFFFFFD AND ds.[Link] IS NULL AND ds.[ConnectionString] IS NULL; But please be careful. Your mileage may vary. And there’s no reason why 400-odd broken reports needs to be quite the nightmare that it could be. Really, it should be less than five minutes. @rob_farley

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  • Using Mock for event listeners in unit-testing

    - by phtrivier
    I keep getting to test this kind of code (language irrelevant) : public class Foo() { public Foo(Dependency1 dep1) { this.dep1 = dep1; } public void setUpListeners() { this.dep1.addSomeEventListener(.... some listener code ...); } } Typically, you want to test what when the dependency fires the event, the class under tests reacts appropriately (in some situation, the only purpose of such classes is to wire lots of other components, that can be independently tested. So far, to test this, I always end up doing something like : creating a 'stub' that implements both a addXXXXListener, that simply stores the callback, and a fireXXXX, that simply calls any registered listener. This is a bit tedious since you have to create the mock with the right interface, but that can do use an introspective framework that can 'spy' on a method, and inject the real dependency in tests Is there a cleaner way to do this kind of things ?

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  • Create association between informations

    - by Andrea Girardi
    I deployed a project some days ago that allow to extract some medical articles using the results of a questionnaire completed by a user. For instance, if I reply on questionnaire I'm affected by Diabetes type 2 and I'm a smoker, my algorithm extracts all articles related to diabetes bubbling up all articles contains information about Diabetes type 2 and smoking. Basically we created a list of topic and, for every topic we define a kind of "guideline" that allows to extract and order informations for a user. I'm quite sure there are some better way to put on relationship two content but I was not able to find them on network. Could you suggest my a model, algorithm or paper to better understand this kind of problem and that helps me to find a faster, and more accurate way to extract information for an user?

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  • How do I learn algorithms and data structures?

    - by sushil bharwani
    this is in continuation to my previous question where i asked is it necessary to learn algorithm and datastructures. I feel yes it is. Now when i work in a enviornment where i wont ever get the chance to learn it by experimenting or practically or in any assignment. What is the right approach like the right books, right kind of problems, right kind of resources that i can go through to give six months or a year or two to learn it. And also mould my mind in a way that it can relate problems to datastructures and algos.

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  • Screensaver does not activate properly [closed]

    - by Ole Christian
    I do not know if this is a known feature/bug in Unity, and I am also unaware of how else to report bug-related things. I was listening to some music using banshee. My services was called upon (My SO wanted me to help with the dishes) so I clicked on the sound icon and paused the music. I left the sound icon menu open. When I came back much later, the screensaver had not yet activated. Once I closed the menu, the screensaver immediately kicked in. I am assuming that this kind of behavior is not intended. This is also easily reproducible for anyone. Has anyone else experienced this kind of behavior? Is this a (known) bug?

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