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• Data validation best practices: how can I better construct user feedback?

  - by Cory Larson

  Data validation, whether it be domain object, form, or any other type of input validation, could theoretically be part of any development effort, no matter its size or complexity. I sometimes find myself writing informational or error messages that might seem harsh or demanding to unsuspecting users, and frankly I feel like there must be a better way to describe the validation problem to the user. I know that this topic is subjective and argumentative. StackOverflow might not be the proper channel for diving into this subject, but like I've mentioned, we all run into this at some point or another. There are so many StackExchange sites now; if there is a better one, feel free to share! Basically, I'm looking for good resources on data validation and user feedback that results from it at a theoretical level. Topics and questions I'm interested in are: Content Should I be describing what the user did correctly or incorrectly, or simply what was expected? How much detail can the user read before they get annoyed? (e.g. Is "Username cannot exceed 20 characters." enough, or should it be described more fully, such as "The username cannot be empty, and must be at least 6 characters but cannot exceed 30 characters."?) Grammar How do I decide between phrases like "must not," "may not," or "cannot"? Delivery This can depend on the project, but how should the information be delivered to the user? Should it be obtrusive (e.g. JavaScript alerts) or friendly? Should they be displayed prominently? Immediately (i.e. without confirmation steps, etc.)? Logging Do you bother logging validation errors? Internationalization Some cultures prefer or better understand directness over subtlety and vice-versa (e.g. "Don't do that!" vs. "Please check what you've done."). How do I cater to the majority of users? I may edit this list as I think more about the topic, but I'm genuinely interest in proper user feedback techniques. I'm looking for things like research results, poll results, etc. I've developed and refined my own techniques over the years that users seem to be okay with, but I work in an environment where the users prefer to adapt to what you give them over speaking up about things they don't like. I'm interested in hearing your experiences in addition to any resources to which you may be able to point me.

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• Methods of learning / teaching programming

  - by Mark Avenius

  When I was in school, I had a difficult time getting into programming because of a catch-22 in the learning process: I didn't know how to write anything because I didn't know what keywords and commands meant. For example (as a student, I would think), "what does this using namespace std; thing do anyway? I didn't know what keywords and commands meant because I hadn't written anything. This basically led me to spending countless long night cursing the compiler as I made minor tweaks to my assignments until they would compile (and hopefully perform whatever operation they were supposed to). Is there a teaching/learning method that anyone uses that gets around this catch-22? I am trying to make this non-argumentative, which is why I don't want to know the 'best' method, but rather which methods exist.

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• Why is it impossible to produce truly random numbers?

  - by Vinoth Kumar

  I was trying to solve a hobby problem that required generating a million random numbers. But I quickly realized, it is becoming difficult to make them unique. I picked up Algorithm Design Manual to read about random number generation. It has the following paragraph that I am fully not able to understand. Unfortunately, generating random numbers looks a lot easier than it really is. Indeed, it is fundamentally impossible to produce truly random numbers on any deterministic device. Von Neumann [Neu63] said it best: “Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.” The best we can hope for are pseudo-random numbers, a stream of numbers that appear as if they were generated randomly. Why is it impossible to produce truly random numbers in any deterministic device? What does this sentence mean?

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• Windows 7 Not Starting and System Repair Not Loading

  - by Mark

  I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 running Windows 7 When turning on my PC I keep receiving a black screen with the option to use System Repair or Start Normally. Both options lead me to the System Repair background except no matter how long I wait the system restore options never show up. Choosing F8 and running all of the options including safe mode encounters the same result above. I tried to to use 2 system recovery disks 32x and 64x I downloaded and both lead to similiar results. When I choose System Repair running from the disk the System Repair Question asking to select a language pops ups but after this no matter how long I wait no other options appear. Next after restarting and selecting F8 (after hitting f12 and running from CD) I choose 'Run From Safe Mode with Command Prompt' I am able to run all of the options from System Restore with differing results: Startup Repair: Choosing this ends up in system repair indefinitely (left running 12 hrs) System Restore: Does Nothing. PC thinks for a second and then stops. When selecting ShutDown I see an error message stating there are no restore points. System Image Recovery: Service Cannot be started in Safe Mode Windows Memory Diagnostic: Runs test but then leads to system repair background which never loads system repair Command Prompt: chkdsk /r -Cannot Lock Current Drive...write protected. chkdsk /f -Cannot Lock Current Drive...write protected. bootcfg - Cannot open Boot.Ini file bootcfg - Ran all 3 (rebuildBcd, FixMbr and Fixboot) but PC still goes to System Repair background with no repair options popping up upon restart (without recovery CD). I'm on the verge of purchasing a boot utility disk for $50 unless there is anything else short of "take it to a computer shop" that somebody can suggest I try.

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• Which algorithms/data structures should I "recognize" and know by name?

  - by Earlz

  I'd like to consider myself a fairly experienced programmer. I've been programming for over 5 years now. My weak point though is terminology. I'm self-taught, so while I know how to program, I don't know some of the more formal aspects of computer science. So, what are practical algorithms/data structures that I could recognize and know by name? Note, I'm not asking for a book recommendation about implementing algorithms. I don't care about implementing them, I just want to be able to recognize when an algorithm/data structure would be a good solution to a problem. I'm asking more for a list of algorithms/data structures that I should "recognize". For instance, I know the solution to a problem like this: You manage a set of lockers labeled 0-999. People come to you to rent the locker and then come back to return the locker key. How would you build a piece of software to manage knowing which lockers are free and which are in used? The solution, would be a queue or stack. What I'm looking for are things like "in what situation should a B-Tree be used -- What search algorithm should be used here" etc. And maybe a quick introduction of how the more complex(but commonly used) data structures/algorithms work. I tried looking at Wikipedia's list of data structures and algorithms but I think that's a bit overkill. So I'm looking more for what are the essential things I should recognize?

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• Beginner's guide to writing comments?

  - by Cameron

  Is there a definitive guide to writing code comments, aimed at budding developers? Ideally, it would cover when comments should (and should not) be used, and what comments should contain. This answer: Do not comment WHAT you are doing, but WHY you are doing it. The WHAT is taken care of by clean, readable and simple code with proper choice of variable names to support it. Comments show a higher level structure to the code that can't be (or is hard to) show by the code itself. comes close, but it's a little concise for inexperienced programmers (an expansion on that with several examples and corner cases would be excellent, I think).

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• Gathering all data in single iteration vs using functions for readable code

  - by user828584

  Say I have an array of runners with which I need to find the tallest runner, the fastest runner, and the lightest runner. It seems like the most readable solution would be: runners = getRunners(); tallestRunner = getTallestRunner(runners); fastestRunner = getFastestRunner(runners); lightestRunner = getLightestRunner(runners); ..where each function iterates over the runners and keeps track of the largest height, greatest speed, and lowest weight. Iterating over the array three times, however, doesn't seem like a very good idea. It would instead be better to do: int greatestHeght, greatestSpeed, leastWeight; Runner tallestRunner, fastestRunner, lightestRunner; for(runner in runners){ if(runner.height > greatestHeight) { greatestHeight = runner.height; tallestRunner = runner; } if(runner.speed > ... } While this isn't too unreadable, it can get messy when there is more logic for each piece of information being extracted in the iteration. What's the middle ground here? How can I use only a single iteration while still keeping the code divided into logical units?

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• Is the slow performance of programming languages a bad thing?

  - by Emanuil

  Here's how I see it. There's machine code and it's all that the computers needs in order to run something. The computers don't care about programming languages. It doesn't matter to them if the machine code comes from Perl, Python or PHP. Programming languages exist to serve programmers. Some programming languages run slower than others but that's not necessarily because there is something wrong with them. In many cases it's just because they do more things that otherwise programmers would have to do and by doing these things, they do better what they are supposed to do - serve programmers. So is the slower performance (at runtime) of a programming language really a bad thing?

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• What defines code readability?

  - by zxcdw

  It is often said that readability is perhaps the most important quality-defining measure of a given piece of code for reasons concerning maintainability, ease of understanding and use. What defines the word readable in context of program source code? What kind of definitive aspects are there to code readability? I would be grateful with code examples of readable code, along with reasoning why it is readable.

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• Is code that terminates on a random condition guaranteed to terminate?

  - by Simon Campbell

  If I had a code which terminated based on if a random number generator returned a result (as follows), would it be 100% certain that the code would terminate if it was allowed to run forever. while (random(MAX_NUMBER) != 0): // random returns a random number between 0 and MAX_NUMBER print('Hello World') I am also interested in any distinctions between purely random and the deterministic random that computers generally use. Assume the seed is not able to be known in the case of the deterministic random. Naively it could be suggested that the code will exit, after all every number has some possibility and all of time for that possibility to be exercised. On the other hand it could be argued that there is the random chance it may not ever meet the exit condition-- the generator could generate 1 'randomly' until infinity. (I suppose one would question the validity of the random number generator if it was a deterministic generator returning only 1's 'randomly' though)

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• Scientific evidence that supports using long variable names instead of abbreviations?

  - by Sebastian Dietz

  Is there any scientific evidence that the human brain can read and understand fully written variable names better/faster than abbreviated ones? Like PersistenceManager persistenceManager; in contrast to PersistenceManager pm; I have the impression that I get a better grasp of code that does not use abbreviations, even if the abbreviations would have been commonly used throughout the codebase. Can this individual feeling be backed up by any studies?

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• Strengthening code with possibly useless exception handling

  - by rdurand

  Is it a good practice to implement useless exception handling, just in case another part of the code is not coded correctly? Basic example A simple one, so I don't loose everybody :). Let's say I'm writing an app that will display a person's information (name, address, etc.), the data being extracted from a database. Let's say I'm the one coding the UI part, and someone else is writing the DB query code. Now imagine that the specifications of your app say that if the person's information is incomplete (let's say, the name is missing in the database), the person coding the query should handle this by returning "NA" for the missing field. What if the query is poorly coded and doesn't handle this case? What if the guy who wrote the query handles you an incomplete result, and when you try to display the informations, everything crashes, because your code isn't prepared to display empty stuff? This example is very basic. I believe most of you will say "it's not your problem, you're not responsible for this crash". But, it's still your part of the code which is crashing. Another example Let's say now I'm the one writing the query. The specifications don't say the same as above, but that the guy writing the "insert" query should make sure all the fields are complete when adding a person to the database to avoid inserting incomplete information. Should I protect my "select" query to make sure I give the UI guy complete informations? The questions What if the specifications don't explicitly say "this guy is the one in charge of handling this situation"? What if a third person implements another query (similar to the first one, but on another DB) and uses your UI code to display it, but doesn't handle this case in his code? Should I do what's necessary to prevent a possible crash, even if I'm not the one supposed to handle the bad case? I'm not looking for an answer like "(s)he's the one responsible for the crash", as I'm not solving a conflict here, I'd like to know, should I protect my code against situations it's not my responsibility to handle? Here, a simple "if empty do something" would suffice. In general, this question tackles redundant exception handling. I'm asking it because when I work alone on a project, I may code 2-3 times a similar exception handling in successive functions, "just in case" I did something wrong and let a bad case come through.

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• Is case after case in a switch efficient?

  - by RandomGuy

  Just a random question regarding switch case efficiency in case after case; is the following code (assume pseudo code): function bool isValid(String myString){ switch(myString){ case "stringA": case "stringB": case "stringC": return true; default: return false; } more efficient than this: function bool isValid(String myString){ switch(myString){ case "stringA": return true; case "stringB": return true; case "stringC": return true; default: return false; } Or is the performance equal? I'm not thinking in a specific language but if needed let's assume it's Java or C (for this case would be needed to use chars instead of strings).

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• CodeGolf : Find the Unique Paths

  - by st0le

  Here's a pretty simple idea, in this pastebin I've posted some pair of numbers. These represent Nodes of a unidirected connected graph. The input to stdin will be of the form, (they'll be numbers, i'll be using an example here) c d q r a b d e p q so x y means x is connected to y (not viceversa) There are 2 paths in that example. a->b->c->d->e and p->q->r. You need to print all the unique paths from that graph The output should be of the format a->b->c->d->e p->q->r Notes You can assume the numbers are chosen such that one path doesn't intersect the other (one node belongs to one path) The pairs are in random order. They are more than 1 paths, they can be of different lengths. All numbers are less than 1000. If you need more details, please leave a comment. I'll amend as required. Shameless-Plug For those who enjoy Codegolf, please Commit at Area51 for its very own site:) (for those who don't enjoy it, please support it as well, so we'll stay out of your way...)

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• Number crunching algo for learning multithreading?

  - by Austin Henley

  I have never really implemented anything dealing with threads; my only experience with them is reading about them in my undergrad. So I want to change that by writing a program that does some number crunching, but splits it up into several threads. My first ideas for this hopefully simple multithreaded program were: Beal's Conjecture brute force based on my SO question. Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe formula for calculating Pi. Prime number brute force search As you can see I have an interest in math and thought it would be fun to incorporate it into this, rather than coding something such as a server which wouldn't be nearly as fun! But the 3 ideas don't seem very appealing and I have already done some work on them in the past so I was curious if anyone had any ideas in the same spirit as these 3 that I could implement?

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• The worst anti-patterns you have came across.

  - by ?????????

  What are the worst anti-patterns you have came across in your career as a programmer? I'm mostly involved in java, although it is probably language-independent. I think the worst of it is what I call the main anti-pattern. It means program consisting of single, extremely big class (sometimes accompanied with a pair of little classes) which contains all logic. Typically with a big loop in which all business logic is contained, sometimes having tens of thousands of lines of code.

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• Should my program "be lenient" in what it accepts and "discard faulty input silently"?

  - by romkyns

  I was under the impression that by now everyone agrees this maxim was a mistake. But I recently saw this answer which has a "be lenient" comment upvoted 137 times (as of today). In my opinion, the leniency in what browsers accept was the direct cause of the utter mess that HTML and some other web standards were a few years ago, and have only recently begun to properly crystallize out of that mess. The way I see it, being lenient in what you accept will lead to this. The second part of the maxim is "discard faulty input silently, without returning an error message unless this is required by the specification", and this feels borderline offensive. Any programmer who has banged their head on the wall when something fails silently will know what I mean. So, am I completely wrong about this? Should my program be lenient in what it accepts and swallow errors silently? Or am I mis-interpreting what this is supposed to mean? Taken to the extreme, if Excel followed this maxim and I gave it an exe file to open, it would just show a blank spreadsheet without even mentioning that anything went wrong. Is this really a good principle to follow?

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• Is there a better term than "smoothness" or "granularity" to describe this language feature?

  - by Chris

  One of the best things about programming is the abundance of different languages. There are general purpose languages like C++ and Java, as well as little languages like XSLT and AWK. When comparing languages, people often use things like speed, power, expressiveness, and portability as the important distinguishing features. There is one characteristic of languages I consider to be important that, so far, I haven't heard [or been able to come up with] a good term for: how well a language scales from writing tiny programs to writing huge programs. Some languages make it easy and painless to write programs that only require a few lines of code, e.g. task automation. But those languages often don't have enough power to solve large problems, e.g. GUI programming. Conversely, languages that are powerful enough for big problems often require far too much overhead for small problems. This characteristic is important because problems that look small at first frequently grow in scope in unexpected ways. If a programmer chooses a language appropriate only for small tasks, scope changes can require rewriting code from scratch in a new language. And if the programmer chooses a language with lots of overhead and friction to solve a problem that stays small, it will be harder for other people to use and understand than necessary. Rewriting code that works fine is the single most wasteful thing a programmer can do with their time, but using a bazooka to kill a mosquito instead of a flyswatter isn't good either. Here are some of the ways this characteristic presents itself. Can be used interactively - there is some environment where programmers can enter commands one by one Requires no more than one file - neither project files nor makefiles are required for running in batch mode Can easily split code across multiple files - files can refeence each other, or there is some support for modules Has good support for data structures - supports structures like arrays, lists, and especially classes Supports a wide variety of features - features like networking, serialization, XML, and database connectivity are supported by standard libraries Here's my take on how C#, Python, and shell scripting measure up. Python scores highest. Feature C# Python shell scripting --------------- --------- --------- --------------- Interactive poor strong strong One file poor strong strong Multiple files strong strong moderate Data structures strong strong poor Features strong strong strong Is there a term that captures this idea? If not, what term should I use? Here are some candidates. Scalability - already used to decribe language performance, so it's not a good idea to overload it in the context of language syntax Granularity - expresses the idea of being good just for big tasks versus being good for big and small tasks, but doesn't express anything about data structures Smoothness - expresses the idea of low friction, but doesn't express anything about strength of data structures or features Note: Some of these properties are more correctly described as belonging to a compiler or IDE than the language itself. Please consider these tools collectively as the language environment. My question is about how easy or difficult languages are to use, which depends on the environment as well as the language.

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• Finding an A* heuristic for a directed graph

  - by Janis Peisenieks

  In a previous question, I asked about finding a route (or path if you will) in a city. That is all dandy. The solution I chose was with the A* algorithm, which really seems to suit my needs. What I find puzzling is heuristic. How do I find one in an environment without constant distance between 2 nodes? Meaning, not every 2 nodes have the same distance between them. What I have is nodes (junctures), streets with weight (which may also be one-way), a start/finish node (since the start and end is always in the same place) and a goal node. In an ordinary case, I would just use the same way I got to goal to go back, but since one of the streets could have been a one-way, that may not be possible. The main question How do I find a heuristic in a directed graph?

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• What should be allowed inside getters and setters?

  - by Botond Balázs

  I got into an interesting internet argument about getter and setter methods and encapsulation. Someone said that all they should do is an assignment (setters) or a variable access (getters) to keep them "pure" and ensure encapsulation. Am I right that this would completely defeat the purpose of having getters and setters in the first place and validation and other logic (without strange side-effects of course) should be allowed? When should validation happen? When setting the value, inside the setter (to protect the object from ever entering an invalid state - my opinion) Before setting the value, outside the setter Inside the object, before each time the value is used Is a setter allowed to change the value (maybe convert a valid value to some canonical internal representation)?

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• How to learn the math behind the code?

  - by Solomon Wise

  I am a 12 year old who has recently gotten into programming. (Although I know that the number of books you have read does not determine your programming competency or ability, just to paint a "map" of where I am in terms of the content I know...) I've finished the books: Python 3 For Absolute Beginners Pro Python Python Standard Library by Example Beautiful Code Agile Web Development With Rails and am about halfway into Programming Ruby. I have written many small programs (One that finds which files have been updated and deleted in a directory, one that compares multiple players' fantasy baseball value, and some text based games, and many more). Obviously, as I'm not some sort of child prodigy, I can't take a formal Computer Science course until high school. I really want to learn computer science to increase my knowledge about the code, and the how the code runs. I've really become interested in the math part after reading the source code for Python's random module. Is there a place where I can learn CS, or programming math online for free, at a level that would be at least partially understandable to a person my age?

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• Benchmarking CPU processing power

  - by Federico Zancan

  Provided that many tools for computers benchmarking are available already, I'd like to write my own, starting with processing power measurement. I'd like to write it in C under Linux, but other language alternatives are welcome. I thought starting from floating point operations per second, but it is just a hint. I also thought it'd be correct to keep track of CPU number of cores, RAM amount and the like, to more consistently associate results with CPU architecture. How would you proceed to the task of measuring CPU computing power? And on top of that: I would worry about a properly minimum workload induced by concurrently running services; is it correct to run benchmarking as a standalone (and possibly avulsed from the OS environment) process?

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• How does one handle an incorrect resource file?

  - by AedonEtLIRA

  I'm starting the parser that will handle one of the key features of my app and realizing exactly who easy it would be for me to screw up a resource file that is provided to the application. For example, a simple resource that I provide to my app is a JSON file that contains an entity layout (name, fascia, location etc...). It would be easy for me to leave out the name of the entity or misspell the JSON key. Obviously catastrophic failures during parsing are to be handled in a try/catch, but how would subtle failures (such as a dyslexic spelling of name) be handled?

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• Techniques for getting off the ground in any language

  - by AndyBursh

  When I start learning a new language, I have a couple of simple implementations that I like to complete to familiarise myself with the language. Currently, I write: Fibonacci and/or factorial to get the hang of writing and calling methods, and basic recursion Djikstras shortest path (with a node type) to get to grips with making classes (or whatever the language equivalent is) with methods and properties, and also using them in slightly more complex code. I was wondering: does anybody else have any techniques or tools they like to use when getting off the ground in a new language? I'm always looking for new things to add to my "start-up routine".

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• Does a prose to code compiler exist?

  - by Raynos

  I have seen some horrible code in my time including people virtually duplicating the code in comments // add 4 to x x+=4; // for each i in 0 to 9 for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { // multiply x by i x *= i; } Taking this concept further, I'm curious whether prose to code compilers exist. Is there a valid use case for English prose to code? Do compilers exist that do this? The distinction between this and auto generated code, is that auto generated code is generally always a subset of a project. Can we have complete projects auto generated from english prose? I realise that this might overlap with the concept of declarative languages.

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