Search Results

Search found 14074 results on 563 pages for 'programmers'.

Page 194/563 | < Previous Page | 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201  | Next Page >

• How is a "Software Developer" different from a "Software Consultant"? What makes a consultant?

  - by Kumar

  I have seen a lot of people claiming themselves to be a "software consultant". These consultants do what a normal software developer does, write code, estimate tasks, fix bugs and attend meetings etc. The only difference being the financials, consultants end up earning more. Then how is a software developer different from a "consultant"? In addition to the main question, I would like to know how can a software developer become a consultant? Are there any specific guidelines for a consultant? Do they need to amass certifications and write up research papers? Please do not confuse the software consultant with a management consultant. Software consultants I have seen are not managers.

  Read the article

• rails fake data, considering switch from faker to forgery, any advantages or pitfalls?

  - by Michael Durrant

  With Ruby on Rails I've usually used Forgery for generating dummy data for testing. I've noticed recently that several clients and tutorials are using Faker They both seem fairly similar in use and popularity: Faker 128 forks, 418 watchers. Forgery 59 forks, 399 watchers. They both seem similar in how current they are: Faker Most updates are from 6 and 9 months ago. Forgery Most updates are from 4 and 9 months ago. The one distinguishing factor I've found so far is that Forgery seems like it has better instructions. Are there any particular benefits or disadvantages to using one over the other? Have you ever needed to switch from one to another for a particular reason?

  Read the article

• Modern.IE VM license

  - by Thomas W.

  Microsoft provides some VMs for testing purposes (advertised on StackOverflow) and I'm trying to understand the license terms. The one I don't really understand is 1.b. You may use the software for testing purposes only. You may not use the software for commercial purposes. My thoughts: a) Testing a website in several browsers on several different virtual machines seems a quite professional approach. I hardly believe many private developers would do that. Of course they should, but which private developer has the time to do so? b) If that's really only available to private developers, what is the offer to companies doing the same thing? I am missing the advertisement for a paid service. My question as a non-native English speaker: Is testing by a company considered as a commercial purpose? Can I use the VMs within a company for testing or not?

  Read the article

• Javascript: Machine Constants Applicable?

  - by DavidB2013

  I write numerical routines for students of science and engineering (although they are freely available for use by anybody else as well) and am wondering how to properly use machine constants in a JavaScript program, or if they are even applicable. For example, say I am writing a program in C++ that numerically computes the roots of the following equation: exp(-0.7x) + sin(3x) - 1.2x + 0.3546 = 0 A root-finding routine should be able to compute roots to within the machine epsilon. In C++, this value is specified by the language: DBL_EPSILON. C++ also specifies the smallest and largest values that can be held by a float or double variable. However, how does this convert to JavaScript? Since a Javascript program runs in a web browser, and I don't know what kind of computer will run the program, and JavaScript does not have corresponding predefined values for these quantities, how can I implement my own version of these constants so that my programs compute results to as much accuracy as allowed on the computer running the web browser? My first draft is to simply copy over the literal constants from C++: FLT_MIN: 1.17549435082229e-038 FLT_MAX: 3.40282346638529e+038 DBL_EPSILON: 2.2204460492503131e-16 I am also willing to write small code blocks that could compute these values for each machine on which the program is run. That way, a supercomputer might compute results to a higher accuracy than an old, low-level, PC. BUT, I don't know if such a routine would actually reach the computer, in which case, I would be wasting my time. Anybody here know how to compute and use (in Javascript) values that correspond to machine constants in a compiled language? Is it worth my time to write small programs in Javascript that compute DBL_EPSILON, FLT_MIN, FLT_MIN, etc. for use in numerical routines? Or am I better off simply assigning literal constants that come straight from C++ on a standard Windows PC?

  Read the article

• When should I tell my boss that I'm thinking about looking for another job?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  I'm thinking about looking around for another job, but I don't know when I should tell my boss because I would like to see what kind of opportunities I can land before I even mention it. The reason I'm reluctant to tell him right away is I'm afraid he'll begin the process of replacing me. If I don't tell him while I'm looking around, then I can't use him as a reference and he'd most likely give a great recommendation. If I were to leave and go work for someone else, it wouldn't be until after I finish my current project which ends in two months because I don't want to screw anyone over. How would you approach him about this and when? Thanks in advance for your wisdom!

  Read the article

• Working with CPU cycles in Gameboy Advance

  - by Preston Sexton

  I am working on an GBA emulator and stuck at implementing CPU cycles. I just know the basic knowledge about it, each instruction of ARM and THUMB mode as each different set of cycles for each instructions. Currently I am simply saying every ARM instructions cost 4 cycles and THUMB instructions cost 2 cycles. But how do you implement it like the CPU documentation says? Does instruction cycles vary depending on which section of the memory it's currently accessing to? http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm#cpuinstructioncycletimes According to the above specification, it says different memory areas have different waitstates but I don't know what it exactly mean. Furthermore, what are Non-sequential cycle, Sequential cycle, Internal Cycle, Coprocessor Cycle for? I saw in some GBA source code that they are using PC to figure out how many cycles each instruction takes to complete, but how are they doing it?

  Read the article

• How to create single integer index value based on two integers where first is unlimited?

  - by Jan Doggen

  I have table data containing an integer value X ranging from 1.... unknown, and an integer value Y ranging from 1..9 The data need to be presented in order 'X then Y'. For one visual component I can set multiple index names: X;Y But for another component I need a one-dimensional integer value as index (sort order). If X were limited to an upper bound of say 100, the one-dimensional value could simply be X*100 + Y. If the one-dimensional value could have been a real, it could be X + Y/10. But if I want to keep X unlimited, is there a way to calculate a single integer 'indexing' value from X and Y? [Added] Background information: I have a Gantt/TreeList component where the tasks are ordered on a TaskIndex integer. This does not need to be a real database field, I can make it a calculated field in the underlying client dataset. My table data is e.g. as follows: ID Baseline ParentID 1 0 0 (task) 5 2 1 (baseline) 8 1 1 (baseline) 9 0 0 (task) 12 0 0 (task) 16 1 12 (baseline) Task 1 has two baselines numbered 1 and 2 (IDs 8 and 5) Task 9 has no baselines Task 12 has one baseline numbered 1 (ID 16) Baselines number 1-9 (the Y variable from my question); 0 or null identify the tasks ID's are unlimited (the X variable) The user plays with visibility of baselines, e.g. he wants to see all tasks with all baselines labeled 1. This is done by updating a filter on the table. Right now I constantly have to recalculate TaskIndex after changing the filter (looping through records). It would be nice if TaskIndex could be calculated on the fly for each record knowing only the data in the current record (I work in Delphi where a client dataset has an OnCalcFields event handler, that is triggered for each record when necessary). I have no control over the inner workings of the visual component.

  Read the article

• Is extensive documentation a code smell?

  - by Griffin

  Every library, open-source project, and SDK/API I've ever come across has come packaged with a (usually large) documentation file, and this seems contradictory to the wide-spread belief that good code needs little to no comments. What separates documentation from this programming methodology? a one to two page overview of a package seems reasonable, but elegant code combined with standard intelisense should have theoretically deprecated the practice of documentation by now IMO. I feel like companies only create detailed documentation and tutorials because its what they've always done. Why should developers have to constantly be searching through online documentation in order to learn how to do things when such information should be intrinsic to the classes, methods and namespaces?

  Read the article

• Can we set up svn server on a local computer without any network access?

  - by Aitezaz Abdullah

  I want to set up an SVN repository on my computer without any network access. I am working on a code without any collaborator, so I don't want it to be publicly available. I read the following post. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6001445/local-source-control-repository-cross-platform but this post suggests using online svn repository services that give free repositories. In that case, my code will be publicly available (as is included in the terms of free plans). So I was wondering if I can set up a local server on my windows xp machine that only I access even when I don't have any internet connection?

  Read the article

• What is a generic term for name/identifier? (as opposed to label)

  - by d3vid

  I need to refer to a number of things that have both an identifier value (used in code and configuration), and a human-readable label. These things include: database columns dropdown items subapplications objects stored in a dictionary I want two unambiguous terms. One to refer to the identifier/value/key. One to refer to the label. As you can see, I'm pretty settled on the latter :) For the former, identifier seems best (not everything is strictly a key, and value and name could refer to the label; although, identifier usually refers only to a variable name), but I would prefer to follow an established practice if there is one. Is there an established term for this? (Please provide a source.) If not, are there any examples of a choice from a significant source (Java APIs, MSDN, a big FLOSS project)? (I wasn't sure if this should be posted here or to English Language & Usage. I thought this was the more appropriate expert audience. Happy to migrate if not.)

  Read the article

• HTML5 or Native Android/iOS application?

  - by Dimitris

  I would like to hear your opinion on this debate. I want to build a mobile application which will interact with a server and I was wondering what's the best way to do it. Build the entire application using the HTML5 technology and then just create native "browsing" apps for Android/iOS or to build the Android/iOS apps from scratch? Using the HTML5 will save considerable amounts of time but I don't know if the result will be equally good in both platforms. Building native apps will take much more time but the result will be definitely good. What do you think?

  Read the article

• String patterns that can be used to filter and group files

  - by Louis Rhys

  One of our application filters files in certain directory, extract some data from it and export a document from the extracted data. The algorithm for extracting the data depends on the file, and so far we use regex to select the algorithm to be used, for example .*\.txt will be processed by algorithm A, foo[0-5]\.xml will be processed by algo B, etc. However now we need some files to be processed together. For example, in one case we need two files, foo.*\.xml and bar.*\.xml. Part of the information to be extracted exist in the foo file, and the other part in the bar file. Moreover, we need to make sure the wild card is compatible. For example, if there are 6 files foo1.xml foo23.xml bar1.xml bar9.xml bar23.xml foo4.xml I would expect foo1 and bar1 to be identified as a group, and foo23 and bar23 as another group. bar9 and foo4 has no pair, so they will not be treated. Now, since the filter is configured by user, we need to have a pattern that can express the above requirement. I don't think you can express meaning like above in standard regex. (foo|bar).*\.xml will match all 6 file above and we can't identify which file is paired for a particular file. Is there any standard pattern that can express it? Or any idea how to modify regex to support this, that can be implemented easily?

  Read the article

• Gödel, Escher, Bach - Gödel's string

  - by Brad Urani

  In the book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, the author gives us a representation of the precursor to Gödel's string (Gödel's string's uncle) as: ~Ea,a': (I don't have the book in front of me but I think that's right). All that remains to get Gödel's string is to plug the Gödel number for this string into the free variable a''. What I don't understand is how to get the Gödel number for the functions PROOF-PAIR and ARITHMOQUINE. I understand how to write these functions in a programming language like FlooP (from the book) and could even write them myself in C# or Java, but the scheme that Hofstadter defines for Gödel numbering only applies to TNT (which is just his own syntax for natural number theory) and I don't see any way to write a procedure in TNT since it doesn't have any loops, variable assignments etc. Am I missing the point? Perhaps Gödel's string is not something that can actually be printed, but rather a theoretical string that need not actually be defined? I thought it would be neat to write a computer program that actually prints Gödel's string, or Gödel's string encoded by Gödel numbering (yes, I realize it would have a gazillion digits) but it seems like doing so requires some kind of procedural language and a Gödel numbering system for that procedural language that isn't included in the book. Of course once you had that, you could write a program that plugs random numbers into variable "a" and run procedure PROOF-PAIR on it to test for theoromhood of Gödel's string. If you let it run for a trillion years you might find a derivation that proves Gödel's string.

  Read the article

• How to explain a layperson why a developer should not be interrupted while neck-deep in coding?

  - by András Szepesházi

  If you just consider the second part of my question, "Why a developer should not be interrupted while neck-deep in coding", that has been discussed a number of times by smart people. Heck, even the co-founder of SO, Joel Spolsky, wrote a blog post about "getting in the zone" and "being knocked out of the zone" and why it takes an average of 15 minutes to achieve productivity when participating in complex, software development related tasks. So I think the why has been established. What I'm interested in is how to explain all that to somebody who doesn't know beans about Beans (khmm I mean software development). How to tell the wife, or the funny guy from accounting at the workplace, or the long time friend who pings you on Skype every 30 minutes with a "Wazzzzzzup?!", that all the interruptions have a much deeper impact on your work than the obvious 30 seconds they took from your time. Obviously you can't explain it by sentences like "I have to juggle a lot of variable names in my short term memory" unless you want to be the target of blank stares or friendly abuse. I'd like to be able to explain all that to non-developers in a way that will make them clearly understand - without being offensive, elitist or too technical.

  Read the article

• Finding work as a college student

  - by lightburst

  I'm a 3rd year CS student. I'm currently really, really, bored and tired of cheap school programming(I go to a fairly respectable(albeit not top) university in my country, but, really, it's not MIT) so I've been thinking about getting a part-time dev job for a long while now. I'm not some hotshot programmer or anything, but "Add/Delete XYZ class objects to list" or "Do this web feature/pattern in PHP" does get old after a few semesters. I also only learned(heard?) of programming when I entered college, so the duration of me being in contact with any code is short. I can't really apply as an intern as I have not accumulated the necessary credits yet to do that so I was thinking of selling myself as a part-time dev. I still need to go to school, and don't want to subject myself to living two lives. Plus, I think I'd have better chances considering my lack of things to write on the resume. The only language I know at heart is C (I've written several pointer-oriented stuff on my freshman year, which is apparently pretty leet(for some reason), or so Joel says. That sort of boosted my morale a bit) but I've worked with several other languages only for the sake of course work such as C#/Java/PHP/ASM. My only user-worthy project was a recursive quicksort simulator I wrote for class using GTK+ that used a textbox to output the progress. I also have not taken the compiler theory class yet, or my thesis. All that being said, I wonder if any legitimate software company(big or small) would hire somebody like me considering all that. If there are companies that do accept anybody like me, would I be doing programming or maybe just be a tester or something? Would anybody hire me as a dev at all? I know I don't have much(not even a degree) but what I lack in experience, I compensate with interest? I am less interested in websites and 'management' software(no offense or anything. also, most of the places here ONLY have those), and more into 'process driven'(I'm not sure how to call it) and system software. I have my eyes on a startup that sells basically an extension of Google Drive, but I feel like I'm too 'risky' for them. Oh, I'm also 19 if that means anything. We're not K-12 so kids go to college earlier than in the US.

  Read the article

• What languages are most commonly used in medical research?

  - by Chris Taylor

  For someone about to go into a career in medical research, what language would be the most useful to learn? From my limited experience (I have been a researcher in mathematics and in finance) I have been able to recommend looking at R (for statistics) Matlab (for general numeric processing) and Python (for general purpose programming with statistics/numerics as an add-on) but I don't know which of those (if any) are in common use -- or if there are other, more specialized languages that are used. To be clear, I'm not talking about a professional programmer working in a medical setting. I am talking about a medical or genetics researcher who uses programming to analyse data, or generally to help get their work done.

  Read the article

• Preventing RSI (Repetitive Strain Injuries)

  - by nightcracker

  I am 16 years old and I love to program and playing the piano. It's not uncommon that I'm bashing away on my mouse and keyboard all day long. I do not feel any pains doing so. Yet I am still worried, because I often hear from people that they can never type for longer then 10 minutes again without getting severe pains. Given my two hobbies, programming and playing the piano that worries me a lot. My current situation is this: G15 keyboard and G5 mouse A chair that looks like this (the back of the chair is surprisingly supportive): http://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/images/products/torbjorn-bureaustoel__0084333_PE210956_S4.JPG In my "normal sitting position" the table is around the height of my bellybutton. A LG Flatron L194wt screen (too small IMO, getting a new one soon) Should I be worrying about RSI/similar health issues? If yes, what can/should I do about it?

  Read the article

• Experience of Python's “PEP-302 New Import Hooks”

  - by Koichi Sasada

  I'm one of the developers of Ruby (CRuby). We are working on Ruby 2.0 release (planned to release 2012/Feb). Python has "PEP302: New Import Hooks" (2003): This PEP proposes to add a new set of import hooks that offer better customization of the Python import mechanism. Contrary to the current import hook, a new-style hook can be injected into the existing scheme, allowing for a finer grained control of how modules are found and how they are loaded. We are considering introducing a feature similar to PEP302 into Ruby 2.0 (CRuby 2.0). I want to make a proposal which can persuade Matz. Currently, CRuby can load scripts from only file systems in a standard way. If you have any experience or consideration about PEP 302, please share. Example: It's a great spec. No need to change it. It is almost good, but it has this problem... If I could go back to 2003, then I would change the spec to... I'm sorry if such a question is not suitable for here. I posted here because I'm not sure that I can ask this question at python-dev (of course, the list is not for cruby development). This post is moved from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11188229/experience-of-pythons-pep-302-new-import-hooks.

  Read the article

• Why does XCode convert PNGs to CgBI format?

  - by Gdeglin

  According to the research done here http://imageoptim.com/tweetbot.html, Xcode's conversion of PNGs to the proprietary Apple CgBI format does not create a noticeable performance improvement. Their claim is that the conversion only reduces PNG loading speed by 1 nanosecond. If this is true, why does apple bother with the CgBI format at all? Has anyone else benchmarked loading CgBI images vs regular PNG images on iOS devices to see if they perform differently?

  Read the article

• Why fork a library for your own application?

  - by Mr. Shickadance

  Why should a programmer ever fork a library for inclusion in a widely used application? I ask this question because I was reading an article about why Chromium isn't packaged for many Linux distros like Fedora. Apparently its largely due to the fact that Google has forked a number of libraries, modified them, and included them in Chromium. This has driven up the complexity of packaging releases. There are a number of reasons why this can be a bad thing, but how strong a case can you actually make for doing so in a large widely used application such as Chromium? The original article: http://ostatic.com/blog/making-projects-easier-to-package-why-chromium-isnt-in-fedora Isn't it usually worth the effort to make slight modifications to your own program in order to use a popular and well developed library?

  Read the article

• Do certain corporations hold more weight on a resume?

  - by Ryan

  Would a developer/tester position at Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. (any large tech. company of which most people have heard) be more valuable on a resume than working as a developer/tester somewhere where tech. isn't the main objective (shipping company, restaurant chain, insurance company, etc.)? Let's say you have two offers, and you only plan to stay with whichever company for 5 years, before trying to get a better position at a different company. One at Google that has a starting salary of $60,000, and one at some insurance company that has a starting salary of $80,000. I guess what I'm trying to say is... with university's, if someone graduates from MIT or Carnegie Mellon, they can pretty much get a job anywhere. Does someone seem more valuable after having worked at a company like Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.? In other words, would taking the lower paying job be better in the long run since it's at Google, or would it be better to take the higher paying job at the insurance company?

  Read the article

• Licensing approach for .NET library that might be used desktop / web-service / cloud environment

  - by Bobrovsky

  I am looking for advice how to architect licensing for a .NET library. I am not asking for tool/service recommendations or something like that. My library can be used in a regular desktop application, in an ASP.NET solution. And now Azure services come into play. Currently, for desktop applications the library checks if the application and company names from the version history are the same as the names the key was generated for. In other cases the library compares hardware IDs. Now there are problems: an Azure-enabled web-application can be run on different hardware each time (AFAIK) sometimes the hardware ID for the same hardware changes unexpectedly checking the hardware ID or version info might not be allowed in some circumstances (shared hosting for example) So, I am thinking about what approach I can take to architect a licensing scheme that: is friendly to customers (I do not try to fight piracy, but I do want to warn the customer if he uses the library on more servers than he paid for) can be used when there is no internet connection can be used on shared hosting What would you recommend?

  Read the article

• What does this piece of code in C++ mean? [closed]

  - by user1838418

  const double pi = 3.141592653589793; const angle rightangle = pi/2; inline angle deg2rad(angle degree) { return degree * rightangle / 90.; } angle function1() { return rightangle * ( ((double) rand()) / ((double) RAND_MAX) - .5 ); } bool setmargin(angle theta, angle phi, angle margin) { return (theta > phi-margin && theta < phi+margin); } Please help me. I'm new to C++

  Read the article

• Examples of Liskov Substitution

  - by james lewis

  I'm facilitating a session next week on the Liskov Substitution Principle and I was wondering if anyone had any examples of violations 'from the trenches'? I'm looking for something other than uncle Bob's rectangle - square problem and the persistent set problem he talks about in A-PPP (although that is a great example). So far I'm using the example of a (very simple) List and an IndexedList as the 'correct' use of inheritance. And the addition of a Set to this hierarchy as a violation (as a Set is distinct; strengthening the pre condition of the Add method). I've also taken this great example and it's solution from this question Both those examples are great but I'm looking for something more subtle and harder to spot. So far I've come up with nothing so if you've got a great, subtle example post it up. Also, any metaphors you've come across that helped you understand LSP would be really useful too.

  Read the article

• Programming language features that help to catch bugs early

  - by Christian Neumanns

  Do you know any programming language features that help to detect bugs early in the software development process - ideally at compile-time or else as early as possible at run-time? Examples of well-known and effective bug-reducing features are: Static typing and generic types: type incompatibility errors are detected by the compiler Design by Contract (TM), also called Contract Programming: invalid values are quickly detected at runtime (through preconditions, postconditions and class invariants) Unit testing I ask this question in the context of improving an object-oriented programming language (called Obix) which has been designed from the ground up to 'make it easy to quickly write reliable code'. Besides the features mentioned above this language also incorporates other Fail-fast features such as: Objects are immutable by default Void (null) values are not allowed by default The aim is to add more Fail-fast concepts to the language. If you know other features which help to write less error-prone code then please let us know. Thank you.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201  | Next Page >