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  • Need personal advice on how to get out of a company..

    - by SOfan
    Hi, I am an SO user since past 6 months and this is the first time I am turning to SO for personal help. I have asked technical questions before with my real ID. I am stuck inside a service based IT company for the past one year and haven't been able to decide if to leave it, when to leave it and how to leave it. I had taken 2 weeks LWP on medical reason roughly at end of 1 year and then soon after reporting, I applied for 2 months more LWP (on medical/personal ground) with the intention of working on my health,take up a hobby class to ward off depression,pessimism, to have some fun in life, and to look for a job which I really would be excited about - that interests me and which matches with my strength. My leave starts from this Monday. So in any case, I had hard set in mind that I will leave the company after I join them back hopefully with some job offer already in hand (after figuring out what I want do). Neither I can stand the past project,past colleagues,company, HR, pathetically low salary. But if I really listen to my heart, I don't want to have to go back to that office after my sabbatical and again have to see those people. I will have to resign it after my sabbatical ends. Then HR people perhaps wont like it, may even accuse me on face or behind back that primary purpose of my leave must have been to hunt for a better job and I lied about medical and person reasons. Also, if they get nasty and force me to serve 2 months notice period. There is no way I see myself after sabbatical resuming in old project or starting new work. It will be a pain. Since they have already approved 2 months leave and stuff, ideally if they want, they should be just able to relieve me right on the next day after I join back. But, I don't know if they want to get nasty, will they mention about my 2 months sabbatical leave in my experience letter or more scary, the term medical/personal reason. I have hard earned my experience here, have worked against my will, mostly it has been painful and slogged like anything, because I realize the importance of work experience in IT industry. I don't have greed to have those 2 months included extra in my experience letter, but I don't want to mess up with my experience letter in a way which makes my next employer ask question, get suspicious, or be wary if I have any medical reason going on. Being an emotional,moody person or somebody who can't be in an environment, once my mind and heart starts hating it. I think it perhaps is best, if I resign on Monday itself telling them (in polite manner) something that look I took sabbatical for some reason but I don't want to resume working in the company after my sabbatical ends. So please accept my resignation. Now tell me what you want to do about my leave request, my notice period and when you are willing to relieve me. What should I write and how? Some background: I am working in an IT company in India.I am overqualified in the company. It is grossly underpaying me. My education qualifications far exceed anyone's in the whole company being a CS undergrad as well as a CS grad. I joined this company after finishing the grad. I had self-doubts about my skills and interest as a programmer. I like doing research oriented work, though didn't have any particular success during grad. My life here has been very hectic. The project containing many many sub-projects has kept me on my toes and I have never really liked the work. I have been playing against my strength. Also the company strict internet usage policy (you can't read gmails, can't browse any non-work related sites not even news). When working for a client, from the machine we can't even check company related emails.For this one has to go to kiosk like 5 machines in a small room etc. Most of the times those machines are not available, so it was not unusual to keep making rounds to these kiosk machines to check company emails, browse company related emails etc.So it was not so easy to keep in touch with company related basic affairs for a not particular careful person. Things like this which are new to me, make me feel restricted. I am an undecisive person with a sense of failure, self-doubt, not meeting up unrealistic expectation. Somewhere at back of mind, I envy my classmates who make a smooth transition from company to company without causing any gap in their resume. I on other hand have gaps in resume. I get tired after working in a place for sometime. problem with colleagues in general. I am not particular great with people, have few friends, not known for a fun nature, rather serious, scholar. I am not a typical conventional female. I think females are usually more disciplined. But I am not so. I reach office late (though after informing manager). I don't want to blame them entirely, because from my past, it is not unusual for me to get undecisive on things. Also I had doubts about my ability as researched and to succeed there. of building a relationship in a group, to have something to talk about, newspaper. I get cut-off from people. peer pressure. I make blunders in coding, lose patience. Consciously or unconsciously I feel contempt for people here, work here, environment here. I have doubts that either I go to a place which does innovation, does research oriented work, product biggies, have great motivated people, have competent people passionate about products they are building. But then I also doubt my ability to survive there. I have identified that an idea job for me would be 4 days a week, a high salary job. When among people in company/team, I can't think much. I need some time at home to read good authentic books written in good style on what work I am doing.So that I am comfortable with my understanding of work. I get into pressure easily under deadline and need 5th day to cool myself off. I took for 2 weeks leave, because each day was hell for me. May be the depression phase of bipolar is on and also partially it could be that being a work centered person, who derives happiness,self-esteem from work, haven't been enjoying work and have been working for the sole person of proving stability, and ability to stick, against all odds, and facing what challenges I see, bonding with people, identifying opportunities to learn in given task etc.have been averaging one day LWP in 1 week or 10 days. or may be because of my nature,ADD,not being able to switch context,out of touch with news, don't have a circle of friends with who I enjoy. less knowledge in general to talk about, just some technical stuff.anyway, so due to emotional reason, some practical reason etc, I wanted to be very sure before leaving. So my leave starts from Monday and I should feel happy about it. I have taken the leave to for a few purposes - to take care of my health by regular yoga/exercise (with project on, I just can't do anything regular), reassess myself to see what I want to try next which work I might like, look for next job, take up a hobby which I like say singing. I am not clear on my career,job aspiration. I have tried my hands on research. During this year appraisal yesterday, I even had some conflict with my last manager. In meeting with me one on one, he would say all nice things about me, but in feedback to new manager, he hasn't given any excellent feedback. It is all only good. I am angry at this old Manager. Also new manager also scolded me as I didn't agree to his appraisal and waited to hear myself from old Manager. He kind of scolded me for wasting his time. Am I being unethical somewhere? I am always very conscious of if I am cheating anywhere. What advice I am seeking? How to resign and what to write in resignation letter

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  • Terrible App Review of the Week&ndash;October 2nd

    - by David Paquette
    As some people know, I have a few apps in the Windows Phone Store.  One of these apps was intended to be a gimmicky app that did NOT really do anything useful.  It was just a funny little app that you probably try it once, then almost immediately uninstall.  To my surprise, this app ended up in some of the Top App lists and actually got a large number of downloads (for the Windows Phone Store).  Along with these downloads came a large number of really terrible and offensive reviews.  People are insulting me and saying awful things that they would never say to someone in person (I hope).  I am ok with this.  I can take the bad reviews and it doesn’t really bother me, but I still think that people are incredibly dis-respectful with their app reviews.  So..I am going to start sharing the best of the worst reviews.  If by chance this is your review, please contact me.  I would love to have a quick chat… Literally THE crappiest app I could of downloaded. You might as well rub dog *** in your eyes..... You'd see more!!! Stan8976   P.S. I am not particularly proud of this app, so I am not going to reveal the name. However, as you see more of these amazing reviews, I think you might be able to guess which app it is.

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  • Ubuntu 13.10 is terrible

    - by user137017
    I was satisfied with 13.04. But when I upgraded to 13.10, I've had a lot of issues and some things just no longer work. To name a few problems: Can't change the brightness My laptop makes more noise than before It freezes more frequently (the kind that doesn't respond to ctr + alt + f2) Sometimes it boots up and and can't play any media files When running a full screened virtual machine in Workstation, ubuntu catches mouse at the edges When I have a VM opened in Workstation and I try to open up another, the first one gets powered off Most irritatingly, when I have a virtual machine running in full screen, every now and then the vm screen goes black and I have to switch to the host and come back 13.10 has offered nothing to compensate for these problems. I would like to get some advice about what I can do. Should I stick with 13.10 and hope the bugs will be fixed? Would a clean reinstall of 13.10 help? Btw, I'm giving some thought to trying other distros.

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  • Advice on improving programming skills, learning capabilities?

    - by anonymous-coward1234
    Hi all, After 2,5 years of professional Java programing, I still have problems that make my job difficult and, more importantly - more times that I would like to admit - not enjoyable. I would like to ask for advice by more experienced people on ways that would help me overcome them. These are the problems I have: I do not absorb new knowledge easily. Even when I understand something, after a couple of days I easily forget even basic stuff. Other co-workers, even with the same working experience, when reading new technologies put things easily into "context", and are able to compare in "real time| similar technologies they already have used. I always try to address all the issues to whatever I am doing at one go, which results in me trying to resolve too many problems at the same time, losing completely control. I find it difficult to make my mind on a single problem that I should address first, and even when I do, and find myself throwing away code that I wrote because I started addressing the wrong issue first. As far as architecture and data modeling is concerned, I have difficulty making decisions on what objects must be created, with what hierarchy, interfaces, abstraction etc. I imagine that - to a certain degree - these things come with experience. But after 2,5 years of Java programming, I would expect myself to have come much farther that I have come, both in terms of absorption and experience. Is there a way to improve my learning speed? Any books, methods, advice is welcome.

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  • Career advice on whether to stick with coding or move on to tech. lead\management [closed]

    - by flk
    I'm at a point in my career where I need to decide what to do next. I've mainly done C# desktop development (with a little python and Silverlight) for 5 or 6 years and I'm trying to decide whether to start learning JavaScript\HTML or to moving into a role where I do less coding and more tech. lead\management role. With all the talk around HTML5\JavaScript, the rise of mobile and the changes with Windows 8 (metro at least) I wonder if I should stick with coding to get some experience in these areas before moving on. But at the same time if I decide stick with coding for a ‘couple more years’ I will probably be faced with the same situation with some other new\interesting technology that I feel I should learn before moving on. I feel if I stick just with coding I'm limiting my career options but if I move to tech. lead\management I will loose my coding skills. Is going one direction or the other going to limiting my career options in the future? I know that there is no real answer to this question so I’m really just looking for some thoughts from others and perhaps experiences from other people that faced similar situations. Thanks

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  • Advice for young software professional ?

    - by Guruprasad
    I recently graduated from college and joined a big reputed software company. I am wondering how would you differentiate yourself among thousands of other competitive & intelligent software engineers and programmers. I am not discounting hard work here. Rather, I would like to know how to go about the job, what things to look out for, opportunities which might about in future or advice in general.

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  • How do I fix a terrible system error on ubuntu 12.04

    - by Anonymous
    I don't know what happened, but one day my computer had some sort of a system error and could no longer update itself. The software center will not open, it will begin to initialize and then a message pops up saying theres a system error and needs to shut down the software center. Then another box pops up after I go to report it saying it was unable to identify source or package name. I also can't extract a zipped folder to anything, or reinstall Ubuntu from a USB boot drive anymore, it keeps telling me my my computer isn't compatible when I know for a fact it is, because thats how I got Ubuntu on here in the first place. the only thing I know about this error is that a message popped up after I went to check for updates saying to report the problem and include this message in the report: 'E:malformed line 56 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (dist parse)' it also called it a bug. I just want to know how to either get rid of the bug completely or find some way to be able to reinstall Ubuntu again. I know it's not a lot of information, but It's all I can give. Sorry.

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  • Programming user interface advice?

    - by onurozcelik
    Hi, In my project I going to generate a user interface through programming. Scalability of this UI is very important requirement. So far I am using two dimensional graphics for generating the UI. I think there may be different solutions but for the moment I know only two. First one is supplying X,Y coordinates of each two dimensional graphic on my UI.(I do not prefer this solution because I do not want to calculate X,Y coordinates of each graphic. For the moment I don't have a logic for doing this easily) Second one(which is currently I am using now) is using layouts which organizes its contents according to size of item. In this solution I don't have to calculate X,Y coordinates of each item.(Layout is doing this for me) But this approach may have its own pitfalls. I am very new to user interface programming. Can you give me advice about this issue?

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  • Languages/Technologies advice

    - by BL
    Hi all, a bit of advice required here :). I recently graduated(Computer Science), and need to decide a path to take programming/technology wise. I have knowledge of Java, C, SQL most of it is university level stuff. I work daily with PHP/SQL building web apps. Which language / technology would you advise me to learn. I am very interested in Database management, GIS etc. Web dev is also very interesting to me. It is all a bit confusing since i would like to learn something that will have a value at least in the near future. I would like to have some ideas on which language/technology is god choice in order to be marketable.

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  • Advice for last year college graduates

    - by Tomh
    Hey guys, I know there are many "advice" questions around this site. But I wanted to to narrow mine down to last year college students, in my case my last year as Master student in computer science. So far is a list of things I've done during my time in college (which I can recommend others to do aswell): Code a lot I've written several hobby projects, had part time jobs, entered the Imagine cup from Microsoft, took programming extensive courses and did freelance gigs. Read a lot I've bought most top books from the recommended book topics here, to be honest I have not read them all. learn different languages I've tried several languages including Haskell, Java, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Prolog, C#, PHP, JS, AS3 and possibly some more I forgot. Tried to start a blog Joel recommends to learn how to write, I tried starting a couple of blogs to improve upon this, I gave up on all instances after writing about three posts. It was just not my thing... Have a portfolio of launched projects/programs I'm busy with this, have a couple of finished, working projects I worked on to show to people. So this is my last year. Is there anything else you can recommend a last year college student to do before hitting the job market? Personally I'm tempted to spend my time on the following: Practice algorithm design Learn and memorize the usage of the low level API's of your favorite language Polish your portfolio Why? Because those first two will make sure you pass the majority of the interviews, here in Holland (I could be wrong). I rather not spend my time on those first two points, but I have to be realistic and thats just my experience on what kind of questions you'll get when you apply. The third point is my hope that I won't have to answer questions about the amount of standard types in c# for example if they can see I get projects done and launched. But I'm still graduating, so I don't know anything :), and many of you might be hiring grads on a recent base and could tell me and other interested people what you wish that the recent grads you interviewed would have done before they applied.

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  • Advice using leaks in instruments for noobs

    - by Gyozo Kudor
    Hello I am pretty new to iphone development. I have run my app for the first time using the "Leaks" from "Instruments". It shows me several leaks around 20 the smallest is 32 bytes and there is one with 1KB. I have followed the memory management guidelines, (i (think i) understand how and when to use release, not to use it when adding to autorelease pools, for every copy, retain, init there should be a release,... etc). I don't think I understand the output of the Leaks in instruments. What does "Responsible library" and "Responsible frame" mean. Because there are some classes and methods i never used directly. Are there any good tutorials for debugging memory leaks in instruments or other advice you can give me regarding leaks. Thanks in advance. Here are the largest 2 leaks. Leaked Object # Address Size Responsible Library Responsible Frame Malloc 1.00 KB 0x4827400 1024 CFNetwork std::vector *, std::allocator * ::reserve(unsigned long) // i have no idea what this is. Leaked Object # Address Size Responsible Library Responsible Frame Malloc 128 Bytes 5 640 UIKit UIImagePickerLoadPhotoLibraryIfNecessary // so this means UIImagePicker is leaking memory? The first leak i get Leaked Object # Address Size Responsible Library Responsible Frame Malloc 128 Bytes 0x442dfd0 128 UIKit UIKeyboardInputManagerClassForInputMode I don't understand any of those.

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  • Advice/suggestions for my first project PHP Classes

    - by Philip
    Hi guys, Any advice is welcome! I have a very limited understanding of php classes but below is my starting point for the route I would like to take. The code is a reflection of what I see in my head and how I would like to go about business. Does my code even look ok, or am I way off base? What are your thoughts, how would you go about achieving such a task as form-validate-insertquery-sendmail-return messages and errors? Please try and keep your answers simple enough for me to digest as for me its about understanding whats going on and not just a copy/paste job. Kindest regards, Phil. Note: This is a base structure only, no complete code added. <?php //======================================= //class.logging.php //======================================== class logging { public $data = array(); public $errors = array(); function __construct() { array_pop($_POST); $this->data =($this->_logging)? is_isset(filterStr($_POST) : ''; foreach($this->data as $key=> $value) { $this->data[$key] = $value; } //print_r($this->data); de-bugging } public function is_isset($str) { if(isset($str)) ? true: false; } public function filterStr($str) { return preg_match(do somthing, $str); } public function validate_post() { try { if(!is_numeric($data['cardID'])) ? throw new Exception('CardID must be numeric!') : continue; } catch (Exception $e) { return $errors = $e->getCode(); } } public function showErrors() { foreach($errors as $error => $err) { print('<div class="notok"></div><br />'); } } public function insertQ() { $query = ""; } } //======================================= //Usercp.php //======================================== if(isset($_GET['mode'])) { $mode = $_GET['mode']; } else { $mode = 'usercp'; } switch($mode) { case 'usercp': echo 'Welcome to the User Control Panel'; break; case 'logging': require_once 'class.logging.php'; $logger = new logging(); if(isset($_POST['submit']) { if($logger->validate_post === true) { $logger->insertQ(); require_once '/scripts/PHPMailer/class.phpmailer.php'; $mailer = new PHPMailer(); $mailer->PHPMailer(); } else { echo ''.$logger->showErrors.''; } } else { echo ' <form action="'.$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'?mode=logging" method="post"> </form> '; } break; case 'user_logout': // do somthing break; case 'user_settings': // do somthing break; ?>

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  • Realtek audio AC 97 5.1 on Windows 7: Terrible subwoofer quality

    - by Edu
    I have a media center PC with on-board Realtek AC97 Audio. I have been using Windows XP for a couple of years with great audio quality. I just upgraded this PC with Windows 7 and installed the latest Realtek drivers from http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/ At the testing screen, all the speakers works correctly (including subwoofer). Despite that, while playing any movie or music, the subwoofer quality is terrible. From it it just comes noises, in the correct rhythm but quite low and quite out of tone. I compensated the loudness by putting the other speakers lower but the sound of the subwoofer is really terrible. Is there anyone facing the same problem? Does anyone have a workaround for that? PS.: I had gone past the steps given in Terrible noises from subwoofer of ACER Aspire 6930 with Realtek sound chip but still I have a bad quality of sound. My problem is very similar to the one in http://www.mp3car.com/car-audio/143796-realtek-hd-audio-is-robbing-my-subwoofer.html

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  • National Give Camp Weekend - January 14-16, 2011

    - by MOSSLover
    What is a Give Camp?  I get asked this question constantly in the SharePoint Community.  About 3 years ago there was an event called "We Are Microsoft" in Dallas, TX.  A lady named, Toi Wright, gathered up a bunch of charities and gathered up a bunch of IT Professionals in the community.  They met for an entire weekend devising better ways to help these charities with 3 days projects.  None of these charities had in house IT staff or they were lacking.  The time these projects would save would help out other people in the long run.  The first give camp was really popular that a couple guys from Kansas City decided to come up with a give camp in the Kansas City regiona.  The event was called Coders 4 Charity.  I read Jeff Julian's post on the "We Are Microsoft" event that it inspired me to get involved.  i showed up to this event and we were split into teams.  On that team I met a couple really awsome guys: Blake Theiss, Lee Brandt, Tim Wright, and Joe Loux.  We created a SharePoint site for a boyscout troup.  It was my first exposure to Silverlight 1.1.  I had so much fun that I attended the event the next year and the St. Louis Coders 4 Charity.  Last year in 2010 when I moved i searched high and low.  Sure enough they had an event in Philadelphia.  I helped out with two SharePoint Projects for a team of firefighters and another charity.  This year there are a series of give camps around the U.S.  They have consolidated most of the give camps.  The first ever New York City Give Camp is on National Give Camp Day.  If you guys are interested I see there is a give camp in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Northwest Arkansas, Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, and more...Here is a link to the site I would definitely encourage you to get involved: http://givecamp.org/national-givecamp/.  Also, if you feel like it's only developer focused that's entirely wrong.  They need DBAs, Project Leads, Architects, and many other roles fulfilled aside from development.  It is a great experience to meet good people and help out a charity doing what we all love to do.  I strongle encourage getting involved in a give camp.  if you are coming to the NYC Give Camp I would love to meet you.  i will be there on Saturday somewhere in the morning until around dinner time.

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  • Editing service for blogger with terrible English grammar

    - by Josh Moore
    I would like to write a technical blog. However, the biggest things holding me back is my poor spelling, punctuation, and grammar (I have all these problems even though I am a native English speaker). I am thinking about using a professional editing/proofreading service to fix my blog posts before I post them. However, given the content will be technical in nature (some articles will get into details of programming) and I would like to write them in markdown, I am not sure if the general online services will be a good fit. Can you recommend a editor (or company) that you like that can provide this service?

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  • Eclipse colour scheme is terrible in Ubuntu

    - by cyberjar09
    I have modified my eclipse colour theme to my liking but just cant seem to develop in peace because I keep having to squint and stare at the screen for certain elements. The colour default scheme is simply pathetic! I have no idea what these elements are called and hence instead of attempting to describe them I have attached screenshots. How can I modify these elements to make them more humanly readable?

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  • Career Advice for a Bright Future [closed]

    - by HARSHITH
    I've completed my 12th . Now i am in a big dilemma . Coming to engineering , there are a lot of branches to choose. My elders and mentors suggested me to go for cse . But in this scenario of global meltdown , the cse boom had crushed down drastically . Are there chances for its regrowth . Please reply me with your valuable suggestions so that i can shape my future in a better way . Would you also suggest any other course for me?

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  • General advice about scaling on QGraphicsView/QGraphicsScene

    - by onurozcelik
    Hi, In my project I am using QGraphicsView/QGraphicsScene stuff. On my scene there will be regions that contains 2D graphics. Region count will be limited(Lets say 20) Users can choose to display one or more regions. If user choose to display one region I am going to show one region on scene If user choose to display n regions I am going to show n regions on scene I need a scaling logic to fit n regions on same scene. How can I achieve this?

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  • Advice welcomed on creating my own Swing component

    - by Toto
    Recently I asked which was the best Swing component to bind to a BigDecimal variable (with some particular editing properties). It turns out that none of the standard Swing components suit me completely, nor did the third-party Swing component libraries I've found out there. So I’ve decided to create my own Swing component. Component description: I want to extend JTextField or JFormattedTextField, so my new component can be easily bound to a BigDecimal variable. The component will have customizable scale and length properties. Behavior: When the component is drawn, it shows only the decimal point and space for scale digits to its right. When the component receives focus the caret should be positioned left to the decimal point. As the user types numbers (any other character is ignored) they appear to the left of the caret, only length – scale numbers are accepted, any other number typed is ignored as the integer portion is full. Any time the user types the decimal point the caret moves to the right side of the decimal point. The following numbers typed are shown in the decimal part, only scale numbers are considered any other number typed is ignored as the decimal portion is full. Additionally, thousand separators should appear as the user types numbers left to the decimal point. Invoking a getValue() method on the component should yield the BigDecimal representing the number just entered. I’ve never created my own Swing component; I’ve barely used the standard ones. So I would appreciate any good tutorial/info/tip on creating the component described. This is the only thing I've got so far. Thanks in advance.

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  • CREON development advice

    - by Matthew Hood
    We have a client who has requested a new project with development to be done on a CREON terminal (Spectra Technologies). Can anyone recommend some good resources about terminal and in particular CREON development. Or know of a reputable development team specializing in CREON development. I have done a fair bit of googling / binging without much success.

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  • Web-Application development startup advice

    - by rpr
    Dear programmers of StackOverflow, recently me and two of my friends from college started a software company. We are developing web-applications using GWT-Spring-Hibernate and other helper frameworks. In a couple of months, we managed to set up a stable back-end and produced some demo programs for CRM solutions. Our area of interest is CRM where we can combine the flexibility of our back-end with the slick looking GWT based GUIs. Unfortunately we live in a third world country (well, kind of two and a half :) and no one here gives our work enough credit, or really cares about the advantages of web-apps. We are stuck at the moment because our current clients do not want to pay that much money for just "putting their local app on the web". Since we can not find satisfying work here, we have decided to work online/international. I was wondering if you guys know a good freelance kind of sites where we can throw ourselves into the market.. Also a question from frustration, to those who are in the field or knowledgeable/interested about web based CRM, how much would you ask/pay for lets say a web app which will keep track of all the patients of a multi-branch clinic also allowing the patients to access to view their own records? Including tiered authorization, logging etc.. Many thanks in advance for your responses!

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  • Should I learn Python2 or Python3?

    - by Elena
    Hello everyone, I was thinking in learning a new language and settled for Python. But now that Dive into Python 3 is out, which one should I learn, 2 or 3? I am asking this also considering possible jobs for version 2 or 3. So, what do you think? Thank you!

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  • How do I explain this to potential employers?

    - by ReferencelessBob
    Backstory: TL;DR: I've gained a lot of experience working for 5 years at one startup company, but it eventually failed. The company is gone and the owner MIA. When I left sixth-form college I didn't want to start a degree straight away, so when I met this guy who knew a guy who was setting up a publishing company and needed a 'Techie' I thought why not. It was a very small operation, he sent mailings to schools, waited for orders to start arriving, then ordered a short run of the textbooks to be printed, stuck them in an envelope posted them out. I was initially going to help him set up a computerized system for recording orders and payments, printing labels, really basic stuff and I threw it together in Access in a couple of weeks. He also wanted to start taking orders online, so I set up a website and a paypal business account. While I was doing this, I was also helping to do the day-to-day running of things, taking phone orders, posting products, banking cheques, ordering textbooks, designing mailings, filing end of year accounts, hiring extra staff, putting stamps on envelopes. I learned so much about things I didn't even know I needed to learn about. Things were pretty good, when I started we sold about £10,000 worth of textbooks and by my 4th year there we sold £250,000 worth of text books. Things were looking good, but we had a problem. Our best selling product had peaked and sales started to fall sharply, we introduced add on products through the website to boost sales which helped for a while, but we had simply saturated the market. Our plan was to enter the US with our star product and follow the same, slightly modified, plan as before. We setup a 1-866 number and had the calls forwarded to our UK offices. We contracted a fulfillment company, shipped over a few thousand textbooks, had a mailing printed and mailed, then sat by the phones and waited. Needless to say, it didn't work. We tried a few other things, at home and in the US, but nothing helped. We expanded in the good times, moving into bigger offices, taking on staff to do administrative and dispatch work, but now cashflow was becoming a problem and things got tougher. We did the only thing we could and scaled things right back, the offices went, the admin staff went, I stopped taking a wage and started working from home. Nothing helped. The business was wound up about about 2 years ago. In the end it turned out that the owner had built up considerable debt at the start of business and had not paid them off during good years, which left him in a difficult position when cashflow had started to dry up. I haven't been able to contact the owner since I found out. It took me a while to get back on my feet after that, but I'm now at University and doing a Computer Science degree. How do I show the experience I have without having to get into all the gory details of what happened?

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  • How to dealing with the "programming blowhard"?

    - by Peter G.
    (Repost, I posted this in the wrong section before, sorry) So I'm sure everyone has run into this person at one point or another, someone catches wind of your project or idea and initially shows some interest. You get to talking about some of your methods and usually around this time they interject stating how you should use method X instead, or just use library Y. But not as a friendly suggestion, but bordering on a commandment. Often repeating the same advice over and over like a overzealous parrot. Personally, I like to reinvent the wheel when I'm learning, or even just for fun, even if it turns out worse than what's been done before. But this person apparently cannot fathom recreating ANY utility for such purposes, or possibly try something that doesn't strictly follow traditional OOP practices, and will settle for nothing except their sense of perfection, and thus naturally heave their criticism sludge down my ears full force. To top it off, they eventually start justifying their advice (retardation) by listing all the incredibly complex things they've coded single-handedly (usually along the lines of "trust me, I've made/used program X for a long time, blah blah blah"). Now, I'm far from being a programming master, I'm probably not even that good, and as such I value advice and critique, but I think advice/critique has a time and place. There is also a big difference between being helpful and being narcissistic. In the past I probably would have used a somewhat stronger George Carlin style dismissal, but I don't think burning bridges is the best approach anymore. Maybe I'm just an asshole, but do you have any advice on how to deal with this kind of verbal flogging?

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  • Advice on SCRUM for the solitary developer [closed]

    - by ProfK
    Possible Duplicate: Agile for the Solo Developer I am looking for advice on the SCRUM process for a solitary developer. Most SCRUM resources I see focus on its use in a team environment, hence my question here. I'd like some guidance on structuring and managing my projects for SCRUM, with me as a solitary developer and business owner, but still occasionally including my clients for input and feedback. Areas I'm not clear on include resolving my backlog into 'sprintable' project areas and stories, defining user stories properly with a view to being digested by developer level users, defining feasible sprints for a single developer etc. Essentially I'm looking for advice on moving from using scrum in a team/office environment, with colleagues and project manager, and using chaos/cowboy-coding on my own, to assuming the role of PM myself and adopting scrum for work on my own. Any advice is welcome.

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