Search Results

Search found 88657 results on 3547 pages for 'code improvement'.

Page 20/3547 | < Previous Page | 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27  | Next Page >

  • How do you keep your basic skills from atrophy?

    - by kojiro
    I've been programming for about 10 years, and I've started to migrate to more of a project management position. I still do coding, but less often now. One of the things that I think is holding me back in my career is that I can't "let go". I think I fear letting hard-won programming skills atrophy while I sit in meetings and annotate requirements. (Not to mention I don't trust people to write requirements who don't understand the code.) I can't just read books and magazines about coding. I'm involved in some open source projects in my free time, and stackoverflow and friends help a bit, because I get the opportunity to help people solve their programming problems without micromanaging, but neither of these are terribly structured, so it's tempting to work first on the problems I can solve easily. I guess what I'd like to find is a structured set of exercises (don't care what language or environment) that… …I can do periodically …has some kind of time requirement so I can tell if I've been goofing off …has some kind of scoring so I can tell if I'm making mistakes Is there such a thing? What would you do to keep your skills fresh?

    Read the article

  • Where can I find design exercises to work on?

    - by Oak
    I feel it's important to continue practicing my problem-solving skills. Writing my own mini-projects is one way, but another is to try and solve problems posted online. It's easy to find interesting programming quizzes online that require applying clever algorithms to solve - Project Euler is one well-known example. However, in a lot of real-life projects the design of the software - especially in the initial phases - has a large impact and at later stages it cannot be tweaked as easily as plain algorithms. In order to improve these skills, I'm looking for any collection of design problems. When I say "design", I mean the abstract design of a software solution - for example what modules will there be and what are the dependencies between them, how data will flow in the program, what sort of data needs to be saved in the database, etc. Design problems are those problems that are critical to solve in the early stages of any project, but their solution is a whiteboard diagram without a single line of code. Of course these sort of problems do not have a single correct solution, but I'll be especially happy with any place that also displays pros and cons of the typical solutions that might be used to approach the problem.

    Read the article

  • I have an MIS degree. How do I sell myself as a programmer?

    - by hydroparadise
    So, I graduated with a BSBA in Management Information Systems with honors almost 2 years ago which is more of a business degree. As of right now, I do have a job title of "Programmer", but it's more of a report writing position in an arbitrary, proprietary language called PowerOn with the occasional interesting project using more mainstream technologies like .Net and Java. I am also somewhat isoloated being the only programmer in the workplace, which I beleive is a detriment to my career path. The only people I have to bounce ideas against are those on the various SE sites. I don't regret going MIS, but over the past couple of years I have discovered my passion for coding, even though I have been doing some form of coding profesionally and as an enthusiast for years. I do want to persue my Masters in CS (at a later time), but I am not sure if I necessarily need a CS degree to get in with a team of programmers. In addition, I do have a number classes I have taken for different laguanges on the way (C++, Java, SQL, and VB.Net) I beleive my strength is in problem solving where code is just a tool to tackling to problem if needed. My question: How do I best sell myself as a programmer? Should I continue pounding out reports and wait till I have my masters in CS? Or am I viable to be a programmer as I stand?

    Read the article

  • How to avoid "DO YOU HAZ TEH CODEZ" situations?

    - by volothamp
    I have a strange situation at work, where a colleague of mine often asks me and other co-workers for working code. I would like to help him, but this constant request of trivial snippets interrupts my thoughts and sometimes makes it hard to concentrate. Plus, I have the impression (...) that this requests are generated by lack of competence, more than by laziness. In fact, he often asks things pretending to know the answer, since when I solve the problem he usually says things like "Sure", "Yes, that's what I thought", giving me the impression that my answer isn't worth it. How can I solve this embarrassing situation? Should I show more explicitly in front of other colleagues his lack of knowledge (by saying things like: "do it yourself if you can, please") or continue giving him what he wants? I think that he should aggregate all his answers in one, so that I can give him a portion of my time and he can work all by himself on his things. There is no hierarchy in the team, I must say we both have a similar seniority of five years, more or less. For the same reason I believe I cannot report to management, since trivial questions are often ignored. I discussed with other two members and they agree with me: in fact he often ask things cycling through colleagues.

    Read the article

  • WINAPI beginner guidance question

    - by gekod
    I'm learning to develop windows applications using WINAPI and plain C. Now I got a bit confused with all those handles and would like to ask if you guys could teach me some good practices to structure and handle controls and windows. Here's where I get confused: Using the IDs declared in the resources for each object, we can get their handles using GetDlgItem(). Now what if we don't know their parent, which is needed by this function. One example: We have the main window created at launch. Then we register two new window classes and create a window for each new class and we create a message function for each too. Now if inside one of the children windows I create a button and inside the other child window I create a text label. Now when we click the button inside of child window A the label in child window B shall be modified to whatever. The WM_COMMAND for the button is interpreted inside the message loop for child window A. Now what would be the best and more elegant way to access the text label inside the child window B? I am in the process of learning the WINAPI and just want to learn it right from the start instead of producing Hacked code that someday becomes unreadable and to later have to adapt to a new way of programing.

    Read the article

  • How much a programmer should read in order to keep himself updated? [closed]

    - by anything
    There are lots of technical books available. Below are few links which lists some good books If you could only have one programming related book on your bookshelf what would it be and why? What non-programming books should a programmer read to help develop programming/thinking skills? Best books on the theory and practice of software architecture? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read ... and the list can go on and on and on. It will be really difficult to read all of the above mentioned books. I am not sure if its even possible for anyone to do that. Even if you filter it based on one's area of interest or work, list is still very large. .. and the technology keeps on changing (even more books :-( ) So, my question is how much a programmer should read lets say per year? How much hours one should put in such activities to keep oneself up to date? How do we find out the time required? PS: Average programmer reads less than one book per year (Code complete). What about the good programmers?

    Read the article

  • Shoring up deficiencies in a "home grown" programmer?

    - by JohnP
    I started out by teaching myself BASIC on a Vic 20, and in college (mid 80's) I had Fortran, Pascal, limited C, machine and assembler (With a smattering of COBOL). I didn't touch programming from approx 1989 to 1999. At that point, I was lucky enough to get hired as a Clipper programmer. Took me about 6 months to learn most of it, and by now (13 yrs) I'm pretty expert in it. I have also picked up Cold Fusion, some C#, some ASP, SQL, etc. I know programming structures, but in most languages I'm missing the esoterics, and I know my code could be much tighter. The problem is that I've learned what I needed to, to get the job done. This results in a lot of gaps in practical knowledge. I am also missing out on a TON of theory. Things like SRP, Refactoring, etc are alien terms. (Although I grok the intent after a short read). In addition, I am in the position now of teaching junior programmers the company and our software, and I don't want to pass on the knowledge gaps. I know this is somewhat of a subjective question and may be closed, but how do you go back and pick up what you've missed?

    Read the article

  • Web dev/programmer with 4.5 yrs experience. Better for career: self-study or master's degree? [closed]

    - by Anonymous Programmer
    I'm a 28 year-old web developer/programmer with 4.5 years of experience, and I'm looking to jump-start my career. I'm trying to decide between self-study and a 1-year master's program in CS at a top school. I'm currently making 65K in a high cost-of-living area that is NOT a hot spot for technology firms. I code almost exclusively in Ruby/Rails, PHP/CodeIgniter, SQL, and JavaScript. I've slowly gained proficiency with Git. Roughly half the time I am architecting/coding, and half the time I am pounding out HTML/CSS for static brochureware sites. I'd like to make more more money while doing more challenging/interesting work, but I don't know where to start. I have an excellent academic record (math major with many CS credits, 3.9+ GPA), GRE scores, and recommendations, so I am confident that I could be admitted to a great CS master's program. On the other hand, there is the tuition and opportunity cost to consider. I feel like there are a number of practical languages/tools/skills worth knowing that I could teach myself - shell scripting, .NET, Python, Node.js, MongoDB, natural language processing techniques, etc. That said, it's one thing to read about a subject and another thing to have experience with it, which structured coursework provides. So, on to the concrete questions: What programming skills/knowledge should I develop to increase my earning potential and make me competitive for more interesting jobs? Will a master's degree in CS from a top school help me develop the above skills/knowledge, and if so, is it preferable to self-study (possibly for other reasons, e.g., the degree's value as a credential)?

    Read the article

  • Need Directions to become a programmer [closed]

    - by Omin
    Before youguys go on about how there are many types of programmers, please read through the post. Long term goal: Develop my own software (company) Short term goal: Get a job that involves coding/programming Current status: Support Analyst (at a software company but does not involve any programming) with 40k salary, 3rd year computer engineering student I had everything figured out. I'm going to develop a 2D scrolling game for iphone or android, publish the app, sell a bunch, and then apply at a studios as a software developer. And then something hit me. I think I need to get a job that involes programming to learn as much as I can in the shortest time possible. So I got a phone interview at a fast growing start up software company, passed that no problem, but then had to take an online technical assessment. That failed miserably. I thought that if I could just present myself, show that I am hard working, positive attitude, eager to make self improvements, type of a guy, I could get the job. I was wrong. And now, I am lost. Im thinking of staying with my job until I find a new one as a programmer. I will be working, self studying, and trying to make this happen without finishing university. I forgot to mention that the online technical assessment was based on data structures/algorithms, OO design, runtime complexity. I was hoping that I could get some guidence. Should I be focusing on app development or study computer science fundamentals? I have a list of books I can be going through: Learning C# O'Reilly (I got interested in C# because of Unity3D and Mono), C# 5.0 in a Nutshell, Head First Design Patterns, Code Complete, Introduction to Algorithms, Programming Interviews Exposed, Cracking the Coding Interview, The Google Resume.

    Read the article

  • WINAPI window management question

    - by gekod
    I'm learning to develop windows applications using WINAPI and plain C. Now I got a bit confused with all those handles and would like to ask if you guys could teach me some good practices to structure and handle controls and windows. Here's where I get confused: Using the IDs declared in the resources for each object, we can get their handles using GetDlgItem(). Now what if we don't know their parent, which is needed by this function. One example: We have the main window created at launch. Then we register two new window classes and create a window for each new class and we create a message function for each too. Now if inside one of the children windows I create a button and inside the other child window I create a text label. Now when we click the button inside of child window A the label in child window B shall be modified to whatever. The WM_COMMAND for the button is interpreted inside the message loop for child window A. Now what would be the best and more elegant way to access the text label inside the child window B? I am in the process of learning the WINAPI and just want to learn it right from the start instead of producing Hacked code that someday becomes unreadable and to later have to adapt to a new way of programing.

    Read the article

  • If you had to go back and re-learn your skill set, how would you do it?

    - by vorbb
    My younger brother is looking to start programming. He's 14, and technically-inclined, but no real experience programming. He's looking to me for guidance, and I don't feel as if my experience is enough, so I figured I'd ask here. He's more interested in web programming, but also has an interest in desktop/mobile/server applications. What would be a good learning path for him to take? I'm going to buy him a bunch of books for Christmas to get him started; the question is, what should he learn, and in which order? The way I see it, he needs to learn theory and code. I'd like to start him off with Python or Ruby or PHP. If he wants to get in to web, he's also going to need to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. Out of those three domains (Languages, Theory, Markup/Etc.), what is the best order do you think to learn in? Also, am I missing anything? Thanks!

    Read the article

  • Development processes, the use of version control, and unit-testing

    - by ct01
    Preface I've worked at quite a few "flat" organizations in my time. Most of the version control policy/process has been "only commit after it's been tested". We were constantly committing at each place to "trunk" (cvs/svn). The same was true with unit-testing - it's always been a "we need to do this" mentality but it never really materializes in a substantive form b/c there is no institutional knowledge base to do it - no mentorship. Version Control The emphasis for version control management at one place was a very strict protocol for commit messages (format & content). The other places let employees just do "whatever". The branching, tagging, committing, rolling back, and merging aspect of things was always ill defined and almost never used. This sort of seems to leave the version control system in the position of being a fancy file-storage mechanism with a meta-data component that never really gets accessed/utilized. (The same was true for unit testing and committing code to the source tree) Unit tests It seems there's a prevailing "we must/should do this" mentality in most places I've worked. As a policy or standard operating procedure it never gets implemented because there seems to be a very ill-defined understanding about what that means, what is going to be tested, and how to do it. Summary It seems most places I've been to think version control and unit testing is "important" b/c the trendy trade journals say it is but, if there's very little mentorship to use these tools or any real business policies, then the full power of version control/unit testing is never really expressed. So grunts, like myself, never really have a complete understanding of the point beyond that "it's a good thing" and "we should do it". Question I was wondering if there are blogs, books, white-papers, or online journals about what one could call the business process or "standard operating procedures" or uses cases for version control and unit testing? I want to know more than the trade journals tell me and get serious about doing these things. PS: @Henrik Hansen had a great comment about the lack of definition for the question. I'm not interested in a specific unit-testing/versioning product or methodology (like, XP) - my interest is more about work-flow at the individual team/developer level than evangelism. This is more-or-less a by product of the management situation I've operated under more than a lack of reading software engineering books or magazines about development processes. A lot of what I've seen/read is more marketing oriented material than any specifically enumerated description of "well, this is how our shop operates".

    Read the article

  • How to become a solid python web developer [closed]

    - by Estarius
    Possible Duplicate: How do I learn Python from zero to web development? I have started Python recently with the goal to become a solid developer to make a web application eventually. However, as time goes by I am wondering if I am being optimal about how I will achieve my goal. I would compare it to a game for example, to be better you must spend time playing and trying new things... However, if you just log in and sit in the lobby chatting you are most likely not progressing. So far, this is my plan (feel free to comment or judge it): Review basic programmation concepts Start coding slowly in Python Once comfortable in Python, learn about web development in Python Learn about those things we heard about: SQLAlchemy, MVC, TDD, Git, Agile (Group project) To achieve these things, I started the Learn python the hard way exercises, which I am doing at the rate of 5 per days. I also started to read Think Python at the same time and planning to move on with Dive into python. As far as my research goes, these documentations along with Python documentation is usually what is the most recommended to learn Python. I consider this to get my point 1 and 2 done. While learning Python is really great, my goal remains to do quality web development. I know there are books about Django etc. however I would like to become comfortable with any Python web development. This means without Framework and with Framework... Any framework, then be able to choose the one which best fits our needs. For this I would like to know if some people have suggestions. Should I just get a book on Django and it should apply to everything ? What would be the best method to go from Python to Web Python and not end up creating crappy code which would turn into nightmares for other programmers ? Then finally, those "things we hear about". While I understand what they all do basically, I am fairly sure that like everything, there are good and wrong ways of making use of them. Should I go through at least a whole book on each before starting to use them or keep it at their respective online documentation ? Are there some kind of documentation which links their use to Python ? Also, from looking at Django and Pyramid they seems to use something else than MVC, while the Django model looks similar, the Pyramid one seems to cut a whole part of it... Is learning MVC still worth it ? Sorry for the wall of text, Thanks in advance !

    Read the article

  • What is the way to understand someone else's giant uncommented spaghetti code? [closed]

    - by Anisha Kaul
    Possible Duplicate: I’ve inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now? I have been recently handled a giant multithreaded program with no comments and have been asked to understand what it does, and then to improve it (if possible). Are there some techniques which should be followed when we need to understand someone else's code? OR do we straightaway start from the first function call and go on tracking next function calls? C++ (with multi-threading) on Linux

    Read the article

  • No improvement in speed when using Ehcache with Hibernate

    - by paddydub
    I'm getting no improvement in speed when using Ehcache with Hibernate Here are the results I get when i run the test below. The test is reading 80 Stop objects and then the same 80 Stop objects again using the cache. On the second read it is hitting the cache, but there is no improvement in speed. Any idea's on what I'm doing wrong? Speed Test: First Read: Reading stops 1-80 : 288ms Second Read: Reading stops 1-80 : 275ms Cache Info: elementsInMemory: 79 elementsInMemoryStore: 79 elementsInDiskStore: 0 JunitCacheTest public class JunitCacheTest extends TestCase { static Cache stopCache; public void testCache() { ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans-hibernate.xml"); StopDao stopDao = (StopDao) context.getBean("stopDao"); CacheManager manager = new CacheManager(); stopCache = (Cache) manager.getCache("ie.dataStructure.Stop.Stop"); //First Read for (int i=1; i<80;i++) { Stop toStop = stopDao.findById(i); } //Second Read for (int i=1; i<80;i++) { Stop toStop = stopDao.findById(i); } System.out.println("elementsInMemory " + stopCache.getSize()); System.out.println("elementsInMemoryStore " + stopCache.getMemoryStoreSize()); System.out.println("elementsInDiskStore " + stopCache.getDiskStoreSize()); } public static Cache getStopCache() { return stopCache; } } HibernateStopDao @Repository("stopDao") public class HibernateStopDao implements StopDao { private SessionFactory sessionFactory; @Transactional(readOnly = true) public Stop findById(int stopId) { Cache stopCache = JunitCacheTest.getStopCache(); Element cacheResult = stopCache.get(stopId); if (cacheResult != null){ return (Stop) cacheResult.getValue(); } else{ Stop result =(Stop) sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().get(Stop.class, stopId); Element element = new Element(result.getStopID(),result); stopCache.put(element); return result; } } } ehcache.xml <cache name="ie.dataStructure.Stop.Stop" maxElementsInMemory="1000" eternal="false" timeToIdleSeconds="5200" timeToLiveSeconds="5200" overflowToDisk="true"> </cache> stop.hbm.xml <class name="ie.dataStructure.Stop.Stop" table="stops" catalog="hibernate3" mutable="false" > <cache usage="read-only"/> <comment></comment> <id name="stopID" type="int"> <column name="STOPID" /> <generator class="assigned" /> </id> <property name="coordinateID" type="int"> <column name="COORDINATEID" not-null="true"> <comment></comment> </column> </property> <property name="routeID" type="int"> <column name="ROUTEID" not-null="true"> <comment></comment> </column> </property> </class> Stop public class Stop implements Comparable<Stop>, Serializable { private static final long serialVersionUID = 7823769092342311103L; private Integer stopID; private int routeID; private int coordinateID; }

    Read the article

  • Calling a native callback from managed .NET code (when loading the managed code using COM)

    - by evilfred
    Hi, I am really confused by the multitude of misinformation about native / managed interop. I have a C++ exe which is NOT built using CLR stuff (it is not Managed C++ or C++/CLI and never will be). I would like to access some code I have in a C# assembly. I can access the C# assembly using COM. However, when my C# code detects an event I would like it to call back into my C++ code. The C++ function pointer to call back into will be provided at runtime. Note that the C++ function pointer is a function found in the exe's execution environment. I don't want the managed code to try and load up some DLL to call a function (there is no DLL). How do I pass this C++ function pointer to my C# code through .NET and have my C# code successfully call it? Thanks!

    Read the article

  • Debug .Net Framework's source code only shows disassembly in Visual Studio 2010

    - by jdecuyper
    Hi! I'm trying to debug .Net Framework's source code using Visual Studio 2010 Professional. I followed the steps described in Raj Kaimal's post but I must be doing something wrong since the only code I'm getting to see is the disassembly code: As you can see in the image, the Go to Source Code and the Load Symbols options are disabled. Nevertheless, symbols are downloaded from Microsoft's server since I can see them inside the local cache directory. The code I'm debugging goes as follow: var wr = WebRequest.Create("http://www.google.com"); Console.WriteLine("Web request created"); var req = wr.GetRequestStream(); Console.Read(); When I hit F11 to step into the first line of code, a window pops us looking for the "WebRequst.cs" file inside "f:\dd\ndp\fx\src\Net\System\Net\WebRequest.cs" which does not exists on my machine. What am I missing? Thanks a lot for your help.

    Read the article

  • Formatting code in research reports

    - by RoseOfJericho
    I am currently writing a formal research report, and I'll be including JavaScript and PHP code. None of the sections of code will be more than 25 lines (so they're mere snippets). There will be approx. half a dozen snippets, each of which will have a couple of paragraphs explaining what is happening in the code and a discussion on its pros/cons. Is there an accepted way of displaying code in research reports? I'm thinking in terms of font, spacing, whether the code should be displayed inside the document or in an appendix, and related details. I have no contact with the body the report will be submitted to, and they have no published guidelines on how to format code.

    Read the article

  • Refactor/rewrite code or continue?

    - by Dan
    I just completed a complex piece of code. It works to spec, it meets performance requirements etc etc but I feel a bit anxious about it and am considering rewriting and/or refactoring it. Should I do this (spending time that could otherwise be spent on features that users will actually notice)? The reasons I feel anxious about the code are: The class hierarchy is complex and not obvious Some classes don't have a well defined purpose (they do a number of unrelated things) Some classes use others internals (they're declared as friend classes) to bypass the layers of abstraction for performance, but I feel they break encapsulation by doing this Some classes leak implementation details (eg, I changed a map to a hash map earlier and found myself having to modify code in other source files to make the change work) My memory management/pooling system is kinda clunky and less-than transparent They look like excellent reasons to refactor and clean code, aiding future maintenance and extension, but could be quite time consuming. Also, I'll never be perfectly happy with any code I write anyway... So, what does stackoverflow think? Clean code or work on features?

    Read the article

  • Code Review "ToDo" Follow Up Items

    - by Blake Blackwell
    I am trying to institute code reviews at my company, and recently we had our first code review meeting. During the meeting, several positive suggestions were made and I added TODO comments in my code for following up. After reading suggestions on here on best practices for code reviews, I would like to follow up on all the items I corrected at the start of the next meeting. Is there a way to add a similar type of comment to the code such as FOLLOWUP so that I can quickly highlight through those code segments in the next meeting?

    Read the article

  • Unit testing a SQL code generator

    - by Tom H.
    The team I'm on is currently writing code in TSQL to generate TSQL code that will be saved as scripts and later run. We're having a little difficulty in separating our unit tests between testing the code generator parts and testing the actual code that they generate. I've read through another similar question, but I was hoping to get some specific examples of what kind of unit test cases we might have. As an example, let's say that I have a bit of code that simply generates a DROP statement for a view, given the view schema and name. Do I just test that the generated code matches some expected outcome using string comparisons and then in a later integration or system test make sure that the drop actually drops the view if it exists, does nothing if the view doesn't exist, or raises an error if the view is one that we are marking as not allowing a drop? Thanks for any advice!

    Read the article

  • PPV Code Review - Is it good idea?

    - by user93422
    I believe in (solo) code reviews a lot. But I am in a one-developer-shop now. I would like to have my code reviewed, and willing to pay money for it. Question: Is there a place where I can have my code reviewed for money? Note: I understand that most of us are willing to review some one else code for free, but there is a limit to how much code one (e.g. I) is willing to review for free before getting bored. Question: Is it good idea to pay 3d party to do my code-reviews?

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27  | Next Page >