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• Why did an interviewer ask me a question about people eating curry?

  - by Barry

  I had an interview question once which went... Interviewer: "Could you tell me how many people will eat curry for their dinner this evening" Me: "Er, sorry?" Interviewer: "Not the actual number just an estimate" I actually started to stumble my way through it, when I stopped and questioned what it had to do with anything about the job. The interviewer mumbled something and moved on. I guess the question is, what is the point in the ridiculous questions? I just don't understand why they started coming up with these things.

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• On a queue, which end is the "head"?

  - by Aidan Cully

  I had always thought that the "head" of a queue as the next element to be read, and never really questioned that usage. So a linked-list library I wrote, which is used for maintaining queues, codified that terminology: we have a list1_head macro that retrieves the first element; when using this library in a queue, this will be the first element to be removed. But a new developer on the team was used to having queues implemented the other way around. He described a queue as behaving like a dog: you insert at the head, and remove at the tail. This is a clever enough description that I feel like his usage must be more widespread, and I don't have a similarly evocative description of my preferred usage. So, I guess, there are two related questions: 1, what does the "head" of a queue mean to you? and 2, why do we use the word "head" to describe that concept?

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• Why are Javascript for/in loops so verbose?

  - by Matthew Scharley

  I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind why the language designers would make the for (.. in ..) loops so verbose. For example: for (var x in Drupal.settings.module.stuff) { alert("Index: " + x + "\nValue: " + Drupal.settings.module.stuff[x]); } It makes trying to loop over anything semi-complex like the above a real pain as you either have to alias the value locally inside the loop yourself, or deal with long access calls. This is especially painful if you have two to three nested loops. I'm assuming there is a reason why they would do things this way, but I'm struggling with the reasoning.

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• what are the advantages and disadvantages of putting code for an unfinished project on github

  - by cori

  I'm stating to work on a project that I intend to release as open source via the githubs. What are the advantages of putting the code on github from the outset, as opposed to waiting until the project is in a working state before publishing. If it matters, this particular project is a C# app/service, and I have only a free github account (so I can't make it private and then pull back the covers later)

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• Adding complexity by generalising: how far should you go?

  - by marcog

  Reference question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4303813/help-with-interview-question The above question asked to solve a problem for an NxN matrix. While there was an easy solution, I gave a more general solution to solve the more general problem for an NxM matrix. A handful of people commented that this generalisation was bad because it made the solution more complex. One such comment is voted +8. Putting aside the hard-to-explain voting effects on SO, there are two types of complexity to be considered here: Runtime complexity, i.e. how fast does the code run Code complexity, i.e. how difficult is the code to read and understand The question of runtime complexity is something that requires a better understanding of the input data today and what it might look like in the future, taking the various growth factors into account where necessary. The question of code complexity is the one I'm interested in here. By generalising the solution, we avoid having to rewrite it in the event that the constraints change. However, at the same time it can often result in complicating the code. In the reference question, the code for NxN is easy to understand for any competent programmer, but the NxM case (unless documented well) could easily confuse someone coming across the code for the first time. So, my question is this: Where should you draw the line between generalising and keeping the code easy to understand?

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• Are Intel compilers really better than Microsoft ones?

  - by Rocket Surgeon

  Years ago I was surprised when discovered that Intel sells Studio compatible compilers. I tried it in particular for C/C++ as well as fantastic diagnostic tools. But the code was simply not that computationally intensive to notice the difference. The only impression was: did Intel really did it for me just now, Wow, amazing tools with nanoseconds resolution, unbeleivable. But the trial ended and team never seriously considered a purchase. From your experience, if license cost does not matter, which vendor is a winner ? It is not broad or vague question or attemt to spark a holy war. This sort of question about 2 very visible tools. Nobody likes when tools have any mysteries or surprises. And choices between best and best are always the pain. I also understand the "grass greener" argument. I want to hear all "what ifs" stories. What if Intel just locally optimizes it for the chip stepping of the month, and not every hardware target will actually work as well as Microsoft compiled ? What if AMD hardware is the target and everything will slow down for no reason ? Or on other hand, what if Intel's hardware has so many unnoticable opportunities, that Microsoft compiler writers are too slow to adopt and never implement in the compiler ? What if both are the same exactly, actually a single codebase just wrapped into 2 different boxes and licensed to both vendors by some 3rd party shop? And so on. But someone knows some answers.

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• Lack of ideas for startup equals slack career?

  - by Fanatic23

  After 12-15 years of working in the same industry, if a person does not have any new ideas for a startup then is it safe to say that his/her career has not reached its potential? We are not talking of implementation strategies or insights here to fructify the startup -- just great ideas which can change things for the better. Not your source code optimization. I mean a radical way of looking at things. If you lot disagree with this line of thinking, then please share some examples where despite such a long span a person can end up without new ideas.

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• Dark or light theme for Android apps?

  - by Philip Sheard

  My app allows the user to choose between a dark and a light theme, but which should it use as the default? It is a field sales app, a kind of glorified invoicing app for enterprise users. It is much larger than most apps in Google Play, and targets a vertical market. Originally I developed the app with a dark font, which was fairly standard at the time. That is still my personal preference, but most modern apps seem to have a light font.

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• Is an 'if password == XXXXXXX' enough for minimum security?

  - by Morgan Herlocker

  If I create a login for an app that has middle to low security risk (in other words, its not a banking app or anything), is it acceptable for me to verify a password entered by the user by just saying something like: if(enteredPassword == verifiedPassword) SendToRestrictedArea(); else DisplayPasswordUnknownMessage(); It seems to easy to be effective, but I certainly would not mind if that was all that was required. Is a simple check on username/password combo enough? Update: The particular project happens to be a web service, the verification is entirely server side, and it is not open-source. Does the domain change how you would deal with this?

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• structure problem in Relational DBMS creation

  - by Kane

  For learning and understanding purpose, I currently want to try to make a small relational DBMS with simple features like (for now) only sequential reading/writing and CREATE TABLE, INSERT, SELECT, UPDATE and DELETE management. I am currently on the "think" part of the project and I am stuck on the way to store the read data in memory. First I was thinking of putting them properly on a structure, but the problem is that tables are all different, know the type of each column is not an issue, but I am not sure C provide a way to make fully dynamic structure. My second and current idea is to make a simple char array of the required length and just get the data by order with cast. But I am not sure if it is the good way to do that part, so I wanted to ask for your opinion and advices about that. Thanks in advance for your help. nb: I hope my question is enough clear and understandable, I still lack of pratice in english

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• Extreme Programming Dying? [closed]

  - by jonny

  Is Extreme Programming Dying? I've been reviewing my fellow students reports on extreme programming.(I am a student myself) Some students are claiming that extreme programming lacks in empirical evidences, and is relevantly new, hence lacking in empirical evidence. XP is already 13 years old it should be considered as new, from my perspective. I guess the practices of XP has been tweaked and used in newer methodologies such as scrum. What are your point of view on this, do you guys think XP is Dying?

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• Why maven so slow compared to automake?

  - by ???'Lenik

  I have a Maven project consists of around 100 modules. I have reason to decompose the project to so many modules, and I don't think I should merge them in order to speed up the build process. I have read a lot of projects by other people, e.g., the Maven project itself, and Apache Archiva, and Hudson project, they all consists of a lot of modules, nearly 100 maybe, more or less. The problem is, to build them all need so much time, 3 hours for the first time build (this is acceptable because a lot of artifacts to download), and 15 minutes for the second build (this is not acceptable). For automake, things are similarly, the first time you need to configure the project, to prepare the magical config.h file, it's far more complex then what maven does. But it's still fast, maybe 10 seconds on my Debian box. After then, make install requires maybe 10 minutes for the first time build. However, when everything get prepared, the .o object files are generated, they don't have to be rebuild at all for the second time build. (In Maven, everything rebuild at everytime.) I'm very wondering, how guys working for Maven projects can bare this long time for each build, I'm just can't sit down calmly during each time Maven build, it took too long time, really.

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• Validating data to nest if or not within try and catch

  - by Skippy

  I am validating data, in this case I want one of three ints. I am asking this question, as it is the fundamental principle I'm interested in. This is a basic example, but I am developing best practices now, so when things become more complicated later, I am better equipped to manage them. Is it preferable to have the try and catch followed by the condition: public static int getProcType() { try { procType = getIntInput("Enter procedure type -\n" + " 1 for Exploratory,\n" + " 2 for Reconstructive, \n" + "3 for Follow up: \n"); } catch (NumberFormatException ex) { System.out.println("Error! Enter a valid option!"); getProcType(); } if (procType == 1 || procType == 2 || procType == 3) { hrlyRate = hrlyRate(procType); procedure = procedure(procType); } else { System.out.println("Error! Enter a valid option!"); getProcType(); } return procType; } Or is it better to put the if within the try and catch? public static int getProcType() { try { procType = getIntInput("Enter procedure type -\n" + " 1 for Exploratory,\n" + " 2 for Reconstructive, \n" + "3 for Follow up: \n"); if (procType == 1 || procType == 2 || procType == 3) { hrlyRate = hrlyRate(procType); procedure = procedure(procType); } else { System.out.println("Error! Enter a valid option!"); getProcType(); } } catch (NumberFormatException ex) { System.out.println("Error! Enter a valid option!"); getProcType(); } return procType; } I am thinking the if within the try, may be quicker, but also may be clumsy. Which would be better, as my programming becomes more advanced?

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• Multilevel Queue Scheduling (MQS) with Round Robin

  - by stackuser

  I'm trying to use MQS to create a Gantt chart of 5 processes (P1-P5) as well as their waiting, response, and turnaround times (and averages of those metrics) within a CPU task schedule. Here's the basic table of arrival times and bursts: Here's my actual work version after ticking off the finished processes. The time quantum for each time slice is (2 queues) TQ1=4 and TQ2=3. Note that I'm doing MQS and NOT MLFQ: It just doesn't feel like I'm doing MQS right here, I know this gets a little complex but maybe someone can point out where I'm going totally wrong.

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• Why should I use List<T> over IEnumerable<T>?

  - by Rowan Freeman

  In my ASP.net MVC4 web application I use IEnumerables, trying to follow the mantra to program to the interface, not the implementation. Return IEnumerable(Of Student) vs Return New List(Of Student) People are telling me to use List and not IEnumerable, because lists force the query to be executed and IEumerable does not. Is this really best practice? Is there any alternative? I feel strange using concrete objects where an interface could be used. Is my strange feeling justified?

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• What's the best way to manage list item sort order with Drag & Drop UI?

  - by Reddy S R

  I have a list of Students that I should display to user on a web page in tabular format. The items are stored in DB along with SortOrder information. On the web page, user can rearrange the list order by dragging and dropping the items to their desired sort order, similar to this post. Below is a screenshot of my test page. In the above example, each row has sort order info attached to it. When I drop John Doe (Student Id 10) above the Student Id 1 row, the list order should now be: 2, 10, 1, 8, 11. What's the optimistic (less resource hungry) way to store and update Sort Order information? My only idea for now is, for every change in the list's sort order, every object's SortOrder value should be updated, which in my opinion is very resource hungry. Just FYI: I might have at most 25 rows in my table.

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• At what point would you drop some of your principles of software development for the sake of more money?

  - by MeshMan

  I'd like to throw this question out there to interestingly see where the medium is. I'm going to admit that in my last 12 months, I picked up TDD and a lot of the Agile values in software development. I was so overwhelmed with how much better my development of software became that I would never drop them out of principle. Until...I was offered a contracting role that doubled my take home pay for the year. The company I joined didn't follow any specific methodology, the team hadn't heard of anything like code smells, SOLID, etc., and I certainly wasn't going to get away with spending time doing TDD if the team had never even seen unit testing in practice. Am I a sell out? No, not completely... Code will always been written "cleanly" (as per Uncle Bob's teachings) and the principles of SOLID will always be applied to the code that I write as they are needed. Testing was dropped for me though, the company couldn't afford to have such a unknown handed to the team who quite frankly, even I did create test frameworks, they would never use/maintain the test framework correctly. Using that as an example, what point would you say a developer should never drop his craftsmanship principles for the sake of money/other benefits to them personally? I understand that this can be a very personal opinion on how concerned one is to their own needs, business needs, and the sake of craftsmanship etc. But one can consider that for example testing can be dropped if the company decided they would rather have a test team, than rather understand unit testing in programming, would that be something you could forgive yourself for like I did? So given that there is something you would drop, there usually should be an equal cost in the business that makes up for what you drop - hopefully, unless of course you are pretty much out for lining your own pockets and not community/social collaborating ;). Double your money, go back to RAD? Or walk on, and look for someone doing Agile, and never look back...

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• 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.

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• Git workflow for small teams

  - by janos

  I'm working on a git workflow to implement in a small team. The core ideas in the workflow: there is a shared project master that all team members can write to all development is done exclusively on feature branches feature branches are code reviewed by a team member other than the branch author the feature branch is eventually merged into the shared master and the cycle starts again The article explains the steps in this cycle in detail: https://github.com/janosgyerik/git-workflows-book/blob/small-team-workflow/chapter05.md Does this make sense or am I missing something?

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• C++ : Lack of Standardization at the Binary Level

  - by Nawaz

  Why ISO/ANSI didn't standardize C++ at the binary level? There are many portability issues with C++, which is only because of lack of it's standardization at the binary level. Don Box writes, (quoting from his book Essential COM, chapter COM As A Better C++) C++ and Portability Once the decision is made to distribute a C++ class as a DLL, one is faced with one of the fundamental weaknesses of C++, that is, lack of standardization at the binary level. Although the ISO/ANSI C++ Draft Working Paper attempts to codify which programs will compile and what the semantic effects of running them will be, it makes no attempt to standardize the binary runtime model of C++. The first time this problem will become evident is when a client tries to link against the FastString DLL's import library from a C++ developement environment other than the one used to build the FastString DLL. Are there more benefits Or loss of this lack of binary standardization?

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• Why many designs ignore normalization in RDBMS?

  - by Yosi

  I got to see many designs that normalization wasn't the first consideration in decision making phase. In many cases those designs included more than 30 columns, and the main approach was "to put everything in the same place" According to what I remember normalization is one of the first, most important things, so why is it dropped so easily sometimes? Edit: Is it true that good architects and experts choose a denormalized design while non-experienced developers choose the opposite? What are the arguments against starting your design with normalization in mind?

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• Multi-platform Map Application

  - by Mahdi

  I'm working on a web project (PHP, jQuery) which currently using Google Maps powering up the map functionality of the application, however we need to make it multi-platform like you can go to the dashboard and choose one from 5-10 map providers (which Goolge Maps is just one of them) to underlying your map functionality. So, as the application is supposed to show the data on map, almost in every single place we have to deal with the API provided by that specific map provider. Currently we are thinking about revising our modular structure and/or making something like an adapter for each provider to deal with their native syntax but via our standard methods. I wish to have your ideas and your experiences, specially if you ever made an interface for dealing via 2-3 different map providers. That would helps much and I really appreciate that. If you need any further information, just ask me to update the question. Update: As Vicky Chijwani suggested Mapstraction, now I'm also wondering which one is more better (pros & cons), having an adapter implemented on Javascript or PHP?

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• How to handle bugs that I think I fixed, but I'm not entirely sure

  - by vsz

  There are some types of bugs which are very hard to reproduce, happen very rarely and seemingly by random. It can happen, that I find a possible cause, fix it, test the program, and can't reproduce the bug. However, as it was impossible to reliably reproduce the bug and it happened so rarely, how can I indicate this in a bugtracker? What is the common way of doing it? If I set the status to fixed, and the solution to fixed, it would mean something completely fixed, wouldn't it? Is it common practice to set the status to fixed and the solution to open, to indicate to the testers, that "it's probably fixed, but needs more attention to make sure" ? Edit: most (if not all) bugtrackers have two properties for the status of a bug, maybe the names are not the same. By status I mean new, assigned, fixed, closed, etc., and by solution I mean open (new), fixed, unsolvable, not reproducible, duplicate, not a bug, etc.

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• How long should one wait before going for a MS?

  - by Jungle Hunter

  Removed duplicate aspects of the question Hi! I'm an undergraduate Master's student. I've what seems to be a good offer in hand in Singapore (if location plays a role). Is an undergraduate Master's good enough for a Master's or one should go for MS? How much time should one wait (in their job) before going for a MS if that's the decision? Does one lose the progress which one makes while at the job before the Master's? Note: Undergraduate Master's is when my degree is called Master's but it is my first degree. This one is a four year one.

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• Avoid GPL violation by moving library out of process

  - by Andrey

  Assume there is a library that is licensed under GPL. I want to use it is closed source project. I do following: Create small wrapper application around that GPL library that listens to socket, parse messages and call GPL library. Then returns results back. Release it's sources (to comply with GPL) Create client for this wrapper in my main application and don't release sources. I know that this adds huge overhead compared to static/dynamic linking, but I am interested in theoretical way.

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