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• Is there value in having technical authors in a software team?

  - by Desolate Planet

  During my 5 years in IT as a software developer, I've noticed that developers have a strong distaste towards doing any documentation. The act of taking screenshots and creating documentation seems to be a painful and time consuming experience. In one company I worked for, we had a technical documentation team with two technical authors and they developed all the user guides for our customers. In other companies where I've suggested hiring a technical author, I've been told they are not worth the money, but I'm a little unsure if that rings true. Is it better to have developers stop coding and take half a day to do screenshots and create the various guides or is it worth hiring someone who handles such tasks?

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• Scriptable user-interfaces/frameworks for automated UI testing

  - by AareP

  I'm planning on using scripting for automated UI testing. Main application is written in c#, and I want it to be scriptable, so I can do everything end-user can do, but programmatically. What do you think of software that provides an interface for scripting, like VBA macros in Excel? Can this be future of all programming, big and small? What is the best way to build such an interface for your own application, dll-based or by parsing own scripting language?

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• The perfect crossfade

  - by epologee

  I find it hard to describe this problem in words, which is why I made a video (45 seconds) to illustrate it. Here's a preview of the questions, please have a look at it on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/epologee/perfect-crossfade The issue of creating a flawless crossfade or dissolve of two images or shapes has been recurring to me in a number of fields over the last decade. First in video editing, then in Flash animation and now in iOS programming. When you start googling it, there are many workarounds to be found, but I really want to solve this without a hack this time. The summary: What is the name of the technique or curve to apply in crossfading two semi-transparent, same-colored bitmaps, if you want the resulting transparency to match the original of either one? Is there a (mathematical) function to calculate the neccessary partial transparency/alpha values during the fade? Are there programming languages that have these functions as a preset, similar to the ease in, ease out or ease in out functions found in ActionScript or Cocoa?

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• Is this the right strategy to convert an in-level order binary tree to a doubly linked list?

  - by Ankit Soni

  So I recently came across this question - Make a function that converts a in-level-order binary tree into a doubly linked list. Apparently, it's a common interview question. This is the strategy I had - Simply do a pre-order traversal of the tree, and instead of returning a node, return a list of nodes, in the order in which you traverse them. i.e return a list, and append the current node to the list at each point. For the base case, return the node itself when you are at a leaf. so you would say left = recursive_function(node.left) right = recursive_function(node.right) return(left.append(node.data)).append(right);` Is this the right approach?

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• Be a better programmer or an irreplacable employee?

  - by mahen23

  Before I worked for a web development company, I asked a lot of questions of friends who were working as developers for tips about being good at your job. One answer I got was: "Always make the employers beg for your competencies. Prove to them that you are the best and you cannot be replaced. While keeping the status quo, hold your employers hostage where if one day they remove your from the job or task, no one else will be able to do your job." How true is this statement?

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• Easy to understand and interesting book on algorithms

  - by gasan

  Please advise me a book on algorithms, that would be easier to read and understand than Cormen's book1. It may be not so big and deep in explanation. I even want it to not be that big, however it shouldn't contain misconceptions or errors or inaccuracies. It should be a some kind of pre-Cormen's book, that will help later to understand more sophisticated conceptions. A beginner book (but still worth to read). 1 Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein

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• Why are we as an industry not more technically critical of our peers? [closed]

  - by Jarrod Roberson

  For example: I still see people in 2011 writing blog posts and tutorials that promote setting the Java CLASSPATH at the OS environment level. I see people writing C and C++ tutorials dated 2009 and newer and the first lines of code are void main(). These are examples, I am not looking for specific answers to the above questions, but to why the culture of accepting sub-par knowledge in the industry is so rampant. I see people posting these same type of empirically wrong suggestions as answers on www.stackoverflow.com and they get lots of up votes and practically no down votes! The ones that get lots of down votes are usually from answering a question that wasn't asked because of lack of reading for comprehension skills, and not incorrect answers per se. Is our industry that ignorant as a whole, I can understand the internet in general being lazy, apathetic and un-informed but our industry should be more on top of things like this and way more critical of people that are promoting bad habits and out-dated techniques and information. If we are really an engineering discipline, why aren't people held to a higher standard as they are in other engineering disciplines? I want to know why people accept bad advice, poor practices as the norm and are not more critical of their peers in the software industry.?

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• Public Speaking in software development.

  - by mummey

  Greetings my fellow cubicle dwellers. I've found my role gradually change from "feature-maintainer" to "feature-developer". While much of the former would consist of fixing and/or updating an existing feature (and quietly grumbling about it's implementation with complete naiveté), in this new role I find: Have to communicate with immediate management to define the development requirements to turnaround the new feature Have to communicate with design to determine the user requirements of the new feature Have to communicate with QA to determine test sets for the new feature, as well as it's current state during development. Have to communicate with producers/project-managers to define remaining turnaround time as well as updates in development requirements. and finally, have to occasionally communicate with upper-management to defend the new feature and demonstrate it's minimized risk to the upcoming release. The last item is key here, and this took me a couple occasions to completely realize. In all, though, it becomes very apparent that communication skills ARE important, even or especially as such for developers who feel they 'own' the feature they're working on. All of this said, I recognize it's importance and would like to improve my skills in this area further. I enjoy one-on-one communication but find I tend to stutter a bit when speaking to any group larger than a few people I know well. Where can I find good resources to improve my own communication skills?

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• How to explain OOP concepts to a non technical person?

  - by John

  I often try to avoid telling people I'm a programmer because most of the time I end up explaining to them what that really means. When I tell them I'm programming in Java they often ask general questions about the language and how it differs from x and y. I'm also not good at explaining things because 1) I don't have that much experience in the field and 2) I really hate explaining things to non-technical people. They say that you truly understand things once you explain them to someone else, in this case how would you explain OOP terminology and concepts to a non technical person?

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• Best arguments for/against introducing ORM technology into a companies dev process

  - by james

  I have started using ORM technology in the last few years. My first exposure was NHibernate. I then moved onto Linq 2 Sql, and Entity Framework. The issue I have however is, there are some organisations where I have found strong opposition to introducing ORM tools. They usually have a number of reasons: they have a lot of built up SQL skills in the team, and are worried about the underlying SQL that ORM's generate. they have DBA's who like to be able to see the SQL an app uses in order that can review it for best practice. they are worried about performance (some people have "heard" the ORM's aren't as performant but have no real proof themselves - there may well be some truth in this! :). So, I'm looking for the best or most convincing arguments that you have put forward FOR the use of ORM tools. Equally, I would be interested in the against arguments too. Note: this is NOT a discussion over which ORM I should use.

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• WWDC 2012 announced features on iOS 5?

  - by Arnold Sakhnov

  I am relatively new to iOS development, so after watching a bunch of WWDC videos announcing new awesome features for the iPhone SDK, I still got a few questions regarding their support for older devices. Specifically: Do the new compiler features (such as literals support, auto-synthesize, etc) require iOS 6 on the target device, or can the new style code be deployed to iOS 5 devices? Auto-layout for iOS, same question. Will it only be supported on iOS 6, or 5 as well? If it's 6 only, what kind of fallback are we expected to implement? Would really appreciate if someone could clarify this for me, as I'm thinking about rewriting my older unfinished project and I would love to use some of that improved SDK functionality.

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• How do you name your personal libraries?

  - by Mehrdad

  I'm pretty bad with naming things. The only name I can every generically come up with is 'helper'. Say, if I have a header file that contains helping functions for manipulating paths, I tend to put it inside my "helper" directory and call it "path-helper.hpp" or something like that. Obviouslly, that's a bad naming convention. :) I want to have a consistent naming scheme for my folder (and namespace) which I can use to always refer to my own headers and libraries, but I have trouble finding names that are easy to type or remember (like boost)... so I end up calling some of them "helper" or "stdext" or whatnot, which isn't a great idea. How do you find names for your libraries that are easy to remember and easy to type, and which aren't too generic (like "helper" or "std" or "stdext" or the like)? Any suggestions on how to go about doing this?

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• How long can a user remember what they were working on? [migrated]

  - by GlenPeterson

  A web application lets the user browse its screens for future or past months. The time period the user is currently viewing follows the user through every screen of the system. But users can be logged in for a month or more. After a certain period of inactivity, we will prompt the user: You were viewing November 2008 when you last clicked. Want to view the current (default) time period instead? How long between user clicks should we wait to show this message? I'm guessing somewhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours most people will forget what they were doing, but I'd love to have some data, or someone's experience to base it on. Other suggestions related to this issue?

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• How is this number calculated?

  - by Hamid

  I have numbers; A == 0x20000000 B == 18 C == (B/10) D == 0x20000004 == (A + C) A and D are in hex, but I'm not sure what the assumed numeric bases of the others are (although I'd assume base 10 since they don't explicitly state a base. It may or may not be relevant but I'm dealing with memory addresses, A and D are pointers. The part I'm failing to understand is how 18/10 gives me 0x4. Edit: Code for clarity: *address1 (pointer is to address: 0x20000000) printf("Test1: %p\n", address1); printf("Test2: %p\n", address1+(18/10)); printf("Test3: %p\n", address1+(21/10)); Output: Test1: 0x20000000 Test2: 0x20000004 Test3: 0x20000008

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• Pros and cons of hosted scripts

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  I have seen some developers use hosted scripts to link their libraries. cdn.jquerytools.org is one example. I have also seen people complain that a hosted script link has been hijacked. How safe is using hosted scripts in reality? Are the scripts automatically updated? For example, if jQuery 5 goes to 6 do I automatically get version 6 or do I need to update my link? I also see that Google has a large set of these scripts setup for hosting. What are the pros and cons?

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• How does one pronounce "cron" as in "cron job"?

  - by Rooke

  Before someone ban-hammers this question as they do with all other pronunciation questions, let me explain its relevance. Verbal communication among co-workers and partners is important; today I was on a conference call with people discussing what I thought was something to do with "Chrome", as in Google Chrome. I pronounce the "cron" in "cron job" with a short O, much like "tron", "gone," or "pawn", but this individual pronouced it with a long O, as in "hone", "bone", or "stone" (notice the e at the end of all those!). Is there a standard pronunciation? Or is this a matter of opinion. For example, there's nothing ambiguous about the pronunciation of "Firefox", but debate is raging over "potato" and "tomato".

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• MVC Validation with ModelState.isValid through a wizard

  - by Emmanuel TOPE

  I'm working on a small educational project on MVC 3, and I'm facing a small problem, when attempting to handle validation in my application through a wizard. I tried to get benefit from the ability of MVC3 to deliver content of a different view using the same URL, when handling an [HttpPost] method on a page. I my case,my main model's class contains about ten [Required] properties, that I would like to expose through a small wizard in 3 steps , So I want that the user may be able to enter his personal informations in the first step, then respond to some questions in the second stepp and finally receive a confirmation mail from the web application whit his credentials in the last step. I can't access the last step, because of the ModelState.isValid method that I use to handle validations, and which can't perform properly if I define some properties as [Required], but don't put them on the first view. As the replies to those questions remain in a couple of choices, I've thinked that I may use some nullable bool? for in order to avoid validation issues, but know that it's not the proper way. Are there someone who would like to help me find a way to extend my validation to those three steps ? Thanks in advance and sorry for my english, I'm not a native speaker.

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• MATLAB: Best fitness vs mean fitness, initial range

  - by Sa Ta

  Based on the example of Rastrigin's function. At the plot function, if I chose 'best fitness', on the same graph 'mean fitness' will also be plotted. I understand well about 'best fitness' whereby it plots the best function value in each generation versus iteration number. It will reach value zero after some times. I don't understand about 'mean fitness'in the graph plotted. What do those 'mean fitness' values mean? How does the 'mean fitness' graph help to understand Rastrigin's function? What are the meaning of the term initial population, initial score and initial range? I wish to have a better understanding of these terms. The default value for initial range is [0,1]. Does it mean that 0 is the lower bound (lb) and 1 is the upper bound (ub)? Do these values interfere with the lb and ub values I set in the constraints? I try to better understand about lb and ub. If my lb is 0 and ub is 5, does it mean that my final point values will be within 0 and 5? If I know the lb and ub for my problem is between 0 and 5, do I just set the initial range as [0,5] at all times and may I assume that this is the best option for initial range, and I need not try it with any other values?

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• Graduated transition from Green - Yellow - Red

  - by GoldBishop

  I have am having algorithm mental block in designing a way to transition from Green to Red, as smoothly as possible with a, potentially, unknown length of time to transition. For testing purposes, i will be using 300 as my model timespan but the methodology algorithm design needs to be flexible enough to account for larger or even smaller timespans. Figured using RGB would probably be the best to transition with, but open to other color creation types, assuming its native to .Net (VB/C#). Currently i have: t = 300 x = t/2 z = 0 low = Green (0, 255, 0) mid = Yellow (255, 255, 0) high = Red (255, 0, 0) Lastly, sort of an optional piece, is to account for the possibility of the low, mid, and high color's to be flexible as well. I assume that there would need to be a check to make sure that someone isnt putting in low = (255,0,0), mid=(254,0,0), and high=(253,0,0). Outside of this anomaly, which i will handle myself based on the best approach to evaluate a color. Question: What would be the best approach to do the transition from low to mid and then from mid to high? What would be some potential pitfalls of implementing this type of design, if any?

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• is Microsoft LC random generator patented?

  - by user396672

  I need a very simple pseudo random generator (no any specific quality requirements) and I found Microsoft's variant of LCG algorithm used for rand() C runtime library function fit my needs (gcc's one seems too complex). I found the algorithm here: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator#C However, I worry the algorithm (including its "magic numbers" i.e coefficients) may by patented or restricted for use in some another way. Is it allowed to use this algorithm without any licence or patent restrictions or not? I can't use library rand() because I need my results to be exactly reproducible on different platforms

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• How does one handle an incorrect resource file?

  - by AedonEtLIRA

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

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• Music Notation Editor - Refactoring view creation logic elseware

  - by Cyril Silverman

  Let me preface by saying that knowing some elementary music theory and music notation may be helpful in grasping the problem at hand. I'm currently building a Music Notation and Tablature Editor (in Javascript). But I've come to a point where the core parts of the program are more or less there. All functionality I plan to add at this point will really build off the foundation that I've created. As a result, I want to refactor to really solidify my code. I'm using an API called VexFlow to render notation. Basically I pass the parts of the editor's state to VexFlow to build the graphical representation of the score. Here is a rough and stripped down UML diagram showing you the outline of my program: In essence, a Part has many Measures which has many Notes which has many NoteItems (yes, this is semantically weird, as a chord is represented as a Note with multiple NoteItems, individual pitches or fret positions). All of the relationships are bi-directional. There are a few problems with my design because my Measure class contains the majority of the entire application view logic. The class holds the data about all VexFlow objects (the graphical representation of the score). It contains the graphical Staff object and the graphical notes. (Shouldn't these be placed somewhere else in the program?) While VexFlowFactory deals with actual creation (and some processing) of most of the VexFlow objects, Measure still "directs" the creation of all the objects and what order they are supposed to be created in for both the VexFlowStaff and VexFlowNotes. I'm not looking for a specific answer as you'd need a much deeper understanding of my code. Just a general direction to go in. Here's a thought I had, create an MeasureView/NoteView/PartView classes that contains the basic VexFlow objects for each class in addition to any extraneous logic for it's creation? but where would these views be contained? Do I create a ScoreView that is a parallel graphical representation of everything? So that ScoreView.render() would cascade down PartView and call render for each PartView and casade down into each MeasureView, etc. Again, I just have no idea what direction to go in. The more I think about it, the more ways to go seem to pop into my head. I tried to be as concise and simplistic as possible while still getting my problem across. Please feel free to ask me any questions if anything is unclear. It's quite a struggle trying to dumb down a complicated problem to its core parts.

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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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• Quality Assurance activities

  - by MasloIed

  Having asked but deleted the question as it was a bit misunderstood. If Quality Control is the actual testing, what are the commonest true quality assurance activities? I have read that verification (reviews, inspections..) but it does not make much sense to me as it looks more like quality control as mentioned here: DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LIFE CYCLE FRAMEWORK Practices guide Verification - “Are we building the product right?” Verification is a quality control technique that is used to evaluate the system or its components to determine whether or not the project’s products satisfy defined requirements. During verification, the project’s processes are reviewed and examined by members of the IV&V team with the goal of preventing omissions, spotting problems, and ensuring the product is being developed correctly. Some Verification activities may include items such as: • Verification of requirement against defined specifications • Verification of design against defined specifications • Verification of product code against defined standards • Verification of terms, conditions, payment, etc., against contracts

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• What would be the best approach to make revisions of user content?

  - by Kevin Simper

  I have searched and could not find any information about it. What is the best approach to storing revisions? I have a website where the user can write a document which can be fairly long (200-300 lines). How do you determine when to make a revision? Is it not a scalable solution to make a new one whenever the save, because that would be useless to the user when the want to look back, and it would require quite a lot of space. You could use time and say for every 15 minute they are working on it there would be a revision, but that would sometimes be nothing or the whole document have completely changed. I could make a diff from the previous revision, and compare by line and look at how many percent of the lines have been changed. What are other doing revisions?

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