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• How to drastically improve code coverage?

  - by Peter Kofler

  I'm tasked with getting a legacy application under unit test. First some background about the application: It's a 600k LOC Java RCP code base with these major problems massive code duplication no encapsulation, most private data is accessible from outside, some of the business data also made singletons so it's not just changeable from outside but also from everywhere. no business model, business data is stored in Object[] and double[][], so no OO. There is a good regression test suite and an efficient QA team is testing and finding bugs. I know the techniques how to get it under test from classic books, e.g. Michael Feathers, but that's too slow. As there is a working regression test system I'm not afraid to aggressively refactor the system to allow unit tests to be written. How should I start to attack the problem to get some coverage quickly, so I'm able to show progress to management (and in fact to start earning from safety net of JUnit tests)? I do not want to employ tools to generate regression test suites, e.g. AgitarOne, because these tests do not test if something is correct.

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• Liskov principle: violation by type-hinting

  - by Elias Van Ootegem

  According to the Liskov principle, a construction like the one below is invalid, as it strengthens a pre-condition. I know the example is pointless/nonsense, but when I last asked a question like this, and used a more elaborate code sample, it seemed to distract people too much from the actual question. //Data models abstract class Argument { protected $value = null; public function getValue() { return $this->value; } abstract public function setValue($val); } class Numeric extends Argument { public function setValue($val) { $this->value = $val + 0;//coerce to number return $this; } } //used here: abstract class Output { public function printValue(Argument $arg) { echo $this->format($arg); return $this; } abstract public function format(Argument $arg); } class OutputNumeric extends Output { public function format(Numeric $arg)//<-- VIOLATION! { $format = is_float($arg->getValue()) ? '%.3f' : '%d'; return sprintf($format, $arg->getValue()); } } My question is this: Why would this kind of "violation" be considered harmful? So much so that some languages, like the one I used in this example (PHP), don't even allow this? I'm not allowed to strengthen the type-hint of an abstract method but, by overriding the printValue method, I am allowed to write: class OutputNumeric extends Output { final public function printValue(Numeric $arg) { echo $this->format($arg); } public function format(Argument $arg) { $format = is_float($arg->getValue()) ? '%.3f' : '%d'; return sprintf($format, $arg->getValue()); } } But this would imply repeating myself for each and every child of Output, and makes my objects harder to reuse. I understand why the Liskov principle exists, don't get me wrong, but I find it somewhat difficult to fathom why the signature of an abstract method in an abstract class has to be adhered to so much stricter than a non-abstract method. Could someone explain to me why I'm not allowed to hind at a child class, in a child class? The way I see it, the child class OutputNumeric is a specific use-case of Output, and thus might need a specific instance of Argument, namely Numeric. Is it really so wrong of me to write code like this?

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• Naming a predicate: "precondition" or "precondition_is_met"?

  - by RexE

  In my web app framework, each page can have a precondition that needs to be satisfied before it can be displayed to the user. For example, if user 1 and user 2 are playing a back-and-forth role-playing game, user 2 needs to wait for user 1 to finish his turn before he can take his turn. Otherwise, the user is displayed a waiting page. This is implemented with a predicate: def precondition(self): return user_1.completed_turn The simplest name for this API is precondition, but this leads to code like if precondition(): ..., which is not really obvious. Seems to me like it is more accurate to call it precondition_is_met(), but not sure about that either. Is there a best practice for naming methods like this?

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• Why does everybody hate SharePoint?

  - by Ryan Michela

  Reading this topic about the most over hyped technologies I noticed that SharePoint is almost universally reviled. My experience with SharePoint (especially the most recent versions) is that it accomplishes it's core competencies smartly. Namely: Centralized document repository - get all those office documents out of email (with versioning) User-editible content creation for internal information disemination - look, an HR site with current phone numbers and the vacation policy Project collaboration - a couple clicks creates a site with a project's documents, task list, simple schedule, threaded discussion, and possibly a list of all project related emails. Very basic business automation - when you fill out the vacation form, an email is sent to HR. My experience is that SharePoint only gets really ugly when an organization tries to push it in a direction it isn't designed for. SharePoint is not a CRM, ERP, bug database or external website. SharePoint is flexible enough to serve in a pinch, but it is no replacement for a dedicated tool. (Microsoft is just as guilty of pushing SharePoint into domains it doesn't belong.) If you use SharePoint for what it's designed for, it really does work. Thoughts?

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• MVP Pattern Philsophical Question - Security Checking in UI

  - by Brian

  Hello, I have a philosophical question about the MVP pattern: I have a component that checks whether a user has access to a certain privilege. This privilege turns on or off certain UI features. For instance, suppose you have a UI grid, and for each row that gets bound, I do a security check to see if certain features in the grid should be enabled or disabled. There are two ways to do this: have the UI/view call the component's method, determine if it has access, and enable/disable or show/hide. The other is have the view fire an event to the presenter, have the presenter do the check and return the access back down to the view through the model or through the event arg. As per the MVP pattern, which component should security checks fit into, the presenter or the view? Since the view is using it to determine its accessibility, it seems more fitting in the view, but it is doing database checks and all inside this business component, and there is business logic there, so I can see the reverse argument too. Thoughts? Thanks.

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• What counts as reinventing the wheel?

  - by dsimcha

  Do the following scenarios count as "reinventing the wheel" in your book? A solution exists, but not in the language you want to use, and existing solutions can't be interfaced with the language you want to use in a clean, idiomatic way. In principle you could get an existing library to do what you wanted with heavy modification, but you think it would probably be easier to just start from scratch. What you're writing has the same one-line description as stuff that's already been done, but you're targeting a different niche. For example, maybe your problem has been solved a zillion times before, but in a way that's inefficient for large datasets and your code works well for large datasets.

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• Is it better to build HTML Code string on the server or on the client side?

  - by Ionut

  The result of the following process should be a html form. This form's structure varies from one to user. For example there might be a different number of rows or there may be the need for rowspan and colspan. When the user chooses to see this table an ajax call is made to the server where the structure of the table is decided from the database. Then I have to create the html code for the table structure which will be inserted in the DOM via JavaScript. The following problem comes to my mind: Where should I build the HTML code which will be inserted in the DOM? On the server side or should I send some parameters in the ajax call method and process the structure there? Therefore the main question involves good practice when it comes to decide between Server side processing or client side processing. Thank you!

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• Mono is frequently used to say "Yes, .NET is cross-platform". How valid is that claim?

  - by Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen

  In What would you choose for your project between .NET and Java at this point in time? I say that I would consider the "Will you always deploy to Windows?" the single most important (EDIT: technical) decision to make up front in a new web project, and if the answer is "no", I would recommend Java instead of .NET. A very common counter-argument is that "If we ever want to run on Linux/OS X/Whatever, we'll just run Mono", which is a very compelling argument on the surface, but I don't agree for several reasons. OpenJDK and all the vendor supplied JVM's have passed the official Sun TCK ensuring things work correctly. I am not aware of Mono passing a Microsoft TCK. Mono trails the .NET releases. What .NET-level is currently fully supported? Does all GUI elements (WinForms?) work correctly in Mono? Businesses may not want to depend on Open Source frameworks as the official plan B. I am aware that with the new governance of Java by Oracle, the future is unsafe, but e.g. IBM provides JDK's for many platforms, including Linux. They are just not open sourced. So, under which circumstances is Mono a valid business strategy for .NET-applications? Edit: Mark H summarized it as: "If the claim is that "I have a windows application written in .NET, it should run on mono", then not, it's not a valid claim - but Mono has made efforts to make porting such applications simpler.".

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• Design pattern for an automated mechanical test bench

  - by JJS

  Background I have a test fixture with a number of communication/data acquisition devices on it that is used as an end of line test for a product. Because of all the various sensors used in the bench and the need to run the test procedure in near real-time, I'm having a hard time structuring the program to be more friendly to modify later on. For example, a National Instruments USB data acquisition device is used to control an analog output (load) and monitor an analog input (current), a digital scale with a serial data interface measures position, an air pressure gauge with a different serial data interface, and the product is interfaced through a proprietary DLL that handles its own serial communication. The hard part The "real-time" aspect of the program is my biggest tripping point. For example, I need to time how long the product needs to go from position 0 to position 10,000 to the tenth of a second. While it's traveling, I need to ramp up an output of the NI DAQ when it reaches position 6,000 and ramp it down when it reaches position 8,000. This sort of control looks easy from browsing NI's LabVIEW docs but I'm stuck with C# for now. All external communication is done by polling which makes for lots of annoying loops. I've slapped together a loose Producer Consumer model where the Producer thread loops through reading the sensors and sets the outputs. The Consumer thread executes functions containing timed loops that poll the Producer for current data and execute movement commands as required. The UI thread polls both threads for updating some gauges indicating current test progress. Unsure where to start Is there a more appropriate pattern for this type of application? Are there any good resources for writing control loops in software (non-LabVIEW) that interface with external sensors and whatnot?

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• Concurrency checking with Last Change Time

  - by Lijo

  I have a following three tables Email (emailNumber, Address) Recipients (reportNumber, emailNumber, lastChangeTime) Report (reportNumber, reportName) I have a C# application that uses inline queries for data selection. I have a select query that selects all reports and their Recipients. Recipients are selected as comma separacted string. During updating, I need to check concurrency. Currently I am using MAX(lastChangeTime) for each reportNumber. This is selected as maxTime. Before update, it checks that the lastChangeTime <= maxTime. --//It works fine One of my co-developers asked why not use GETDATE() as “maxTime” rather than using a MAX operation. That is also working. Here what we are checking is the records are not updated after the record selection time. Is there any pitfalls in using GETDATE() for this purpose?

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• Should I provide fallbacks for HTML5/CSS3 elements in a web page at this point?

  - by Abluescarab

  I'm wondering if I should bother providing a fallback for HTML5 tags and attributes and CSS3 styling at this point in time. I know that there's probably still a lot of people out there who use older versions of browsers and HTML5/CSS3 are still fairly new. I read this article: Should I use non-standard tags in a HTML page for highlighting words? and one answer mentioned that people kind of "cheat" with older browsers by using the new tags and attributes, but styling them in CSS to ensure they show up right. This question: Relevance of HTML5: Is now the time? was asked about two years ago and I don't know how relevant it is anymore. For example, I want to use the placeholder and required attributes in a web form I'm building and it has no labels to show what each <input> is. How do I handle this, or do I bother?

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• Who does code coverage testing?

  - by Athiruban

  Recently, I was given an opportunity to increase the code coverage in a project based on Java Swing, MySQL and other technologies. They told me to bring the code coverage to 100%, while it was only 45% at the time I joined. I am just starting, not a professional developer, right from the beginning I felt bad even though I write and understand computer programs well. (The developed code contains a lot of technical stuff like Generics and no documentation about the code is available.) Has anyone experienced the same situation before? Please tell who is the right person to do the job.

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• Any suggestions how it would be good to promote software in a small company ?

  - by Derfder

  Ok, I know if I am Red hat or other giant and offer some support etc. I can be profitable, in fact, Red Hat is doing quite well. However, what about a small company where I create a small program. e.g. an instant messenger for a windows or linux (just as an illustration) and I want to sell it. But how can I sell it if it is free and everybody can download it? Any advice? I like the idea of FSF by Richard Stallman, however I am missing the way how to sell my software under GNU/GPL licence. Any advice, how can I solve this problem? Any profitable small business software developers around with their opinion? Any links or names of small companies taht I can look at and study their model of business?

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• Support for non-english characters?

  - by TomJ

  Is support for non-english characters common in programming languages? I mean, technically, I would think it is feasable, but I don't have any experience in anything other than english, so I don't know how common it is. I know that there are non-english based programming languages, but can something like C#, C++, C, Java, or Python support non-english classes/methods/variables? Example in go (url, http://play.golang.org/p/wRYCNVdbjC) package main import "fmt" type ?? struct { ?? string } func main() { fmt.Println("Hello, ??") ?? := new(??) ??.?? = "hello world" fmt.Println(??.??) }

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• Does Microsoft really offer "support"?

  - by SpashHit

  One of the arguments against using Open Source is that there is no "support". However, do big vendors (e.g. Microsoft) really offer "support" of any kind? I'm sure there is some sort of 4-figure-per-hour "paid support" option out there, but is that really an "option" for any problem short of one that is going to bankrupt your business? To put it more concretely... I buy a Microsoft product... it has a bug... now what? And how is that better than what I get from Open Source?

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• SQL query. An unusual join. DB implemented in sqlite-3

  - by user02814

  This is essentially a question about constructing an SQL query. The db is implemented with sqlite3. I am a relatively new user of SQL. I have two tables and want to join them in an unusual way. The following is an example to explain the problem. Table 1 (t1): id year name ------------------------- 297 2010 Charles 298 2011 David 300 2010 Peter 301 2011 Richard Table 2 (t2) id year food --------------------------- 296 2009 Bananas 296 2011 Bananas 297 2009 Melon 297 2010 Coffee 297 2012 Cheese 298 2007 Sugar 298 2008 Cereal 298 2012 Chocolate 299 2000 Peas 300 2007 Barley 300 2011 Beans 300 2012 Chickpeas 301 2010 Watermelon I want to join the tables on id and year. The catch is that (1) id must match exactly, but if there is no exact match in Table 2 for the year in Table 1, then I want to choose the year that is the next (lower) available. A selection of the kind that I want to produce would give the following result id year matchyr name food ------------------------------------------------- 297 2010 2010 Charles Coffee 298 2011 2008 David Cereal 300 2010 2007 Peter Barley 301 2011 2010 Richard Watermelon To summarise, id=297 had an exact match for year=2010 given in Table 1, so the corresponding line for id=297, year=2010 is chosen from Table 2. id=298, year=2011 did not have a matching year in Table 2, so the next available year (less than 2011) is chosen. As you can see, I would also like to know what that matched year (whether exactly , or inexactly) actually was. I would very much appreciate (1) an indication (yes/no answer) of whether this is possible to do in SQL alone, or whether I need to look outside SQL, and (2) a solution, if that is not too onerous.

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• Is Silverlight only for eye-candy, or does it have a use in business?

  - by Cyberherbalist

  Granted that Silverlight may make eye-popping websites of great beauty, is there any justification for using it to make practical web applications that have serious business purposes? I'd like to use it (to learn it) for a new assignment I have, which is to build a web-based application that keeps track of the data interfaces used in our organization, but I'm not sure how to justify it, even to myself. Any thoughts on this? If I can't justify it then I will have to build the app using the same old tired straight ASP.NET approach I've used (it seems) a hundred times already.

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• When does the "Do One Thing" paradigm become harmful?

  - by Petr

  For the sake of argument here's a sample function that prints contents of a given file line-by-line. Version 1: void printFile(const string & filePath) { fstream file(filePath, ios::in); string line; while (file.good()) { getline(file, line); cout << line << endl; } } I know it is recommended that functions do one thing at one level of abstraction. To me, though code above does pretty much one thing and is fairly atomic. Some books (such as Robert C. Martin's Clean Code) seem to suggest breaking the above code into separate functions. Version 2: void printLine(const string & line) { cout << line << endl; } void printLines(fstream & file) { string line; while (file.good()) { getline(file, line); printLine(line); } } void printFile(const string & filePath) { fstream file(filePath, ios::in); printLines(file); } I understand what they want to achieve (open file / read lines / print line), but isn't it a bit of overkill? The original version is simple and in some sense already does one thing - prints a file. The second version will lead to a large number of really small functions which may be far less legible than the first version. Wouldn't it be, in this case, better to have the code at one place? At which point does the "Do One Thing" paradigm become harmful?

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• What should I learn that I missed by not going to school?

  - by BinaryMuse

  I'm a software engineer at a local university, and I feel I'm able to competently do my job, but recently I've been interested in "filling in" the gaps in my knowledge. I suspect I would have learned some of this in school; for example, I don't have a lot of knowledge of sorting algorithms (something I feel is pretty common in college). So, what knowledge am I likely missing by not going to college that I could study on my own? Bonus points for listing resources that might put me on the right track! Some background: I've programmed in PHP, Java, and Ruby (more seriously in Java and Ruby than PHP); I have some experience with C/C++, though my workload doesn't really lend itself to those languages; I work mostly (recently) with the web, using frameworks such as CakePHP and Rails. I'm familiar with SQL (though probably not with some of the theory). Note: The university I work for has no technical classes, so taking courses on the university's dime is a great idea but not possible for me. :)

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• In this slow Job Market, I have no choice to take a Job that uses VB.NET and is going to use C#. Advice?

  - by Xaisoft

  I really don't want to do VB.NET, but I need a Job and I need a Job Fast. The two positions I am looking at both have existing apps in VB.NET, but are looking to convert them to C# and do new development in C#, but as well all know, sometimes this doesn't happen for a while and you get stuck with the main language. My background is in C# and after looking at VB.NET, my head is hurting. Any advice as I tackle a Job like this. As I said, I preferably want stick with C#, but today, one may have no choice, so I have to just take what I get. I am looking for advice on this for those who have experienced it, are experiencing it, and those who have not.

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• How to create an auto-grader in and for Python

  - by recluze

  I'm trying to create an auto-grader for one of my beginning programming courses for python. From my online search, I've come to know that it is effectively a unit test framework that tests the student's code rather than production code but I'm not really sure how to structure the flow of the program. Can anyone please provide a strategy for submission of code by students and automating the whole process of marking? For instance, how would the student code be submitted and then stored/structured on disk, how would the grades be stored/reported? I'm only looking for a broad strategy and will try on my own to fill in the blanks. (I asked this on stockoverflow.com initially but it's considered as off-topic and I was suggested to ask here.)

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• Scrum: What if the Product Owner has tasks?

  - by Lauren J

  I have just started working with a team that has picked up some aspects of Scrum (two week timeboxing) but not others (the team does not currently agree to all estimates or to the number of points in a sprint, but I'll change this soon.) The product owner is also a technical resource (scientist) with some development background. Is it appropriate to have the product owner's tasks (which mostly involve research) mixed in with the team's tasks (some of which are research and some development).

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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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• Would adding award points or game features to workplace software be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

  - by Eric P

  So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?

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• Duplication of code (backend and javascript - knockout)

  - by Michal B.

  We have a new developer in our team. He seems a smart guy (he just came in so I cannot really judge). He started with implementing some small enhancements in the project (MVC3 web application using javascript - jquery and knockout). Let's say we have two values: A - quite complex calculation C - constant B = A + C On the screen there is value B and user can change it (normal texbox). When B changes, A changes as well because C is constant. So there is linear dependency between A and B. Now, all the calculations are done in the backend, but we need to recalculate A as user changes B (in js, I would use knockout). I thought about storing old A and B and when B changes by 10 then we know that new A will be old A + 10. He says this is dirty, because it's duplication of code (we make use of the fact that they are dependent and according to him that should be only in one place in our app). I understand it's not ideal, but making AJAX request after every key press seems a bit too much. It's a really small thing and I would not post if we haven't had long discussion about it. How do you deal with such problems? Also I can imagine that using knockout implies lots of calculations on the client side, which very often leads to duplication of the same calculations from the backend. Does anyone have links to some articles/thoughts on this topic?

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