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• Worldwide Web Camps

  Over the next few weeks Microsoft is sponsoring a number of free Web Camp events around the world.  These provide a great way to learn about ASP.NET 4, ASP.NET MVC 2, and Visual Studio 2010. The Web Camps are two day events.  The camps arent conferences where you sit quietly for hours and people talk at you they are intended to be interactive.  The first day is focused on learning through presentations that are heavy on coding demos.  The second day is focused on you building...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• A good software development book

  - by Mahmoud Hossam

  I've searched this website, as well as SO for a question like that, and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a book that is similar to Head First Software Development. I want to know more about the different stages of software development, I know about coding already, but I don't know much about unit testing, version control, integration, design...etc. P.S. it'd be nice if the book wasn't a thousand pages long. Edit: I'm looking for an introductory text, not a book about the latest trends in software development.

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• Interactive Master Detail Report Just A Few Minutes Away!

  - by kanichiro.nishida

  Oracle BI Publisher 11G have not just made Master Detail report development much easier and quicker, but also made it more interactive and fun without any coding or scripting. I’ve just created a short video that shows how to create such Master Detail report within a few minutes, so please take a look if you’re interested in!     With 11G, now you can create such report only with your browser very quickly and your report audience will be not only able to interact with the report but also able to view it in a pixel-perfect way with many different formats such as PDF, Excel, Word, PPT, etc. Happy Master Detail Reports development and design! Please share any feedback you have with Interactive Viewer and Layout Editor with us!

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• What do you do to get your software design robust, flexible and clear?

  - by Oscar

  I am still getting mature as a software engineering/designer/architect, as you may want to call. At this point in time, I am getting small projects, private projects and so on. What I noticed is that even though I think about the SW structure, design some diagrams, have they really clear in my mind when I start coding, at the end, my software is not flexible and clear as I would like to. I would like to ask you what kind of approaches, mechanisms or even tricks do you use, to get your software (and SW design) flexible, robust and clear (easy to understand and use). So.... Any ideas to give to a beginner?

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• Advice on SCRUM for the solitary developer [closed]

  - by ProfK

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

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• Which hosted ecommerce solutions allow customization?

  - by Diego

  Following my previous question, I'm now evaluating the possibility of using a hosted platform for the ecommerce project I have to implement. Before I start "playing" with each one of them, I'd like ask if anybody knows which ones allow a good degree of customization. At the moment I'm looking at BigCommerce, but it seems that customization is limited to templates, while I need additional features which require PHP Coding. Also, I'd need to be able to import additional product data into the system, and I'd need to do this via code; I had a look at some integrations, but they gave me the impression that they all run on the rendered page via JavaScript. For example, if I want to show Facebook Reviews on a product, I'll have to add some JS that will fetch it and show it on the page. This is not optimal, as I must cater for people with JS disabled, therefore I'd need to run my own PHP code. Thanks again for all the opinions.

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• Prologue…

  - by Chris Stewart

  Hi all,                 This is the beginning of my blog. I have been a software developer for going on 11 years using the Microsoft toolset (primarily VB 5, VB 6, VB.net and SQL Server 6, 7, 2000, 2005, 2008). My coding interests are C#, ASP.net, SQL and XNA. Here I will post my musings, things of interest, techie babble and sometimes random gibberish. My hope for this blog is to document my learning experiences with C#, help, encourage and in some way be useful to those who come after me. Thanks for reading!

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• A good software development book [closed]

  - by Mahmoud Hossam

  I've searched this website, as well as SO for a question like that, and I still haven't found what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a book that is similar to Head First Software Development. I want to know more about the different stages of software development, I know about coding already, but I don't know much about unit testing, version control, integration, design...etc. P.S. it'd be nice if the book wasn't a thousand pages long. Edit: I'm looking for an introductory text, not a book about the latest trends in software development.

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• What must be done to allow a development team to minimize difficulties as new team members are added?

  - by Travis

  I work at a small Web Dev firm, and have been handling all the PHP/MySQL/etc. for a while. I'm looking at improving our practices to allow for easier collaboration as we grow. Some things I have in mind are: Implementing a versioning system (source control) Coding standards for the team (unless mandated by a certain framework, etc.) Enforcing a common directory structure for our Desktops (for backup purposes, etc.) Web-based task/project/time/file/password/contact management and collaboration app(we've tried a bunch; I may just create one) What do more experienced developers view as necessary first steps in this area? Do you recommend any books? One thing to consider is that the bulk of our daily tasks involve maintenance and adding minor functionality rather than new projects, and the team size will be between 3 and 5. I just found a related question about teams that will be expanding from a solo developer.

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• Evil DRY

  - by StefanSteinegger

  DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) is a basic software design and coding principle. But there is just no silver bullet. While DRY should increase maintainability by avoiding common design mistakes, it could lead to huge maintenance problems when misunderstood. The root of the problem is most probably that many developers believe that DRY means that any piece of code that is written more then once should be made reusable. But the principle is stated as "Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system." So the important thing here is "knowledge". Nobody ever said "every piece of code". I try to give some examples of misusing the DRY principle. Code Repetitions by Coincidence There is code that is repeated by pure coincidence. It is not the same code because it is based on the same piece of knowledge, it is just the same by coincidence. It's hard to give an example of such a case. Just think about some lines of code the developer thinks "I already wrote something similar". Then he takes the original code, puts it into a public method, even worse into a base class where none had been there before, puts some weird arguments and some if or switch statements into it to support all special cases and calls this "increasing maintainability based on the DRY principle". The resulting "reusable method" is usually something the developer not even can give a meaningful name, because its contents isn't anything specific, it is just a bunch of code. For the same reason, nobody will really understand this piece of code. Typically this method only makes sense to call after some other method had been called. All the symptoms of really bad design is evident. Fact is, writing this kind of "reusable methods" is worse then copy pasting! Believe me. What will happen when you change this weird piece of code? You can't say what'll happen, because you can't understand what the code is actually doing. So better don't touch it anymore. Maintainability just died. Of course this problem is with any badly designed code. But because the developer tried to make this method as reusable as possible, large parts of the system get dependent on it. Completely independent parts get tightly coupled by this common piece of code. Changing on the single common place will have effects anywhere in the system, a typical symptom of too tight coupling. Without trying to dogmatically (and wrongly) apply the DRY principle, you just had a system with a weak design. Now you get a system which just can't be maintained anymore. So what can you do against it? When making code reusable, always identify the generally reusable parts of it. Find the reason why the code is repeated, find the common "piece of knowledge". If you have to search too far, it's probably not really there. Explain it to a colleague, if you can't explain or the explanation is to complicated, it's probably not worth to reuse. If you identify the piece of knowledge, don't forget to carefully find the place where it should be implemented. Reusing code is never worth giving up a clean design. Methods always need to do something specific. If you can't give it a simple and explanatory name, you did probably something weird. If you can't find the common piece of knowledge, try to make the code simpler. For instance, if you have some complicated string or collection operations within this code, write some general-purpose operations into a helper class. If your code gets simple enough, its not so bad if it can't be reused. If you are not able to find anything simple and reasonable, copy paste it. Put a comment into the code to reference the other copies. You may find a solution later. Requirements Repetitions by Coincidence Let's assume that you need to implement complex tax calculations for many countries. It's possible that some countries have very similar tax rules. These rules are still completely independent from each other, since every country can change it of its own. (Assumed that this similarity is actually by coincidence and not by political membership. There might be basic rules applying to all European countries. etc.) Let's assume that there are similarities between an Asian country and an African country. Moving the common part to a central place will cause problems. What happens if one of the countries changes its rules? Or - more likely - what happens if users of one country complain about an error in the calculation? If there is shared code, it is very risky to change it, even for a bugfix. It is hard to find requirements to be repeated by coincidence. Then there is not much you can do against the repetition of the code. What you really should consider is to make coding of the rules as simple as possible. So this independent knowledge "Tax Rules in Timbuktu" or wherever should be as pure as possible, without much overhead and stuff that does not belong to it. So you can write every independent requirement short and clean. DRYing try-catch and using Blocks This is a technical issue. Blocks like try-catch or using (e.g. in C#) are very hard to DRY. Imagine a complex exception handling, including several catch blocks. When the contents of the try block as well as the contents of the individual catch block are trivial, but the whole structure is repeated on many places in the code, there is almost no reasonable way to DRY it. try { // trivial code here using (Thingy thing = new thingy) { //trivial, but always different line of code } } catch(FooException foo) { // trivial foo handling } catch (BarException bar) { // trivial bar handling } catch { // trivial common handling } finally { // trivial finally block } The key here is that every block is trivial, so there is nothing to just move into a separate method. The only part that differs from case to case is the line of code in the body of the using block (or any other block). The situation is especially interesting if the many occurrences of this structure are completely independent: they appear in classes with no common base class, they don't aggregate each other and so on. Let's assume that this is a common pattern in service methods within the whole system. Examples of Evil DRYing in this situation: Put a if or switch statement into the method to choose the line of code to execute. There are several reasons why this is not a good idea: The close coupling of the formerly independent implementation is the strongest. Also the readability of the code and the use of a parameter to control the logic. Put everything into a method which takes a delegate as argument to call. The caller just passes his "specific line of code" to this method. The code will be very unreadable. The same maintainability problems apply as for any "Code Repetition by Coincidence" situations. Enforce a base class to all the classes where this pattern appears and use the template method pattern. It's the same readability and maintainability problem as above, but additionally complex and tightly coupled because of the base class. I would call this "Inheritance by Coincidence" which will not lead to great software design. What can you do against it: Ideally, the individual line of code is a call to a class or interface, which could be made individual by inheritance. If this would be the case, it wouldn't be a problem at all. I assume that it is no such a trivial case. Consider to refactor the error concept to make error handling easier. The last but not worst option is to keep the replications. Some pattern of code must be maintained in consistency, there is nothing we can do against it. And no reason to make it unreadable. Conclusion The DRY-principle is an important and basic principle every software developer should master. The key is to identify the "pieces of knowledge". There is code which can't be reused easily because of technical reasons. This requires quite a bit flexibility and creativity to make code simple and maintainable. It's not the problem of the principle, it is the problem of blindly applying a principle without understanding the problem it should solve. The result is mostly much worse then ignoring the principle.

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• Do you develop with security in mind?

  - by MattyD

  I was listening to a podcast on Security Now and they mentioned about how a lot of the of the security problems found in Flash were because when flash was first developed it wasdn't built with security in mind because it didn't need to thus flash has major security flaws in its design etc. I know best practices state that you should build secure first etc. Some people or companies don't always follow 'best practice'... My question is do you develop to be secure or do you build with all the desired functionality etc then alter the code to be secure (Whatever the project maybe) (I realise that this question could be a possible duplicate of Do you actively think about security when coding? but it is different in the fact of actually process of building the software/application and design of said software/application)

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• Coders For Charities

  Last weekend I had the opportunity to give back to the community doing what I love. As geeks we dont usually have this opportunity. The event is called Coders 4 Charities (C4C) and its a grueling weekend of coding for nearly 30 hours over the weekend. When you finish you get to present to the charity and all of the other groups what you have completed. From the site: Coders For Charities is a 3-day charity event that pairs charities and local software developers. Charities often do not have...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Is there a need for a Facebook specific page title?

  - by nute

  I see that Facebook's Open Graph asks you to have a meta property "og:title". Why don't they just use the HTML title tag? In my PHP code I started going through all page types and coding the og:title property. Then I realized, why don't I just set the og:title to the HTML page title? It would probably save me a lot of work... Am I missing something? In which cases would we want the og:title to be different?

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• Programming Test

  - by Travis Webb

  We are looking to hire some more Java developers onto our team, and plan to test their coding abilities with a test. We currently use a web-based Java test that automatically compiles and runs the code, but it is very flaky and we're having problems with our candidates losing their work on this site. Not only is this frustrating for everyone, it makes us look like we don't know what we're doing. Is there a popular testing suite out there? What do you use? I'm not interested in dogmatic arguments on whether or not I should be testing my candidates in this way, I'm looking for a tool that will help me do it.

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• 7 reasons you had to be at JavaOne Latin America 2012

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Yesterday was 12/12/12, and everybody went crazy on Twitter with cool memes like this one. And maybe you are now wondering why I mentioned 7 (seven) on the blog title. Because I want to play numbers? Yes! Today is 7 days after JavaOne Latin America 2012 is over (... and I had to figure out an excuse for taking so long to blog about it...). So unless you were at JavaOne Latin America this year, here are 7 things you missed: OTN Lounge mini-theatreThere was a mini-theatre holding several lightning talks. We had people from SouJava JUG, GoJava JUG, Globalcode, and several other Java gurus and companies running demos, talks, and even more. For example, @drspockbr talked about the ScrumToys project, that demonstrates the power of JSF. Hands On Lab for JAX-RS and WebSocketsOne of the cool things to do during JavaOne is to come to these Hands On labs and really do something using new technologies with the help of experts. This one in particular, was covered by me, Arun Gupta, and Reza Rahman. The HOL had more people than laptops (and we had 48 laptops!) interested on understanding and learning about the new stuff that is coming within Java EE 7. Things like JAX-RS, Server-sent Events and WebSockets. Hey, if you want to try this HOL by yourself, it is available on Github, so go for it! If you have questions, just let me know! Java Community KeynoteThis keynote presented a lot of cool things like startups using Java in their projects, the Duke Awards, SouJava winning the JCP Outstanding Award, the Java Band, and even more! It was really a space where the Java community could present what they are doing and what they want to do. There's a lot of interest on the Adopt-a-JSR program and the Adopt-OpenJDK. There's also an Adopt-a-JavaEE-JSR program! Take a look if you want to participate and Make the Future Java. Java EE (JMS, JAX-RS) sessions from Reza Rahman, the HeavyMetal guyReza is a well know professional and Java EE enthusiast from the communitty who just joined Oracle this year. His sessions were very well attended, perhaps because of a high interest on the new things coming to Java EE 7 like JMS 2.0 and JAX-RS 2.0. If you want to look at what he did at this JavaOne edition, read his blog post. By the way, if you like Java and heavymetal, you should follow him on Twitter as well! :-) Java EE (WebSockets, HTML5) sessions from Arun Gupta, the GlassFish guyIf you don't know Arun Gupta, no worries. You will have time to know about him while you read his Java EE 6 Pocket Guide. Arun has been evangelizing Java EE for a long time, and is now spreading his word about the new upcoming version Java EE 7. He gave one talk about HTML5 Productivity on the Java EE 7 platform, and another one on building web apps with WebSockets. Pretty neat! Arun blogged about JavaOne Latin America as well. Read it here. Java Embedded and JavaFXIf there are two things that are really trending in the Java World right now besides Java EE 7, certainly they are JavaFX and Java Embedded. There were 14 talks covering Java Embedded, from Java Cards to Raspberry.pi, from Java ME to Java on your TV with Ginga-J. The Internet of Things is becoming true, and Java is the only platform today that can connect it all in an standardized and concise way. JavaFX gained a lot of attention too. There were 8 sessions covering what the platform has to offer in terms of Rich User Experience. The JavaFX Scene Builder is an awesome tool to start playing designing an UI, and coding for JavaFX is like coding Swing with 8 hands, one holding your coffee cup. You can achieve a lot, with your two hands (unless, you really have 8 hands, then you can achieve 4 times more :-). If you want to read more about JavaFX, go to Stephen Chin's blog post. GlassFish and Friends Party, 1st edition at JavaOne Lating AmericaThis is probably the thing that I'm most proud. We brought to Brasil the tradition of holding a happy hour for all GlassFish, Java EE friends. This party started almost 7 years ago in San Francisco, and it was about time to bring it to Brazil! The party happened on Tuesday night, right after JavaOne General Keynote, at the Tribeca Pub. We had about 80 attendees and met a lot of Java EE developers there! People from JUGs, Oracle, Locaweb and Red Hat showed up too, including some execs from Oracle that didn't resist and could not miss a party like this one.Lots of caipirinhas, beer and food to everyone, some cool music... even The Fish walking around the party with Juggy!You can see more photos from the party on an album I shared with the recently created GlassFish Brasil community on Google+ here (but you may be more interested in joining the GlassFish english community). There's also more pictures that Arun took and shared on this link. So now you may want to consider coming to Brazil next year! Java EE 7 is on its way, and Brazil is happily and patiently waiting for it, with a lot of enthusiasm. By the way, GlassFish and Java EE 6 just celebrated a Happy Birthday!

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• BASH Scripting: Check If running with sudo/superuser, if not, dont run, return error

  - by EvilPhoenix

  This is something I've been curious about. I make a lot of small bash scripts (.sh files) to do tasks that I routinely do. Some of those tasks require everything to be ran as superuser. I've been curious: Is it possible to, within the BASH script prior to everything being run, check if the script is being run as superuser, and if not, print a message saying You must be superuser to use this script, then subsequently terminate the script itself. The other side of that is I'd like to have the script run when the user is superuser, and not generate the error. Any ideas on coding (if statements, etc.) on how to execute the aforementioned?

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• Test Driven Development with vxml

  - by Malcolm Anderson

  It's been 3 years since I did any coding and am starting back up with Java using netBeans and glassfish.  Right off the bat I noticed two things about Java's ease of use.  The java ide (netBeans) has finally caught up with visual studio, and jUnit, has finally caught up with nUnit.  netBeans intellisense exists and I don't have to subclass everything in jUnit.    Now on to the point of this very short post ( request)   I'm trying to figure out how to do test driven development with vxml and have not found anythnig yet.  I've done my google search, but unfortunately, TDD in IVR land has something to do with helping the hearing impared. I've found a vxml simulator or two, but none of their marketing is getting my hopes up.    My request - if you have done any agile engineering work with vxml, contact me, I need to pick your brain and bring some ideas back to my team.   Thanks in advance.

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• SQL SERVER – Download FREE PDFs from SQLAuthority.com

  - by Pinal Dave

  Throughout the last seven years, we have created many PDF downloads from SQLAuthority.com and many are very much appreciated by users. I just wanted to list all the downloads which we have created so far in a single place, hence here is the blog post which contains all the PDF downloads which we have created so far. SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Download Beginning Big Data with NuoDB SQL Server Management Studio Keyboard Shorts Download SQL Server 2008 Certification Path Complete Download SQL Server Cheat Sheet Download SQL Server Database Coding Standards and Guidelines Complete List Download SQL Server Indexing Checklist Let me know which one of the PDF you like the most and if you expect us to create any more PDF articles. Leave a comment. Additionally, we have created various script bank for all the script which has been used on SQLAuthority.com so far. You can get access to the scripts by clicking on following link. SQLAuthority.com Scripts Download Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Design patterns frequently seen in embedded systems programming

  - by softwarelover

  I don't have any question related to coding. My concerns are about embedded systems programming independent of any particular programming language. Because I am new in the realm of embedded programming, I would quite appreciate responses from those who consider themselves experienced embedded systems programmers. I basically have 2 questions. Of the design patterns listed below are there any seen frequently in embedded systems programming? Abstraction-Occurrence pattern General Hierarchy pattern Player-Role pattern Singleton pattern Observer pattern Delegation pattern Adapter pattern Facade pattern Immutable pattern Read-Only Interface pattern Proxy pattern As an experienced embedded developer, what design patterns have you, as an individual, come across? There is no need to describe the details. Only the pattern names would suffice. Please share your own experience. I believe the answers to the above questions would work as a good starting point for any novice programmers in the embedded world.

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• Pair programming business logic with a non-IT person

  - by user1598390

  Have you have any experience in which a non-IT person works with a programmer during the coding process? It's like pair programming, but one person is a non-IT person that knows a lot about the business, maybe a process engineer with math background who knows how things are calculated and can understand non-idiomatic, procedural code. I've found that some procedural, domain-specific languages like PL/SQL are quite understandable by non-IT engineers. These person end up being co-authors of the code and guarantee the correctness of formulas, factors etc. I've found this kind of pair programming quite productive, this kind of engineer user feel they are also "owners" and "authors" of the code and help minimize misunderstanding in the communication process. They even help design the test cases. Is this practice common ? Does it have a name ? Have you had similar experiences ?

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• JFXtras Project: More cool features for your JavaFX app

  - by terrencebarr

  JFXtras in an open source project that provides a bunch of interesting components and pieces to make your JavaFX application even more productive, engaging, and, yes, sexy. And saves you coding time along the way. Check out the new JFXtras Ensemble demo, which showcases in one fell swoop all the features and bits you can take advantage of. Also, bookmark Jim Weaver’s excellent blog to keep up with all things JavaFX and rich client. Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: JavaFX, JFXtras, Open Source

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• Modified Strategy Design Pattern

  - by Samuel Walker

  I've started looking into Design Patterns recently, and one thing I'm coding would suit the Strategy pattern perfectly, except for one small difference. Essentially, some (but not all) of my algorithms, need an extra parameter or two passed to them. So I'll either need to pass them an extra parameter when I invoke their calculate method or store them as variables inside the ConcreteAlgorithm class, and be able to update them before I call the algorithm. Is there a design pattern for this need / How could I implement this while sticking to the Strategy Pattern? I've considered passing the client object to all the algorithms, and storing the variables in there, then using that only when the particular algorithm needs it. However, I think this is both unwieldy, and defeats the point of the strategy pattern. Just to be clear I'm implementing in Java, and so don't have the luxury of optional parameters (which would solve this nicely).

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• How to interview my future team leader?

  - by Stormenet

  Our current team leader is quitting his job (starting his own company) and thus we are searching for a new team leader. It's a small team of 4 people (Team leader included). Since it's a small team we expect the team leader not to only manage us but also do some coding. Because of this I convinced the R&D manager to let me have a say in this so that I can evaluate his technical skills and managing skills. I have little experience interviewing people let alone my future Team leader. What I search in a team leader is someone who isn't running a dictatorship but someone that when there are issues there is a discussion about it and we take everyone on the same line. What are the things I should not forget to ask and what are the skills I should find in that person?

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• Can a loosely typed language be considered true object oriented?

  - by user61852

  Can a loosely typed programming language like PHP be really considered object oriented? I mean, the methods don't have returning types and method parameters has no declared type either. Doesn't class design require methods to have a return type? Don't methods signatures have specifically-typed parameters? How can OOP techniques help you code in PHP if you always have to check the types of parameters received because the language doesn't enforce types? Please, if I'm wrong, explain it to me. When you design things using UML, then code classes in PHP with no return-typed methods and no-type parameters... Is the code really compliant with the UML design? You spend time designing the architecture of your software, then the compiler doesn't force the programmer to follow your design while coding, letting he/she assign any object variable to any other variable with no "type-mismatch" warning.

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• Becoming A Great Developer

  - by Lee Brandt

  Image via Wikipedia I’ve been doing the whole programming thing for awhile and reading and watching some of the best in the business. I have come to notice that the really great developers do a few things that (I think) makes them great. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am one of these few. I still struggle with doing some of the things that makes one great at development. Coincidently, many of these things also make you a better person period. Believe That Guidance Is Better Than Answers This is one I have no problem with. I prefer guidance any time I am learning from another developer. Answers may get you going, but guidance will leave you stranded. At some point, you will come across a problem that can only be solved by thinking for yourself and this is where that guidance will really come in handy. You can use that guidance and extrapolate whatever technology to salve that problem (if it’s the right tool for solving that problem). The problem is, lots of developers simply want someone to tell them, “Do this, then this, then set that, and write this.” Favor thinking and learn the guidance of doing X and don’t ask someone to show you how to do X, if that makes sense. Read, Read and Read If you don’t like reading, you’re probably NOT going to make it into the Great Developer group. Great developers read books, they read magazines and they read code. Open source playgrounds like SourceForge, CodePlex and GitHub, have made it extremely easy to download code from developers you admire and see how they do stuff. Chances are, if you read their blog too, they’ll even explain WHY they did what they did (see “Guidance” above). MSDN and Code Magazine have not only code samples, but explanations of how to use certain technologies and sometimes even when NOT to use that same technology. Books are also out on just about every topic. I still favor the less technology centric books. For instance, I generally don’t buy books like, “Getting Started with Jiminy Jappets”. I look for titles like, “How To Write More Effective Code” (again, see guidance). The Addison-Wesley Signature Series is a great example of these types of books. They teach technology-agnostic concepts. Head First Design Patterns is another great guidance book. It teaches the "Gang Of Four" Design Patterns in a very easy-to-understand, picture-heavy way (I LIKE pictures). Hang Your Balls Out There Even though the advice came from a 3rd-shift Kinko’s attendant, doesn’t mean it’s not sound advice. Write some code and put it out for others to read, criticize and castigate you for. Understand that there are some real jerks out there who are absolute geniuses. Don’t be afraid to get some great advice wrapped in some really nasty language. Try to take what’s good about it and leave what’s not. I have a tough time with this myself. I don’t really have any code out there that is available for review (other than my demo code). It takes some guts to do, but in the end, there is no substitute for getting a community of developers to critique your code and give you ways to improve. Get Involved Speaking of community, the local and online user groups and discussion forums are a great place to hear about technologies and techniques you might never come across otherwise. Mostly because you might not know to look. But, once you sit down with a bunch of other developers and start discussing what you’re interested in, you may open up a whole new perspective on it. Don’t just go to the UG meetings and watch the presentations either, get out there and talk, socialize. I realize geeks weren’t meant to necessarily be social creatures, but if you’re amongst other geeks, it’s much easier. I’ve learned more in the last 3-4 years that I have been involved in the community that I did in my previous 8 years of coding without it. Socializing works, even if socialism doesn’t. Continuous Improvement Lean proponents might call this “Kaizen”, but I call it progress. We all know, especially in the technology realm, if you’re not moving ahead, you’re falling behind. It may seem like drinking from a fire hose, but step back and pick out the technologies that speak to you. The ones that may you’re little heart go pitter-patter. Concentrate on those. If you’re still overloaded, pick the best of the best. Just know that if you’re not looking at the code you wrote last week or at least last year with some embarrassment, you’re probably stagnating. That’s about all I can say about that, cause I am all out of clichés to throw at it. :0) Write Code Great painters paint, great writers write, and great developers write code. The most sure-fire way to improve your coding ability is to continue writing code. Don’t just write code that your work throws on you, pick that technology you love or are curious to know more about and walk through some blog demo examples. Take the language you use everyday and try to get it to do something crazy. Who knows, you might create the next Google search algorithm! All in all, being a great developer is about finding yourself in all this code. If it is just a job to you, you will probably never be one of the “Great Developers”, but you’re probably okay with that. If, on the other hand, you do aspire to greatness, get out there and GET it. No one’s going hand it to you.

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