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• Stuck due to "knowing too much"

  - by Ran Biron

  Note more discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4037794 Welcome Hacker News Visitors! While HN is a fine forum for discussion and debate, Programmers - Stack Exchange is not. From the FAQ: If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ____”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ____ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.) Currently, this question is viewed by the membership of Programmers.SE as more likely to provoke unproductive discussion than constructive answers; while debates on its form and future are conducted, it will be locked to prevent arguments and vandalism. -- Shog9 I have a relatively simple development task, but every time I try to attack it, I end up spiraling in deep thoughts - how could it extending the future, what are the 2nd generation clients going to need, how does it affect "non functional" aspects (e.g. Performance, authorization...), how would it best be architectured to allow change... I remember myself a while ago, younger and, perhaps, more eager. The "me" I was then wouldn't have given a thought about all that - he would've gone ahead and wrote something, then rewrote it, then rewrote it again (and again...). The "me" today is more hesitant, more careful. I find it much easier today to sit and plan and instruct other people on how to do things than to actually go ahead and do them myself - not because I don't like to code - the opposite, I love to! - but because every time I sit at the keyboard, I end up in that same annoying place. Is this wrong? Is this a natural evolution, or did I drive myself into a rut? Fair disclosure - in the past I was a developer, today my job title is a "system architect". Good luck figuring what it means - but that's the title. Wow. I honestly didn't expect this question to generate that many responses. I'll try to sum it up. Reasons: Analysis paralysis / Over engineering / gold plating / (any other "too much thinking up-front can hurt you"). Too much experience for the given task. Not focusing on what's important. Not enough experience (and realizing that). Solutions (not matched to reasons): Testing first. Start coding (+ for fun) One to throw away (+ one API to throw away). Set time constraints. Strip away the fluff, stay with the stuff. Make flexible code (kinda opposite to "one to throw away", no?). Thanks to everyone - I think the major benefit here was to realize that I'm not alone in this experience. I have, actually, already started coding and some of the too-big things have fallen off, naturally. Since this question is closed, I'll accept the answer with most votes as of today. When/if it changes - I'll try to follow.

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• Using Live Data in Database Development Work

  - by Phil Factor

  Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk Newsletter... in which Phil Factor reacts with some exasperation when coming across a report that a majority of companies were still using financial and personal data for both developing and testing database applications. If you routinely test your development work using real production data that contains personal or financial information, you are probably being irresponsible, and at worst, risking a heavy financial penalty for your company. Surprisingly, over 80% of financial companies still do this. Plenty of data breaches and fraud have happened from the use of real data for testing, and a data breach is a nightmare for any organisation that suffers one. The cost of each data breach averages out at around $7.2 million in the US in notification, escalation, credit monitoring, fines, litigation, legal costs, and lost business due to customer churn, £1.9 million in the UK. 70% of data breaches are done from within the organisation. Real data can be exploited in a number of ways for malicious or criminal purposes. It isn't just the obvious use of items such as name and address, date of birth, social security number, and credit card and bank account numbers: Data can be exploited in many subtle ways, so there are excellent reasons to ensure that a high priority is given to the detection and prevention of any data breaches. You'll never successfully guess all the ways that real data can be exploited maliciously, or the ease with which it can be accessed. It would be silly to argue that developers never need access to a copy of the database containing live data. Developers sometimes need to track a bug that can only be replicated on the data from the live database. However, it has to be done in a very restrictive harness. The law makes no distinction between development and production databases when a data breach occurs, so the data has to be held with all appropriate security measures in place. In Europe, the use of personal data for testing requires the explicit consent of the people whose data is being held. There are federal standards such as GLBA, PCI DSS and HIPAA, and most US States have privacy legislation. The task of ensuring compliance and tight security in such circumstances is an expensive and time-consuming overhead. The developer is likely to suffer investigation if a data breach occurs, even if the company manages to stay in business. Ironically, the use of copies of live data isn't usually the most effective way to develop or test your data. Data is usually time-specific and isn't usually current by the time it is used for testing, Existing data doesn't help much for new functionality, and every time the data is refreshed from production, any test data is likely to be overwritten. Also, it is not always going to test all the 'edge' conditions that are likely to flush out bugs. You still have the task of simulating the dynamics of actual usage of the database, and here you have no alternative to creating 'spoofed' data. Because of the complexities of relational data, It used to be that there was no realistic alternative to developing and testing with live data. However, this is no longer the case. Real data can be obfuscated, or it can be created entirely from scratch. The latter process used to be impractical, now that there are plenty of third-party tools to choose from. The process of obfuscation isn't risk free. The process must access the live data, and the success of the obfuscation process has to be carefully monitored. Database data security isn't an exciting topic to you or I, but to a hacker it can be an all-consuming obsession, especially if there is financial or political gain involved. This is not the sort of adversary one would wish for and it is far better to accept, and work with, security restrictions that exist for using live data in database development work, especially when the tools exist to create large realistic database test data that can be better for several aspects of testing.

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• Oracle OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  For almost 30 years, Oracle OpenWorld has been the world's premier learning event for Oracle customers, developers, and partners. With more than 2,000 sessions providing best practices; demos; tips and tricks; and product insight from Oracle, customers, partners, and industry experts, Oracle OpenWorld provides more educational and networking opportunities than any other event in the world. 2011 Facts Attendees from 117 Countries Used Filtered Tap Water to Eliminate 22 Tons of Plastic Bottles Diverted Enough Trash to Fill 37 Dump Trucks 45,000+ Total Registered Attendees Oracle OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better What's New? What's Different?  This year Oracle OpenWorld will include the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle), the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld, JavaOne, MySQL Connect, and the expanded Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld. More than 50,000 customers and partners will attend OpenWorld to see Oracle's newest hardware and software products at work, and learn more about our server and storage, database, middleware, industry, and applications solutions.  New This Year: The Executive Edge @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 1 - 2) New at Oracle OpenWorld this year, the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle) will bring together customer, partner and Oracle executives for two days of keynote presentations, summits targeted to customer industries and organizational roles, roundtable discussions, and great new networking opportunities. The Customer Experience Revolution Is Here!Customer Experience Summit @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 3 - 5) This dynamic new program offers more than 60 keynotes, roundtables and networking sessions exploring trends, innovations and best practices to help companies succeed with a customer experience-driven business strategy.  All Things Java -- JavaOne (Sep 30 - Oct 4) JavaOne is the world's most important event for the Java developer community. Technical sessions cover topics that span the breadth of the Java universe, with keynotes from the foremost Java visionaries and expert-led hands-on learning opportunities.  Are you innovating with Oracle Fusion Middleware?  If you are, then you need to know that the Call for Nominations for the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards is open now through July 17, 2012. Jointly sponsored by Oracle, AUSOUG, IOUG, OAUG, ODTUG, QUEST, and UKOUG, the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards honor organizations creatively using Oracle Fusion Middleware to deliver unique value to their enterprise.  Winning customers and partners will be hosted at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, where they can connect with Oracle executives, network with peers, and be featured in an upcoming edition of Oracle Magazine. Be sure to submit your WebCenter use case today! Oracle Music Festival his year, the first-ever Oracle Music Festival will debut, running from September 30 to October 4. In the tradition of great live music events like Coachella and SXSW, the streets of San Francisco—from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. for five nights-into-days—will vibrate with the music of some of today’s hottest name acts, emerging and local bands, and scratching DJs. Outdoor venues and clubs near Moscone Center and the Zone (including 111 Minna, DNA, Mezzanine, Roe, Ruby Skye, Slim’s, the Taylor Street Café, Temple, Union Square, and Yerba Buena Gardens) will showcase acts that range from reggae to rock, punk to ska, R&B to country, indie to honky-tonk. After a full day of sessions and networking, you'll be primed for some late-night relaxation and rocking out at one or more of these sets.  Please note that with awesome acts, thousands of music devotees, and a limited number of venues each night, access to Festival events is on a first-come, first-served basis. Join us at the Oracle Music Festival--it's going to be epic! Save $500 on Registration with Early Bird Pricing Early Bird pricing ends July 13! Save up to $500 on registration fees by registering by Friday. Will you be attending Oracle OpenWorld 2012? We hope to see you there! Be sure to follow @oraclewebcenter on Twitter for more information and use hashtags #webcenter and #oow!

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• Normalisation and 'Anima notitia copia' (Soul of the Database)

  - by Phil Factor

  (A Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk) The other day, I was staring  at the sys.syslanguages  table in SQL Server with slightly-raised eyebrows . I’d just been reading Chris Date’s  interesting book ‘SQL and Relational Theory’. He’d made the point that you’re not necessarily doing relational database operations by using a SQL Database product.  The same general point was recently made by Dino Esposito about ASP.NET MVC.  The use of ASP.NET MVC doesn’t guarantee you a good application design: It merely makes it possible to test it. The way I’d describe the sentiment in both cases is ‘you can hit someone over the head with a frying-pan but you can’t call it cooking’. SQL enables you to create relational databases. However,  even if it smells bad, it is no crime to do hideously un-relational things with a SQL Database just so long as it’s necessary and you can tell the difference; not only that but also only if you’re aware of the risks and implications. Naturally, I’ve never knowingly created a database that Codd would have frowned at, but around the edges are interfaces and data feeds I’ve written  that have caused hissy fits amongst the Normalisation fundamentalists. Part of the problem for those who agonise about such things  is the misinterpretation of Atomicity.  An atomic value is one for which, in the strange virtual universe you are creating in your database, you don’t have any interest in any of its component parts.  If you aren’t interested in the electrons, neutrinos,  muons,  or  taus, then  an atom is ..er.. atomic. In the same way, if you are passed a JSON string or XML, and required to store it in a database, then all you need to do is to ask yourself, in your role as Anima notitia copia (Soul of the database) ‘have I any interest in the contents of this item of information?’.  If the answer is ‘No!’, or ‘nequequam! Then it is an atomic value, however complex it may be.  After all, you would never have the urge to store the pixels of images individually, under the misguided idea that these are the atomic values would you?  I would, of course,  ask the ‘Anima notitia copia’ rather than the application developers, since there may be more than one application, and the applications developers may be designing the application in the absence of full domain knowledge, (‘or by the seat of the pants’ as the technical term used to be). If, on the other hand, the answer is ‘sure, and we want to index the XML column’, then we may be in for some heavy XML-shredding sessions to get to store the ‘atomic’ values and ensure future harmony as the application develops. I went back to looking at the sys.syslanguages table. It has a months column with the months in a delimited list January,February,March,April,May,June,July,August,September,October,November,December This is an ordered list. Wicked? I seem to remember that this value, like shortmonths and days, is treated as a ‘thing’. It is merely passed off to an external  C++ routine in order to format a date in a particular language, and never accessed directly within the database. As far as the database is concerned, it is an atomic value.  There is more to normalisation than meets the eye.

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: Fishbowl Solutions

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Today, I give you the final entry in the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge, held last week during OpenWorld. This one comes from Friend of the ‘Lab and Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowle20) hacker, John Sim (@jrsim_uix), whom you might remember from his XBox Kinect demo at COLLABORATE 12 (presentation slides and abstract) hacks and other exploits with WebCenter. We put this challenge together specifically for developers like John, who like to experiment with new tools and push the envelope of what’s possible and build cool things, and as you can see from his entry John did just that, mashing together Google Maps and Oracle Social Network into a mobile app built with PhoneGap that uses the device’s camera and GPS to keep teams on the move in touch. He calls it a Mobile GeoTagging Solution, but I think Avengers Assemble! would have equally descriptive, given that was obviously his inspiration. Here’s his description of the mobile app: My proposed solution was to design and simplify GeoLocation mapping, and automate updates for users and teams on the move; who don’t have access to a laptop or want to take their ipads out – but allow them to make quick updates to OSN and upload photos taken from their mobile device – there and then. As part of this; the plan was to include a rules engine that could be configured by the user to allow the device to automatically update and post messages when they arrived at a set location(s). Inspiration for this came from on{x} – automate your life. Unfortunately, John didn’t make it to the conference to show off his hard work in person, but luckily, he had a colleague from Fishbowl and a video to showcase his work.    Here are some shots of John’s mobile app for your viewing pleasure: John’s thinking is sound. Geolocation is usually relegated to consumer use cases, thanks to services like foursquare, but distributed teams working on projects out in the world definitely need a way to stay in contact. Consider a construction job. Different contractors all converge on a single location, and time is money. Rather than calling or texting each other and risking a distracted driving accident, an app like John’s allows everyone on the job to see exactly where the other contractors are. Using his GPS rules, they could easily be notified about how close each is to the site, definitely useful when you have a flooring contractor sitting idle, waiting for an electrician to finish the wiring. The best part is that the project manager or general contractor could stay updated on all the action (or inaction) using Oracle Social Network, either sitting at a desk using the browser app or desktop client or on the go, using one of the native mobile apps built for Oracle Social Network. I can see this being used by insurance adjusters too, and really any team that, erm, assembles at a given spot. Of course, it’s also useful for meeting at the pub after the day’s work is done. Beyond people, this solution could also be implemented for physical objects that are in route to a destination. Say you’re a customer waiting on rail shipment or a package delivery. You could track your valuable’s whereabouts easily as they report their progress via checkins. If they deviated from the GPS rules, you’d be notified. You might even be able to get a picture into Oracle Social Network with some light hacking. Thanks to John and his colleagues at Fishbowl for participating in our challenge. We hope everyone had a good experience. Make sure to check out John’s blog post on his work and the experience using Oracle Social Network. Although this is the final, official entry we had, tomorrow, I’ll show you the work of someone who finished code, but wasn’t able to make the judging event. Stay tuned.

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• First Impressions of a MacBook (from a PC guy)

  - by dgreen

  Disclaimer: I've been a PC guy my entire working career. I'd probably characterize myself as a power user. Never afraid to bust out the console line. But working with a Mac is totally foreign to me. So for those Mac guys who are curious, this is how your world appears from the outside to a computer literate person :)My Macbook Air has arrived! And it's a thing of beauty:First, the specs: 13" MacBook Air, 2.0GHz Core i7 processor. Upgraded to 8GB of RAM for an additional $100, SSD flash storage  = 256GB. The plan is ultimately to use this baby for some iOS development but also some decent lifting in Windows with Visual Studio. Done a lot of reading  and between VMWare Fusion, Parallels and Bootcamp...I'm going to go with VMWare Fusion for $49.99And now my impressions (please re-read disclaimer before proceeding!):I open the box and am trying to understand exactly how the magsafe connector works (and how to disconnect it).  Why does it have two socket outlet plugs? Who knows.  I feel like Hansel in Zoolander. The files are "in" the computer.Stuck in my external hard drive (usb). So how do I get to the files? To the Googles!Argh...it can't read my external NTFS drive. Fat32 can't support field over 4GB…problematic since some of my existing VMWare image files are much larger than 4GB. Didn't see this coming.Three year old loves iPhoto. Super easy to use. Don't even know what I'm doing but I've already (accidentally) discovered the image filtering options. Fun stuff.First thing I downloaded ever => Chrome. I need something to ground me, something familiar. My token, if you will (sorry, gratuitous Inception joke).Ok, I get it… Finder == windows explorer. But where is my hierarchical structure? I miss the tree :(On that note, yeah…how do I see what "path" my files reside in? I'm afraid to know the answer. You know what scares more though…this notion of a smart folder. Feel like the godfather - just get the job done, I don't care how you handle it, I don't want to know...just get it done. What the hell is AirDrop?Mail…just worked. Still in shock that they have a free client for yahoo mail (please no yahoo jokes).mail -> deleting a message takes 5 seconds. Have they heard of async?"Command" key instead of "Control" ok, then what the $%&^! is the control key for then"aliases" == shortcuts I thinkI don't see the file system. And I'm scared. All these things I'm downloading…these .dmg files (bad name) where are they going? Can't seem to delete when they're doneUgh...realized need to buy a mini-to-vga adaptor if I want to use my external monitor ($13 on ebay, $39 in apple store).Windows docking is trickiest for me…this notion of detached windows with a menu bar at the top. I don't like this paradigm, it's confusing. But maybe because I've been using Windows for too long.Evernote, Dropbox desktop clients seem almost identical…few quirks here and there I need to get used to.iTunes is still a bit gross. In a weird way it's actually worse on a Mac if thats possible. This is not the MacBook's fault…this is a software design issue. Overall: UI will take some getting used to. Can't decide if this represents the future and I'm stuck in the past…or this is the past and I've been spoiled by the future (which would be Windows…don't be hating I happen to be very productive in Win7)  So there you go - my 90 minute first impression of the MacBook universe.

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• Cloud Backup: Getting the Users' Backs Up

  - by Tony Davis

  On Wednesday last week, Microsoft announced that as of July 1, all data transfers into its Microsoft Azure cloud will be free (though you have to pay for transferring data out). On Thursday last week, SQL Azure in Western Europe went down. It was a relatively short outage, but since SQL Azure currently provides no easy way to take a standard backup of a database and store it locally, many people had no recourse but to wait patiently for their cloud-based app to resume. It seems that Microsoft are very keen encourage developers to move their data onto their cloud, but are developers ready to do it, given that such basic backup capabilities are lacking? Recently on Simple-Talk, Mike Mooney described a perfect use case for the Microsoft Cloud. They had a simple web-based application with a SQL Server backend; they could move the application to Windows Azure, and the data into SQL Azure and in the process free themselves from much of the hassle surrounding management and scaling of the hardware, network and so on. It was a great fit and yet it nearly didn't happen; lack of support for the BACKUP command almost proved a show-stopper. Of course, backups of Azure databases are always and have always been taken automatically, for disaster recovery purposes, but these are strictly on-cloud copies and as of now it is not possible to use them to them to restore a database to a particular point in time. It seems that none of those clever Microsoft people managed to predict the need to perform basic backups of Azure databases so that copies could be stored locally, outside the Azure universe. At the very least, as Mike points out, performing a local backup before a new deployment is more or less mandatory. Microsoft did at least note the sound of gnashing teeth and, as a stop-gap measure, offered SQL Azure Database Copy which basically allows you to create an online clone of your database, but this doesn't allow for storing local archives of the data. To that end MS has provided SQL Azure Import/Export, to package up and export a database and its data, using BACPACs. These BACPACs do not guarantee transactional consistency; for example, if a child table is modified after the parent is copied, then the copied database will be in inconsistent state (meaning, to add to the fun, BACPACs need to be created from a database copy). In any event, widespread problems with BACPAC's evil cousin, the DACPAC have been well-documented, and it seems likely that many will also give BACPAC the bum's rush. Finally, in a TechEd 2011 presentation tagged "SQL Azure Advanced Administration", it was announced that "backup and restore" were coming in the next SQL Azure CTP. And yet this still doesn't mean that we'll get simple backups as DBAs know and love them. What it does mean, at least, is the ability to restore any given database to a point in time within a 2-week window. For the time being, if you want a local copy of your data and don't want to brave the BACPAC, one is left with SSIS or BCP, creative use of schema and data comparison tools, or use of SQL Azure Backup (currently in beta) in order to perform this simple but vital task. Cheers, Tony.

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• Clever memory usage through the years

  - by Ben Emmett

  A friend and I were recently talking about the really clever tricks people have used to get the most out of memory. I thought I’d share my favorites, and would love to hear yours too! Interleaving on drum memory Back in the ye olde days before I’d been born (we’re talking the 50s / 60s here), working memory commonly took the form of rotating magnetic drums. These would spin at a constant speed, and a fixed head would read from memory when the correct part of the drum passed it by, a bit like a primitive platter disk. Because each revolution took a few milliseconds, programmers took to manually arranging information non-sequentially on the drum, timing when an instruction or memory address would need to be accessed, then spacing information accordingly around the edge of the drum, thus reducing the access delay. Similar techniques were still used on hard disks and floppy disks into the 90s, but have become irrelevant with modern disk technologies. The Hashlife algorithm Conway’s Game of Life has attracted numerous implementations over the years, but Bill Gosper’s Hashlife algorithm is particularly impressive. Taking advantage of the repetitive nature of many cellular automata, it uses a quadtree structure to store the hashes of pieces of the overall grid. Over time there are fewer and fewer new structures which need to be evaluated, so it starts to run faster with larger grids, drastically outperforming other algorithms both in terms of speed and the size of grid which can be simulated. The actual amount of memory used is huge, but it’s used in a clever way, so makes the list . Elite’s procedural generation Ok, so this isn’t exactly a memory optimization – more a storage optimization – but it gets an honorable mention anyway. When writing Elite, David Braben and Ian Bell wanted to build a rich world which gamers could explore, but their 22K memory was something of a limitation (for comparison that’s about the size of my avatar picture at the top of this page). They procedurally generated all the characteristics of the 2048 planets in their virtual universe, including the names, which were stitched together using a lookup table of parts of names. In fact the original plans were for 2^52 planets, but it was decided that that was probably too many. Oh, and they did that all in assembly language. Other games of the time used similar techniques too – The Sentinel’s landscape generation algorithm being another example. Modern Garbage Collectors Garbage collection in managed languages like Java and .NET ensures that most of the time, developers stop needing to care about how they use and clean up memory as the garbage collector handles it automatically. Achieving this without killing performance is a near-miraculous feet of software engineering. Much like when learning chemistry, you find that every time you think you understand how the garbage collector works, it turns out to be a mere simplification; that there are yet more complexities and heuristics to help it run efficiently. Of course introducing memory problems is still possible (and there are tools like our memory profiler to help if that happens to you) but they’re much, much rarer. A cautionary note In the examples above, there were good and well understood reasons for the optimizations, but cunningly optimized code has usually had to trade away readability and maintainability to achieve its gains. Trying to optimize memory usage without being pretty confident that there’s actually a problem is doing it wrong. So what have I missed? Tell me about the ingenious (or stupid) tricks you’ve seen people use. Ben

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• what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs?

  - by Amumu

  In University, we learn and reinvent the wheel a lot to truly learn the programming concepts. For example, we may learn assembly language to understand, what happens inside the box, and how the system operates, when we execute our code. This helps understanding higher level concepts deeper. For example, memory management like in C is just an abstraction of manually managed memory contents and addresses. The problem is, when we're going to work, usually productivity is required more. I could program my own containers, or string class, or date/time (using POSIX with C system call) to do the job, but then, it would take much longer time to use existing STL or Boost library, which abstract all of those thing and very easy to use. This leads to an issue, that a regular person doesn't need to get through all the low level/under the hood stuffs, who learns only one programming language and using language-related APIs. These people may eventually compete with the mainstream graduates from computer science or software engineer and call themselves programmers. At first, I don't think it's valid to call them programmers. I used to think, a real programmer needs to understand the computer deeply (but not at the electronic level). But then I changed my mind. After all, they get the job done and satisfy all the test criteria (logic, performance, security...), and in business environment, who cares if you're an expert and understand how computer works or not. You may get behind the "amateurs" if you spend to much time learning about how things work inside. It is totally valid for those people to call themselves programmers. This makes me confuse. So, after all, programming should be considered an universal skill? Does programming language and concepts matter or the problems we solve matter? For example, many C/C++ vs Java and other high level language, one of the main reason is because C/C++ features performance, as well as accessing low level facility. One of the main reason (in my opinion), is coding in C/C++ seems complex, so people feel good about it (not trolling anyone, just my observation, and my experience as well. Try to google "C hacker syndrome"). While Java on the other hand, made for simplifying programming tasks to help developers concentrate on solving their problems. Based on Java rationale, if the programing language keeps evolve, one day everyone can map their logic directly with natural language. Everyone can program. On that day, maybe real programmers are mathematicians, who could perform most complex logic (including business logic and academic logic) without worrying about installing/configuring compiler, IDEs? What's our job as a computer scientist/software engineer? To solve computer specific problems or to solve problems in general? For example, take a look at this exame: http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/attach/Problem%20Resources/2010WorldFinalProblemSet.pdf . The example requires only basic knowledge about the programming language, but focus more on problem solving with the language. In sum, what differs a computer scientist/software engineer to regular people who learn programming language and APIs? A mathematician can be considered a programmer, if he is good enough to use programming language to implement his formula. Can we programmer do this? Probably not for most of us, since we specialize about computer, not math. An electronic engineer, who learns how to use C to program for his devices, can be considered a programmer. If the programming languages keep being simplified, may one day the software engineers, who implements business logic and create softwares, be obsolete? (Not for computer scientist though, since many of the CS topics are scientific, and science won't change, but technology will).

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• Future Of F# At Jazoon 2011

  - by Alois Kraus

  I was at the Jazoon 2011 in Zurich (Switzerland). It was a really cool event and it had many top notch speaker not only from the Microsoft universe. One of the most interesting talks was from Don Syme with the title: F# Today/F# Tomorrow. He did show how to use F# scripting to browse through open databases/, OData Web Services, Sharepoint, …interactively. It looked really easy with the help of F# Type Providers which is the next big language feature in a future F# version. The object returned by a Type Provider is used to access the data like in usual strongly typed object model. No guessing how the property of an object is called. Intellisense will show it just as you expect. There exists a range of Type Providers for various data sources where the schema of the stored data can somehow be dynamically extracted. Lets use e.g. a free database it would be then let data = DbProvider(http://.....); data the object which contains all data from e.g. a chemical database. It has an elements collection which contains an element which has the properties: Name, AtomicMass, Picture, …. You can browse the object returned by the Type Provider with full Intellisense because the returned object is strongly typed which makes this happen. The same can be achieved of course with code generators that use an input the schema of the input data (OData Web Service, database, Sharepoint, JSON serialized data, …) and spit out the necessary strongly typed objects as an assembly. This does work but has the downside that if the schema of your data source is huge you will quickly run against a wall with traditional code generators since the generated “deserialization” assembly could easily become several hundred MB. *** The following part contains guessing how this exactly work by asking Don two questions **** Q: Can I use Type Providers within C#? D: No. Q: F# is after all a library. I can reference the F# assemblies and use the contained Type Providers? D: F# does annotate the generated types in a special way at runtime which is not a static type that C# could use. The F# type providers seem to use a hybrid approach. At compilation time the Type Provider is instantiated with the url of your input data. The obtained schema information is used by the compiler to generate static types as usual but only for a small subset (the top level classes up to certain nesting level would make sense to me). To make this work you need to access the actual data source at compile time which could be a problem if you want to keep the actual url in a config file. Ok so this explains why it does work at all. But in the demo we did see full intellisense support down to the deepest object level. It looks like if you navigate deeper into the object hierarchy the type provider is instantiated in the background and attach to a true static type the properties determined at run time while you were typing. So this type is not really static at all. It is static if you define as a static type that its properties shows up in intellisense. But since this type information is determined while you are typing and it is not used to generate a true static type and you cannot use these “intellistatic” types from C#. Nonetheless this is a very cool language feature. With the plotting libraries you can generate expressive charts from any datasource within seconds to get quickly an overview of any structured data storage. My favorite programming language C# will not get such features in the near future there is hope. If you restrict yourself to OData sources you can use LINQPad to query any OData enabled data source with LINQ with ease. There you can query Stackoverflow with The output is also nicely rendered which makes it a very good tool to explore OData sources today.

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• Graphics trouble after resuming from hibernate or suspend

  - by Voyagerfan5761

  I have a Dell Inspiron 2650 (with NVidia graphics, using nouveau drivers) that I'm using to try out Ubuntu. It's all great, except that Hibernate and Suspend aren't usable. Yes, I know that questions about power-save issues are rampant in the Linux support universe, but it seems that every time I find a solution it's for a very specific hardware combination and doesn't apply to me. So anyway, here goes. When I resume from either power-saving mode, I'll get graphics problems anywhere on the range from a few scattered random-colored pixels that won't change; all the way to full-screen patterns that don't change as I move the mouse, hit keys on the keyboard, or even bring up the shutdown dialog using the power button. Those full-screen issues (which may involve stripes with random pixels, partial black screen, or both) always end in me forcing the machine to shut down by holding the power button. I haven't done much testing yet to determine what severity level is most commonly associated with each mode, but I do avoid using either power-save option because of these issues. I'll add info on my hardware as I can gather it (no home internet connection, and this laptop is tethered to my desk by a dead battery and casing degradation). Please feel free to request something specific in the question comments. Hardware Info See this hardinfo report for my system's hardware configuration. (No, my username is not "myuser"; I sanitized hardinfo's output before publishing it.) Screenshots These screenshots are from a relatively mild occurrence, which happened after the second hibernation I took that session. The first one worked great, though I used the wireless card and Firefox heavily between the two hibernation attempts. Take a look at what happened when I opened my home directory in Nautilus and scrolled it: See below for the situations I've tested so far. The real trouble comes when the machine resumes to an unusable state; in such cases I can't even unlock the screen or properly reboot, much less take a screenshot. I have a hunch that putting a CD in the drive will cause such major failures, and I will try that at some point; see related question. Situations Tested Maverick (10.10) Suspend Seems to suspend nicely with nothing running Seems to suspend nicely with flash drive plugged in On resume from suspend with no flash drive, Terminal and gedit running: Funky graphics on top of log output, then blank screen with pixelated cursor; no response to power button (normally will shutdown 60 seconds later) Hibernate Seems to hibernate nicely with nothing running Seems to hibernate nicely with a few apps (Terminal, Mouse preferences) running Seems to not hibernate when flash drive plugged in Seems to not hibernate when System Monitor is running Have encountered failed hibernation (after several hours and one successful hibernate/thaw cycle) with no external media connected and no programs running except normal background stuff Natty LiveCD (11.04_2010-12-22) When I tested it, Natty wouldn't stay logged in. It played part of the login sound and then [ OK ] appeared in the top right corner (white-on-black terminal text) for a few seconds. Then it kicked me back to the Unlock screen. It did that four times before I gave up and just tested suspend from the Unlock screen. Suspend Resumed to vertical gray and black lines 2px (?) wide, then shifted to vertical "jail bars" of black over a black screen with above-described random pixels and mouse pointer. No apparent response to input from mouse (clicking randomly). Keyboard and touchpad unrecognized.

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• 101 Ways to Participate...and make the future Java

  - by heathervc

   In case you missed it earlier today, and as promised in BOF6283, here are the 101 Ways to Improve (and Make the Future) Java...thanks to Bruno Souza of SouJava and Martijn Verburg of the London Java Community for their contributions! Join or create a JUG Come to the meetings Help promoting your JUG: twitter, facebook, etc Find someone that can give a talk Get your company to sponsor (a meeting, an event) Organize an activity (meetings, hackathons, dojos, etc) Answer questions on a mailing list (or simply join!) Volunteer for a small, one time tasks (creating a web page, helping with an activity) Come early to an event, and help to carry the piano Moderate a list or add things to the wiki Participate in the organization meetings or mailing lists Take pictures of an event or meeting and publish them online Write a blog about an event or meeting, to help promote the group Help record and post a session online Present your JavaOne experience when you get back Repeat the best talk you saw at JavaOne at a JUG meeting Send this list of ideas to other Java developers in your area so they can help out too! Present a step-by-step tutorial Present GreenFoot and Alice to school students Present BlueJ and Alice to university students Teach those tools to teachers and professors Write a step-by-step tutorial on your blog or to a magazine Create a page that lists resources Give a talk about your favorite Java feature or technology Learn a new Java API and present to your co-workers Then, present in a JUG meeting, and then, present it in an event in your area, and submit it to JavaOne! Create a study group to get certified or to learn some new Java technology Teach a non-Java developer how to download the basic tools and where to find more information Download and use an open source project Improve the documentation Write an article or a blog post about the project Write an FAQ Join and participate on the mailing list Describe a bug in detail and submit a bug report Fix a bug and submit it to the project Give a talk about it at a JUG meeting Teach your co-workers how to use the project Sign up to Adopt a JSR Test regular builds of the Reference Implementation (RI) Report bugs in the RI Submit Feature Requests to the spec Triage issues on the issue tracker Run a hack day to discuss the API Moderate mailing lists and forums Create an FAQ or Wiki Evangelize a specification on Twitter, G+, Hacker News, etc Give a lightning talk Help build the RI Help build the Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK) Create a Podcast Learn Latin - e.g. legal language, translate to English Sign up to Adopt OpenJDK Run a Bugathon Fix javac compiler warnings Build virtual images Add tests to Java Submit Javadoc patches Give a webbing Teach someone to build OpenJDK Hold a brown bag session at work Fix the oldest known bug Overhaul Javadoc to use HTML Load the OpenJDK into different IDEs Run a build farm node Test your code on a nightly build Learn how to read Java byte code Visit JCP.org Follow jcp_org on Twitter Friend JCP on Facebook Read JCP Blog Register for JCP.org site Create a JSR Watch List Review JSRs in progress Comment on JSRs in progress, write and track bug reports, use cases, etc Review JSRs in Maintenance Comment on JSRs in Maintenance Implement Final JSRs Review the Transparency of JSRs in progress and provide feedback to the PMO and Spec Lead/community Become a JCP Member or associate with a current JCP member Nominate to serve on an Expert Group (EG) Serve on an EG Submit a JSR proposal and become Spec Lead Take a Spec Lead role in an Inactive or Dormant JSR Nominate for an Executive Committee (EC) seat Vote in the EC elections Vote in EC Special Elections Review EC Meeting Summaries Attend Spec Lead calls Write blogs, articles on your experiences Join the EC project on java.net Join JCP.Next on java.net/JSR 358 Participate on the JCP forums and join JSR projects on java.net Suggest agenda items for open EC meetings Attend public EC teleconference (2x per year) Attend open EC meetings at JavaOne Nominate for JCP Annual Awards Attend annual JavaOne and JCP Annual Awards Ceremony Attend JCP related BOF sessions and give your feedback to Program Office Invite JCP program office members to your JUG  or meetup Invite JSR Spec Leads to your JUG or meetup And always - hold a party!

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• Investigating Strategies For Functional Decomposition

  - by Liam McLennan

  Introducing Functional Decomposition Before I begin I must apologise. I think I am using the term ‘functional decomposition’ loosely, and probably incorrectly. For the purpose of this article I use functional decomposition to mean the recursive splitting of a large problem into increasingly smaller ones, so that the one large problem may be solved by solving a set of smaller problems. The justification for functional decomposition is that the decomposed problem is more easily solved. As software developers we recognise that the smaller pieces are more easily tested, since they do less and are more cohesive. Functional decomposition is important to all scientific pursuits. Once we understand natural selection we can start to look for humanities ancestral species, once we understand the big bang we can trace our expanding universe back to its origin. Isaac Newton acknowledged the compositional nature of his scientific achievements: If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants   The Two Strategies For Functional Decomposition of Computer Programs Private Methods When I was working on my undergraduate degree I was taught to functionally decompose problems by using private methods. Consider the problem of painting a house. The obvious solution is to solve the problem as a single unit: public void PaintAHouse() { // all the things required to paint a house ... } We decompose the problem by breaking it into parts: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { // everything required to paint the undercoat } private void PaintTopcoat() { // everything required to paint the topcoat } The problem can be recursively decomposed until a sufficiently granular level of detail is reached: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { prepareSurface(); fetchUndercoat(); paintUndercoat(); } private void PaintTopcoat() { fetchPaint(); paintTopcoat(); } According to Wikipedia, at least one computer programmer has referred to this process as “the art of subroutining”. The practical issues that I have encountered when using private methods for decomposition are: To preserve the top level API all of the steps must be private. This means that they can’t easily be tested. The private methods often have little cohesion except that they form part of the same solution. Decomposing to Classes The alternative is to decompose large problems into multiple classes, effectively using a class instead of each private method. The API delegates to related classes, so the API is not polluted by the sub-steps of the problem, and the steps can be easily tested because they are each in their own highly cohesive class. Additionally, I think that this technique facilitates better adherence to the Single Responsibility Principle, since each class can be decomposed until it has precisely one responsibility. Revisiting my previous example using class composition: public class HousePainter { private undercoatPainter = new UndercoatPainter(); private topcoatPainter = new TopcoatPainter(); public void PaintAHouse() { undercoatPainter.Paint(); topcoatPainter.Paint(); } } Summary When decomposing a problem there is more than one way to represent the sub-problems. Using private methods keeps the logic in one place and prevents a proliferation of classes (thereby following the four rules of simple design) but the class decomposition is more easily testable and more compatible with the Single Responsibility Principle.

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• Brazil is Hot for Social Media

  - by Mike Stiles

  Today’s guest blog is from Oracle SVP Product Development Reggie Bradford, fresh off a visit to Sao Paulo, Brazil where he spoke at the Dachis Social Business Summit and spent some time getting a personal taste for the astonishing growth of social in Brazil, both in terms of usage and engagement. I knew it was big, but I now have an all-new appreciation for why the Wall Street Journal branded Brazil the “social media capital of the universe.” Brazil has the world’s 5th largest economy, an expanding middle class, an active younger demo market, a connected & outgoing culture, and an ongoing embrace of the social media platforms. According to comScore's 2012 Brazil Digital Future in Focus report, 97% are using social media, and that’s not even taking mobile-only users into account. There were 65 million Facebook users in 2012, spending an average 535 minutes there, up 208%. It’s one of Twitter’s fastest growing markets and the 2nd biggest market for YouTube. Instagram usage has grown over 300% since last year. That by itself is exciting, but look at the opportunity for social marketing brands. 74% of Brazilian social users follow brands on Facebook, and 59% have praised a company on either Twitter or Facebook. A 2011 Oh! Panel study found 81% of social networkers there used social to research new products and 75% went there looking for discounts. B2C eCommerce sales in Brazil is projected to hit $26.9 billion by 2015. I bet I’m not the only one who sees great things ahead, and I was fortunate enough give a keynote ABRADI, an association of leading digital agencies in Brazil with 53 execs from 35 agencies attending. I was also afforded the opportunity to give my impressions of what’s going on in Brazil to Jornal Propoganda & Marketing, one of the most popular publications in Latin America for marketers. I conveyed that especially in an environment like Brazil, where social users are so willing to connect and engage brands, marketers need to back away from the heavy-handed, one-way messaging of old school advertising and move toward genuine relationships and trust-building. To aide in this, organizational and operation changes must be embraced inside the enterprise. We've talked often about the new, tighter partnership forming between the CIO and CMO. If this partnership is not encouraged, fostered and resourced, the increasing amount of time consumers spend on mobile and digital, and the efficiencies and integrations offered by cloud-based software cannot be exploited. These are the kinds of changes that can yield social data that, when combined with enterprise data, helps you come to know your social audiences intimately and predict their needs. Consumers are always connected and need your brand to be accessible at any time, be it for information or customer service. And, of course, all of this is happening quite publicly. The holistic, socially-enable enterprise connects social to customer service systems and all other customer touch points, facilitating the kind of immediate, real-time, gratifying response customers are coming to expect. Social users in Brazil are highly active and clearly willing to meet us as brands more than halfway. Empowering yourself with a social management technology platform will have you set up to maximize this booming social market…from listening & monitoring to engagement to analytics to workflow & automation to globalization & language support. Brands, it’s time to be as social as the great people of Brazil are. Obrigado! @reggiebradfordPhoto: Gualberto107, freedigitalphotos.net

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• Cream of the Crop

  - by KemButller

  JD Edwards has been working hard to ensure that you shouldn't have to work so hard! Yet there are still JD Edwards customers that may not be up to speed on all the new and or improved tools and utilities we have delivered, all designed to make your life easier. So today, I want to share what I consider to be the cream of the crop….those items that every customer should know about and leverage to make ERP life just a little bit (or A LOT) easier! These are my top picks, the cream of a very good crop! Explore and enjoy, and gain some of your time back to do with as you please. · www.runjde.com It’s where to go when you need to know! The Resource Kits available on www.runjde.com provide comprehensive Resource Kits (guides) by user type. The guides provide brief descriptions of the wide array of resources that are available to JD Edwards’s eco system and links to each of those resources. · My Oracle Support (MOS) Information Centers This link will take you to an index that is designed to provide you with simple and quick navigation to the available EnterpriseOne Information Centers. This index provides links to: · EnterpriseOne Application specific Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Tools and Technology Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Performance Information Center · EnterpriseOne 9.1 and 9.0 Information Centers Information Centers give Oracle the ability to aggregate content for a given focus area and present this content in categories for easy browsing by our customers. Information Centers offer a variety of focused dynamic content organized around one or more of the following tasks. · Overview · Use · Troubleshooting · Patching and Maintenance · Install and Configure · Upgrade · Optimize Performance · Security · Certify JD Edwards Newsletters Be in the know by reading the Global Customer Support Product Newsletters. They are PACKED with news and information covering a wide range of topics and news. It is a must read if you want to know what’s happening in the JD Edwards universe! Read the latest EntepriseOne newsletter Read the latest World newsletter Learn How to receive notification when a new newsletter edition is published Oracle Learning Library – (OLL) Oracle Learn Library is the place to go for easy access to JD Edwards Application and Tools training. For a comprehensive view of the training available for a specific product/functional area, explore the Knowledge Paths For Net Change (new feature) training, explore the TOI sessions (TOI stands for Transfer Of Information). Tip: Be sure to experiment with the search filters! · www.upgradejde.com The site designed to help customers and partners with the process of upgrading JD Edwards. The site is a wealth of information, tools and resources designed to assist in the evaluation, planning and execution steps required when upgrading. Of note is the wildly successful upgrade strategy known as “The Art of the Possible” wherein JD Edwards and many of our partners hold free workshops to teach customers how to conduct upgrades in 100 days or less. Equally important is the fact that on www.upgradejde.com, customers can gain visibility into planned enhancements using the Product and Technology Feature Catalogs. The catalogs are great for creating customer specific reports about the net change between older releases and current or planned releases. Examples of other key resources on www.upgradejde.com are the product data base changes between releases, extensibility guides, (formerly known as programmer’s guides), whitepapers, ROI calculators and much more!

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• Framework for Everything - Where to begin? [Longer post]

  - by SquaredSoft

  Back story of this question, feel free to skip down for the specific question Hello, I've been very interested in the idea of abstract programming the last few years. I've made about 30 attempts at creating a piece of software that is capable of almost anything you throw at it. I've undertook some attempts at this that have taken upwards of a year, while getting close, never releasing it beyond my compiler. This has been something I've always tried wrapping my head around, and something is always missing. With the title, I'm sure you're assuming, "Yes of course you noob! You can't account for everything!" To which I have to reply, "Why not?" To give you some background into what I'm talking about, this all started with doing maybe a shade of gray hat SEO software. I found myself constantly having to create similar, but slightly different sets of code. I've gone through as many iterations of way to communicate on http as the universe has particles. "How many times am I going to have to write this multi-threaded class?" is something I found myself asking a lot. Sure, I could create a class library, and just work with that, but I always felt I could optimize what I had, which often was a large undertaking and typically involved frequent use of the CRTL+A keyboard shortcut, mixed with the delete button. It dawned on me that it was time to invest in a plugin system. This would allow me to simply add snippets of code. as time went on, and I could subversion stuff out, and distribute small chunks of code, rather than something that encompasses only a specific function or design. This comes with its own complexity, of course, and by the time I had finished the software scope for this addition, it hit me that I would want to add to everything in the software, not just a new http method, or automation code for a specific website. Great, we're getting more abstract. However, the software that I have in my mind comes down to a quite a few questions regarding its execution. I have to have some parameters to what I am going to do. After writing what the perfect software would do in my mind, I came up with this as a list of requirements: Should be able to use networking A "Macro" or "Expression system" which would allow people to do something like : =First(=ParseToList(=GetUrl("http://www.google.com?q=helloworld!"), Template.Google)) Multithreaded Able to add UI elements through some type of XML -- People can make their own addons etc. Can use third party API through the plugins, such as Microsoft CRM, Exchange, etc. This would allow the software to essentially be used for everything. Really, any task you wish to automate, in a simple way. Making the UI was as also extremely hard. How do you do all of this? Its very difficult. So my question: With so many attempts at this, I'm out of ideas how to successfully complete this. I have a very specific idea in my mind, but I keep failing to execute it. I'm a self taught programmer. I've been doing it for years, and work professionally in it, but I've never encountered something that would be as complex and in-depth as a system which essentially does everything. Where would you start? What are the best practices for design? How can I avoid constantly having to go back and optimize my software. What can I do to generalize this and draw everything out to completion. These are things I struggle with. P.s., I'm using c# as my main language. I feel like in this example, I might be hitting the outer limit of the language, although, I don't know if that is the case, or if I'm just a bad programmer. Thanks for your time.

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• Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do (a problem from Introduction to algorithms) [closed]

  - by Mike

  EDITED (I realized that the question certainly needs a context) The problem 1.1-5 in the book of Thomas Cormen et al Introduction to algorithms is: "Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do. Then come up with one in which a solution that is “approximately” the best is good enough." I'm interested in its first statement. And (from my understanding) it is asked to name a real-world problem where only the exact solution will work as opposed to a real-world problem where good-enough solution will be ok. So what is the difference between the exact and good enough solution. Consider some physics problem for example the simulation of the fulid flow in the permeable medium. To make this simulation happen some simplyfing assumptions have to be made when deriving a mathematical model. Otherwise the model becomes at least complex and unsolvable. Virtually any particle in the universe has its influence on the fluid flow. But not all particles are equal. Those that form the permeable medium are much more influental than the ones located light years away. Then when the mathematical model needs to be solved an exact solution can rarely be found unless the mathematical model is simple enough (wich probably means the model isn't close to reality). We take an approximate numerical method and after hours of coding and days of verification come up with the program or algorithm which is a solution. And if the model and an algorithm give results close to a real problem by some degree that is good enough soultion. Its worth noting the difference between exact solution algorithm and exact computation result. When considering real-world problems and real-world computation machines I believe all physical problems solutions where any calculations are taken can not be exact because universal physical constants are represented approximately in the computer. Any numbers are represented with the limited precision, at least limited by amount of memory available to computing machine. I can imagine plenty of problems where good-enough, good to some degree solution will work, like train scheduling, automated trading, satellite orbit calculation, health care expert systems. In that cases exact solutions can't be derived due to constraints on computation time, limitations in computer memory or due to the nature of problems. I googled this question and like what this guy suggests: there're kinds of mathematical problems that need exact solutions (little note here: because the question is taken from the book "Introduction to algorithms" the term "solution" means an algorithm or a program, which in this case gives exact answer on each input). But that's probably more of theoretical interest. So I would like to narrow down the question to: What are the real-world practical problems where only the best (exact) solution algorithm or program will do (but not the good-enough solution)? There are problems like breaking of cryptographic ciphers where only exact solution matters in practice and again in practice the process of deciphering without knowing a secret should take reasonable amount of time. Returning to the original question this is the problem where good-enough (fast-enough) solution will do there's no practical need in instant crack though it's desired. So the quality of "best" can be understood in any sense: exact, fastest, requiring least memory, having minimal possible network traffic etc. And still I want this question to be theoretical if possible. In a sense that there may be example of computer X that has limited resource R of amount Y where the best solution to problem P is the one that takes not more than available Y for inputs of size N*Y. But that's the problem of finding solution for P on computer X which is... well, good enough. My final thought that we live in a world where it is required from programming solutions to practical purposes to be good enough. In rare cases really very very good but still not the best ones. Isn't it? :) If it's not can you provide an example? Or can you name any such unsolved problem of practical interest?

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• Web application development platform recommendation

  - by TK.Maxi

  Hi all I did a year's worth of Pascal, Visual Basic and C++ 15 years ago, so suffice it to say that I'm a complete n00b & lamer when it comes to this. I really do hope that this question doesn't canned, but if it does, please be so kind as to point me in the direction of where it should be posted. I have an idea, like so many others, for a web app. I don't necessarily have the capital to outsource the development of the app right now, and I probably wouldn't want to, since non-disclosure agreements can be expensive to enforce, especially in this day and age of intercontinental outsourcing. I need the app to be usable on any mobile device (eventually), primarily on the major mobile platforms at first, on the web, (pc/mac/*ix) obviously, on mobile web browsers like opera mobile, etc. I envisage the app interacting with the major social networks like fb, orkut, msn im, twitter, et al in a way where friend's are messaged and/or wall posted, a message is posted to the users wall. Geo-location functionality is a plus, considering the service/app can be location sensitive in two ways, 1, the immediate location of the user, 2. the desired location of the user. I'd like to incorporate OpenID sign on, and the flip-side, the service will require that people (service providers) list their specialities/specialisations/interests/areas of expertise, so that matches to user requests can be made by the service, while users' requests are posted into the web universe. I've probably described a glut of apps out there, but I'd appreciate feedback on the sort of platform that I should look at using, be it hosted on something like Google's app engine, or written in android friendly code, or whatever. I'm a firm believer in herd mentality, especially at the start of a project that I have very little experience in. The more opinions, the merrier! I can't get very much more specific, since that would give the idea away. Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing from wise and experienced and the fresh and innovative alike. Thanks

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• How do you protect against specific CSRF attack

  - by Saif Bechan

  I am going trough the OWASP Top 10 list of 2007 and 2010. I stumbled upon Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) this is often called session riding as you let the user usee his session to fulfill your wishes. Now a solution to this is adding a token to every url and this token is checked for every link. For example to vote on product x the url would be: 'http://mysite.com?token=HVBKJNKL' This looks like a solid solution to because a hacker can not guess the token. But I was thinking of the following scenario(I do not know if it is possible): You create a website with an hidden iFrame or div. After that you can load my website in it either using just the normal iFrame or ajax. When you have my website loaded hidden inside your website, and the user has a stored session, the following can be done. You can retrieve the token from the URLS, and still do all the actions needed. Is it possible to do something like this. Or is it not possible to do this cross domain.

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• Navigating through a sea of hype

  - by wouldLikeACrystalBall

  This is a vague, open question, so if you have no interest in these, please leave now. A few years ago it seemed everyone thought the death of desktop software was imminent. Web applications were the future. Everyone would move to cloud-based software-as-a-service systems, and developing applications for specific end-user platforms like Windows would soon become something of a ghetto. Joel's "How Microsoft Lost the API War" was but one of many such pieces sounding the death knell for this way of software development. Flash-forward to 2010, and the hype is all around mobile devices, particularly the iPhone. Software-as-a-Service vendors--even small ones such as YCombinator startups--go out of their way to build custom applications for the iPhone and other smart phone devices; applications that can be quite sophisticated, that run only on specific hardware and software architectures and are thus inherently incompatible. Now some of you are probably thinking, "Well, only the decline of desktop software was predicted; mobile devices aren't desktops." But the term was used by those predicting its demise to mean laptops also, and really any platform capable of running a browser. What was promised was a world where HTML and related standards would supplant native applications and their inherent difficulties. We would all code to the browser, not the OS. But here we are in 2010 with the AppStore bulging and development for the iPad just revving up. A few days ago, I saw someone on Hacker News claim that the future of computing was entirely in small, portable devices. Apparently the future is underpowered, requires dexterous thumbs and induces near-sightedness. How do those who so vehemently asserted one thing now assert the opposite with equal vehemence, without making even the slightest admission of error? And further, how are we as developers supposed to sift through all of this? I bought into the whole web-standards utopianism that was in vogue back in '06-'07 and now feel like it was a mistake. Is there some formula one can apply rather than a mere appeal to experience?

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• How to dispose a Writeable Bitmap? (WPF)

  - by Mario

  Some time ago i posted a question related to a WriteableBitmap memory leak, and though I received wonderful tips related to the problem, I still think there is a serious bug / (mistake made by me) / (Confusion) / (some other thing) here. So, here is my problem again: Suppose we have a WPF application with an Image and a button. The image's source is a really big bitmap (3600 * 4800 px), when it's shown at runtime the applicaton consumes ~90 MB. Now suppose i wish to instantiate a WriteableBitmap from the source of the image (the really big Image), when this happens the applications consumes ~220 MB. Now comes the tricky part, when the modifications to the image (through the WriteableBitmap) end, and all the references to the WriteableBitmap (at least those that I'm aware of) are destroyed (at the end of a method or by setting them to null) the memory used by the writeableBitmap should be freed and the application consumption should return to ~90 MB. The problem is that sometimes it returns, sometimes it does not. Here is a sample code: // The Image's source whas set previous to this event private void buttonTest_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (image.Source != null) { WriteableBitmap bitmap = new WriteableBitmap((BitmapSource)image.Source); bitmap.Lock(); bitmap.Unlock(); //image.Source = null; bitmap = null; } } As you can see the reference is local and the memory should be released at the end of the method (Or when the Garbage collector decides to do so). However, the app could consume ~224 MB until the end of the universe. Any help would be great.

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• Arrrg! MovieClip object refuses to moved in any rational way in as3?

  - by Aaron H.

  I have a MovieClip object, which is exported for actionscript (AS3) in an .swc file. When I place an instance of the clip on the stage without any modifications, it appears in the upper left corner, about half off stage (i.e. only the lower right quadrant of the object is visible). I understand that this is because the clip has a registration point which is not the upper left corner. If you call getBounds() on the movieclip you can get the bounds of the clip (presumably from the "point" that it's aligned on) which looks something like (left: -303, top: -100, right: 303, bottom: 100), you can subtract the left and top values from the clip x and y: clip.x -= bounds.left; clip.y -= bounds.top; This seems to properly align the clip fully on stage with the top left of the clip squarely in the corner of the stage. But! Following that logic doesn't seem to work when aligning it on the center of the stage! clip.x = (stage.stageWidth / 2); etc... This creates the crazy parallel universe where the clip is now down in the lower right corner of the stage. The only clue I have is that looking at: clip.transform.matrix and clip.transform.concatenatedMatrix matrix has a tx value of 748 (half of stage height) ty value of 426 (Half of stage height) concatenatedMatrix has a tx value of 1699.5 and ty value of 967.75 That's also obviously where the movieclip is getting positioned, but why? Where is this additional translation coming from?

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• Visual Studio 2008 Generation of Designer File Failed (Cannot use a leading .. to exit above the top

  - by tardomatic

  Hi, It seems the universe is against me this week. I have been happily coding away on my ASP.Net application for weeks now without issues. Today I tried to add a textbox to a form, and on saving the form, I received the following error: Generation of designer file failed: Cannot use a leading .. to exit above the top directory I googled, but with no luck. I did find a blog post that shows how to add a key into the registry so that Visual Studio logs more detail about these errors, and the following is what shows up in the generated log file: ------------------------------------------------------------- C:\[path to aspx file]\PageName.aspx Generation of designer file failed: Cannot use a leading .. to exit above the top directory. ------------------------------------------------------------- System.Web.HttpException: Cannot use a leading .. to exit above the top directory. at System.Web.Util.UrlPath.ReduceVirtualPath(String path) at System.Web.Util.UrlPath.Reduce(String path) at System.Web.Util.UrlPath.Combine(String appPath, String basepath, String relative) at System.Web.VirtualPath.Combine(VirtualPath relativePath) at System.Web.VirtualPath.Combine(VirtualPath v1, VirtualPath v2) at System.Web.VirtualPathUtility.Combine(String basePath, String relativePath) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Application.Parser.BeginParse(String virtualPath, String text) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Application.Generator.UpdateDesignerClass(String document, String codeBehind, String codeBehindFile, String[] publicFields, UDC_Flags flags) ------------------------------------------------------------- And, of course this means that there is no way I can reference the newly added text box from the code behind. I thought it might be just this page giving the issue, but I have tried three other pages with the same result. I haven't changed the environment for weeks, so I am not sure how this happens. Any ideas out there? Thanks in advance Hamish

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• Worse is better. Is there an example?

  - by J.F. Sebastian

  Is there a widely-used algorithm that has time complexity worse than that of another known algorithm but it is a better choice in all practical situations (worse complexity but better otherwise)? An acceptable answer might be in a form: There are algorithms A and B that have O(N**2) and O(N) time complexity correspondingly, but B has such a big constant that it has no advantages over A for inputs less then a number of atoms in the Universe. Examples highlights from the answers: Simplex algorithm -- worst-case is exponential time -- vs. known polynomial-time algorithms for convex optimization problems. A naive median of medians algorithm -- worst-case O(N**2) vs. known O(N) algorithm. Backtracking regex engines -- worst-case exponential vs. O(N) Thompson NFA -based engines. All these examples exploit worst-case vs. average scenarios. Are there examples that do not rely on the difference between the worst case vs. average case scenario? Related: The Rise of ``Worse is Better''. (For the purpose of this question the "Worse is Better" phrase is used in a narrower (namely -- algorithmic time-complexity) sense than in the article) Python's Design Philosophy: The ABC group strived for perfection. For example, they used tree-based data structure algorithms that were proven to be optimal for asymptotically large collections (but were not so great for small collections). This example would be the answer if there were no computers capable of storing these large collections (in other words large is not large enough in this case). Coppersmith–Winograd algorithm for square matrix multiplication is a good example (it is the fastest (2008) but it is inferior to worse algorithms). Any others? From the wikipedia article: "It is not used in practice because it only provides an advantage for matrices so large that they cannot be processed by modern hardware (Robinson 2005)."

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• Simple way to decrease values without making a new attribute?

  - by Jam

  I'm making a program where you're firing a 'blaster', and I have 5 ammo. I'm blasting an alien who has 5 health. At the end I instantiate the player and make him blast 6 times to check that the program works correctly. But the way I've done it makes it so that the amount won't decrease. Is there an easy fix to this, or do I just have to make a new attribute for ammo and health? Here's what I have: class Player(object): """ A player in a shooter game. """ def blast(self, enemy, ammo=5): if ammo>=1: ammo-=1 print "You have blasted the alien." print "You have", ammo, "ammunition left." enemy.die(5) else: print "You are out of ammunition!" class Alien(object): """ An alien in a shooter game. """ def die(self, health=5): if health>=1: health-=1 print "The alien is wounded. He now has", health, "health left." elif health==0: health-=1 print "The alien gasps and says, 'Oh, this is it. This is the big one. \n" \ "Yes, it's getting dark now. Tell my 1.6 million larvae that I loved them... \n" \ "Good-bye, cruel universe.'" else: print "The alien's corpse sits up momentarily and says, 'No need to blast me, I'm dead already!" # main print "\t\tDeath of an Alien\n" hero = Player() invader = Alien() hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) hero.blast(invader) raw_input("\n\nPress the enter key to exit.")

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