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• Ultra-Portable Laptop or Tablet PC for Development and Sketching

  - by Nelson LaQuet

  I am a software developer that primarily writes in PHP, [X]HTML, CSS, Javascript, C# and C++. I use Eclipse for web development, Visual Studio 2008 for C++ and C# work, TortoiseSVN, Subversion server for local repositories, SQL Server Express, Apache and MYSQL. I also use Office 2007 for word processing and spreadsheets and use Vista Ultimate 64 as my primary operating system. The only other things I do on my laptop are watch movies, surf the internet and listen to music. I currently have a Acer Aspire 5100 (1.4 GHz AMD Turion X2, 2 GB of RAM and a 15.4" screen). This thing does not cut it in performance or portability, and in addition, my DVD drive failed. And before anybody posts about vista: I have had XP Professional 32 on it for the last two years, and recently upgraded to Vista 64. It is actually faster (with areo disabled) then XP; so it is not the OS that is causing the laptop to be slow. I usually sketch a lot, for explaining things, developing user interfaces and software architecture. Because of my requirements, I was thinking about a Lenovo X61 Tablet PC. It outperforms my current laptop, is significantly more portable, and... is a tablet. My question is: do any other software developers use this (or other tablets) for programming? Does it help to be able to sketch on the computer itself? And is it capable of being a good development machine? Will it handle the above software listed? If not, what is the best ultra-portable laptop that is good for programming? Or are ultra-portable laptops even good for programming? I could manage with my 15.4" screen, but am spoiled by my two 19" at my home desktop and my job's workstation.

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• The Implications of Modern Day Software Development Abstractions

  - by Andreas Grech

  I am currently doing a dissertation about the implications or dangers that today's software development practices or teachings may have on the long term effects of programming. Just to make it clear: I am not attacking the use abstractions in programming. Every programmer knows that abstractions are the bases for modularity. What I want to investigate with this dissertation are the positive and negative effects abstractions can have in software development. As regards the positive, I am sure that I can find many sources that can confirm this. But what about the negative effects of abstractions? Do you have any stories to share that talk about when certain abstractions failed on you? The main concern is that many programmers today are programming against abstractions without having the faintest idea of what the abstraction is doing under-the-covers. This may very well lead to bugs and bad design. So, in you're opinion, how important is it that programmers actually know what is going below the abstractions? Taking a simple example from Joel's Back to Basics, C's strcat: void strcat( char* dest, char* src ) { while (*dest) dest++; while (*dest++ = *src++); } The above function hosts the issue that if you are doing string concatenation, the function is always starting from the beginning of the dest pointer to find the null terminator character, whereas if you write the function as follows, you will return a pointer to where the concatenated string is, which in turn allows you to pass this new pointer to the concatenation function as the *dest parameter: char* mystrcat( char* dest, char* src ) { while (*dest) dest++; while (*dest++ = *src++); return --dest; } Now this is obviously a very simple as regards abstractions, but it is the same concept I shall be investigating. Finally, what do you think about the issue that schools are preferring to teach Java instead of C and Lisp ? Can you please give your opinions and your says as regards this subject? Thank you for your time and I appreciate every comment.

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• Easy way to lock a file on a remote machine (windows)?

  - by roufamatic

  I've tracked down an error in my logs, and am trying to reproduce it. My theory is that a file sometimes gets locked in a specific folder, and when the application (ASP.NET) tries to delete that folder it hangs. I don't have the application running on my own machine so I'm debugging this on a remote server. But for the life of me, I can't seem to figure out a way to lock a file that prevents it from being deleted by the process. My first thought was to map the network path to a local drive and just leave a command prompt open to that folder. Locally that always fouls up my folder deletes, but apparently SMB is a bit more robust and doesn't grant me a lock. After that I created an infinte loop vbscript in the folder and executed it remotely. The file was deleted out from underneath the executing code. Man! I then tried creating a file on the server in that folder and removing all permissions. That didn't do the trick. I don't have access to the IIS settings so perhaps it's running under a privileged system account. So: what's a program that you know is free and I can quickly use to create an exclusive lock on a file so I can test my delete theory? Like a really, really bad Notepad clone or something. :-)

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• Pecking order of pigeons?

  - by sc_ray

  I was going though problems on graph theory posted by Prof. Ericksson from my alma-mater and came across this rather unique question about pigeons and their innate tendency to form pecking orders. The question goes as follows: Whenever groups of pigeons gather, they instinctively establish a pecking order. For any pair of pigeons, one pigeon always pecks the other, driving it away from food or potential mates. The same pair of pigeons always chooses the same pecking order, even after years of separation, no matter what other pigeons are around. Surprisingly, the overall pecking order can contain cycles—for example, pigeon A pecks pigeon B, which pecks pigeon C, which pecks pigeon A. Prove that any finite set of pigeons can be arranged in a row from left to right so that every pigeon pecks the pigeon immediately to its left. Since this is a question on Graph theory, the first things that crossed my mind that is this just asking for a topological sort of a graphs of relationships(relationships being the pecking order). What made this a little more complex was the fact that there can be cyclic relationships between the pigeons. If we have a cyclic dependency as follows: A-B-C-A where A pecks on B,B pecks on C and C goes back and pecks on A If we represent it in the way suggested by the problem, we have something as follows: C B A But the above given row ordering does not factor in the pecking order between C and A. I had another idea of solving it by mathematical induction where the base case is for two pigeons arranged according to their pecking order, assuming the pecking order arrangement is valid for n pigeons and then proving it to be true for n+1 pigeons. I am not sure if I am going down the wrong track here. Some insights into how I should be analyzing this problem will be helpful. Thanks

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• Leveraging hobby experience to get a job

  - by Bernard

  Like many other's I began programming at an early age. I started when I was 11 and I learned C when I was 14 (now 26). While most of what I did were games just to entertain myself I did everything from low level 2D graphics, and binary I/O, to interfacing with free API's, custom file systems, audio, 3D animations, OpenGL, web sites, etc. I worked on a wide variety of things trying to make various games. Because of this experience I have tested out of every college level C/C++ programming course I have ever been offered. In the classes I took, my classmates would need a week to do what I finished in class with an hour or two of work. I now have my degree now and I have 2 years of experience working full time as a web developer however I would like to get back into C++ and hopefully do simulation programming. Unfortunately I have yet to do C++ as a job, I have only done it for testing out of classes and doing my senior project in college. So most of what I have in C++ is still hobby experience and I don't know how to best convey that so that I don't end up stuck doing something too low level for me. Right now I see a job offer that requires 2 years of C++ experience, but I have at least 9 (I didn't do C++ everyday for the last 14 years). How do I convey my experience? How much is it truly worth? and How do I get it's full value? The best thing that I can think of is a demo and a portfolio, however that only comes into play after an interview has been secured. I used a portfolio to land my current job. All answers and advice are appreciated.

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• Doing coding in Linux through a virtual machine on Windows VS partitioning

  - by ihaveitnow

  I already have experience with setting up virtual machines, running them and other minor tasks. Im a gamer, so I wont get rid of windows (for now at least...) but I do want to be a great programmer and to be involved with the Open-Source community. Id like to know if its a good idea to do my programming in linux through a virtual machine, vs giving it a partitioned section of the HDD. Id like to know about performance pros and cons and functionality. All responses are appreciated, thanks in advance. The type of programming I intend to dive into : Android Dev, Web Dev, Desktop Dev...More Android and Web right now though. So im looking at C#,C,C++,Java,PHP,HTML,MySQL...Off the top of the dome. I do web designing as well, so dreamweaver is added as an "essential". But im sure I can do dreamweaver files and upload them to the server after programming in Linux...Right? And any info on IDE's in Linux for the above mentioned are appreciated, but i would prefer going the coding route and understanding the essence of whats happening "under the covers" Thanks to all for reading, I appreciate it. Hope this isnt confusing :S

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• Keeping updated with the latest technologies.

  - by Prashanth

  I am a software developer and I have been programming since the past six years. I simply love the mental challenge involved in trying to come up with solutions to hard problems, reading up programming literature, blogs by prominent developers and so on. I work on Microsoft platform and I have trouble keeping up with the pace at which various frameworks are rolled out. Remoting,WCF,ASP.NET,ASP.NET MVC, LINQ, WPF, WWF, OSLO, ADO.NET data services, DSL tools etc etc. Even understanding all these frameworks at an abstract level and see how they are all tied up with MS vision itself is a major hurdle. Now when you add other non microsoft technologies, programming languages etc to the equation, I wonder how do people manage? Given that there are only 24 hours in a day, how does one keep himself updated about so many technology changes that happen everyday? My question is , is it even worth doing that? The thing is, I am also interested in other fields such as literature, science. I try my best to at least gain a superficial understanding of what is happening in other fields of my interest and don't want to give up on that :)

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• Career day in kindergarten

  - by Péter Török

  I was invited to the kindergarten group of my elder daughter to talk and answer the kids' questions about my profession. There are 26 kids of age 4-6 in the group, plus 3 teachers who are fairly scared of anything related to programming and IT themselves, but bold enough to learn new tricks. I would have about 20-30 minutes, without projector or anything. They have an old computer though, which by its look may be a 486, and I am not even sure if it's functioning. My research turned up excellent earlier threads, with lots of good tips: How would you explain your job to a 5-year old? Career Day: how do I make “computer programmer” sound cool to 8 year olds? What things can I teach a group of children about programming in one day? My situation is different from each of the above though: the latter ones are concerned with older children, while the first one is about talking to a single kid (or elder person)—a group of 20 is a whole different challenge. How can I teach the kids and their teachers about programming in a fun way?

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• How can someone with no experience learn how to program?

  - by Mugatu

  A friend and I have been coming up with website ideas for a couple years, mostly just jotting them down whenever we come up with a good, useful idea when browsing the web. For the past 6 months we've hired a couple different programmers to make a couple of the sites for us, but have been disappointed with how it's gone. Been too slow and too many miscommunications for our liking. So like the saying goes if you want something done right do it yourself, we're going to do it ourselves. I know nothing about programming, I've never written a line of code in my life. I consider myself very good with math and about as logical as you can get, but I have zero real-life programming knowledge. The sites we want to make are all pretty 'Web 2.0'ish', meaning user-generated content, commenting on posts, pages that change on the fly, etc. So here are some of my questions for anyone who's been there before: Is there a language you'd recommend learning first? Something that is a good indicator how most other languages work? What web programming languages do you recommend learning first based on popularity both now and the future. I don't want to learn a language that's going to be outdated by the time I'm an expert at it. Any specific books you'd recommend? Any general advice you'd give to someone literally starting at square zero for coding who plans on being in it for the long haul?

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• Is C++ (one of) the best language to learn at first

  - by AlexV

  C++ is one of the most used programming language in the world since like 25+ years. My first job as programmer was in C++ and I coded in C++ everyday for nearly 4 years. Now I do mostly PHP, but I will forever cherish this C++ background. C++ has helped me understand many "under the hood" features/behaviors/restrictions of many other (and different) programming languages like PHP and Delphi. I'm a full time programmer for 6+ years now and since I have a quite varied programming background I often get questions by "newbies" as where to start to become a "good" programmer. I think C++ is one of the best language to start with because it gives you a real usefull experience that will last and will teach you how things work under the hood. It's not the easier one to learn for a newbie, but in my opinion it's one that will reward in the long term. I would like to know your opinion on this matter to add to my arguments when I guide "newbies". After this introduction, here's my question : Is C++ (one of) the best language to learn at first for you. Since it's subjective, I've marked this question as community wiki. EDIT: This question is not about why Java (or C# or any other language) is better than C++ to start with, it's about what's make C++ a good choice or not a good choice to learn as one of your firsts languages. For example, for me C++ made me understand how the memory works. Now today in many languages everything is managed by the garbadge collector and some people don't even know that. I'm glad I know how it works underneath and I think it can help you to write better code.

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• Effective books for learning the intricacies of business application development?

  - by OffApps Cory

  I am a self taught "developer". I use the term loosely because I only know enough to make myself dangerous. I have no theory background, and I only pick up things to get this little tool to work or make that control do what I want. That said, I am looking for some reading material that explains some of the theory behind application development especially from a business standpoint. Really I need to understand what all of these terms that float around really talk about. Business Logic Layer, UI abstraction level and all that. Anyone got a reading list that they feel helped them understand this stuff? I know how to code stuff up so that it works. It is not pretty mostly because I don't know the elegant way of doing it, and it is not planned out very well (I also don't know how to plan an application). Any help would be appreciated. I have read a number of books on what I thought was the subject, but they all seem to rehash basic coding and what-not. This doesn't have to be specific to VB.NET or WPF (or Entity Framework) but anything with those items would be quite helpful.

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• What are some of the core principles needed to master Multi threading using Delphi?

  - by Gary Becks

  I am kind of new to programming in general (about 8 months with on and off in delphi and a little python here and there) and I am in the process of buying some books. I am interested in learning about concurrent programming and building multi threaded apps using Delphi. Whenever I do a search for "multithreading delphi" or "delphi multithreading tutorial" I seem to get conflicting results as some of the stuff is about using certain libraries (omnithread library) and other stuff seems to be more geared towards programmers with more experience. I have studied quite a few books on delphi and for the most part they seem to kind of skim the surface and not really go into depth on the subject. I have a friend who is a programmer (he uses c++) who recommends I learn what is actually going on with the underlying system when using threads as opposed to jumping into how to actually implement them in my programs first. On amazon.com there are quite a few books on concurrent programming but none of them seem to be made with Delphi in mind. Basically I need to know what are the main things I should be focused on learning before jumping into using threads, if I can/should attempt to learn them using books that are not specifically aimed at delphi developers (don't want to confuse myself reading books with a bunch of code examples in other languages right now) and if there are any reliable resources/books on the subject that anyone here could recommend. Thanks in advance.

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• Is there really such a thing as "being good at math"?

  - by thezhaba

  Aside from gifted individuals able to perform complex calculations in their head, I'm wondering if proficiency in mathematics, namely calculus and algebra, has really got to do with one's natural inclination towards sciences, if you can put it that way. A number of students in my calculus course pick up material in seemingly no time whereas I, personally, have to spend time thinking about and understanding most concepts. Even then, if a question that requires a bit more 'imagination' comes up I don't always recognize the concepts behind it, as is the case with calculus proofs, for instance. Nevertheless, I refuse to believe that I'm simply not made for it. I do very well in programming and software engineering courses where a lot of students struggle. At first I could not grasp what they found to be so difficult, but eventually I realized that having previous programming experience is a great asset -- once I've seen and made practical use of the programming concepts learning about them in depth in an academic setting became much easier as I have then already seen their use "in the wild". I suppose I'm hoping that something similar happens with mathematics -- perhaps once the practical idea behind a concept (which authors of textbooks sure do a great job of concealing..) is evident, understanding the seemingly dry and symbolic ideas and proofs would be more obvious? I'm really not sure. All I'm sure of is I'd like to get better at calculus, but I don't yet understand why some of us pick it up easily while others have to spend considerable amounts of time on it and still not have complete understanding if an unusual problem is given.

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• Spring MVC: How to get the remaining path after the controller path?

  - by Willis Blackburn

  I've spent over an hour trying to find the answer to this question, which seems like it should reflect a common use case, but I can't figure it out! Basically I am writing a file-serving controller using Spring MVC. The URLs are of the format http://www.bighost.com/serve/the/path/to/the/file.jpg, in which the part after "/serve" is the path to the requested file, which may have an arbitrary number of path segments. I have a controller like this: @Controller class ServerController { @RequestMapping(value = "/serve/???") public void serve(???) { } } What I am trying to figure out is: What do I use in place of "???" to make this work? I have two theories about how this should work. The first theory is that I could replace the first "???" in the RequestMapping with a path variable placeholder that has some special syntax meaning "capture to the end of the path." If a regular placeholder looks like "{path}" then maybe I could use "{path:**}" or "{path:/}" or something like that. Then I could use a @PathVariable annotation to refer to the path variable in the second "???". The other theory is that I could replace the first "???" with "**" (match anything) and that Spring would give me an API to obtain the remainder of the path (the part matching the "**"). But I can't find such an API. Thanks for any help you can provide!

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• About Interview structure for test automation lab developers

  - by Ikaso

  Hi, I am interviewing new applicants for a team that is doing test automation on our company product(s). The team is composed of junior software developers and a team leader. The product runs on windows and has both managed and unmanaged parts. The test automation is done on both client side (user mode and kernel mode) and server side (IIS, Windows Services, backend). We are doing mainly intergration tests and black box tests. I am trying to figure out how to organize my interview. My overall idea is to ask about a project they have done, then ask some technical questions (multithreading, GC, design patterns) and one programming question. Please note that there is another interview done before me with 2 programming questions. My programming question is rather simple (for example: reversing a singly-linked linked list). My coworkers think that my questions will not find good developers since my questions are rather simple and well known, but so far most of the applicants fail those questions. My questions are: Should I change the structure of my interview for this kind of job? What questions do you ask to figure our if the applicant is test oriented? (Maybe I should provide a buggy implementation of a problem and let them find the bugs and then ask them about what tests they would have done) Regards,

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• How do i set the Transaction Isolation in EJB?

  - by Nitesh Panchal

  Hello, I am not able to find a way to set TransactionIsolation in ejb. Can anybody tell me how do i set it? I am using persistence. I have looked the following classes : EntityManager , EntityManagerFactory, UserTransaction. None of them seems to have any method like setTransactionIsolation or such. Do we need to change persistence.xml? I just read a book named Mastering EJB 3.0 4th edition. They gave a full 10 page theory about Isolation level that this problems occur and that occurs and such things but at the end they gave this paragraph :- "As we now know, the EJB standard does not deal with isolation levels directly, and rightly so. EJB is a component specification. It defines the behavior and contracts of a business component with clients and middleware infrastructure (containers) such that the component can be rendered as various middleware services properly. EJBs therefore are transactional components that interact with resource managers, such as the JDBC resource manager or JMS resource manager, via JTS, as part of a transaction. They are not, hence, resource components in themselves. Since isolation levels are very specific to the behavior and capabilities of the underlying resources, they should therefore be specified at the resource API levels. " What exactly does it mean? What is meant by resource level APIs? Please help me. If persistence has no way to set Isolation Level then why do they give such huge theory in an EJB book and make it heavy in weight unnecessarily :(

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• System Calls in windows & Native API?

  - by claws

  Recently I've been using lot of Assembly language in *NIX operating systems. I was wondering about the windows domain. Calling convention in linux: mov $SYS_Call_NUM, %eax mov $param1 , %ebx mov $param2 , %ecx int $0x80 Thats it. That is how we should make a system call in linux. Reference of all system calls in linux: Regarding which $SYS_Call_NUM & which parameters we can use this reference : http://docs.cs.up.ac.za/programming/asm/derick_tut/syscalls.html OFFICIAL Reference : http://kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/dir_section_2.html Calling convention in Windows: ??? Reference of all system calls in Windows: ??? Unofficial : http://www.metasploit.com/users/opcode/syscalls.html , but how do I use these in assembly unless I know the calling convention. OFFICIAL : ??? If you say, they didn't documented it. Then how is one going to write libc for windows without knowing system calls? How is one gonna do Windows Assembly programming? Atleast in the driver programming one needs to know these. right? Now, whats up with the so called Native API? Is Native API & System calls for windows both are different terms referring to same thing? In order to confirm I compared these from two UNOFFICIAL Sources System Calls: http://www.metasploit.com/users/opcode/syscalls.html Native API: http://undocumented.ntinternals.net/aindex.html My observations: All system calls are beginning with letters Nt where as Native API is consisting of lot of functions which are not beginning with letters Nt. System Call of windows are subset of Native API. System calls are just part of Native API. Can any one confirm this and explain.

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• BackOffice Database Application FrontEnd - Program in C#/VB.Net or PHP?

  - by HK1

  I'm working on a project where there will be a MySQL database containing data that will mostly be displayed on the web using PHP. However, there is a need here for a back-office data entry application (linked to the same MySQL database) that is feature rich and easy to use. what I'm trying to understand is where we are at with web-based frontends. I find that there are still so many events and features that I can make use of in a Windows Desktop GUI written in something like C#, VB.Net or MS Access. I don't have a lot of experience programming UI for web but it's my impression that it's still more difficult and takes longer to get similar or the same functionality using non-MS web technologies (I dislike ASP.net, sorry) as compared to programming the desktop portion in a traditional desktop application language like C#, VB.Net, or MS Access. jQuery and jQuery UI are definately making things easier. Also, there's very rich online applications like Google Docs and Zoho but it's my impression that these are programmed by some of the top web UI programmers around, not to mention that it takes longer to write it and intensive testing to make it work in all of your target browsers. It also takes extra time and code to "block" browsers that don't meet the requirements. What programming language would you recommend? I know I may not have given enough information here but I'm not sure what I'm missing. If you have questions just leave a comment below so I can edit this post and answer the questions.

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• Callbacks on GUI Thread

  - by miguel

  We have an external data provider which, in its construtor, takes a callback thread for returning data upon. There are some issues in the system which I am suspicious are related to threading, however, in theory they cannot be, due to the fact that the callbacks should all be returned on the same thread. My question is, does code like this require thread synchronisation? class Foo { ExternalDataProvider _provider; public Foo() { // This is the c'tor for the xternal data provider, taking a callback loop as param _provider = new ExternalDataProvider(UILoop); _provider.DataArrived += ExternalProviderCallbackMethod; } public ExternalProviderCallbackMethod() { var itemArray[] = new String[4] { "item1", "item2", "item3", "item4" }; for (int i = 0; i < itemArray.Length; i++) { string s = itemArray[i]; switch(s) { case "item1": DoItem1Action(); break; case "item2": DoItem2Action(); break; default: DoDefaultAction(); break; } } } } The issue is that, very infrequently, DoItem2Action is executingwhen DoItem1Action should be exectuing. Is it at all possible threading is at fault here? In theory, as all callbacks are arriving on the same thread, they should be serialized, right? So there should be no need for thread sync here?

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• All Callbacks on GUI Thread - Multithreading issues possible?

  - by miguel

  We have an external data provider which, in its construtor, takes a callback thread for returning data upon. There are some issues in the system which I am suspicious are related to threading, however, in theory they cannot be, due to the fact that the callbacks should all be returned on the same thread. My question is, does code like this require thread synchronisation? class Foo { ExternalDataProvider _provider; public Foo() { // This is the c'tor for the xternal data provider, taking a callback loop as param _provider = new ExternalDataProvider(UILoop); _provider.DataArrived += ExternalProviderCallbackMethod; } public ExternalProviderCallbackMethod(...) { //...(code omitted) var itemArray[] = new String[4] { "item1", "item2", "item3", "item4" }; for (int i = 0; i < itemArray.Length; i++) { string s = itemArray[i]; switch(s) { case "item1": DoItem1Action(); break; case "item2": DoItem2Action(); break; default: DoDefaultAction(); break; } //...(code omitted) } } } The issue is that, very infrequently, DoItem2Action is executingwhen DoItem1Action should be exectuing. Is it at all possible threading is at fault here? In theory, as all callbacks are arriving on the same thread, they should be serialized, right? So there should be no need for thread sync here?

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• Why C++ is (one of) the best language to learn at first [closed]

  - by AlexV

  C++ is one of the most used programming language in the world since like 25+ years. My first job as programmer was in C++ and I coded in C++ everyday for nearly 4 years. Now I do mostly PHP, but I will forever cherish this C++ background. C++ has helped me understand many "under the hood" features/behaviors/restrictions of many other (and different) programming languages like PHP and Delphi. I'm a full time programmer for 6+ years now and since I have a quite varied programming background I often get questions by "newbies" as where to start to become a "good" programmer. I think C++ is one of the best language to start with because it gives you a real usefull experience that will last and will teach you how things work under the hood. It's not the easier one to learn for a newbie, but in my opinion it's the one who will reward the most in long term. I would like to know your opinion on this matter to add to my arguments when I guide "newbies". After this introduction, here's my question : Why C++ is for you (one of) the best language to learn at first. Since it's subjective, I've marked this question as community wiki.

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• Type-safe generic data structures in plain-old C?

  - by Bradford Larsen

  I have done far more C++ programming than "plain old C" programming. One thing I sorely miss when programming in plain C is type-safe generic data structures, which are provided in C++ via templates. For sake of concreteness, consider a generic singly linked list. In C++, it is a simple matter to define your own template class, and then instantiate it for the types you need. In C, I can think of a few ways of implementing a generic singly linked list: Write the linked list type(s) and supporting procedures once, using void pointers to go around the type system. Write preprocessor macros taking the necessary type names, etc, to generate a type-specific version of the data structure and supporting procedures. Use a more sophisticated, stand-alone tool to generate the code for the types you need. I don't like option 1, as it is subverts the type system, and would likely have worse performance than a specialized type-specific implementation. Using a uniform representation of the data structure for all types, and casting to/from void pointers, so far as I can see, necessitates an indirection that would be avoided by an implementation specialized for the element type. Option 2 doesn't require any extra tools, but it feels somewhat clunky, and could give bad compiler errors when used improperly. Option 3 could give better compiler error messages than option 2, as the specialized data structure code would reside in expanded form that could be opened in an editor and inspected by the programmer (as opposed to code generated by preprocessor macros). However, this option is the most heavyweight, a sort of "poor-man's templates". I have used this approach before, using a simple sed script to specialize a "templated" version of some C code. I would like to program my future "low-level" projects in C rather than C++, but have been frightened by the thought of rewriting common data structures for each specific type. What experience do people have with this issue? Are there good libraries of generic data structures and algorithms in C that do not go with Option 1 (i.e. casting to and from void pointers, which sacrifices type safety and adds a level of indirection)?

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• Criteria for triggering garbage collection in .Net

  - by Kennet Belenky

  I've come across some curious behavior with regard to garbage collection in .Net. The following program will throw an OutOfMemoryException very quickly (after less than a second on a 32-bit, 2GB machine). The Foo finalizer is never called. class Foo { static Dictionary<Guid, WeakReference> allFoos = new Dictionary<Guid, WeakReference>(); Guid guid = Guid.NewGuid(); byte[] buffer = new byte[1000000]; static Random rand = new Random(); public Foo() { // Uncomment the following line and the program will run forever. // rand.NextBytes(buffer); allFoos[guid] = new WeakReference(this); } ~Foo() { allFoos.Remove(guid); } static public void Main(string args[]) { for (; ; ) { new Foo(); } } } If the rand.nextBytes line is uncommented, it will run ad infinitum, and the Foo finalizer is regularly invoked. Why is that? My best guess is that in the former case, either the CLR or the Windows VMM is lazy about allocating physical memory. The buffer never gets written to, so the physical memory is never used. When the address space runs out, the system crashes. In the latter case, the system runs out of physical memory before it runs out of address space, the GC is triggered and the objects are collected. However, here's the part I don't get. Assuming my theory is correct, why doesn't the GC trigger when the address space runs low? If my theory is incorrect, then what's the real explanation?

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• How to track a projects extraneous quirks

  - by Steerpike

  Hello, It's possible that the answer to this question may just be standard bug tracking software like jira or fogbugz, but I'm kind of hoping someone out there knows a better system for what I'm describing. My most current project is requiring a lot of setup quirkiness to get into a position where I can actually start a coding section. For example: A series of convoluted internal company commands before I can insitgate an SSH. Making sure any third party classes that make external calls have internal company proxy options setup - while also making sure these setting wont be set up when installed on a production environment Making sure the proxy is set before trying to install pear packages. Other similar things, mostly involving internal IT security and getting it to work with modules and packages. Individually none of these things is a huge deal, and I've written extensive notes to myself regarding exact commands and aditions I've made, but they're currently in a general text document and it's going to be hard to remember exactly where what I need is far down the line. We also have several new staff starting soon and I' rather give them an easier time of setting up their programming environments. Like I said, they aren't 'programming quirks' exactly, but just the constant fiddling that comes about before programming starts in earnest. Any thoughts on the best way to documents these things for my own and future generations sanity?

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• What choices do I have for a future in software development?

  - by user354892

  After graduating from college with a degree in mathematics and a minor in computer science, I took over a year to find my first programming job. I very much enjoy my work environment, but sometimes I feel like I'm not developing professionally as quickly as I am capable of. My company does mostly web programming. The project that I work on is basically a front-end for a SQL database. The entire project is (AFAIK) coded is VB.NET. I've been working on the back-end logic of the program. After some time on the job, we decided that designing web pages is not my cup of tea. It seems like the thing that I spend more time on than anything else is searching the web and SO for information about poorly documented .net and web APIs. This does not make me happy; is this normal for a programming job; I don't think it is. It really hit me the other day when i saw a question about math asked here and I didn't know the answer; I feel like my knowledge is going stale! I was previously almost hired by another company where they design graphic-intensive battle simulations for the military. I sometimes wonder what my life might be like if I had that job. I feel like my math and problem solving skills might have been a better fit at this other company. Within the wide field of software development, there are a number of directions in which to go as evidenced by the huge variety of topics discussed here on StackOverflow. I would like to feel like I'm going in the direction where I will make the most of my skills and have a satisfying career. Let me word this question as clearly as possible: given the wide breadth of the field of software development, how does it break down into sub-fields and what are the considerations for developing a software development career. I do not want to manage my career by default.

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