Search Results

Search found 14074 results on 563 pages for 'programmers'.

Page 261/563 | < Previous Page | 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268  | Next Page >

• Spreadsheet or writing an application?

  - by Lenny222

  When would you keep simple to medium-complex personal calculations in a spread sheet (Excel etc) and when would you write a small program or script for it? For example when you want to calculate what size of mortgage you can afford to buy a house. I could create a spreadsheet and have a nice tabular representation. On the other hand, if i would write a small script in a nice language (in my case Haskell), i'd have the security of a nice type system, preventing typos etc. What are the pro/cons in your opinion?

  Read the article

• Career Change Need Advice: Professional Web Developer

  - by bikedorkseattle

  I'm hoping to get some advice here on the steps I should take to make a career change into professional web development. I've been working in cancer research the last 14 years and I need a change. The job market is terrible, the pay is worse, and despite what one would think the atmosphere is generally un-collegial, even in your own group. Venture funding never returned after the dot com burst and with 3 to 5 wars our country is now in, NIH funding is only going to get worse. I know things are not going to get better for my field, sadly, and I know I need to move on. For probably just as long I have fiddled around with web development, I even run a fairly popular site with close to 1 million/month pageviews that pulls a decent income, but not stable enough to live off of right now. My skills are ok for being self taught. I enjoy the fast paced nature of the web and the tools the community creates and how eager people are to help and share knowledge; it's what science should be. I have been trying to find an entry level developer job doing standard HTML/CSS/PHP/MySQL/JS/jQuery type work. A good 50%+ of the jobs want someone with a CS degree, and most want 5 years experience. Having no professional experience and no formal education, I know I'm at a huge disadvantage. I am now considering my options on how to move forward professionally. The way I see it I have basically 3 options. Build up my portfolio of work as much as I can and continue to learn as much as I can on my own. Try to contribute on some open source project when time allows. Network like crazy and go to meetups. Be confident and pray a lot in private. OR While doing above, do some certification programs in PHP and Java, possibly others. Get a Zend Certification. OR Spend a few years getting a CS degree while doing 1. I've already done the work fulltime go to school thing and it doesn't excite me one bit. I didn't have the greatest college experience and am not too eager to return, but I have a family to feed. Is the degree really necessary or is it more of a right of passage type thing in most instances? I appreciate everyones input. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

  Read the article

• PHP/MySQL Database application development tool

  - by RCH

  I am an amateur PHP coder, and have built a couple of dozen projects from scratch (including fairly simple e-commerce systems with user authentication, PayPal integration etc - all coded by hand from a clean page. Have also done a price comparison engine that takes data from multiple sites etc.). But I am no expert with OO and other such advanced techniques - I just have a fairly decent grasp of the basics of data processing, logic, functions and trying to optimize code as much as possible. I just want to make this clear so you have some idea of where I'm coming from. I have a couple of fairly large new projects on my plate for corporate clients - both require bespoke database-driven applications with complex relationships, many tables and lots of different front-end functions to manipulate that data for the internal staff in these companies. I figured building these systems from scratch would probably be a huge waste of time. Instead, there must be tools out there that will allow me to construct MySQL databases and build the pages with things like pagination, action buttons, table construction etc. Some kind of database abstraction layer, or system generator, if you will. What tool do you recommend for such a purpose for someone at my level? Open source would be great, but I don't mind paying for something decent as well. Thanks for any advice.

  Read the article

• Rule of thumb for cost vs. savings for code re-use

  - by Styler

  Is it a good rule of thumb to always write code for the intent of re-using it somewhere down the road? Or, depending on the size of the component you are writing, is it better practice to design it for re-use when it makes sense with regards to time spent on it. What is a good rule of thumb for spending extra time on analysis and design on project components that have "some probability" of being needed later down the road for other things that may or may need this part. For example, if I have the need for project X to do things A, and B. A definitely needs to be written for re-use because it just makes sense to do so. B is very project specific at the moment, and I can hack it all together in a couple days to finish the project on time and give everyone kudos for being a great team, etc. Or if we say, lets spend a whole friggin' 2 weeks figuring out what project Y/Z might need this thing for and spend a load of extra time on on part B because someday we might need to use it on project Y/Z (where the savings will be realized). I'd imagine a perfect world situation would be a nicely crafted combination of project specific vs. re-use architected components given the project. However some code shops might feel it would be a great idea to write everything for the intention of using it at some point down the road.

  Read the article

• Why is programming sometimes viewed as a second-rate role?

  - by CaptainCodeman

  I've been a programmer for most of my life. I recently interviewed for a management job in a company and the interviewer looked at my CV asked me "How do we know you're not just a programmer". Which in my opinion is quite a rude thing to say, but it's not an isolated incident and I've heard other similar things in other settings. It does seem that for some reason being a programmer is viewed as having a lower station, especially in settings where they have a separate IT department which is viewed as a support role. Is a career in software development doomed to being a second-rate support citizen?

  Read the article

• Inspecting the model in a Rails application

  - by Matt Sherman

  I am learning some Ruby on Rails, and am a newbie. Most of my background is in ASP.net MVC on the back end. As I play with a basic scaffold project, I wonder about this case: you jump into an established Rails project and want to get to know the model. Based on what I have seen so far (again, simple scaffold), the properties for a given class are not immediately revealed. I don't see property accessors on the model classes. I do understand that this is because of the dynamic nature of Ruby and such things are not necessary or even perhaps desirable. Convention over code, I get that. (Am familiar with dynamic concepts, mostly via JS.) But if I am somewhere off in a view, and want to quickly know whether the (eg) Person object has a MiddleName property, how would I find that out? I don't have to go into the migrations, do I?

  Read the article

• Which languages are more conducive to telecommuting, and also less concerned with pairing?

  - by Dirk

  I don't know that it may even make a difference, and I reckon if it did the differences would be cultural rather than technical, but if one were going to set out today (2011) to learn a language, and specifically wanted to telecommute (so they could live in two different places during the year), are there any languages whose culture looks more favorably upon telecommuting than other languages / cultures? For example, I get the impression (and I am probably completely wrong) that in the Ruby community, you are more likely to be expected to be on-site and doing pair programming (though I suppose you can do pairing remotely too). As a corollary question, are there languages / communities where pair programming is less important, for people who wanted to program in part because they aren't social butterflies?

  Read the article

• Does TDD's "Obvious Implementation" mean code first, test after?

  - by natasky

  My friend and I are relatively new TDD and have a dispute about the "Obvious Implementation" technique (from "TDD By Example" by Kent Beck). My friend says it means that if the implementation is obvious, you should go ahead and write it - before any test for that new behavior. And indeed the book says: How do you implement simple operations? Just implement them. Also: Sometimes you are sure you know how to implement an operation. Go ahead. I think what the author means is you should test first, and then "just implement" it - as opposed to the "Fake It ('Till You Make It)" and other techniques, which require smaller steps in the implementation stage. Also after these quotes the author talks about getting "red bars" (failing tests) when doing "Obvious Implementation" - how can you get a red bar without a test?. Yet I couldn't find any quote from the book saying "obvious" still means test first. What do you think? Should we test first or after when the implementation is "obvious" (according to TDD, of course)? Do you know a book or blog post saying just that?

  Read the article

• Books or guides regarding secure key storage and database encryption

  - by Matty

  I have an idea for a SaaS product I want to create, however, this product will store extremely sensitive data that needs to be encrypted at rest. The trouble is not so much the encryption, but the problem of securely storing the keys so that in the event the server was somehow compromised, the keys couldn't just be recovered and used to decrypt the database. Are there any decent books to guides regarding database encryption, and in particular secure key storage? This seems to be a less than straightforward topic and something that is difficult to get right. I'm seeing multiple ways to attack such a system, but unable to come up with one that is secure enough to store highly confidential information.

  Read the article

• What if I can't make my unit test fail in "Red, Green, Refactor" of TDD?

  - by Joshua Harris

  So let's say that I have a test: @Test public void MoveY_MoveZero_DoesNotMove() { Point p = new Point(50.0, 50.0); p.MoveY(0.0); Assert.assertAreEqual(50.0, p.Y); } This test then causes me to create the class Point: public class Point { double X; double Y; public void MoveY(double yDisplace) { throw new NotYetImplementedException(); } } Ok. It fails. Good. Then I remove the exception and I get green. Great, but of course I need to test if it changes value. So I write a test that calls p.MoveY(10.0) and checks if p.Y is equal to 60.0. It fails, so then I change the function to look like so: public void MoveY(double yDisplace) { Y += yDisplace; } Great, now I have green again and I can move on. I've tested not moving and moving in the positive direction, so naturally I should test a negative value. The only problem with this test is that if I wrote the test correctly, then it doesn't fail at first. That means that I didn't fit the principle of "Red, Green, Refactor." Of course, This is a first-world problem of TDD, but getting a fail at first is helpful in that it shows that your test can fail. Otherwise this seemingly innocent test that is just passing for incorrect reasons could fail later because it was written wrong. That might not be a problem if it happened 5 minutes later, but what if it happens to the poor-sap that inheirited your code two years later. What he knows is that MoveY does not work with negative values because that is what the test is telling him. But, it really could work and just be a bug in the test. I don't think that would happen in this particular case because the code sample is so simple, but if it were a large complicated system that might not be the case. It seems crazy to say that I want to fail my tests, but that is an important step in TDD, for good reasons.

  Read the article

• Could someone help me understand SQL TDE Database encryption?

  - by SLC

  I don't quite follow how it works. According to the MSDN Article there is a big hierarchy of keys protecting other keys and passwords. At some point the database is encrypted. You query the database which is encrypted, and it works seamlessly. If you're able to simply connect to the database as normal and not have to worry about any of the encryption from a developer point of view, how exactly is it secure? Surely anyone can simply connect and do select * from x and the data is revealed. Sorry my question is a bit scattered, I am just very confused by the article.

  Read the article

• What is the best C++ interview question?

  - by David Thielen

  If you could ask a C++ programmer one question to measure their C++ skills, what would it be? The question I think is best is: Can you call "delete this;" inside a member function? (I put this as a link so you can think it through first, then go to The Best C++ Interview Question – Ever! to see the correct answer.) I don't ask this because I expect most people to know the answer. If they did it would not be that useful a question. I ask to see if they can work their way to the correct answer and how they do so.

  Read the article

• Building non (jsp/freemarker) template based website [on hold]

  - by Ismail Marmoush

  If my web app is supposed to work in one page, something like asana.com, and I wanted to make the whole website free of templates, meaning I would serve data and make js/mobile app call them, or even let other developers create new interfaces for it. So is it acceptable to have such a design for such a problem ? or you think I would eventually have use jsps/freemarker for a certain case. I found something when I started asking the right questions, here is it wiki: Single Page Application

  Read the article

• How does PHP5 fare with earlier versions of the language

  - by Pankaj Upadhyay

  I would like to learn PHP for web development but have been drawn back because of comments like the following*: PHP is good but generates spaghetti code PHP is nice but Python is marriage material PHP lacks stuff that you get in other languages like C# or Java But for PHP5 I have seen some promising comments. So, my question is: How does PHP5 fare with earlier versions of the language and is it good enough now to learn for web development. * Comments are just for reference not to incite a flame war. No comparison of PHP with other languages is asked for here. Please comment just on PHP5 and how it compares with earlier versions.

  Read the article

• Why is a linked list implementation considered linear?

  - by VeeKay

  My apologies for asking such a simple question. Instead of posting such basic question in SO, I felt that this is more apt a question here. I tried finding an answer for this but none of them are logically appealing or convincing to my understanding. Typically, computer memory is always linear. So is the term non linear used for a data structure in a logical sense? If so, to logically achieve non linearity in a linear computer memory, we use pointers. Right? In that case, if pointers are virtual implementations for achieving non linearity, Why would a data structure like linked list be considered linear if in reality the nodes are never physically adjacent?

  Read the article

• How do you encode Algebraic Data Types in a C#- or Java-like language?

  - by Jörg W Mittag

  There are some problems which are easily solved by Algebraic Data Types, for example a List type can be very succinctly expressed as: data ConsList a = Empty | ConsCell a (ConsList a) consmap f Empty = Empty consmap f (ConsCell a b) = ConsCell (f a) (consmap f b) l = ConsCell 1 (ConsCell 2 (ConsCell 3 Empty)) consmap (+1) l This particular example is in Haskell, but it would be similar in other languages with native support for Algebraic Data Types. It turns out that there is an obvious mapping to OO-style subtyping: the datatype becomes an abstract base class and every data constructor becomes a concrete subclass. Here's an example in Scala: sealed abstract class ConsList[+T] { def map[U](f: T => U): ConsList[U] } object Empty extends ConsList[Nothing] { override def map[U](f: Nothing => U) = this } final class ConsCell[T](first: T, rest: ConsList[T]) extends ConsList[T] { override def map[U](f: T => U) = new ConsCell(f(first), rest.map(f)) } val l = (new ConsCell(1, new ConsCell(2, new ConsCell(3, Empty))) l.map(1+) The only thing needed beyond naive subclassing is a way to seal classes, i.e. a way to make it impossible to add subclasses to a hierarchy. How would you approach this problem in a language like C# or Java? The two stumbling blocks I found when trying to use Algebraic Data Types in C# were: I couldn't figure out what the bottom type is called in C# (i.e. I couldn't figure out what to put into class Empty : ConsList< ??? >) I couldn't figure out a way to seal ConsList so that no subclasses can be added to the hierarchy What would be the most idiomatic way to implement Algebraic Data Types in C# and/or Java? Or, if it isn't possible, what would be the idiomatic replacement?

  Read the article

• Teaching OO to VBA developers [closed]

  - by Eugene

  I work with several developers that come from less object oriented background like (VB6, VBA) and are mostly self-taught. As part of moving away from those technologies we recently we started having weekly workshops to go over the features of C#.NET and OO practices and design principles. After a couple of weeks of basic introduction I noticed that they had a lot of problems implementing even basic code. For instance it took probably 15 minutes to implement a Stack.push() and a full hour to implement a simple Stack fully. These developers were trying to do things like passing top index as a parameter to the method, not creating an private array, using variables out of scope. But most of all not going through the "design (dia/mono)log" (I need something to do X, so maybe I'll make an array, or put it here). I am a little confused because they are smart people and are able to produce functional code in their traditional environments. I'm curious if anybody else has encountered a similar thing and if there are any particular resources, exercises, books, ideas that would be helpful in this circumstance.

  Read the article

• Technology Choice for a Client Application [on hold]

  - by AK_

  Not sure this is the right place to ask... I'm involved in the development of a new system, and now we are passing the demos stage. We need to build a proper client application. The platform we care most about is Windows, for now at least, but we would love to support other platforms, as long as it's free :-). Or at least very cheap. We anticipate two kinds of users: Occasional, coming mostly from the web. Professional, who would probably require more features, and better performance, and probably would prefer to see a native client. Our server exposes two APIs: A SOAP API, WCF behind the scenes, that supports 100% of the functionality. A small and very fast UDP + Binary API, that duplicates some of the functionality and is intended for the sake of performance for certain real-time scenarios. Our team is mostly proficient in .Net, C#, C++ development, and rather familiar with Web development (HTML, JavaScript). We are probably intending to develop two clients (for both user profiles), a web app, and a native app. Architecturally, we would like to have as many common components as possible. We would like to have several layers: Communication, Client Model, Client Logic, shared by both of the clients. We would also like to be able to add features to both clients when only the actual UI is a dual cost, and the rest is shared. We are looking at several technologies: WPF + Silverlight, Pure HTML, Flash / Flex (AIR?), Java (JavaFx?), and we are considering poking at WinRT(or whatever the proper name is). The question is which technology would you recommend and why? And which advantages or disadvantages will it have regarding our requirements?

  Read the article

• Is it a waste of time to free resources before I exit a process?

  - by Martin

  Let's consider a fictional program that builds a linked list in the heap, and at the end of the program there is a loop that frees all the nodes, and then exits. For this case let's say the linked list is just 500K of memory, and no special space managing is required. Is that a wast of time, because the OS will do that anyway? Will there be a different behavior later? Is that different according to the OS version? I'm mainly interested in UNIX based systems, but any information will be appreciated. I had today my first lesson in OS course and I'm wondering about that now.

  Read the article

• I studied electrical engineering. Can I work as a developer? [closed]

  - by FailedDev

  A while ago I finished my Msc in Electrical Engineering and started working as an engineering consultant where I mostly do development work. I am good at picking up languages/technologies tools. I have fiddled with C/C++/C#/perl/ant/bash/html/css etc. Although I have never had a complain for my work, rather the contrary, I just feel that some day, someone will ask me a real hard task which would maybe seem rather trivial for a computer scientist but hard for me. Should I read/do something to become a better developer. Should I pick up a book about design patterns or algorithms for example? Is this normal that I have this kind of "fear"? Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this question. Please notify me so I can close it if this is the case.

  Read the article

• Personal Software Process (PSP1)

  - by gentoo_drummer

  I'm trying to figure out an exercise but it doesn't really makes to much sense.. I'm not asking someone to provide the solution. just to try and analyse what needs to be done in order to solve this. I'm trying to understand which PSP 1.0 1.1 process I should use. PROBE? Or something else? I would greatly appreciate some help on this one from someone that has experience with the Personal Software Process Methodology.. Here is the question. For the reference case (“code1.c”), the following s/w metrics are provided: man-hours spent in implementation phase (per-module): 2,7 mh/file man-hours spent in testing phase (per-module): 4,3 mh/file estimated number of bugs remaining (per-module): 0,3 errors/function, 4 errors/module (remaining) Based on the corresponding values provided for the reference case, each of the following tasks focus on some s/w metrics to be estimated for the test case (“code2.c”): [25 marks] (estimated) man-hours required in implementation phase (per-module) [8 marks] (estimated) man-hours required in testing phase (per-module) [8 marks] (estimated) number of bugs remaining at the end of testing phase (per-module) [9 marks] Tasks 4 through 6 should use the data provided for the reference case within the context of Personal Software Process level-1 (PSP-1), using them as a single-point historic data log. Specifically, the same s/w metrics are to be estimated for the test case (“code2.c”), using PSP as the basic estimation model. In order to perform the above listed tasks, students are advised to consider all phases of the PSP software development process, especially at levels PSP0 and PSP1. Both cases are to be treated as separate case-studies in the context of classic s/w development.

  Read the article

• Understanding Data Binding for Windows Phone 7

  - by nikhil

  I want to develop a simple app for the Windows Phone 7 platform. It's basically a vocabulary based game that involves the user moving word tiles from one area to another to score points. I want to know what is the best way of tying the UI to the game's backend? I saw the Windows Phone 7 jumpstart videos, there they touch up on Data Binding but don't really go into any depth. I'm a newbie and don't have any experience with designing the architecture for a phone app, It'd be great if someone could explain what steps I should be taking or guide me to a resource from where I could learn more.

  Read the article

• Good design for a simple site that contains a blog

  - by bporter

  What is a good design for a simple web site with mostly static pages and a blog? I am helping a friend build this for their small business. We are looking for a simple approach that can be implemented fairly quickly. (I am a programmer and can help with coding, hosting, etc.) One option is to use a site like virb, which lets you choose from one of their themes and build a site pretty easily. You can also include a blog. They host the site for a pretty low monthly rate. I recommended this option, but my friend wants a design that is unique and custom. So, I took one of the themes and started modifying the HTML and CSS. This might still be a good option, but... ...If we are going to greatly modify it, why not just create the static pages from scratch and use something like Wordpress for the blog. Is this a good option? It looks fairly easy to integrate Wordpress with a site so that the design and behavior are really cohesive. Is this a good idea? Do you recommend any other approaches?

  Read the article

• Is there a quasi-standard set of attributes to annotate thread safety, immutability etc.?

  - by Eugene Beresovksy

  Except for a blog post here and there, describing the custom attributes someone created, but that do not seem to get any traction - like one describing how to enforce immutability, another one on Documenting Thread Safety, modeling the attributes after JCIP annotations - is there any standard emerging? Anything MS might be planning for the future? This is something that should be standard, if there's to be any chance of interoperability between libraries concurrency-wise. Both for documentation purposes, and also to feed static / dynamic test tools. If MS isn't doing anything in that direction, it could be done on CodePlex - but I couldn't find anything there, either. <opinion>Concurrency and thread safety are really hard in imperative and object-languages like C# and Java, we should try to tame it, until we hopefully switch to more appropriate languages.</opinion>

  Read the article

• Alternative way of developing for ASP.NET to WebForms - Any problems with this?

  - by John

  So I have been developing in ASP.NET WebForms for some time now but often get annoyed with all the overhead (like ViewState and all the JavaScript it generates), and the way WebForms takes over a lot of the HTML generation. Sometimes I just want full control over the markup and produce efficient HTML of my own so I have been experimenting with what I like to call HtmlForms. Essentially this is using ASP.NET WebForms but without the form runat="server" tag. Without this tag, ASP.NET does not seem to add anything to the page at all. From some basic tests it seems that it runs well and you still have the ability to use code-behind pages, and many ASP.NET controls such as repeaters. Of course without the form runat="server" many controls won't work. A post at Enterprise Software Development lists the controls that do require the tag. From that list you will see that all of the form elements like TextBoxes, DropDownLists, RadioButtons, etc cannot be used. Instead you use normal HTML form controls. But how do you access these HTML controls from the code behind? Retrieving values on post back is easy, you just use Request.QueryString or Request.Form. But passing data to the control could be a little messy. Do you use a ASP.NET Literal control in the value field or do you use <%= value % in the markup page? I found it best to add runat="server" to my HTML controls and then you can access the control in your code-behind like this: ((HtmlInputText)txtName).Value = "blah"; Here's a example that shows what you can do with a textbox and drop down list: Default.aspx <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="NoForm.Default" %> <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="NoForm.Default" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form action="" method="post"> <label for="txtName">Name:</label> <input id="txtName" name="txtName" runat="server" /><br /> <label for="ddlState">State:</label> <select id="ddlState" name="ddlState" runat="server"> <option value=""></option> </select><br /> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </form> </body> </html> Default.aspx.cs using System; using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; namespace NoForm { public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { //Default values string name = string.Empty; string state = string.Empty; if (Request.RequestType == "POST") { //If form submitted (post back) name = Request.Form["txtName"]; state = Request.Form["ddlState"]; //Server side form validation would go here //and actions to process form and redirect } ((HtmlInputText)txtName).Value = name; ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("ACT")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("NSW")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("NT")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("QLD")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("SA")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("TAS")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("VIC")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("WA")); if (((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.FindByValue(state) != null) ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Value = state; } } } As you can see, you have similar functionality to ASP.NET server controls but more control over the final markup, and less overhead like ViewState and all the JavaScript ASP.NET adds. Interestingly you can also use HttpPostedFile to handle file uploads using your own input type="file" control (and necessary form enctype="multipart/form-data"). So my question is can you see any problems with this method, and any thoughts on it's usefulness? I have further details and tests on my blog.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268  | Next Page >