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• Check parameters annotated with @Nonnull for null?

  - by David Harkness

  We've begun using FindBugs with and annotating our parameters with @Nonnull appropriately, and it works great to point out bugs early in the cycle. So far we have continued checking these arguments for null using Guava's checkNotNull, but I would prefer to check for null only at the edges--places where the value can come in without having been checked for null, e.g., a SOAP request. // service layer accessible from outside public Person createPerson(@CheckForNull String name) { return new Person(Preconditions.checkNotNull(name)); } ... // internal constructor accessed only by the service layer public Person(@Nonnull String name) { this.name = Preconditions.checkNotNull(name); // remove this check? } I understand that @Nonnull does not block null values itself. However, given that FindBugs will point out anywhere a value is transferred from an unmarked field to one marked @Nonnull, can't we depend on it to catch these cases (which it does) without having to check these values for null everywhere they get passed around in the system? Am I naive to want to trust the tool and avoid these verbose checks? Bottom line: While it seems safe to remove the second null check below, is it bad practice? This question is perhaps too similar to Should one check for null if he does not expect null, but I'm asking specifically in relation to the @Nonnull annotation.

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• Overwhelmed by complex C#/ASP.NET project in Visual Studio 2008

  - by Darren Cook

  I have been hired as a junior programmer to work on projects that extend existing functionality in a very large, complex solution. The code base consists of C#, ASP.NET, jQuery, javascript, html and xml. I have some knowledge of all these in addition to fair knowledge of object-oriented programming and its fundamental concepts of inheritance, abstraction, polymorphism and encapsulation. I can follow code up through its base classes, interfaces, abstract classes and understand a large part of the code that I read while doing this. However, this solution is so humongous and so many things get tied together whenever I navigate through the code that I feel absolutely overwhelmed. I often find myself unable to fully follow everything that is going on with objects being serialized, large amounts of C# and javascript operating on the same pages and methods being called from template files that consist mainly of markup. I love learning about code, but trying to deal with this really stresses me out. Additionally, I do know that a significant amount of unit testing has been done but I know nothing about unit testing or how to utilize it. Any advice anyone could offer me regarding dealing with a large code base while using Visual Studio 2008 would be greatly appreciated. Are there tools that I can use to help get a handle on what is going on? Perhaps there are things even in Visual Studio that I am not aware of. How can I follow the code to low level functionality in order to get a better grasp of what is going on at a high level?

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• What triggered the popularity of lambda functions in modern programming languages?

  - by Giorgio

  In the last few years anonymous functions (AKA lambda functions) have become a very popular language construct and almost every major / mainstream programming language has introduced them or is planned to introduce them in an upcoming revision of the standard. Yet, anonymous functions are a very old and very well-known concept in Mathematics and Computer Science (invented by the mathematician Alonzo Church around 1936, and used by the Lisp programming language since 1958, see e.g. here). So why didn't today's mainstream programming languages (many of which originated 15 to 20 years ago) support lambda functions from the very beginning and only introduced them later? And what triggered the massive adoption of anonymous functions in the last few years? Is there some specific event, new requirement or programming technique that started this phenomenon?

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• How to make a non-english clone of CoffeeScript?

  - by Ans

  I want to make a non-english programming language that is identical to what CoffeeScript is to JavaScript. What I mean is that I don't want to build my own design or syntax. Just want to have a non-english programming language that compiles to JavaScript. I want to follow everything CoffeeScript fellows so I don't really want to make any design decisions. For example: This is coffeescript: number = 42 opposite = true number = -42 if opposite I want my language to be something like: ??? = 42 ??? = ???? ??? = -42 ??? ??? that get compiled to: var number, opposite; number = 42; opposite = true; if (opposite) { number = -42; }

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• Getting into C# and MVC4 coming from Javascript

  - by Stefan V.

  Let me know if this is the wrong place to ask this but, I am trying to get into a backend/server language coming from a front-end javascript background (vanilla, angular, jQuery and a bit of node and mongodb, also some experience with PHP and MySQL). Why C#? My company's entire server-side is MVC4. Occasionally, I am going through commits of the backend guys and have asked them all sorts of questions. A lot of what I have heard and seen just seems appealing. Anyway, I'd rather start with C# first and gradually adopt .NET MVC. Does anybody advice, tips, recommended books, etc for somebody trying to learn C# coming from a JS background?

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• The best way to have a pointer to several methods - critique requested

  - by user827992

  I'm starting with a short introduction of what i know from the C language: a pointer is a type that stores an adress or a NULL the * operator reads the left value of the variable on its right and use this value as address and reads the value of the variable at that address the & operator generate a pointer to the variable on its right so i was thinking that in C++ the pointers can work this way too, but i was wrong, to generate a pointer to a static method i have to do this: #include <iostream> class Foo{ public: static void dummy(void){ std::cout << "I'm dummy" << std::endl; }; }; int main(){ void (*p)(); p = Foo::dummy; // step 1 p(); p = &(Foo::dummy); // step 2 p(); p = Foo; // step 3 p->dummy(); return(0); } now i have several questions: why step 1 works why step 2 works too, looks like a "pointer to pointer" for p to me, very different from step 1 why step 3 is the only one that doesn't work and is the only one that makes some sort of sense to me, honestly how can i write an array of pointers or a pointer to pointers structure to store methods ( static or non-static from real objects ) what is the best syntax and coding style for generating a pointer to a method?

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• Help me get started in TDD for web development

  - by Snow_Mac

  I've done a tiny, tiny bit of TDD in building an app for a company that I interned with. We used lots of mocking and wrote lots of assert statements, after reading lots of blogs, I'm convinced that TDD is the way to go, but how do you go about TDD web applications? My main framework is Yii in PHP. My main questions are: What do you test? Models? Controllers? Views? How do you know if the output is correct? All my web apps interact with a DB, are there cavets to that and gotchas? Can I do testing in Netbeans? Can you test form elements or just strictly objects & methods?

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• Syntax of passing lambda

  - by Astara

  Right now, I'm working on refactoring a program that calls its parts by polling to a more event-driven structure. I've created sched and task classes with the sced to become a base class of the current main loop. The tasks will be created for each meter so they can be called off of that instead of polling. Each of the events main calls are a type of meter that gather info and display it. When the program is coming up, all enabled meters get 'constructed' by a main-sub. In that sub, I want to store off the "this" pointer associated with the meter, as well as the common name for the "action routine. void MeterMaker::Meter_n_Task (Meter * newmeter,) { push(newmeter); // handle non-timed draw events Task t = new Task(now() + 0.5L); t.period={0,1U}; t.work_meter = newmeter; t.work = [&newmeter](){newmeter.checkevent();};<<--attempt at lambda t.flags = T_Repeat; t.enable_task(); _xos->sched_insert(t); } A sample call to it: Meter_n_Task(new CPUMeter(_xos, "CPU ")); 've made the scheduler a base class of the main routine (that handles the loop), and I've tried serveral variations to get the task class to be a base of the meter class, but keep running into roadblocks. It's alot like "whack-a-mole" -- pound in something to fix something one place, and then a new probl pops out elsewhere. Part of the problem, is that the sched.h file that is trying to hold the Task Q, includes the Task header file. The task file Wants to refer to the most "base", Meter class. The meter class pulls in the main class of the parent as it passes a copy of the parent to the children so they can access the draw routines in the parent. Two references in the task file are for the 'this' pointer of the meter and the meter's update sub (to be called via this). void *this_data= NULL; void (*this_func)() = NULL; Note -- I didn't really want to store these in the class, as I wanted to use a lamdba in that meter&task routine above to store a routine+context to be used to call the meter's action routine. Couldn't figure out the syntax. But am running into other syntax problems trying to store the pointers...such as g++: COMPILE lsched.cc In file included from meter.h:13:0, from ltask.h:17, from lsched.h:13, from lsched.cc:13: xosview.h:30:47: error: expected class-name before ‘{’ token class XOSView : public XWin, public Scheduler { Like above where it asks for a class, where the classname "Scheduler" is. !?!? Huh? That IS a class name. I keep going in circles with things that don't make sense... Ideally I'd get the lamba to work right in the Meter_n_Task routine at the top. I wanted to only store 1 pointer in the 'Task' class that was a pointer to my lambda that would have already captured the "this" value ... but couldn't get that syntax to work at all when I tried to start it into a var in the 'Task' class. This project, FWIW, is my teething project on the new C++... (of course it's simple!.. ;-))... I've made quite a bit of progress in other areas in the code, but this lambda syntax has me stumped...its at times like thse that I appreciate the ease of this type of operation in perl. Sigh. Not sure the best way to ask for help here, as this isn't a simple question. But thought I'd try!... ;-) Too bad I can't attach files to this Q.

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• How to verify that all files are intact prior to install?

  - by Kalle H. Väravas

  I'm working on my CMS (in PHP platform) for a long time now. The main program is done and I'm currently developing the Installer part. Installation itself will be fairly simple: Upload all files Verify that the "content/" dir has correct permissions Check if ALL files are intact and not modified [This is the subject of this question] Insert the config data and first settings Run install (Generate all DB tables and insert sample data etc.) Now the question-mark is at step 3. How do I verify ALL files? Verification itself should compare all CMS root-directories files against a list from remote location. List should contain filename, filesize and filetype. This way the user can check, that there are no unnecessary or corrupted files, that could indicated a breach in the software. I have seen some software installers do that, but I cannot find any right now and there for I'm clueless on the most optimal method for this. Of course there always is a simple array trick, but there surely must be a better and faster method?!

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• What are the downsides of leaving automation tags in production code?

  - by joshin4colours

  I've been setting up debug tags for automated testing of a GWT-based web application. This involves turning on custom debug id tags/attributes for elements in the source of the app. It's a non-trivial task, particularly for larger, more complex web applications. Recently there's been some discussion of whether enabling such debug ids is a good idea to do across the board. Currently the debug ids are only turned on in development and testing servers, not in production. There have been points raised that enabling debug ids does cause performance to take a hit, and that debug ids in production may lead to security issues. What are benefits of doing this? Are there any significant risks for turning on debug tags in production code?

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• SQL: empty string vs NULL value

  - by Jacek Prucia

  I know this subject is a bit controversial and there are a lot of various articles/opinions floating around the internet. Unfortunatelly, most of them assume the person doesn't know what the difference between NULL and empty string is. So they tell stories about surprising results with joins/aggregates and generally do a bit more advanced SQL lessons. By doing this, they absolutely miss the whole point and are therefore useless for me. So hopefully this question and all answers will move subject a bit forward. Let's suppose I have a table with personal information (name, birth, etc) where one of the columns is an email address with varchar type. We assume that for some reason some people might not want to provide an email address. When inserting such data (without email) into the table, there are two available choices: set cell to NULL or set it to empty string (''). Let's assume that I'm aware of all the technical implications of choosing one solution over another and I can create correct SQL queries for either scenario. The problem is even when both values differ on the technical level, they are exactly the same on logical level. After looking at NULL and '' I came to a single conclusion: I don't know email address of the guy. Also no matter how hard i tried, I was not able to sent an e-mail using either NULL or empty string, so apparently most SMTP servers out there agree with my logic. So i tend to use NULL where i don't know the value and consider empty string a bad thing. After some intense discussions with colleagues i came with two questions: am I right in assuming that using empty string for an unknown value is causing a database to "lie" about the facts? To be more precise: using SQL's idea of what is value and what is not, I might come to conclusion: we have e-mail address, just by finding out it is not null. But then later on, when trying to send e-mail I'll come to contradictory conclusion: no, we don't have e-mail address, that @!#$ Database must have been lying! Is there any logical scenario in which an empty string '' could be such a good carrier of important information (besides value and no value), which would be troublesome/inefficient to store by any other way (like additional column). I've seen many posts claiming that sometimes it's good to use empty string along with real values and NULLs, but so far haven't seen a scenario that would be logical (in terms of SQL/DB design). P.S. Some people will be tempted to answer, that it is just a matter of personal taste. I don't agree. To me it is a design decision with important consequences. So i'd like to see answers where opion about this is backed by some logical and/or technical reasons.

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• If PHP websites represnt 70% of websites in my country then should I learn it?

  - by Fadi Tiwari

  In my country most of the sites are built using PHP and MySQL. Half of those sites use vbulletin and Wordpress. When it comes to companies, ministries and universities they use ASP.NET. I am not sure what should I learn to get more money as freelacer? Should I learn ASP.NET and focus my area to build companies and universities' sites? (And the question if they will know me one day and ask me to build any of their sites or not?) Or should I learn PHP and focus my business on people's sites and maybe some small formal sites? Which option will give me more money?

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• What is the proper name for this design pattern in Python?

  - by James

  In Python, is the proper name for the PersonXXX class below PersonProxy, PersonInterface, etc? import rest class PersonXXX(object): def __init__(self,db_url): self.resource = rest.Resource(db_url) def create(self,person): self.resource.post(person.data()) def get(self): pass def update(self): pass def delete(self): pass class Person(object): def __init__(self,name, age): self.name = name self.age = age def data(self): return dict(name=self.name,age=self.age)

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• Metaobject protocol:Why is it known as an important concept

  - by sushant

  Metaobject protocol is protocol for metaobjects in a programming languages. Although I understand it on simple terms, I want to know the reason and a summary of real world usage patterns of this protocol. So, why exactly is metaobject and more importantly metaobject protocol is such a good idea. I want to know the problem which led to its evolution and also, its high power usage. Opinions as well as general overview/description/alternate explanations are also welcome.

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• What are the common mistakes in 'tailored Scrum approaches'?

  - by Clark Gable

  I have seen this before. Management wants to be agile and be scrummified, but does not want to step out of the status quo. My latest observation is no different; here, the Scrum is 'tailored' to the organization; specifically into a weird many-people-process. The diagram showing the different participants. I am putting together a document listing why this will not work. Here are the obvious ones: 1. There are product owner agents (an obvious WTF), who report to the product owner: causing dilution of decision making capability 2. There is a role that looks similar to a manager in the traditional approach - development manager: an obvious attempt at command-and-control model 3. The ScrumMaster's role includes collecting timesheets, which are used to track progress instead of burndown charts: detrimental to agile's efforts to build teams with motivated individuals Leaving the question "how would you convince the management?", my question is more at, "what else do you see as failures in this/similar 'tailored Scrum approaches'? EDIT: The diagram might use a few more details 1. The development manager is not part of the development team, with not very clearly defined responsibilities, except: developer performance assessemnt, recruitment, etc., 2. There are more than two teams (with ScrumMaster+development manager+dev team) with the same product owner for all teams!

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• How to connect to a WCF service using IP of the host machine where the service is hosted?

  - by Kumar

  I have a secured WCF service (https://<MachineName>:sslport/services) self hosted in a machine. Different instances of same service are deployed in differnt machines. From a client app, I am able to connect to theses services through code, i.e. using ChannelFactory() with the same endpoint address. But if I try to access the service using the endpoint address as https://<ipAddress>:sslport/services replacing machines name with machine IP address, I am getting some error stating "could not establish trust relationship". I know this is an error caused by SSL certificate that it could not establish a trust relationship. Are there any settings or any possibilities to make this work?

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• How do you handle increasingly long compile times when working with templates?

  - by Ghita

  I use Visual Studio 2012 and he have cases where we added templates parameters to a class "just" in order to introduce a "seam point" so that in unit-test we can replace those parts with mock objects. How do you usually introduce seam points in C++: using interfaces and/or mixing based on some criteria with implicit interfaces by using templates parameters also ? One reason to ask this is also because when compiling sometimes a single C++ file (that includes templates files, that could also include other templates) results in an object file being generated that takes in the order of around 5-10 seconds on a developer machine. VS compiler is also not particularly fast on compiling templates as far as I understand, and because of the templates inclusion model (you practically include the definition of the template in every file that uses it indirectly and possibly re-instantiate that template every time you modify something that has nothing to do with that template) you could have problems with compile times (when doing incremental compiling). What are your ways of handling incremental(and not only) compile time when working with templates (besides a better/faster compiler :-)).

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• What to expect during an interview with Senior Development Exec?

  - by Umanga

  I passed first two technical interviews at a global e-commerce company for the position of Senior Software Engineer. I was told that there are two more interviews ,one with "Senior Development Exec" and another with "HR". 1) I am wondering what kind of questions I should expect during the interview with "Senior Development Exec"? Is is technical,high level architecture related ..etc? 2) During HR interviews,is it Ok to ask about the work-life balance and actual working hours?

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• Writing or extending existing emacs packages: is it worth or should I move to Netbeans/Eclipse?

  - by Andrea

  I'm finishing my master degree course in CS and I've almost become addicted to Emacs. I've used it to write in C, Latex, Java, JSP,XML, CommonLisp, Ada and other languages no other editor supported, like AMPL. I'd like to improve the packages I've been using the most or create new ones, but, in practice, I find that the implementation of Emacs leaves a lot to be desired. There are a lot of poorly-featured/poorly-maintained packages with either overlapping functionalities or obscure incompatibilities, and Elisp just seems to foster the situation by lacking the common features modern lisps have. In contrast Eclipse and Netbeans are actively improved and it does seem they can be effective for non-mainstream languages. I tried Hibachi for Ada in Eclipse and it worked well, there's CUPS for Lisp in Eclipse and LambdaBeans built using NetBeans components. On the other hand those plugins seem to be less active than their Emacs' counterparts, for example Hibachi was archived last year. What's your opinion on this? Which editor should I write extension for? EDIT: To answer Larry Coleman (see comment below): I like Emacs as a user because it is efficient both for me and the computer I'm using. It's fast and the textual interface (i.e. minibuffer) allows for quick interaction. It's solid and packages are usually small and easy to manage. If I need to correct or remove something I usually just have to change a row in my .emacs or an elisp file, or delete a directory. Eclipse plugins rely on a more complicated process that screwed my Eclipse configuration a couple of times, forcing me to do a clean reinstall. Emacs works as long as I use the basic packages. If I need something more complicated the situation gets pretty hairy. As a "power user" I think that the best I can hope for is to write a severely crippled version of the extensions I'd actually like to have; in other words, that it's not worth the trouble. I'd like to write extensions for the things I'd like to have automated in Emacs, for example project support with automated tag-table update on file writing. There are a few projects on this that lack integration, documentation, extensibility and so forth. The best one is probably CEDET, for which I believe the Greenspun's 10th rule can be applied. EDIT: To comment Larry Coleman's answer I'm pretty sure I can pick elisp programming but the extensions I have in mind don't exist yet despite their relative simplicity and the effort more knowledgeable people poured into related projects.This makes me wonder whether it is so because of the way emacs is developed, i.e. people tend to write their own little extensions without coordination, or its implementation, its extension language not being able to keep up with the growing complexity.

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• EJB Lifecycle and Relation to WARs

  - by Adam Tannon

  I've been reading up on EJBs (3.x) and believe I understand the basics. This question is a "call for confirmation" that I have interpreted the Java EE docs correctly and that I understand these fundamental concepts: An EJB is to an App Container as a Web App (WAR) is to a Web Container Just like you deploy a WAR to a Web Container, and that container manages your WAR's life cycle, you deploy an EJB to an App Container, and the container manages your EJB's life cycle When the App Container fires up and deploys an EJB, it is given a unique "identifier" and URL that can be used by JNDI to look up the EJB from another tier (like the web tier) So, when your web app wants to invoke one of your EJB's methods, it looks the EJB up using some kind of service locator (JNDI) and invoke the method that way Am I on-track or way off-base here? Please correct me & clarify for me if any of these are incorrect. Thanks in advance!

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• In which object should I implement wait()/notify()?

  - by Christopher Francisco

  I'm working in an Android project with multithreading. Basically I have to wait to the server to respond before sending more data. The data sending task is delimited by the flag boolean hasServerResponded so the Thread will loop infinitely without doing anything until the flag becomes true. Since this boolean isn't declared as volatile (yet), and also looping without doing anything wastes resources, I thought maybe I should use AtomicBoolean and also implement wait() / notify() mechanism. Should I use the AtomicBoolean object notify() and wait() methods or should I create a lock Object?

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• Updating an Entity through a Service

  - by GeorgeK

  I'm separating my software into three main layers (maybe tiers would be a better term): Presentation ('Views') Business logic ('Services' and 'Repositories') Data access ('Entities' (e.g. ActiveRecords)) What do I have now? In Presentation, I use read-only access to Entities, returned from Repositories or Services, to display data. $banks = $banksRegistryService->getBanksRepository()->getBanksByCity( $city ); $banksViewModel = new PaginatedList( $banks ); // some way to display banks; // example, not real code I find this approach quite efficient in terms of performance and code maintanability and still safe as long as all write operations (create, update, delete) are preformed through a Service: namespace Service\BankRegistry; use Service\AbstractDatabaseService; use Service\IBankRegistryService; use Model\BankRegistry\Bank; class Service extends AbstractDatabaseService implements IBankRegistryService { /** * Registers a new Bank * * @param string $name Bank's name * @param string $bik Bank's Identification Code * @param string $correspondent_account Bank's correspondent account * * @return Bank */ public function registerBank( $name, $bik, $correspondent_account ) { $bank = new Bank(); $bank -> setName( $name ) -> setBik( $bik ) -> setCorrespondentAccount( $correspondent_account ); if( null === $this->getBanksRepository()->getDefaultBank() ) $this->setDefaultBank( $bank ); $this->getEntityManager()->persist( $bank ); return $bank; } /** * Makes the $bank system's default bank * * @param Bank $bank * @return IBankRegistryService */ public function setDefaultBank( Bank $bank ) { $default_bank = $this->getBanksRepository()->getDefaultBank(); if( null !== $default_bank ) $default_bank->setDefault( false ); $bank->setDefault( true ); return $this; } } Where am I stuck? I'm struggling about how to update certain fields in Bank Entity. Bad solution #1: Making a series of setters in Service for each setter in Bank; - seems to be quite reduntant, increases Service interface complexity and proportionally decreases it's simplicity - something to avoid if you care about code maitainability. I try to follow KISS and DRY principles. Bad solution #2: Modifying Bank directly through it's native setters; - really bad. If you'll ever need to move modification into the Service, it will be pain. Business logic should remain in Business logic layer. Plus, there are plans on logging all of the actions and maybe even involve user permissions (perhaps, through decorators) in future, so all modifications should be made only through the Service. Possible good solution: Creating an updateBank( Bank $bank, $array_of_fields_to_update) method; - makes the interface as simple as possible, but there is a problem: one should not try to manually set isDefault flag on a Bank, this operation should be performed through setDefaultBank method. It gets even worse when you have relations that you don't want to be directly modified. Of course, you can just limit the fields that can be modified by this method, but how do you tell method's user what they can and cannot modify? Exceptions?

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• flat files vs. RDBMS database, few read/writes, few changes

  - by Bob Lapique

  I have to handle data from long term (years, decades) climate monitoring stations. The data flow usually starts with raw data (voltages, etc.) plus quality check information (pressure, temperature, flow rate, etc.) generally recorded @ 1Hz. Then, the data are assigned a quality flag (human and/or program), processed (apply calibration curves) and flagged. So, we basically end up with 2 datasets : raw and processed data. New data are typically added once a day (~500Ko/day/instrument). Simultaneous queries are not likely to ever happen. I wanted to go for a RDBMS (we have a MySQL server) and have some experience in database design, but the IT guy keeps telling me that flat files will to the job just as well. I suspect him to try to make his life easier when it comes to backup/upgrade the MySQL. There are not so many links between data, they don't change much, but the quality flags will change. A RDBMS is easier to compare data from different instruments on a "many days" scale, compared to daily text files. Well, what would you advise ? Thanks.

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• Masters vs. PhD - long [closed]

  - by Sterling

  I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully having people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the most important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I can't even really accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have at once obviously, but just to know I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money…get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long…not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the "publish or perish" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say "I made this" rather than "I managed a group of people that made this." I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. I When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry…just some really great new application or system…there is a shelf-life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, "The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will." Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years…I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help.

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• VS 11 vs VS 2012 [closed]

  - by Alex

  I'm using Visual Studio 11 Beta at home, mainly for learning purposes. But now it's possible to download VS 2012 RC. Does it make sense to install it instead? Does it have many changes comparing with VS 11? I know that VS 11 doesn't work with Azure, was it fixed in VS 2012? EDIT: Actually I found this: What’s new in the RC since Beta, which describes changes in RC and if I decide to install it, I don't need to uninstall previous version: We’ve enabled upgrade from beta to RC, so if you’re using the same product edition (e.g. Professional, Ultimate, etc.), you do not need to uninstall the beta first. Simply run the Visual Studio 2012 RC installer, which will uninstall the right Beta bits and lay down the RC bits, all at once.

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