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  • Browser App - RAD UI Development - Is it possible?

    - by Randy Minder
    I've been away from building browser applications for a long time. I'm now interested in creating one for a hobby of mine. I dread having to deal with HTML, JavaScript etc. to build a high quality browser based user interface. I've got the full suite of Telerik controls. Is it possible to build a polished, somewhat feature rich browser UI while being sheltered from the archaic environment of HTML and JavaScript? I'd love to be able to simply drag-drop components, much like building a Win UI and have the exact HTML, JavaScript code created for me. Thanks!

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  • What are your experiences as a programmer?

    - by jenf
    I haven't finished school yet and plan on studying Informatics and searching a job as a programmer. However I don't know any real programmers and so I don't have a real source for information on how their job actually is. I apologize if this question is subjective but I think that it is an important one to ask. What do you actually program (with)? Do you generally work with one programming language or more? Do you like working with it/them? Do you like your job? Is it kind of a hobby and a job at once?

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  • Current state of Erlang web development? Frameworks, Template languages

    - by pommonico
    Django is to Python as Rails is to Ruby. What is the current front-runner for Erlang? Recent Erlang web activity has resulted in many new frameworks but they are all still moving targets. ErlyWeb is very far along but now seems to be dead. If you were to invest significant capital into a new web product (i.e. not a hobby, you use your own money and you use other's investment in you with expectation of payback), would you choose Erlang as a web platform? If so, what framework and technologies would you choose?

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  • Is there kind of runtime C++ assembler library around?

    - by Anton
    Hi guys! For my small hobby project I need to emit machine code from C++ program in runtime. I have base address 0xDEADBEEF and want to write something like this: Assembler a((void*)0xDEADBEEF); a.Emit() << Push(Reg::Eax) << Push(Reg::Ebx) << Jmp(0xFEFEFEFE); Inline assembler isn't my choice because generated machine code is dependent of the program state. Does anybody know any existing library for doing this? If no, would it be a good idea to develop one from scratch and make it open source? (I mean, will anybody ever use this library if it existed?)

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  • Game Objects Talking To Each Other

    - by PhilCK
    What is a good way of dealing with objects and having them talk to each other? Up until now all my games hobby/student have been small so this problem was generally solved in a rather ugly way, which lead to tight integration and circular dependencies. Which was fine for the size of projects I was doing. However my projects have been getting bigger in size and complexity and now I want to start re-using code, and making my head a simpler place. The main problem I have is generally along the lines of Player needs to know about the Map and so does the Enemy, this has usually descended into setting lots of pointers and having lots of dependencies, and this becomes a mess quickly. I have thought along the lines of a message style system. but I cant really see how this reduces the dependencies, as I would still be sending the pointers everywhere. Thanks. PS: I guess this has been discussed before, but I don't know what its called just the need I have.

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  • Why does the file date always change to the current date?

    - by Marshall
    We are a programming shop, but this i snot a programming question. My boss has put an external HD on the network. It contains the 'home' folders for users on the network. He uses it to place VB projects that he wants me to work on. But no matter what date and time he places a project on the drive, the file dates(modified) always shows the current date, though nothing in the files have changed. It makes it very hard to confirm that he has given me the latest versions. (He is not a fan of version control and nothing I do will convince him different.) Any ideas why this happens and how to prevent it from happening? P.S. As I wrote this I decided to add the last accessed date to the file display, and those dates happen to show the dates I expect to see. Why is the modified date getting changed, but not the accessed date. Does the accessed date change only when the files are opened or read, changed or not? Note: I use Directory Opus 9, a replacement for windows file browser. Thanks, Marshall

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  • How to keep Ubuntu 11.10 and Kate editor w/terminal from changing command line when changing tabs?

    - by Kairan
    I am programming C using Kate editor in Ubuntu 11.10. It works great, but when I change tabs in Kate, the terminal line changes to the file path of the tab I click on. Normally this is not a big deal (other than annoyingly adding extra text to my terminal) however if I am currently RUNNNING a C program, it obviously will type at the command line, which is not so cool. Example terminal window for my C program (its at a menu): 1) select opt 1 2) select opt 2 Enter choice: (here it waits for prompt from user) Now when I click a tab in Kate, it wants to put in the cd / path of the file in that tab, such as: cd /home/user/os/files And of course since my terminal was waiting for prompt from user it gets that command.. not good. Perhaps there is no fix, but maybe someone knows? Obviously I could choose NOT to switch tabs or end program before switching tabs... Note: I probably made the mistake of putting this under StackOverflow which is more of a programming area - so though repost here might be best (I am not sure how to link the questions but will paste hyperlink to that post - I dont want to violate any stackoverflow/superuser violations) Suggestions on merging them are welcome or if I should delete one? StackOverFlow Question

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  • Windows 7 - Windows XP - sharing - why isn't working?

    - by durumdara
    Hi! This is seems to be "hardware" and not "software" / "programming" question, but I need to use this share in my programs, so it is "close to programming". We had an XP based wireless network. The server is XP Professional, the clients are XP Home (Notebooks). This was working well with folder sharing (with user rights, not simple share). Then we replaced the one of the notebook with Win7/X64 notebook. First time this can reach the server, and the another client too. Later I went to another sites, and connect to another servers, another networks. And then, when I return to this network, I saw that I cannot connect to this server. Nothing of resources I see, and when try to dbl click on this computer, I got login window, where I can write anything, never I can login... The interesting part, that: Another XP home can see the server, can login as quest, or with other user. The server can see the XP home notebook. The Win7 can see the notebook's shared folders, and XP home can see the Win7 shared folders. The server can see the Win7 folders, BUT: the Win7 cannot see the server folders. Cannot see the resources too... The Win7 is in "work networking group", the group name is not mshome. I tried everything on the server, I tried to remove MS client, restore it with simple sharing, set guest password, etc., but I lost the possibilities to access this server from Win7. Does anyone have any idea what I need to see, what I need to set to access these resource - to use them in my programs? Thanks for every info, link: dd

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  • Java Swing over Remote Desktop - Strange, weird GUI squashing

    - by ADTC
    I thought this question fits SuperUser more than StackOverflow because it's not about actual Java programming, though programmers might be more likely to encounter the problem. Anyway, let me start of with some stats before I ask the actual question: Laptop: Windows 7 x32 Screen resolution 1024 x 768; Nvidia GeForce Go 6200 Connected to desktop via ad-hoc wireless network Access internet via desktop Desktop: Windows 7 x64 Screen resolution 1920 x 1080 Connected to laptop via ad-hoc wireless network Access internet via cable modem I'm connecting to my laptop via Remote Desktop from my desktop to take advantage of the large screen. I'm doing programming on my laptop (for portability reasons). Everything else runs smooth and fast over Remote Desktop as both computers are connected directly over the ad-hoc wireless. The only problem is this: Java Swing apps don't display the GUI properly. I acquired a Java Swing application and I'm debugging it in Eclipse. Here's what I got when I ran the app: Apparently there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the GUI application I'm debugging, because the Java Control Panel exhibits the same problem. I've searched high and low in Google about this; the closest I came to a solution is this. But sadly, the use of -Dsun.java2d.nodraw=true has no effect at all. This only happens over Remote Desktop. I have tried locally and the GUI apps display properly. This isn't a dealbreaker for me as I can stop using Remote Desktop when developing Java Swing apps. However, I would like to know if anyone has encountered this and found any solution. PS: All software involved (Eclipse, Java JRE, etc.) are latest versions.

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  • Windows 7 - Windwos XP - sharing - why isn't working?

    - by durumdara
    Hi! This is seems to be "hardware" and not "software" / "programming" question, but I need to use this share in my programs, so it is "close to programming". We had an XP based wireless network. The server is XP Professional, the clients are XP Home (Notebooks). This was working well with folder sharing (with user rights, not simple share). Then we replaced the one of the notebook with Win7/X64 notebook. First time this can reach the server, and the another client too. Later I went to another sites, and connect to another servers, another networks. And then, when I return to this network, I saw that I cannot connect to this server. Nothing of resources I see, and when try to dbl click on this computer, I got login window, where I can write anything, never I can login... The interesting part, that: Another XP home can see the server, can login as quest, or with other user. The server can see the XP home notebook. The Win7 can see the notebook's shared folders, and XP home can see the Win7 shared folders. The server can see the Win7 folders, BUT: the Win7 cannot see the server folders. Cannot see the resources too... The Win7 is in "work networking group", the group name is not mshome. I tried everything on the server, I tried to remove MS client, restore it with simple sharing, set guest password, etc., but I lost the possibilities to access this server from Win7. Does anyone have any idea what I need to see, what I need to set to access these resource - to use them in my programs? Thanks for every info, link: dd

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  • Server 2012, Jumbo Frames - should I expect problems?

    - by TomTom
    Ok, this sound might stupid - but is there any negative on just enabling jumbo frames in practice? From what I understand: Any switch or ethernet adapter that sees a jumbo frame it can not handle will just drop it. TCP is not a problem as max frame size is negotiated in the setinuo phase. UCP is a theoretical problem as a server may just send a LARGE UDP packet that gets dropped on the way. Practically though, as UDP is packet based, I do not really think any software WOULD send a UDP packet larger than 1500 bytes net without app level configuration changes - at least this is how I do my programming, as it is quite hard to get a decent MTU size for that without testing yourself, so you fall back in programming to max 1500 packets. The network in question is a standard small business network - we upgraded now from a non managed 24 port switch to a 52 port switch with 4 10g ports (netgear - quite cheap) and will mov a file server to 10g for also ISCSI serving. All my equipment on the Ethernet level can handle minimum 9000 bytes and due to local firewalls I really want to get packets larger (less firewall processing), but the network is also NAT'ed to the internet. On top, different machines move around (download) large files (multi gigabyte area) quite often for processing. The question is - can I expect problems when I just enable jumbo frames? Again, this is not totally ignorance - I just don't see programs sending more than 1500 byte UDP packets (if that is a practical problem please tell me) and for TCP the MTU is negotiated anyway. if there is a problem I can move to a dedicated VLAN, but this has it's own shares of problems as basically most workstations must then be on both VLAN's.

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  • Are there any custom keyboard available for laptops

    - by Ahe
    My work laptop is a HP elitebook 8560w which I mainly use for programming. Usually I have a external keyboard but recently I have been working out of office and therefore have been using the laptops own keyboard. One thing has really started to bug me. The keyboard layout of this 15.6" laptop contains numpad but the arrow keys are really bad (too small). Also when programming, I really miss a standard inverted T-arrow keys and the home/end/PgUp/PgDn buttons. Then it occurred to me; I would rather give up a numpad than a standard arrow keys. (The keyboard real estate in 15.6" laptop would allow this, and I really have to agree with Jeff Atwood here http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/02/have-keyboard-will-program.html) Which brings me to my question. Do any laptop manufacturers make custom keyboards for their laptops or is there some third party manufacturer who could supply these kind of special keyboards? Quick googling on this doesn't give any meaningful results. Looks like that I have to carry an external keyboard with me if someone here can't give any pointers.

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  • To what extent is size a factor in SSD performance?

    - by artif
    To what extent is the size of an SSD a factor in its performance? In my mind, correct me if I'm wrong, a bigger SSD should be, everything else being equal, faster than a smaller one. A bigger SSD would have more erase blocks and thus more leeway for the FTL (flash translation layer) to do garbage collection optimization. Also there would be more time before TRIM became necessary. I see on Wikipedia that it remarks that "The performance of the SSD can scale with the number of parallel NAND flash chips used in the device" so it seems throughput also increases significantly. Also many SSDs contain internal caches of some sort and presumably those caches are larger for correspondingly large SSDs. But supposing this effect exists, I would like a quantitative analysis. Does throughput increase linearly? How much is garbage collection impacted, if at all? Does latency stay the same? And so on. Would the performance of a 8 GB SSD be significantly different from, for example, an 80 GB SSD assuming both used high quality chips, controllers, etc? Are there any resources (webpages, research papers, presentations, books, etc) that discuss correlations between SSD performance (4 KB random write speed, latency, maximum sequential throughput, etc) and size? I realize this does not really sound like a programming question but it is relevant for what I'm working on (using flash for caching hard drive data) which does involve programming. If there is a better place to ask this question, eg a more hardware oriented site, what would that be? Something like the equivalent of stack overflow (or perhaps a forum) for in-depth questions on hardware interfaces, internals, etc would be appreciated.

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  • Strange Behaviour with Unicode Characters in Windows

    - by open_sourse
    Ok, I do not know if this is a programming question, but it certainly is a technical one so I am asking it here. I was working on some internationalization stuff in my PHP code, and in order to ensure that my generated HTML shows up Unicode correctly based on the encoding and stuff I decided to add some Chinese text to my PHP page, which then echoes it into the browser to complete my test case. So I went into google and typed "Chinese", copied the first Chinese text that the search returned (which was ??/??). I then copied it into Notepad++ which is my editor, and to my surprise showed up as boxes similar to [][]/[][]. So I thought the encoding in Notepad++ was messed up and I changed the encoding to UTF-8 and UCS, neither worked. I did it fresh in a newly encoded file, still I got the boxes. The same content when I paste into Google and StackOverFlow (like I did in this posting) shows up correct Chinese! I even opened up Windows Clipboard Viewer and the content is represented in the Clipboard as boxes! I tried pasting it into Windows Explorer address bar and using to rename a file to, but I still get boxes. But it shows up correctly when pasted into my Chrome Browser address bar! Is this a Windows issue? Since I am able to paste it correctly in SO, the data in memory should be encoded correctly right? But if that is the case why does it show up as boxes in the Clipboard Viewer? I am confused here...By the way I am using Windows XP with SP3. (I am asking this question here, even if it is not programmatic, because it is preventing me from running my programming test cases..)

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  • file system damage

    - by jffrs
    I try recover the backup superblock on /dev/sda2 that contain ubuntu 12.04 LTS and partition ext4 with livecd ubuntu 10.04. the message is below root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# fsck.ext4 -b 163840 -B 4096 /dev/sda2 e2fsck 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010) /dev/sda2 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced. Resize inode not valid. Recreate? yes Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Programming error? block #7963637 claimed for no reason in process_bad_block. Programming error? block #11240437 claimed for no reason in process_bad_block. Root inode is not a directory. Clear? yes Inode 712 is in extent format, but superblock is missing EXTENTS feature Fix? yes Inode 98519 has compression flag set on filesystem without compression support. Clear? yes Inode 98519 has INDEX_FL flag set but is not a directory. Clear HTree index? what's the correct procedure?

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  • How to find an entry-level job after you already have a graduate degree?

    - by Uri
    Note: I asked this question in early 2009. A couple of months later, I found a great job. I've previously updated this question with some tips for whoever ends up in a similar situation, and now cleaned it up a little for the benefit of the fresh batch of graduates. Original post: In my early 20s I abandoned a great C++ development career path in a major company to go to graduate school and get a research masters (3 years). I did another year in industrial research, and then moved to the US to attend graduate school again, getting another masters and a Ph.D in software engineering from a top school (another 6 years down the drain). I was coding the whole way throughout my degrees (core Java and Eclipse plug-ins) and working on research related to software engineering (usability of APIs). I ended up graduating the year of the recession, with a son on the way and the prospects of no healthcare. Academic jobs and industrial research jobs are quite scarce. Initially, I was naive, thinking that with my background, I could easily find a coding job. Big mistake. It turns out that I'm in a complicated position. Entry level positions are usually offered to college undergraduates. I attended my school's career fairs, but you could immediately see signs of Ph.D. aversion and overqualification issues. Some of the recruiters I spoke with explicitly told me that they wanted 20 year olds with clean slates, and some were looking for interns since they are in various forms of hiring freezes. I managed to get a couple of interviews from these career fairs and through recruiters. However, since I've been out of school for a long time and programming primarily in Java, I am also no longer proficient in C/C++ and the usual range of college-level interview questions that everyone uses. I had no problems with this when I was 19 and interviewing for my first job since a lot of what you do in C is manipulate pointers and I was coding C++ for fun and for school. Later I was routinely doing pointer manipulation on the job, and during my first masters taught college courses with data structures and C++. But even though I remember many properties of C++ well, it's been close to ten years since I regularly used C++ and pointers. As a Java developer I rarely had to work at this level, but experience in OOD and in writing good maintainable code is meaningless for C++ interviews. Reading books as a refresh and looking at sample code did not do the trick. I also looked at mid-to-senior level Java positions, but most of them focused on J2EE APIs rather than on core Java and required a certain number of years in industrial positions. Coding research tools and prior C++ experience doesn't count. So that sends me back to entry-level jobs that are posted through job-boards, and these are not common (mostly they are Monster junk), and small companies are even less likely to answer a Ph.D. compared to the giants who participate in top-10 career fairs. Even worse, in many companies initial screening is done by HR folks who really don't want to deal with anything anomalous like a Ph.D. Any tips on how I should approach this intractable position? For example, what should I write in cover letters? Note that while immigration is not an issue for me, I cannot go freelance as I need the benefits (and in particular group health insurance). During my studies I had no time to contribute to open-source projects or maintain a popular blog, so even if I invested in that now there would be no immediate benefit. Updates: In the two months after posting this I received several offers to work as a core Java developer in the financial industry and accepted one from a firm where I am working to this day. For those who find themselves in similar situations, here are my tips: Give up on trying to find an entry level positions. You can't undo time. Accept the fact that there is Ph.D. discrimination in the job market (some might say rightfully so). It is legal to discriminate based on education. No point fighting it. The most important tip is to focus on the language you are comfortable with. The sad truth about programming in a particular language is that it is not like riding a bike. If you haven't used a language in the last few years, and can't actually apply it routinely (not just as a refresher) before you start your search, it is going to be very difficult to do well in an interview. Now that I'm interviewing others, I routinely see it in folks with a mixed C++/Java background. We maintain "a shadow" of the old language but end up with a weird mix that makes it hard to interview on either. Entry-level folks are at an advantage here since they usually have one language. Memory can help you do great in a screening interview, but without recent day-to-day experience, code tests will be difficult. Despite the supposed relation, core Java programming and J2EE programming are two different things with different skillsets. If you come from academia, you likely have very little J2EE experience and may find it hard to get accepted for a J2EE job. J2EE jobs seem to have a larger list of acronyms in their requirements. In addition, from interviewing J2EE developers it seems that for many there is a focus on mastering specific APIs and architectures, whereas core Java development tends to be secondary. In the same way that I can no longer manipulate pointers well, a J2EE developer may have difficulties doing low level Java manipulation. This puts you at a relative advantage in competing for core Java jobs! If you are able to work for startups (in terms of family life and stability) or migrate to startup-rich areas such as the west coast, you can find many exciting opportunities where advanced degrees are a benefit. I've since been approached by several startups, although I had to decline. Work through a recruiter if possible. They have direct contacts with the hiring parties, allowing you to "stand out". It is better to get a clear yes/no confirmation from a recruiter on whether a company might be interested in interviewing you, than it is to send your resume and hope that someone will ever see it. Recruiters are also a great way of bypassing HR. However, also beware of recruiters. They have a vested interest and will go to various shady practices and pressure tactics. To find a good recruiter, talk to a friend who declined a job offer he got through a recruiter. A good recruiter, to me, is measured in how they handle that. Interview for the jobs that require your core strength. If you're rusty or entirely unfamiliar with a technology around which the job revolves, you're probably not a good match. Yes, you probably have the talent to master them, but most companies would want "instant gratification". I got my offers from companies that wanted core Java developer. I didn't do well on places that wanted advance C++ because I am too rusty and not up to date on recent libraries. I also didn't hear from companies that wanted lots of J2EE experience, and that's ok. Finding companies that want core Java without web is harder, but exists in specific industries (e.g., finance, defense). This requires a lot more legwork in terms of search, but these jobs do exist. There are different interview styles. Some companies focus on puzzles, some companies focus on algorithms, and some companies focus on design and coding skills. I had the most success in places where the questions were the most related to the function I would have been performing. Pick companies accordingly as well.

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  • segmentation fault using BaseCode encryption

    - by Natasha Thapa
    i took the code from the links below to encrypt and decrypt a text but i get segmentation fault when trying to run this any ideas?? http://etutorials.org/Programming/secure+programming/Chapter+4.+Symmetric+Cryptography+Fundamentals/4.5+Performing+Base64+Encoding/ http://etutorials.org/Programming/secure+programming/Chapter+4.+Symmetric+Cryptography+Fundamentals/4.6+Performing+Base64+Decoding/ #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <stdio.h> static char b64revtb[256] = { -3, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*0-15*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*16-31*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, 62, -1, -1, -1, 63, /*32-47*/ 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, -1, -1, -1, -2, -1, -1, /*48-63*/ -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, /*64-79*/ 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*80-95*/ -1, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, /*96-111*/ 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*112-127*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*128-143*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*144-159*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*160-175*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*176-191*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*192-207*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*208-223*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, /*224-239*/ -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1 /*240-255*/ }; unsigned char *spc_base64_encode( unsigned char *input , size_t len , int wrap ) ; unsigned char *spc_base64_decode(unsigned char *buf, size_t *len, int strict, int *err); static unsigned int raw_base64_decode(unsigned char *in, unsigned char *out, int strict, int *err); unsigned char *tmbuf = NULL; static char tmpbuffer[] ={0}; int main(void) { memset( tmpbuffer, NULL, sizeof( tmpbuffer ) ); sprintf( tmpbuffer, "%s:%s" , "username", "password" ); tmbuf = spc_base64_encode( (unsigned char *)tmpbuffer , strlen( tmpbuffer ), 0 ); printf(" The text %s has been encrytped to %s \n", tmpbuffer, tmbuf ); unsigned char *decrypt = NULL; int strict; int *err; decrypt = spc_base64_decode( tmbuf , strlen( tmbuf ), 0, err ); printf(" The text %s has been decrytped to %s \n", tmbuf , decrypt); } static char b64table[64] = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" "0123456789+/"; /* Accepts a binary buffer with an associated size. * Returns a base64 encoded, NULL-terminated string. */ unsigned char *spc_base64_encode(unsigned char *input, size_t len, int wrap) { unsigned char *output, *p; size_t i = 0, mod = len % 3, toalloc; toalloc = (len / 3) * 4 + (3 - mod) % 3 + 1; if (wrap) { toalloc += len / 57; if (len % 57) toalloc++; } p = output = (unsigned char *)malloc(((len / 3) + (mod ? 1 : 0)) * 4 + 1); if (!p) return 0; while (i < len - mod) { *p++ = b64table[input[i++] >> 2]; *p++ = b64table[((input[i - 1] << 4) | (input[i] >> 4)) & 0x3f]; *p++ = b64table[((input[i] << 2) | (input[i + 1] >> 6)) & 0x3f]; *p++ = b64table[input[i + 1] & 0x3f]; i += 2; if (wrap && !(i % 57)) *p++ = '\n'; } if (!mod) { if (wrap && i % 57) *p++ = '\n'; *p = 0; return output; } else { *p++ = b64table[input[i++] >> 2]; *p++ = b64table[((input[i - 1] << 4) | (input[i] >> 4)) & 0x3f]; if (mod = = 1) { *p++ = '='; *p++ = '='; if (wrap) *p++ = '\n'; *p = 0; return output; } else { *p++ = b64table[(input[i] << 2) & 0x3f]; *p++ = '='; if (wrap) *p++ = '\n'; *p = 0; return output; } } } static unsigned int raw_base64_decode(unsigned char *in, unsigned char *out, int strict, int *err) { unsigned int result = 0, x; unsigned char buf[3], *p = in, pad = 0; *err = 0; while (!pad) { switch ((x = b64revtb[*p++])) { case -3: /* NULL TERMINATOR */ if (((p - 1) - in) % 4) *err = 1; return result; case -2: /* PADDING CHARACTER. INVALID HERE */ if (((p - 1) - in) % 4 < 2) { *err = 1; return result; } else if (((p - 1) - in) % 4 == 2) { /* Make sure there's appropriate padding */ if (*p != '=') { *err = 1; return result; } buf[2] = 0; pad = 2; result++; break; } else { pad = 1; result += 2; break; } case -1: if (strict) { *err = 2; return result; } break; default: switch (((p - 1) - in) % 4) { case 0: buf[0] = x << 2; break; case 1: buf[0] |= (x >> 4); buf[1] = x << 4; break; case 2: buf[1] |= (x >> 2); buf[2] = x << 6; break; case 3: buf[2] |= x; result += 3; for (x = 0; x < 3 - pad; x++) *out++ = buf[x]; break; } break; } } for (x = 0; x < 3 - pad; x++) *out++ = buf[x]; return result; } /* If err is non-zero on exit, then there was an incorrect padding error. We * allocate enough space for all circumstances, but when there is padding, or * there are characters outside the character set in the string (which we are * supposed to ignore), then we end up allocating too much space. You can * realloc() to the correct length if you wish. */ unsigned char *spc_base64_decode(unsigned char *buf, size_t *len, int strict, int *err) { unsigned char *outbuf; outbuf = (unsigned char *)malloc(3 * (strlen(buf) / 4 + 1)); if (!outbuf) { *err = -3; *len = 0; return 0; } *len = raw_base64_decode(buf, outbuf, strict, err); if (*err) { free(outbuf); *len = 0; outbuf = 0; } return outbuf; }

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  • A way of doing real-world test-driven development (and some thoughts about it)

    - by Thomas Weller
    Lately, I exchanged some arguments with Derick Bailey about some details of the red-green-refactor cycle of the Test-driven development process. In short, the issue revolved around the fact that it’s not enough to have a test red or green, but it’s also important to have it red or green for the right reasons. While for me, it’s sufficient to initially have a NotImplementedException in place, Derick argues that this is not totally correct (see these two posts: Red/Green/Refactor, For The Right Reasons and Red For The Right Reason: Fail By Assertion, Not By Anything Else). And he’s right. But on the other hand, I had no idea how his insights could have any practical consequence for my own individual interpretation of the red-green-refactor cycle (which is not really red-green-refactor, at least not in its pure sense, see the rest of this article). This made me think deeply for some days now. In the end I found out that the ‘right reason’ changes in my understanding depending on what development phase I’m in. To make this clear (at least I hope it becomes clear…) I started to describe my way of working in some detail, and then something strange happened: The scope of the article slightly shifted from focusing ‘only’ on the ‘right reason’ issue to something more general, which you might describe as something like  'Doing real-world TDD in .NET , with massive use of third-party add-ins’. This is because I feel that there is a more general statement about Test-driven development to make:  It’s high time to speak about the ‘How’ of TDD, not always only the ‘Why’. Much has been said about this, and me myself also contributed to that (see here: TDD is not about testing, it's about how we develop software). But always justifying what you do is very unsatisfying in the long run, it is inherently defensive, and it costs time and effort that could be used for better and more important things. And frankly: I’m somewhat sick and tired of repeating time and again that the test-driven way of software development is highly preferable for many reasons - I don’t want to spent my time exclusively on stating the obvious… So, again, let’s say it clearly: TDD is programming, and programming is TDD. Other ways of programming (code-first, sometimes called cowboy-coding) are exceptional and need justification. – I know that there are many people out there who will disagree with this radical statement, and I also know that it’s not a description of the real world but more of a mission statement or something. But nevertheless I’m absolutely sure that in some years this statement will be nothing but a platitude. Side note: Some parts of this post read as if I were paid by Jetbrains (the manufacturer of the ReSharper add-in – R#), but I swear I’m not. Rather I think that Visual Studio is just not production-complete without it, and I wouldn’t even consider to do professional work without having this add-in installed... The three parts of a software component Before I go into some details, I first should describe my understanding of what belongs to a software component (assembly, type, or method) during the production process (i.e. the coding phase). Roughly, I come up with the three parts shown below:   First, we need to have some initial sort of requirement. This can be a multi-page formal document, a vague idea in some programmer’s brain of what might be needed, or anything in between. In either way, there has to be some sort of requirement, be it explicit or not. – At the C# micro-level, the best way that I found to formulate that is to define interfaces for just about everything, even for internal classes, and to provide them with exhaustive xml comments. The next step then is to re-formulate these requirements in an executable form. This is specific to the respective programming language. - For C#/.NET, the Gallio framework (which includes MbUnit) in conjunction with the ReSharper add-in for Visual Studio is my toolset of choice. The third part then finally is the production code itself. It’s development is entirely driven by the requirements and their executable formulation. This is the delivery, the two other parts are ‘only’ there to make its production possible, to give it a decent quality and reliability, and to significantly reduce related costs down the maintenance timeline. So while the first two parts are not really relevant for the customer, they are very important for the developer. The customer (or in Scrum terms: the Product Owner) is not interested at all in how  the product is developed, he is only interested in the fact that it is developed as cost-effective as possible, and that it meets his functional and non-functional requirements. The rest is solely a matter of the developer’s craftsmanship, and this is what I want to talk about during the remainder of this article… An example To demonstrate my way of doing real-world TDD, I decided to show the development of a (very) simple Calculator component. The example is deliberately trivial and silly, as examples always are. I am totally aware of the fact that real life is never that simple, but I only want to show some development principles here… The requirement As already said above, I start with writing down some words on the initial requirement, and I normally use interfaces for that, even for internal classes - the typical question “intf or not” doesn’t even come to mind. I need them for my usual workflow and using them automatically produces high componentized and testable code anyway. To think about their usage in every single situation would slow down the production process unnecessarily. So this is what I begin with: namespace Calculator {     /// <summary>     /// Defines a very simple calculator component for demo purposes.     /// </summary>     public interface ICalculator     {         /// <summary>         /// Gets the result of the last successful operation.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The last result.</value>         /// <remarks>         /// Will be <see langword="null" /> before the first successful operation.         /// </remarks>         double? LastResult { get; }       } // interface ICalculator   } // namespace Calculator So, I’m not beginning with a test, but with a sort of code declaration - and still I insist on being 100% test-driven. There are three important things here: Starting this way gives me a method signature, which allows to use IntelliSense and AutoCompletion and thus eliminates the danger of typos - one of the most regular, annoying, time-consuming, and therefore expensive sources of error in the development process. In my understanding, the interface definition as a whole is more of a readable requirement document and technical documentation than anything else. So this is at least as much about documentation than about coding. The documentation must completely describe the behavior of the documented element. I normally use an IoC container or some sort of self-written provider-like model in my architecture. In either case, I need my components defined via service interfaces anyway. - I will use the LinFu IoC framework here, for no other reason as that is is very simple to use. The ‘Red’ (pt. 1)   First I create a folder for the project’s third-party libraries and put the LinFu.Core dll there. Then I set up a test project (via a Gallio project template), and add references to the Calculator project and the LinFu dll. Finally I’m ready to write the first test, which will look like the following: namespace Calculator.Test {     [TestFixture]     public class CalculatorTest     {         private readonly ServiceContainer container = new ServiceContainer();           [Test]         public void CalculatorLastResultIsInitiallyNull()         {             ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();               Assert.IsNull(calculator.LastResult);         }       } // class CalculatorTest   } // namespace Calculator.Test       This is basically the executable formulation of what the interface definition states (part of). Side note: There’s one principle of TDD that is just plain wrong in my eyes: I’m talking about the Red is 'does not compile' thing. How could a compiler error ever be interpreted as a valid test outcome? I never understood that, it just makes no sense to me. (Or, in Derick’s terms: this reason is as wrong as a reason ever could be…) A compiler error tells me: Your code is incorrect, but nothing more.  Instead, the ‘Red’ part of the red-green-refactor cycle has a clearly defined meaning to me: It means that the test works as intended and fails only if its assumptions are not met for some reason. Back to our Calculator. When I execute the above test with R#, the Gallio plugin will give me this output: So this tells me that the test is red for the wrong reason: There’s no implementation that the IoC-container could load, of course. So let’s fix that. With R#, this is very easy: First, create an ICalculator - derived type:        Next, implement the interface members: And finally, move the new class to its own file: So far my ‘work’ was six mouse clicks long, the only thing that’s left to do manually here, is to add the Ioc-specific wiring-declaration and also to make the respective class non-public, which I regularly do to force my components to communicate exclusively via interfaces: This is what my Calculator class looks like as of now: using System; using LinFu.IoC.Configuration;   namespace Calculator {     [Implements(typeof(ICalculator))]     internal class Calculator : ICalculator     {         public double? LastResult         {             get             {                 throw new NotImplementedException();             }         }     } } Back to the test fixture, we have to put our IoC container to work: [TestFixture] public class CalculatorTest {     #region Fields       private readonly ServiceContainer container = new ServiceContainer();       #endregion // Fields       #region Setup/TearDown       [FixtureSetUp]     public void FixtureSetUp()     {        container.LoadFrom(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "Calculator.dll");     }       ... Because I have a R# live template defined for the setup/teardown method skeleton as well, the only manual coding here again is the IoC-specific stuff: two lines, not more… The ‘Red’ (pt. 2) Now, the execution of the above test gives the following result: This time, the test outcome tells me that the method under test is called. And this is the point, where Derick and I seem to have somewhat different views on the subject: Of course, the test still is worthless regarding the red/green outcome (or: it’s still red for the wrong reasons, in that it gives a false negative). But as far as I am concerned, I’m not really interested in the test outcome at this point of the red-green-refactor cycle. Rather, I only want to assert that my test actually calls the right method. If that’s the case, I will happily go on to the ‘Green’ part… The ‘Green’ Making the test green is quite trivial. Just make LastResult an automatic property:     [Implements(typeof(ICalculator))]     internal class Calculator : ICalculator     {         public double? LastResult { get; private set; }     }         One more round… Now on to something slightly more demanding (cough…). Let’s state that our Calculator exposes an Add() method:         ...   /// <summary>         /// Adds the specified operands.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="operand1">The operand1.</param>         /// <param name="operand2">The operand2.</param>         /// <returns>The result of the additon.</returns>         /// <exception cref="ArgumentException">         /// Argument <paramref name="operand1"/> is &lt; 0.<br/>         /// -- or --<br/>         /// Argument <paramref name="operand2"/> is &lt; 0.         /// </exception>         double Add(double operand1, double operand2);       } // interface ICalculator A remark: I sometimes hear the complaint that xml comment stuff like the above is hard to read. That’s certainly true, but irrelevant to me, because I read xml code comments with the CR_Documentor tool window. And using that, it looks like this:   Apart from that, I’m heavily using xml code comments (see e.g. here for a detailed guide) because there is the possibility of automating help generation with nightly CI builds (using MS Sandcastle and the Sandcastle Help File Builder), and then publishing the results to some intranet location.  This way, a team always has first class, up-to-date technical documentation at hand about the current codebase. (And, also very important for speeding up things and avoiding typos: You have IntelliSense/AutoCompletion and R# support, and the comments are subject to compiler checking…).     Back to our Calculator again: Two more R# – clicks implement the Add() skeleton:         ...           public double Add(double operand1, double operand2)         {             throw new NotImplementedException();         }       } // class Calculator As we have stated in the interface definition (which actually serves as our requirement document!), the operands are not allowed to be negative. So let’s start implementing that. Here’s the test: [Test] [Row(-0.5, 2)] public void AddThrowsOnNegativeOperands(double operand1, double operand2) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>(() => calculator.Add(operand1, operand2)); } As you can see, I’m using a data-driven unit test method here, mainly for these two reasons: Because I know that I will have to do the same test for the second operand in a few seconds, I save myself from implementing another test method for this purpose. Rather, I only will have to add another Row attribute to the existing one. From the test report below, you can see that the argument values are explicitly printed out. This can be a valuable documentation feature even when everything is green: One can quickly review what values were tested exactly - the complete Gallio HTML-report (as it will be produced by the Continuous Integration runs) shows these values in a quite clear format (see below for an example). Back to our Calculator development again, this is what the test result tells us at the moment: So we’re red again, because there is not yet an implementation… Next we go on and implement the necessary parameter verification to become green again, and then we do the same thing for the second operand. To make a long story short, here’s the test and the method implementation at the end of the second cycle: // in CalculatorTest:   [Test] [Row(-0.5, 2)] [Row(295, -123)] public void AddThrowsOnNegativeOperands(double operand1, double operand2) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>(() => calculator.Add(operand1, operand2)); }   // in Calculator: public double Add(double operand1, double operand2) {     if (operand1 < 0.0)     {         throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand1");     }     if (operand2 < 0.0)     {         throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand2");     }     throw new NotImplementedException(); } So far, we have sheltered our method from unwanted input, and now we can safely operate on the parameters without further caring about their validity (this is my interpretation of the Fail Fast principle, which is regarded here in more detail). Now we can think about the method’s successful outcomes. First let’s write another test for that: [Test] [Row(1, 1, 2)] public void TestAdd(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       double result = calculator.Add(operand1, operand2);       Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, result); } Again, I’m regularly using row based test methods for these kinds of unit tests. The above shown pattern proved to be extremely helpful for my development work, I call it the Defined-Input/Expected-Output test idiom: You define your input arguments together with the expected method result. There are two major benefits from that way of testing: In the course of refining a method, it’s very likely to come up with additional test cases. In our case, we might add tests for some edge cases like ‘one of the operands is zero’ or ‘the sum of the two operands causes an overflow’, or maybe there’s an external test protocol that has to be fulfilled (e.g. an ISO norm for medical software), and this results in the need of testing against additional values. In all these scenarios we only have to add another Row attribute to the test. Remember that the argument values are written to the test report, so as a side-effect this produces valuable documentation. (This can become especially important if the fulfillment of some sort of external requirements has to be proven). So your test method might look something like that in the end: [Test, Description("Arguments: operand1, operand2, expectedResult")] [Row(1, 1, 2)] [Row(0, 999999999, 999999999)] [Row(0, 0, 0)] [Row(0, double.MaxValue, double.MaxValue)] [Row(4, double.MaxValue - 2.5, double.MaxValue)] public void TestAdd(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       double result = calculator.Add(operand1, operand2);       Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, result); } And this will produce the following HTML report (with Gallio):   Not bad for the amount of work we invested in it, huh? - There might be scenarios where reports like that can be useful for demonstration purposes during a Scrum sprint review… The last requirement to fulfill is that the LastResult property is expected to store the result of the last operation. I don’t show this here, it’s trivial enough and brings nothing new… And finally: Refactor (for the right reasons) To demonstrate my way of going through the refactoring portion of the red-green-refactor cycle, I added another method to our Calculator component, namely Subtract(). Here’s the code (tests and production): // CalculatorTest.cs:   [Test, Description("Arguments: operand1, operand2, expectedResult")] [Row(1, 1, 0)] [Row(0, 999999999, -999999999)] [Row(0, 0, 0)] [Row(0, double.MaxValue, -double.MaxValue)] [Row(4, double.MaxValue - 2.5, -double.MaxValue)] public void TestSubtract(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       double result = calculator.Subtract(operand1, operand2);       Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, result); }   [Test, Description("Arguments: operand1, operand2, expectedResult")] [Row(1, 1, 0)] [Row(0, 999999999, -999999999)] [Row(0, 0, 0)] [Row(0, double.MaxValue, -double.MaxValue)] [Row(4, double.MaxValue - 2.5, -double.MaxValue)] public void TestSubtractGivesExpectedLastResult(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       calculator.Subtract(operand1, operand2);       Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, calculator.LastResult); }   ...   // ICalculator.cs: /// <summary> /// Subtracts the specified operands. /// </summary> /// <param name="operand1">The operand1.</param> /// <param name="operand2">The operand2.</param> /// <returns>The result of the subtraction.</returns> /// <exception cref="ArgumentException"> /// Argument <paramref name="operand1"/> is &lt; 0.<br/> /// -- or --<br/> /// Argument <paramref name="operand2"/> is &lt; 0. /// </exception> double Subtract(double operand1, double operand2);   ...   // Calculator.cs:   public double Subtract(double operand1, double operand2) {     if (operand1 < 0.0)     {         throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand1");     }       if (operand2 < 0.0)     {         throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand2");     }       return (this.LastResult = operand1 - operand2).Value; }   Obviously, the argument validation stuff that was produced during the red-green part of our cycle duplicates the code from the previous Add() method. So, to avoid code duplication and minimize the number of code lines of the production code, we do an Extract Method refactoring. One more time, this is only a matter of a few mouse clicks (and giving the new method a name) with R#: Having done that, our production code finally looks like that: using System; using LinFu.IoC.Configuration;   namespace Calculator {     [Implements(typeof(ICalculator))]     internal class Calculator : ICalculator     {         #region ICalculator           public double? LastResult { get; private set; }           public double Add(double operand1, double operand2)         {             ThrowIfOneOperandIsInvalid(operand1, operand2);               return (this.LastResult = operand1 + operand2).Value;         }           public double Subtract(double operand1, double operand2)         {             ThrowIfOneOperandIsInvalid(operand1, operand2);               return (this.LastResult = operand1 - operand2).Value;         }           #endregion // ICalculator           #region Implementation (Helper)           private static void ThrowIfOneOperandIsInvalid(double operand1, double operand2)         {             if (operand1 < 0.0)             {                 throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand1");             }               if (operand2 < 0.0)             {                 throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand2");             }         }           #endregion // Implementation (Helper)       } // class Calculator   } // namespace Calculator But is the above worth the effort at all? It’s obviously trivial and not very impressive. All our tests were green (for the right reasons), and refactoring the code did not change anything. It’s not immediately clear how this refactoring work adds value to the project. Derick puts it like this: STOP! Hold on a second… before you go any further and before you even think about refactoring what you just wrote to make your test pass, you need to understand something: if your done with your requirements after making the test green, you are not required to refactor the code. I know… I’m speaking heresy, here. Toss me to the wolves, I’ve gone over to the dark side! Seriously, though… if your test is passing for the right reasons, and you do not need to write any test or any more code for you class at this point, what value does refactoring add? Derick immediately answers his own question: So why should you follow the refactor portion of red/green/refactor? When you have added code that makes the system less readable, less understandable, less expressive of the domain or concern’s intentions, less architecturally sound, less DRY, etc, then you should refactor it. I couldn’t state it more precise. From my personal perspective, I’d add the following: You have to keep in mind that real-world software systems are usually quite large and there are dozens or even hundreds of occasions where micro-refactorings like the above can be applied. It’s the sum of them all that counts. And to have a good overall quality of the system (e.g. in terms of the Code Duplication Percentage metric) you have to be pedantic on the individual, seemingly trivial cases. My job regularly requires the reading and understanding of ‘foreign’ code. So code quality/readability really makes a HUGE difference for me – sometimes it can be even the difference between project success and failure… Conclusions The above described development process emerged over the years, and there were mainly two things that guided its evolution (you might call it eternal principles, personal beliefs, or anything in between): Test-driven development is the normal, natural way of writing software, code-first is exceptional. So ‘doing TDD or not’ is not a question. And good, stable code can only reliably be produced by doing TDD (yes, I know: many will strongly disagree here again, but I’ve never seen high-quality code – and high-quality code is code that stood the test of time and causes low maintenance costs – that was produced code-first…) It’s the production code that pays our bills in the end. (Though I have seen customers these days who demand an acceptance test battery as part of the final delivery. Things seem to go into the right direction…). The test code serves ‘only’ to make the production code work. But it’s the number of delivered features which solely counts at the end of the day - no matter how much test code you wrote or how good it is. With these two things in mind, I tried to optimize my coding process for coding speed – or, in business terms: productivity - without sacrificing the principles of TDD (more than I’d do either way…).  As a result, I consider a ratio of about 3-5/1 for test code vs. production code as normal and desirable. In other words: roughly 60-80% of my code is test code (This might sound heavy, but that is mainly due to the fact that software development standards only begin to evolve. The entire software development profession is very young, historically seen; only at the very beginning, and there are no viable standards yet. If you think about software development as a kind of casting process, where the test code is the mold and the resulting production code is the final product, then the above ratio sounds no longer extraordinary…) Although the above might look like very much unnecessary work at first sight, it’s not. With the aid of the mentioned add-ins, doing all the above is a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds (while writing this post took hours and days…). The most important thing is to have the right tools at hand. Slow developer machines or the lack of a tool or something like that - for ‘saving’ a few 100 bucks -  is just not acceptable and a very bad decision in business terms (though I quite some times have seen and heard that…). Production of high-quality products needs the usage of high-quality tools. This is a platitude that every craftsman knows… The here described round-trip will take me about five to ten minutes in my real-world development practice. I guess it’s about 30% more time compared to developing the ‘traditional’ (code-first) way. But the so manufactured ‘product’ is of much higher quality and massively reduces maintenance costs, which is by far the single biggest cost factor, as I showed in this previous post: It's the maintenance, stupid! (or: Something is rotten in developerland.). In the end, this is a highly cost-effective way of software development… But on the other hand, there clearly is a trade-off here: coding speed vs. code quality/later maintenance costs. The here described development method might be a perfect fit for the overwhelming majority of software projects, but there certainly are some scenarios where it’s not - e.g. if time-to-market is crucial for a software project. So this is a business decision in the end. It’s just that you have to know what you’re doing and what consequences this might have… Some last words First, I’d like to thank Derick Bailey again. His two aforementioned posts (which I strongly recommend for reading) inspired me to think deeply about my own personal way of doing TDD and to clarify my thoughts about it. I wouldn’t have done that without this inspiration. I really enjoy that kind of discussions… I agree with him in all respects. But I don’t know (yet?) how to bring his insights into the described production process without slowing things down. The above described method proved to be very “good enough” in my practical experience. But of course, I’m open to suggestions here… My rationale for now is: If the test is initially red during the red-green-refactor cycle, the ‘right reason’ is: it actually calls the right method, but this method is not yet operational. Later on, when the cycle is finished and the tests become part of the regular, automated Continuous Integration process, ‘red’ certainly must occur for the ‘right reason’: in this phase, ‘red’ MUST mean nothing but an unfulfilled assertion - Fail By Assertion, Not By Anything Else!

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  • Silverlight User Group of Switzerland (SLUGS)

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    Last Thursday, the Silverlight Firestarter event took place in Redmond, and was streamed live to a large audience worldwide (around 20’000 people). Approximately 30 if them were in Wallisellen near Zurich, in Microsoft Switzerland’s offices. This was not only a great occasion to learn more about the future of Silverlight and to see great demos, but also it was the very first meeting of the Silverlight User Group of Switzerland (SLUGS). Having 30 people for a first meeting was a great success, especially if we consider that it was REALLY cold that night, that it had snowed 20 cm the night before! We all had a good time, and 3 lucky winners went back home with a prize: One LG Optimus 7 Windows Phone and two copies of Silverlight 4 Unleashed. Congratulations to the winners! After the keynote (which went in a whirlwind, shortest 90 minutes ever!), we all had pizza and beverages generously sponsored by the Swiss DPE team, of which not less than 5 guys came to the event! Thanks to Stefano, Ronnie, Sascha, Big Mike and Ken for attending! We decided to have meetings every month. Stay tuned for announcements on when and where the events will take place. We are also in the process of creating various groups online where the attendees can find more information. For instance, I created a group on Flickr where the pictures taken at events will be published. The group is public, and the pictures of the first event are already online! We also have the already known page at http://www.slugs.ch/, check it out. A national group Even though the first event was in Zurich, and that 3 of the founding members live nearby, we would like to try and be a national group. That means having events sometimes in other parts of Switzerland, collaborating with other local user groups, etc. Stay tuned for more Join! We want you, we need you If you are doing Silverlight, for a living or as a hobby, if you are interested in user experience, XAML, Expression Blend and many more topics, you should consider joining! This is a great occasion to exchange experiences, to learn from Silverlight experts, to hear sessions about various topics related to Silverlight, etc. If you want to talk about a topic that is of interest to you, If you want to propose a topic of discussion Or if you just want to hang out then go to http://www.slugs.ch and register! Cheers, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • Does Scrum turn active developers into passive developers?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    I'm a web developer working in a team of three developers and one designer. It's now about five months that we've implemented the agile scrum software development methodology. But I have a weird feeling I just wanted to share in this site. One important factor in human life is decision-making process. However, there is a big difference in decisions you make. Some decisions are just the outcome of an internal or external force, while other decisions are completely based on your free will, and some decisions are simply something in between. The more freedom you have in making decisions, the more self-driven your work would become. This seems to be a rule. Because we tend to shape our lives ourselves. There is a big difference between you deciding what to do, or being told what to do. Before scrum, I felt like having more freedom in making the decisions which were related to development, analysis, prioritizing implementation, etc. I had more feeling like I'm deciding what I'm doing. However, due to the scrum methodology, now many decisions simply come from the product owner. He prioritizes PBIs, he analyzes how the software should work, even sometimes how the UI and functionality should be implemented. I know that this is part of the scrum methodology, and I also know that this may result in better sales of product in future. However, I now feel like I'm always getting told to do something, instead of deciding to do something. This syndrome now has made me more passive towards the work. I tend to search less to find a better solution, approach, or technique I don't wake up in the morning expecting to get to an enjoyable work. Rather, I feel like being forced to work in order to live I have more hunger to work on my own hobby projects after work I won't push the team anymore to get to the higher technological levels I spend more time now on dinner, or tea-times and have less enthusiasm to get back to work I'm now willing more for the work to finish sooner, so that I can get home The big problem is, I see and diagnose this behavior in my colleagues too. Is it the outcome of scrum? Does scrum really makes the development team feel like they have no part in forming the overall software, thus making the passive to the project? How can I overcome this feeling?

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  • SharpDX and game engines, back to zero?

    - by Baboon
    I'm a desktop developer (I mainly do WPF for a living) but I want to make games as a hobby. So a few months ago, I started reading blogs, gamedevSE, you name it. I understand in the C++ DirectX world, you have engines such as Unity3D with designers and whatnot, but as much as I'm ok to spend months understanding game development, I'd prefer to stay with my comfy C#. So I thought I'd develop my first games in /C#/DirectX through SharpDX But then, I can't use game engines anymore, since they're made for C++DirectX and not SharpDX. (ok, I could do P/Invokes but that defeats the purpose of SharpDX). I do know about XNA, and I also do know I can't publish to the marketplace with it (and quite frankly, I don't really want to learn an API that is in jeopardy). So how do you conceal writing games in C# and using existing game engines instead of reinventing the wheel? wait for ports? So I've found out the following: After doing the first tutorials of MOgre and digging around, it seems MOgre gives you the worse of both worlds: . You can't port it with Mono because it directly references a C++/CLI dll (Ogre) and C++/CLI isn't supported by Mono. And since it's not C++ itself, you can't make a pure build. Which, as far as I understand, means I'd be stuck on windows (and not even WinRT/Metro compatible), without capability of porting anything to mobiles or other OS (Mac/Linux). Even though it looks really nice to develop with MOgre, I'd like to learn something a little more open to future broadening. On the other hand, MonoGame seems to be a rewrite of XNA with SharpDX which sounds very promising: Mono allows me to easily port my games to other platforms, mobiles included. SharpDX allows me to access the latest DirectX versions XNA would be my first choice if only MS showed some hope for the future It really looks like MonoGame is nothing else than XNA on SharpDX. Axiom looks good too but I lack info on the subject (and pages with poor design don't give me a good feeling about an API...) XNA with SunBurn looks good: It should be portable to Mono (can anyone with experience give us feedback on that?), thus multi-platform. It's then marketplace-able since Mono itself is. Did I miss something or are 2) and 4) my best options (aside from the fact Mono doesn't support any XAML)?

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  • Finally, I have my HP 6910p laptop running with 8Gb RAM

    - by Liam Westley
    Today, I received two Corsair Value Select 4Gb DDR SO-DIMMs (from overclock.co.uk) for my aging HP 6910p to give it the extra lease of life to keep it going until the end of 2010.  And here is the proof that Windows 7 64-bit happily sees all 8Gb, There are no 4Gb modules are officially supported for the HP 6910p (they didn’t exist when it was first build).  I was taking a bit of a gamble, and relying on the UK distance selling regulations which meant that even if they didn’t work I’d be able to send them back, getting a full refund and only paying for the return postage. I’d read Keith Comb’s blog back in 2008, (http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithcombs/archive/2008/07/05/loading-a-hp-6910p-with-8gb-of-ram.aspx) where he mentioned ‘trying’ out 4Gb samples of SO-DIMMs in a HP 6910p laptop, but there still appears to be no mentions of running this configuration in any other blog. Seeing how the 8Gb of memory is used is made easier with the new Resource Monitor available in Windows 7.  With two copies of Visual Studio 2008, Outlook, Firefox (with 30+ tabs), TweetDeck (an infamous memory hog) and VMWare workstation running a virtual machine allocated with 2Gb of memory, you might have no ‘free’ memory remaining, but the standby memory is an awesome 2.4Gb, and once the VM is up and running the Hard Faults/sec hovers around zero,   It’s the page fault figure which really counts, because reducing that value means that you are preventing the Windows 7 system drive from being used for virtual memory paging operations.  Even after only a few hours of use it’s noticeable that disc access has been reduced and applications feel more responsive and ‘snappy’.  I did consider the option of purchasing an SSD to replace the main drive, rather than go for 8Gb of RAM, but I think I’ve probably made the correct decision. Given my hobby topic of virtualisation, I take the view that you can never have too much memory.   It was also a decision made easier by the price differential between 8Gb of RAM compared to a decent size SSD.  In the 18 months since Keith Comb tested the first 4Gb SO-DIMMS they have plummeted in price, at just under £100 per 4Gb, they are around a fifth of the price when launched. So if you ever wondered if a HP 6910p can handle 8Gb, now you know.

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  • Fun with Sun Ray, 3D, Oracle VM x86 and SRIOV

    - by wim.coekaerts
    One of the things I like about my job is that I get to play around with stuff and make use of the technologies we work on in my teams. Sort of my own little playground. It allows me to study the products in great detail and put them to use in ways that individual product teams don't always intend them to be used for :) but that makes it fun. I have a lot of this set up at home because... work is sort of hobby and I just like to tinker with it. Anyway, a few weeks ago I was looking at my sun ray rig at home and how well 3D works. Google Earth and some basic opengl tests like glxspheres combined with virtualgl. It resulted in some very cool demos recorded with my little camera (sorry for the crappy quality of the video :-) : OVDC (soft client) on my mac Sun Ray 2FS Never mind the hickups during zoom, that's because I was using the scrollwheel on my mouse and I can't scroll uninterrupted :) Anyway, this is quite cool ! The setup for this was the following : Sun Ray on LAN, Sun Ray Server 5 latest installed on OL5.5 inside a VM running on Oracle VM 2.2 (hardware virt, with a virtual network (vif)) and the virtualgl rendering happened on another box (wopr5) that runs linux on a little atom D520 with an ION2 gpu. So network goes from Sun Ray to Sun Ray Server to wopr5 and back. Given that this is full screen 3D it puts a good amount of load on the network and it's pretty cool that SRS was just a VM :) So, separately, I had written a little blog entry about using sriov and oracle vm a while back. link to sriov blog entry Last night when I came home I wanted to do some more playing around with SRIOV and live migrate. To do this, I wanted to set up a VM with 2 network interfaces, one virtual network (vif) and then one that's one of the SRIOV virtual functions from my network card. Inside the guest they show as eth0 and eth1, and then bond them using a standard linux bonding device (bond0 here) with active active links. The goal here is that on live migrate, we would detach the VF (eth1 in guest in this case), the bond would then just hum along on eth0 (vif) we can live migrate the VM and then on the other server after the migrate completes we re-attach a VF to the VM there and eth1 pops up again and the bond uses both eth0/eth1 to do its work. So, to set this up, I figured, why not use my sun ray server VM because the 3D work generates a nice network load and is very latency/timing sensitive. In the end, I ran glxspheres on my sunray server (vm) displaying on my sun ray 2 fs and while that was running, I did my live migrate test of this vm (unplug pci VF, migrate, reconnect vf) and guess what, it just kept running :) veryyyyyy cool. now, it was supposed to, but it's always nice to see it actually work, for real. Here's a diagram of it. No gimics - just real technology at work ! enjoy :)

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  • 3D terrain map with Hexagon Grids (XNA)

    - by Rob
    I'm working on a hobby project (I'm a web/backend developer by day) and I want to create a 3D Tile (terrain) engine. I'm using XNA, but I can use MonoGame, OpenGL, or straight DirectX, so the answer does not have to be XNA specific. I'm more looking for some high level advice on how to approach this problem. I know about creating height maps and such, there are thousands of references out there on the net for that, this is a bit more specific. I'm more concerned with is the approach to get a 3D hexagon tile grid out of my terrain (since the terrain, and all 3d objects, are basically triangles). The first approach I thought about is to basically draw the triangles on the screen in the following order (blue numbers) to give me the triangles for terrain (black triangles) and then make hexes out of the triangles (red hex). http://screencast.com/t/ebrH2g5V This approach seems complicated to me since i'm basically having to draw 4 different types of triangles. The next approach I thought of was to use the existing triangles like I did for a square grid and get my hexes from 6 triangles as follows http://screencast.com/t/w9b7qKzVJtb8 This seems like the easier approach to me since there are only 2 types of triangles (i would have to play with the heights and widths to get a "perfect" hexagon, but the idea is the same. So I'm looking for: 1) Any suggestions on which approach I should take, and why. 2) How would I translate mouse position to a hexagon grid position (especially when moving the camera around), for example in the second image if the mouse pointer were the green circle, how would I determine to highlight that hexagon and then translating that into grid coordinates (assuming it is 0,0)? 3) Any references, articles, books, etc - to get me going in the right direction. Note: I've done hex grid's and mouse-grid coordinate conversion before in 2d. looking for some pointers on how to do the same in 3d. The result I would like to achieve is something similar to the following: http :// www. youtube .com / watch?v=Ri92YkyC3fw (sorry about the youtube link, but it will only let me post 2 links in this post... same rep problem i mention below...) Thanks for any help! P.S. Sorry for not posting the images inline, I apparently don't have enough rep on this stack exchange site.

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  • What Counts for a DBA: Passion

    - by drsql
    One of my first questions, when interviewing for a DBA/Programmer position, is always: “Why do you want this job?” The answers I receive range from cheesy hyperbole (“I want to enhance your services with my vast knowledge”) to deadpan realism (“I have N kids who all have a hole in the front of their face where food goes"). Both answers are fine in their own way, at least displaying some self-confidence, humour and honesty, but once in a while, I'll hear the answer that is music to me ears... “I LOVE DATABASES!” Whenever I hear it, my nerves tingle in hopeful anticipation; have I found someone for whom working with database isn't just a job, but a passion? Inevitably, I'm often disappointed. What initially seemed like passion turns out to be rather shallow enthusiasm; the person is enthusiastic about working with databases in the same way he or she might be about eating a bag of Cajun spiced kettle chips; enjoyable, but not something to think about too deeply or take too seriously. Enthusiasm comes, and enthusiasm goes. I've seen countless technical forum users burst onto the scene in a blaze of frantic question-answering, only to fade away within days, never to be heard from again. Passion, however, is more of a longstanding commitment. The biographies of the great technologists and authors of the recent past are full of the sort of passion and engrossment that lead a person to write a novel non-stop for a fortnight with no sleep and only dog food to eat (Philip K. Dick), or refuse to leave the works of the first tunnel under the Thames, even though it was flooded (Brunel). In a similar (though more modest) way, my passion for working with databases has led me to acts that might cause someone for whom it was "just a job" to roll their eyes in disbelief. Most evenings you're more likely to find me reading a database book than watching TV. I've spent hundreds of hours of my spare time writing blogs and articles (some of which are only read by tens of people); I've spent hundreds of dollars travelling to conferences, paying my own flight and hotel expenses, so that I can share a little of what I know, and mix with some like-minded people. And I know I'm far from alone in this, in the SQL Server community. Passion isn't everything, of course, and it isn't always accompanied by any great skill, but in almost every case, that skill can be cultivated over time. If you are doing what you are passionate about, work turns into more than just a way to feed your kids; it becomes your hobby, entertainment, and preoccupation. And it is this passion that gives a DBA the obsessive stubbornness, the refusal to be beaten by even the most difficult problem, which is often so crucial. A final word of warning though: passion without limits can turn weird. Never let it get in the way of your wife, kids, bills, or personal hygiene.

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