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• How can I get Windows 8 to automatically disable touch when I am using my Wacom pen and turn it back on when I am not

  - by Robert

  I have an HP convertible tablet computer which I just upgraded to Windows 8. The problem (which existed under Windows 7 as well) is that this tablet has both a capacitive touch screen (with multi-touch) AND a wacom-type tablet built in to the screen that works using electro-magnetic resonance with the provided stylus. My Use Case: Most of the time I am happy using my fingers and the touch interface for navigation and whatnot. However, when I want to get down to serious note-taking/drawing, I want to use the wacom functionality. The problem is that any comfortable writing position has me resting my arm/hand on the screen, which activates the touch technology (despite supposed palm-detection algorithms) and completely screws up my input paradigm. My Ideal Solution: Ideallly, since wacom technology senses when the pen is "close" to the screen, I would love to have touch be automatically disabled whenever the wacom pen is detected, and turned back on when it is out of range. this would allow me to seamless switch between the two input methods, and since I NEVER want to use both at once would work perfectly for me. An acceptable alternative: As a next best option, It would be great to be able to turn off the touch functionality (leaving the wacom in place) whenever I entered specific apps (e.g. OneNote, Photoshop, Gimp, Pencil, etc.) and then have it turn back on when I left that app.... As a worst case at least lets me use my PC option: If I could create a shortcut (tile or otherwise) that flips the touch on and off without going all the way through the nested computer settings, that would be better than nothing. Thanks in advance for the help with 1 or more of the above.

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• Add New Features to WMP with Windows Media Player Plus

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Do you use Windows Media Player 11 or 12 as your default media player? Today, we’re going to show you how to add some handy new features and enhancements with the Windows Media Player Plus third party plug-in. Installation and Setup Download and install Media Player Plus! (link below). You’ll need to close out of Windows Media Player before you begin or you’ll receive the message below. The next time you open Media Player you’ll be presented with the Media Player Plus settings window. Some of the settings will be enabled by default, such as the Find as you type feature. Using Media Player Plus! Find as you type allows you to start typing a search term from anywhere in Media Player without having to be in the Search box. The search term will automatically fill in the search box and display the results.   You’ll also see Disable group headers in the Library Pane.   This setting will display library items in a continuous list similar to the functionality of Windows Media Player 10. Under User Interface you can enable displaying the currently playing artist and title in the title bar. This is enabled by default.   The Context Menu page allows you to enable context menu enhancements. The File menu enhancement allows you to add the Windows Context menu to Media Player on the library pane, list pane, or both. Right click on a Title, select File, and you’ll see the Windows Context Menu. Right-click on a title and select Tag Editor Plus. Tag Editor Plus allows you to quickly edit media tags.   The Advanced tab displays a number of tags that Media Player usually doesn’t show. Only the tags with the notepad and pencil icon are editable.   The Restore Plug-ins page allows you to configure which plug-ins should be automatically restored after a Media Player crash. The Restore Media at Startup page allows you to configure Media Player to resume playing the last playlist, track, and even whether it was playing or paused at the time the application was closed. So, if you close out in the middle of a song, it will begin playing from that point the next time you open Media Player. You can also set Media Player to rewind a certain number of seconds from where you left off. This is especially useful if you are in the middle of watching a movie. There’s also the option to have your currently playing song sent to Windows Live Messenger. You can access the settings at any time by going to Tools, Plug-in properties, and selecting Windows Media Player Plus. Windows Media Plus is a nice little free plug-in for WMP 11 and 12 that brings a lot of additional functionality to Windows Media Player. If you use Media Player 11 or WMP 12 in Windows 7 as your main player, you might want to give this a try. Download Windows Media Player Plus! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Install and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxFixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesMake VLC Player Look like Windows Media Player 10Make VLC Player Look like Windows Media Player 11Make Windows Media Player Automatically Open in Mini Player Mode TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7

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• What I've Gained from being a Presenter at Tech Events

  - by MOSSLover

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/MOSSLover/archive/2014/06/12/what-ive-gained-from-being-a-presenter-at-tech-events.aspxI know I fail at blogging lately.  As I've said before life happens and it gets in the way of best laid out plans.  I thought about creating some type of watch with some app that basically dictates using dragon naturally speaking to Wordpress, but alas no time and the write processing capabilities just don't exist yet.So to get to my point Alison Gianotto created this blog post: http://www.snipe.net/2014/06/why-you-should-stop-stalling-and-start-presenting/.  I like the message she has stated in this post and I want to share something personal.It was around 2007 that I was seriously looking into leaving the technology field altogether and going back to school.  I was calling places like Washington University in Saint Louis and University of Missouri Kansas City asking them how I could go about getting into some type of post graduate medical school program.  My entire high school career was based on Medical Explorers and somehow becoming a doctor.  I did not want to take my hobby and continue using it as a career mechanism.  I was unhappy, but I didn't realize why I was unhappy at the time.  It was really a lot of bad things involving the lack of self confidence and self esteem.  Overall I was not in a good place and it took me until 2011 to realize that I still was not in a good place in life.So in about April 2007 or so I started this blog that you guys have been reading or occasionally read.  I kind of started passively stalking people by reading their blogs in the SharePoint and .Net communities.  I also started listening to .Net Rocks & watching videos on their corresponding training for SharePoint, WCF, WF, and a bunch of other technologies.  I wanted more knowledge, so someone suggested I go to a user group.  I've told this story before about how I met Jeff Julian & John Alexander, so that point I will spare you the details.  You know how I got to my first user group presentation and how I started getting involved with events, so I'll also spare those details.The point I want to touch on is that I went out I started speaking and that path I took helped me gain the self confidence and self respect I needed.  When I first moved to NYC I couldn't even ride a subway by myself or walk alone without getting lost.  Now I feel like I can go out and solve any problem someone throws at me.  So you see what Alison states in her blog post is true and I am a great example to that point.  I stood in front of 800 or so people at SharePoint Conference in 2011 and spoke about a topic.  In 2007 I would have hidden or stuttered the entire time.  I have now spoken at over 70 events and user groups.  I am a top 25 influencer in my technology.  I was a most valued professional for years in a row in Microsoft SharePoint.  People are constantly trying to gain my time, so that they can pick my brain for solutions and other life problems.  I went from maybe five or six friends to over hundreds of friends in various cities across the globe.  I'm not saying it's an instant fame and it doesn't take a ton of work, but I have never looked back once at my life and regretted the choice I made in 2007.  It has lead me to a lot of other things in my life, including more positivity and happiness.  If anyone ever wants to contact me and pick my brain on a presentation go ahead.  If you want me to help you find the best meetup that suits you for that presentation I can try to help too (I might be a little more helpful in the Microsoft or iOS arenas though).  The best thing I can state is don't be scared just do it.  If you need an audience I can try to pencil it in my schedule.  I can't promise anything, but if you are in NYC I can at least try.

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• Access Denied

  - by Tony Davis

  When Microsoft executives wake up in the night screaming, I suspect they are having a nightmare about their own version of Frankenstein's monster. Created with the best of intentions, without thinking too hard of the long-term strategy, and having long outlived its usefulness, the monster still lives on, occasionally wreaking vengeance on the innocent. Its name is Access; a living synthesis of disparate body parts that is resistant to all attempts at a mercy-killing. In 1986, Microsoft had no database products, and needed one for their new OS/2 operating system, the successor to MSDOS. In 1986, they bought exclusive rights to Sybase DataServer, and were also intent on developing a desktop database to capture Ashton-Tate's dominance of that market, with dbase. This project, first called 'Omega' and later 'Cirrus', eventually spawned two products: Visual Basic in 1991 and Access in late 1992. Whereas Visual Basic battled with PowerBuilder for dominance in the client-server market, Access easily won the desktop database battle, with Dbase III and DataEase falling away. Access did an excellent job of abstracting and simplifying the task of building small database applications in a short amount of time, for a small number of departmental users, and often for a transient requirement. There is an excellent front end and forms generator. We not only see it in Access but parts of it also reappear in SSMS. It's good. A business user can pull together useful reports, without relying on extensive technical support. A skilled Access programmer can deliver a fairly sophisticated application, whilst the traditional client-server programmer is still sharpening his pencil. Even for the SQL Server programmer, the forms generator of Access is useful for sketching out application designs. So far, so good, but here's where the problems start; Access ties together two different products and the backend of Access is the bugbear. The limitations of Jet/ACE are well-known and documented. They range from MDB files that are prone to corruption, especially as they grow in size, pathetic security, and "copy and paste" Backups. The biggest problem though, was an infamous lack of scalability. Because Microsoft never realized how long the product would last, they put little energy into improving the beast. Microsoft 'ate their own dog food' by using Access for Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. They choked on it. For years, scalability and performance problems with Exchange Server have been laid at the door of the Jet Blue engine on which it relies. Substantial development work in Exchange 2010 was required, just in order to improve the engine and storage schema so that it more efficiently handled the reading and writing of mails. The alternative of using SQL Server just never panned out. The Jet engine was designed to limit concurrent users to a small number (10-20). When Access applications outgrew this, bitter experience proved that there really is no easy upgrade path from Access to SQL Server, beyond rewriting the whole lot from scratch. The various initiatives to do this never quite bridged the cultural gulf between Access and a true relational database So, what are the obvious alternatives for small, strategic database applications? I know many users who, for simple 'list maintenance' requirements are very happy using Excel databases. Surely, now that PowerPivot has led the way, it is time for Microsoft to offer a new RAD package for database application development; namely an Excel-based front end for SQL Server Express. In that way, we'll have a powerful and familiar front end, to a scalable database, and a clear upgrade path when an app takes off and needs to go enterprise. Cheers, Tony.

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Jeff Foster

  My previous blog, Deliberate Practice, discussed the need for developers to “sharpen their pencil” continually, by setting aside time to learn how to tackle problems in different ways. However, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a contested and somewhat-controversial concept from language theory, seems to hold reasonably true when applied to programming languages. It states that: “The structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world.” If you’re constrained by a single programming language, the one that dominates your day job, then you only have the tools of that language at your disposal to think about and solve a problem. For example, if you’ve only ever worked with Java, you would never think of passing a function to a method. A good developer needs to learn many languages. You may never deploy them in production, you may never ship code with them, but by learning a new language, you’ll have new ideas that will transfer to your current “day-job” language. With the abundant choices in programming languages, how does one choose which to learn? Alan Perlis sums it up best. “A language that doesn‘t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing“ With that in mind, here’s a selection of languages that I think are worth learning and that have certainly changed the way I think about tackling programming problems. Clojure Clojure is a Lisp-based language running on the Java Virtual Machine. The unique property of Lisp is homoiconicity, which means that a Lisp program is a Lisp data structure, and vice-versa. Since we can treat Lisp programs as Lisp data structures, we can write our code generation in the same style as our code. This gives Lisp a uniquely powerful macro system, and makes it ideal for implementing domain specific languages. Clojure also makes software transactional memory a first-class citizen, giving us a new approach to concurrency and dealing with the problems of shared state. Haskell Haskell is a strongly typed, functional programming language. Haskell’s type system is far richer than C# or Java, and allows us to push more of our application logic to compile-time safety. If it compiles, it usually works! Haskell is also a lazy language – we can work with infinite data structures. For example, in a board game we can generate the complete game tree, even if there are billions of possibilities, because the values are computed only as they are needed. Erlang Erlang is a functional language with a strong emphasis on reliability. Erlang’s approach to concurrency uses message passing instead of shared variables, with strong support from both the language itself and the virtual machine. Processes are extremely lightweight, and garbage collection doesn’t require all processes to be paused at the same time, making it feasible for a single program to use millions of processes at once, all without the mental overhead of managing shared state. The Benefits of Multilingualism By studying new languages, even if you won’t ever get the chance to use them in production, you will find yourself open to new ideas and ways of coding in your main language. For example, studying Haskell has taught me that you can do so much more with types and has changed my programming style in C#. A type represents some state a program should have, and a type should not be able to represent an invalid state. I often find myself refactoring methods like this… void SomeMethod(bool doThis, bool doThat) { if (!(doThis ^ doThat)) throw new ArgumentException(“At least one arg should be true”); if (doThis) DoThis(); if (doThat) DoThat(); } …into a type-based solution, like this: enum Action { DoThis, DoThat, Both }; void SomeMethod(Action action) { if (action == Action.DoThis || action == Action.Both) DoThis(); if (action == Action.DoThat || action == Action.Both) DoThat(); } At this point, I’ve removed the runtime exception in favor of a compile-time check. This is a trivial example, but is just one of many ideas that I’ve taken from one language and implemented in another.

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• Cannot convert lambda expression to type 'string' because it is not a delegate type

  - by RememberME

  I have the following code written by another developer on 2 pages of my site. This used to work just fine, but now is giving the error "Cannot convert lambda expression to type 'string' because it is not a delegate type" on the Delete line with Ajax.ThemeRollerActionLink. I don't go into this section of the site often, and we recently upgraded from MVC 1.0 to 2.0. I'm guessing that's probably when it stopped working. I've looked up this error and the recommended fix seems to be add using System.Linq However, the page already has <%@ Import Namespace="System.Linq" %> <% Html.Grid(Model).Columns(col => { col.For(c => "<a href='" + Url.Action("Edit", new { userName = c }) + "' class=\"fg-button fg-button-icon-solo ui-state-default ui-corner-all\"><span class=\"ui-icon ui-icon-pencil\"></span></a>").Named("Edit").DoNotEncode(); col.For(c => Ajax.ThemeRollerActionLink("fg-button fg-button-icon-solo ui-state-default ui-corner-all", "ui-icon ui-icon-close", "Delete", new { userName = c }, new AjaxOptions { Confirm = "Delete User?", HttpMethod = "Delete", InsertionMode = InsertionMode.Replace, UpdateTargetId = "gridcontainer", OnSuccess = "successDeleteAssignment", OnFailure = "failureDeleteAssignment" })).Named("Delete").DoNotEncode(); col.For(c => c).Named("User"); }).Attributes(id => "userlist").Render(); %>

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• WPF DataGrid HeaderTemplate Mysterious Padding

  - by Jake Wharton

  I am placing a single button with an image in the header of a column of a DataGrid. The cell template is also just a simple button with an image. <my:DataGridTemplateColumn> <my:DataGridTemplateColumn.HeaderTemplate> <DataTemplate> <Button ToolTip="Add New Template" Name="AddNewTemplate" Click="AddNewTemplate_Click"> <Image Source="../Resources/add.png"/> </Button> </DataTemplate> </my:DataGridTemplateColumn.HeaderTemplate> <my:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate> <DataTemplate> <Button ToolTip="Edit Template" Name="EditTemplate" Click="EditTemplate_Click" Tag="{Binding}"> <Image Source="../Resources/pencil.png"/> </Button> </DataTemplate> </my:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate> </my:DataGridTemplateColumn> When rendered, the header has approximately 10-15px of padding on the right side only which causes the cells to obviously render at that width leaving the cell button having empty space on both sides. Being a pixel-perfectionist this annoys the hell out of me. I had initially thought that it was space for the arrows displayed when sorted but I have sorting disabled on both the entire DataGrid and explicitly on the column. Here's a image: I assume this is padding form whatever is the parent element of the button. Does anyone know a way to eliminate it?

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• search dataset from xml file

  - by Anelim

  Hi, I need to filter the results I obtain when I load my xml file. For example I need to search the xml data for items with keyword "Chemistry" for example. The below xml example is a summary of my xml file. The data is loaded in a gridview. Could you help? Thanks! Xml File (summary): <CONTRACTS> <CONTRACT> <CONTRACTID>779</CONTRACTID> <NAME>ContractName</NAME> <KEYWORDS>Chemistry, Engineering, Chemical</KEYWORDS> <CONTRACTSTARTDATE>1/8/2005</CONTRACTSTARTDATE> <CONTRACTENDDATE>31/7/2008</CONTRACTENDDATE> <COMMODITIES><COMMODITY><COMMODITYCODE>CHEM</COMMODITYCODE> <COMMODITYNAME>Chemicals</COMMODITYNAME></COMMODITY></COMMODITIES> </CONTRACT></CONTRACTS> My code behind code is: Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load Dim ds As DataSet = New DataSet() ds.ReadXml(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory + "/testxml.xml") Dim dtContract As DataTable = ds.Tables(0) Dim dtJoinCommodities As DataTable = ds.Tables(1) Dim dtCommodity As DataTable = ds.Tables(2) dtContract.Columns.Add("COMMODITYCODE") dtContract.Columns.Add("COMMODITYNAME") Dim count As Integer = 0 Dim commodityCode As String = Nothing Dim commodityName As String = Nothing Dim dRowJoinCommodity As DataRow Dim trimChar As Char() = {","c, " "c} Dim textboxstring As String = "KEYWORDS like 'pencil'" For Each dRow As DataRow In dtContract.Select(textboxstring) commodityCode = "" commodityName = "" count = dtContract.Rows.IndexOf(dRow) dRowJoinCommodity = dtJoinCommodities.Rows(count) For Each dRowCommodities As DataRow In dtCommodity.Rows If dRowCommodities("COMMODITIES_Id").ToString() = dRowJoinCommodity("COMMODITIES_ID").ToString() Then commodityCode = commodityCode + dRowCommodities("COMMODITYCODE").ToString() + ", " commodityName = commodityName + dRowCommodities("COMMODITYNAME").ToString() + ", " End If Next commodityCode = commodityCode.TrimEnd(trimChar) commodityName = commodityName.TrimEnd(trimChar) dRow("COMMODITYCODE") = commodityCode dRow("COMMODITYNAME") = commodityName Next GridView1.DataSource = dtContract GridView1.DataBind() End Sub

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• What is the best way to automatically transpose a LilyPond source file into multiple keys?

  - by Michael Steele

  problem I'm using LilyPond to typeset sheet music for a church choir to perform. Depending on who is available on any given week, songs will be played in various keys. We have an amazing pianist who can play anything we throw at her and the guitarists will typically pencil in alternate chords, but I want to make things easier by having beautifully typeset sheet music available in any key we want. So say we're going to sing our ABCs. First I'll take whatever source transcriptions available and enter it into a LilyPond script: melody = \relative c' { c c g g a a g2 f f e e d d c2 } I want the ability to transpose this automatically, so if I want the whole thing in 'G' I wrap the song in a \transpose call like so: melody = \transpose c g \relative c' { c c g g a a g2 f f e e d d c2 } What I really want is to substitute something for the 'g' and generate the output for melody multiple times. Simple LilyPond variables don't seem to work here, and so far I've been unsuccessful in defining a scheme function to do this. What I've resorted to for the moment is taking the above file, call it twinkle.ly and turning it into an M4 script called twinkle.ly.m4, the contents of which look like this: melody = \transpose c _key \relative c' { c c g g a a g2 f f e e d d c2 } I then compile the while thing by executing the following line: > m4 -D _key=g twinkle.ly.m4 > twinkle_g.ly && lilypond twinkle_g.ly I've written a Makefile to do this for me, defining rules for every song I have and every key I'm interested in. question There's got to be a better way of going about this. Given that Lilypond supports embedded scheme, I would prefer to not use a macro preprocessed on it. Has anybody else come up with a solution to this same problem?

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• Drawing half of a Bezier path in Raphael

  - by Fibericon

  Let's say I have a cubic Bezier path as follows (formatted for use with the Raphael path function): M55 246S55 247 55 248 Just an example. This was taken from my drawing application, where I use the cursor to draw a line when the user holds the mouse button down, kind of like a pencil or marker. I'm using jquery's mousemove event to draw the line between two points every time the user moves the mouse. There is another (the reference point) that is taken before the line is drawn, so that the Bezier curve can be created. Here's my question: is it possible to make Raphael only draw half of a given path? I'm aware of the getSubpath() function, but if my understanding of Bezier curves is correct, it would be rather difficult to calculate the second argument. The problem with the animate function is that it creates double lines (that is, it creates the curved line that I want, and the boxy line around it which should not be shown, possibly because the mouse is being moved faster than the animation can handle). Of course, if my approach itself is flawed in some way (or my understanding of the possible solutions), I'd like to hear it. Any help would be appreciated.

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• [LaTeX] breaking an environment across pages - the smart way

  - by Flavius

  Hi I am using the exercise package to display exercises in a book. I have redefined some commands like this, which basically adds some space, a pencil, and two hrule's before and after the exercise: \renewcommand{\ExerciseHeader}{\vskip 1em\hrule\vskip 1em\centerline{\textbf{\large\smallpencil \ExerciseHeaderNB\ExerciseHeaderTitle% \ExerciseHeaderDifficulty\ExerciseHeaderOrigin\medskip}}} \makeatletter\def\endExerciseEnv{\termineliste{1}\@EndExeBox\vskip .5em\hrule\vskip 1em}\makeatother Now this works, but there's a small problem: There are situations where only the \hrule ends up being at the bottom of a page, and the rest of the exercise goes on the next page. There is also the opposite behavior: the entire exercise is on one page, except the \hrule in "endExerciseEnv", which is flushed to the next page. My question is: How to force the top hrule come either together with the header of the exercise (caption, title, whatever not) and at least the first two paragraphs (or \ExePath and a paragraph, or anything like that, but there must be at last "two things", so it doesn't look ugly), OR be flushed altogether, with the entire exercise? Similar question for the bottom hrule: How to force it have at least two items in front of it on the visible page where the hrule itself goes to? Any LaTeX guru who knows that? Addendum I have asked in the past LaTeX questions like this and I've got answers which required me to do stuff manually, like "insert a \vskip here and there" or such. Let me be clear: This is a book, there's lot of exercises, and I NEED it be done "automatically", by going the proper way of redeclaring commands & co.

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• ADO.NET Multiple simultaneous reads from an open database.

  - by Deverill

  Answer not needed - my logic was wrong and this question is invalid. Charles helped me see where I went off-tracks. Thanks I have a utility that moves data from one source to another. In the process of writing the record I check to see if it exists and do an update/insert as necessary. The difficulty I have is that as I'm writing the main record info there is a 2nd table for "custom data" that I have to check to see if it exists and do an update/insert for that as well. Example: I may be loading a pencil sharpener that may or may not exist. While I'm writing it into destination it has characteristics such as style, color, etc. and each of them may or may not exist. As written I seem to need to have 2 DataReaders open, one for the sharpener and one to check for and update color. I am new to ADO.NET, but not to programming and it's more complicated than I listed but for sanity's sake I didn't put all the details. My question is: What am I missing? You can't have 2 readers open at the same time on a connection, yet I can't close the first if I'm stepping through all products. It seems inefficient to have 2 connections, readers, etc. for this. Is there a feature of ADO.NET DBs that I'm missing? How would you do it? Thanks!

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• PhpBB3: adding background to specific php generated text input without affecting the other text inputs

  - by user1780055

  I have created a custom PhpBB3 style and desperately since a few hours tried to add a background image to a specific comment text area. With firebug I checked if the comment text area had a class and it does, so I tried some css variations and finally tried: sn-inputComment { background: url("{T_THEME_PATH}/images/pencil.png") repeat-x left top #FFFFFF;} { I also tried to find and manipulate the php generated text area but no success. Non of my methods worked. I will provide you all with a tinylink url to my forum with a test user and password access. User: test Password: 123456 url: http://tinyurl.com/9yqpxdb Now when you are logged in you should be redirected to the correct url and you will see a a few text boxes with "Write a comment...". I would be very happy if you could tell me what I did wrong, why im not able to add a background to the text input without having my search boxes and "what is on your mind box" affected. I appreciate your time and hope that this can be somehow solved. Sincerely, Daniel

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• center div tags inside parent div

  - by Senthilnathan

  I have two div tags inside a parent div. I want to display the two divs in same line and centered. Below is the html code. <div id="parent"> <div id="addEditBtn" style="display:inline-block; vertical-align: middle; width:20px; cursor:pointer;" class="ui-state-default ui-corner-all"> <span class="ui-icon ui-icon-pencil"></span></div> <div id="deleteBtn" style="display:inline-block; vertical-align: middle; width:20px; cursor:pointer;" class="ui-state-default ui-corner-all"> <span class="ui-icon ui-icon-trash"></span></div> </div> I tried with "display:inline-block; vertical-align: middle;" but its getting aligned left. Please help me out to centered the div tags inside the parent div.

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• Fast sketching tools for drawing C/C++ structs, pointers, etc...

  - by tomasorti

  Hi. I would like to know what do you use to sketch relations between different entities in C/C++. This can be a very broad issue, so I'll try to clarify a bit more my question and give an example. I'm looking for something that is simple enough as a user, and let me sketch easily containers, pointers, etc... in an informal way. The aim is to document some structs relations to pass them to junior developers. A look at the drawings is supposed to accelerate the understanding of the code. My solutions at this moment are to use: 1) Paper & pencil. 2) Microsoft PowerPoint/Word Autoshapes. 3) Freeware Dia. Other ones could be: 4) Microsoft Visio, but my company does not own licenses. 5) UML tools. I don't want to go this way. This is what I mean a more formal solution. I know tools like Rational Rose are great, and I tried boUML and violet and they are fine in some parts, but I prefer the flexibility of options 2) or 3). Finally, let me write down a more concrete example: Let's say I what to sketch a map that contains another map as the mapped value, and that one contains a struct as the mapped value, that holds a vector of pointers of a type and a pointer to other type. Also, there exist other structs that hold pointers to the objects pointed by the previous map, so there are objects pointed from different places. This is just one example I have, but you can easily come with one from you experience. What would you use to sketch this example or another similar you have dealt with? Best regards, Tomas.

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• display the item in tdbmemo from combobox

  - by zizil

  i have combobox that have value category1 and category2...the category1 have items like pencil,food,magazine,newspaper... when i choose category1, i want to retrieve the items in tdbmemo.then the same items in tdbmemo i want to display in checklistbox...i dont know how to do...i use clcat.items.add to display the item but the items is not display procedure TfrmSysConfig.FillInCheckListClCat; var sTable : string; sqlCat : TIBOQuery; iIndex :integer; lstCat : TStringList; begin if tblMain.FieldByName('POS_ReceiptCatBreakDown').AsString <> '' then begin sqlCat := TIBOQuery.Create(nil); sqlCat.IB_Connection := dmMain.db; lstCat := TStringList.Create; try sqlCat.SQL.Text := 'SELECT code FROM ' + cboCategory.Value; sqlCat.Open; while not sqlCat.Eof do begin clCat.Items.Add( sqlCat.FieldByName( 'Code' ).AsString ); sqlCat.Next; end; finally lstCat.Free; sqlCat.Free; end; end; end;

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• Why do we need serialization in web service

  - by Cloud2010

  I have one webservice: public class Product { public int ProductId { get; set; } public string ProductName { get; set; } } public class Service : System.Web.Services.WebService { public Service () { //Uncomment the following line if using designed components //InitializeComponent(); } [WebMethod] public List<Product> GetItems() { List<Product> productList = new List<Product>() { new Product{ProductId=1,ProductName="Pencil"}, new Product{ProductId=2,ProductName="Pen"} }; return productList; } and in a asp.net application I am consuming it like: localhost.Service s = new localhost.Service(); List<localhost.Product> k = new List<localhost.Product>(); k = s.GetItems().ToList(); // i am getting the values here. now my question is do I need to serialize my webmethod as i am returning custom types? when should we serialize ? is it necessary at all, if yes , then what are the conditions?

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• Design a T-shirt for .NET Reflector Pro

  - by Laila

  Win a .NET Reflector Pro license, a box of Red Gate goodies, and a t-shirt printed with your design! Red Gate likes t-shirts. Each of our teams has one. In fact, each individual person has one, numbered according to when they joined the company: Red Gate's 1st, 2nd, and so on right up to Red Gate's 170th, with the slogan "More than just a number". Those t-shirts are important, chiefly because they remind the people wearing them that they are important. But that isn't enough. What really makes us great are the people who choose to use our tools. So we'd like to extend our tradition of t-shirts to include you and put the design of our next shirt entirely in your hands. We'd like you to come up with a witty slogan or create an inventive or simply beautiful t-shirt design for .NET Reflector Pro, our add-in for Visual Studio, which allows you to step into decompiled assemblies whilst debugging in Visual Studio. When you're done, post your masterpiece to Twitter with the hash tag #reflectortees, and @redgate will take a look! We'll pick the best design, and the winner will get a licensed copy of .NET Reflector Pro and a box of Red Gate goodies - not to mention a copy of their t-shirt. The winning design will go into production and be worn and given out at tradeshows, conferences, and user group events across the world, proudly bearing the name of their designer. We'll also pick three runners-up who will receive licenses for .NET Reflector Pro. Red Gate goodie box Interested? If you're up for the challenge, then we've got some resources to get you started. Inside the .zip file you'll find high-quality versions of the following: T-shirt templates: don't forget to design the front and the back! Different versions of the .NET Reflector Pro logo and Red Gate logo. Colour sheets to give you an easy reference to the Red Gate colours, including hex and RGB values. You can create and send us as many designs as you like, and each of them will be considered for the prize. To submit your designs, simply tweet including the competition hash tag, #reflectortees, and a link to somewhere we can see your design: either an image hosting site such as Twitpic, Flickr or Picasa, or a personal blog. You will need to create a Twitter account (which is free), if you don't already have one. You only have three limits: The background colour of the t-shirt should be one of our brand colours (red, light/dark grey or black), though you're welcome to use other colours in the rest of the design. You need to make use of either the .NET Reflector Pro logo OR the Red Gate logo (please keep them as they are) If you include any text or slogan, stick with just one or two colors for it. Apart from that, go wild. Go and do whatever it is you do when you get creative: whether you walk barefoot on the grass with a pencil and paper, sit cross-legged on a pile of cushions with a laptop, or simply close your eyes and float through a mist of ideas, now is your chance. Make sure you enjoy it. We're looking forward to seeing your creations. Terms and conditions 1. The closing date for entries is June 11th, 2010 (4 p.m. UK time). Red Gate Software Ltd reserves the right to extend the competition deadline at its discretion. If there is a revision, the revised date will be published on this blog and the date for announcing the results will be postponed accordingly. 2. The winning designer will be notified on June 14th, 2010 through Twitter. The winner must claim his/her prize by sending us a high-resolution image of their design via email (i.e. Illustrator EPS files or appropriate format, ideally at 300dpi). If the winner does not come forward within 3 days of the announcement, they will forfeit their prize and another winner will be selected from the runners-up. The names of the winner and runners-up will be posted on this blog by June 18th.  3. Entry is completed on the designer posting a link to their entry in a tweet with the correct hash tag, #reflectortees. 4. Red Gate Software needs to hold the rights to using the winning design in order to put the t-shirt into production. We will make sure that this is fine with the winner before we do so, but if you do not want us holding the rights to your design, please do not submit your designs. We reserve the right to slightly alter or adjust any artwork we decide to use (mainly to make it easier to print), but we will make sure we contact the winner for approval first. The winner will also need to allow us the use of his/her name for purposes of promoting your design. 5. Entries must be entirely your own original work and must not breach any copyright or third party rights. Red Gate Software Ltd will not be made partially or fully liable for any non-original work submitted by you. 6. This competition is free: you do not need to buy anything or be an existing customer to enter. 7. This competition is not open to employees of Red Gate Software Ltd, their families, or any other company directly connected with the administration of this promotion.

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• Ranking - an Introduction

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Ranking Ranking is quite common in the internet. Readers are asked to rank their latest reading by clicking on one of 5 (sometimes 10) stars. The number of stars is then converted to a number and the average number of stars as selected by all the readers is proudly (or shamefully) displayed for future readers. SharePoint 2007 lacked this feature altogether. SharePoint 2010 allows the users to rank items in a list or documents in a library (the two are actually the same because a library is actually a list). But in SP2010 the computation of the average is done later on a timer rather than on-the-spot as it should be. I suspect that the reason for this shortcoming is that they did not involve a mathematician! Let me explain. Ranking is kept in a related list. When a user rates a document the rank-list is added an item with the item id, the user name, and his number of stars. The fact that a user already ranked an item prevents him from ranking it again. This prevents the creator of the item from asking his mother to rank it a 5 and do it 753 times, thus stacking the ballot. Some systems will allow a user to change his rating and this will be done by updating the rank-list item. Now, when the timer kicks off, the list is spanned and for each item the rank-list items containing this id are summed up and divided by the number of votes thus yielding the new average. This is obviously very time consuming and very server intensive. In the 18th century an early actuary named James Dodson used what the great Augustus De Morgan (of De Morgan’s law) later named Commutation tables. The labor involved in computing a life insurance premium was staggering and also very error prone. Clerks with pencil and paper would multiply and add mountains of numbers to do the task. The more steps the greater the probability of error and the more expensive the process. Commutation tables created a “summary” of many steps and reduced the work 100 fold. So had Microsoft taken a lesson in the history of computation, they would have developed a much faster way for rating that may be done in real-time and is also 100 times faster and less CPU intensive. How do we do this? We use a form of commutation. We always keep the number of votes and the total of stars. One simple division gives us the average. So we write an event receiver. When a vote is added, we just add the stars to the total-stars and 1 to the number of votes. We then recomputed the average. When a vote is updated, we reduce the total by the old vote, increase it by the new vote and leave the number of votes the same. Again we do the division to get the new average. When a vote is deleted (highly unlikely and maybe even prohibited), we reduce the total by that vote and reduce the number of votes by 1… Gone are the days of spanning lists, counting items, and tallying votes and we have no need for a timer process to run it all. This is the first of a few treatises on ranking. Even though I discussed the math and the history thereof, in here I am only going to solve the presentation issue. I wanted to create the CSS and Jscript needed to display the stars, create the various effects like hovering and clicking (onmouseover, onmouseout, onclick, etc.) and I wanted to create a general solution with any number of stars. When I had it all done, I created the ranking game so that I could test it. The game is interesting in and on itself, so here it is (or go to the games page and select “rank the stars”). BTW, when you play it, look at the source code and see how it was all done.  Next, how the 5 stars are displayed in the New and Update forms. When the whole set of articles will be done, you’ll be able to create the complete solution. That’s all folks!

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• Detecting Duplicates Using Oracle Business Rules

  - by joeywong-Oracle

  Recently I was involved with a Business Process Management Proof of Concept (BPM PoC) where we wanted to show how customers could use Oracle Business Rules (OBR) to easily define some rules to detect certain conditions, such as duplicate account numbers, duplicate names, high transaction amounts, etc, in a set of transactions. Traditionally you would have to loop through the transactions and compare each transaction with each other to find matching conditions. This is not particularly nice as it relies on more traditional approaches (coding) and is not the most efficient way. OBR is a great place to house these types’ of rules as it allows users/developers to externalise the rules, in a simpler manner, externalising the rules from the message flows and allows users to change them when required. So I went ahead looking for some examples. After quite a bit of time spent Googling, I did not find much out in the blogosphere. In fact the best example was actually from...... wait for it...... Oracle Documentation! (http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28271_01/user.1111/e10228/rules_start.htm#ASRUG228) However, if you followed the link there was not much explanation provided with the example. So the aim of this article is to provide a little more explanation to the example so that it can be better understood. Note: I won’t be covering the BPM parts in great detail. Use case: Payment instruction file is required to be processed. Before instruction file can be processed it needs to be approved by a business user. Before the approval process, it would be useful to run the payment instruction file through OBR to look for transactions of interest. The output of the OBR can then be used to flag the transactions for the approvers to investigate. Example BPM Process So let’s start defining the Business Rules Dictionary. For the input into our rules, we will be passing in an array of payments which contain some basic information for our demo purposes. Input to Business Rules And for our output we want to have an array of rule output messages. Note that the element I am using for the output is only for one rule message element and not an array. We will configure the Business Rules component later to return an array instead. Output from Business Rules Business Rule – Create Dictionary Fill in all the details and click OK. Open the Business Rules component and select Decision Functions from the side. Modify the Decision Function Configuration Select the decision function and click on the edit button (the pencil), don’t worry that JDeveloper indicates that there is an error with the decision function. Then click the Ouputs tab and make sure the checkbox under the List column is checked, this is to tell the Business Rules component that it should return an array of rule message elements. Updating the Decision Service Next we will define the actual rules. Click on Ruleset1 on the side and then the Create Rule in the IF/THEN Rule section. Creating new rule in ruleset Ok, this is where some detailed explanation is required. Remember that the input to this Business Rules dictionary is a list of payments, each of those payments were of the complex type PaymentType. Each of those payments in the Oracle Business Rules engine is treated as a fact in its working memory. Implemented rule So in the IF/THEN rule, the first task is to grab two PaymentType facts from the working memory and assign them to temporary variable names (payment1 and payment2 in our example). Matching facts Once we have them in the temporary variables, we can then start comparing them to each other. For our demonstration we want to find payments where the account numbers were the same but the account name was different. Suspicious payment instruction And to stop the rule from comparing the same facts to each other, over and over again, we have to include the last test. Stop rule from comparing endlessly And that’s it! No for loops, no need to keep track of what you have or have not compared, OBR handles all that for you because everything is done in its working memory. And once all the tests have been satisfied we need to assert a new fact for the output. Assert the output fact Save your Business Rules. Next step is to complete the data association in the BPM process. Pay extra care to use Copy List instead of the default Copy when doing data association at an array level. Input and output data association Deploy and test. Test data Rule matched Parting words: Ideally you would then use the output of the Business Rules component to then display/flag the transactions which triggered the rule so that the approver can investigate. Link: SOA Project Archive [Download]

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• Diophantine Equation [closed]

  - by ANIL

  In mathematics, a Diophantine equation (named for Diophantus of Alexandria, a third century Greek mathematician) is a polynomial equation where the variables can only take on integer values. Although you may not realize it, you have seen Diophantine equations before: one of the most famous Diophantine equations is: X^n+Y^n=Z^n We are not certain that McDonald's knows about Diophantine equations (actually we doubt that they do), but they use them! McDonald's sells Chicken McNuggets in packages of 6, 9 or 20 McNuggets. Thus, it is possible, for example, to buy exactly 15 McNuggets (with one package of 6 and a second package of 9), but it is not possible to buy exactly 16 nuggets, since no non- negative integer combination of 6's, 9's and 20's adds up to 16. To determine if it is possible to buy exactly n McNuggets, one has to solve a Diophantine equation: find non-negative integer values of a, b, and c, such that 6a + 9b + 20c = n. Problem 1 Show that it is possible to buy exactly 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, and 55 McNuggets, by finding solutions to the Diophantine equation. You can solve this in your head, using paper and pencil, or writing a program. However you chose to solve this problem, list the combinations of 6, 9 and 20 packs of McNuggets you need to buy in order to get each of the exact amounts. Given that it is possible to buy sets of 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 or 55 McNuggets by combinations of 6, 9 and 20 packs, show that it is possible to buy 56, 57,..., 65 McNuggets. In other words, show how, given solutions for 50-55, one can derive solutions for 56-65. Problem 2 Write an iterative program that finds the largest number of McNuggets that cannot be bought in exact quantity. Your program should print the answer in the following format (where the correct number is provided in place of n): "Largest number of McNuggets that cannot be bought in exact quantity: n" Hints: Hypothesize possible instances of numbers of McNuggets that cannot be purchased exactly, starting with 1 For each possible instance, called n, a. Test if there exists non-negative integers a, b, and c, such that 6a+9b+20c = n. (This can be done by looking at all feasible combinations of a, b, and c) b. If not, n cannot be bought in exact quantity, save n When you have found six consecutive values of n that in fact pass the test of having an exact solution, the last answer that was saved (not the last value of n that had a solution) is the correct answer, since you know by the theorem that any amount larger can also be bought in exact quantity

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• Linking buttion to jQuery through service

  - by Ruddy

  I have a small problem that should be very easy to overcome. For some reason I cant work this out. So the problem is I cannot get a button to link to some jquery. My set-up is as follows (showing the relevant code): Default.aspx jQuery: function getContent() { var data = { numberID: 1 }; $.jsonAspNet("ContentService.asmx", "GetContent", data, function (result) { $('#content').html(result); }); } jQuery(document).ready(function () { getContent(); } HTML: <div id="content"></div> ContentService.vb Public Function GetContent(number As Integer) As String Dim sb = New StringBuilder sb.AppendLine("<table>") sb.AppendLine("<tr>") sb.AppendLine("<td class='ui-widget-header ui-corner-all'>Number</td>") sb.AppendLine("</tr>") sb.AppendLine("<tr>") sb.AppendLine("<td>" & number & "</td>") sb.AppendLine("<td><a href='#' id='test' class='fg-button ui-state-default ui-corner-all'><img src='" & Context.Request.ApplicationPath & "/images/spacer.gif' class='ui-icon ui-icon-pencil' /></a></td>") sb.AppendLine("</tr>") sb.AppendLine("</table>") Return sb.ToString End Function So that's the basics of what I have everything works but I'm not sure how to get the button (id='test') to get linked to some jQuery. I want it to be pressed and bring up a popup. I have tried to put the jQuery on default.aspx but this doesn't seem to work unless the button is place in the HTML on that page. $('#test').unbind('click').click(function () { alert('Working'); }); I'm sure this is easy to be able to do but I have been trying for a while and cannot seem to get it to work.

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• Rails, Edit page update in a window

  - by Mike

  I have my code working so that I have a table of businesses. There's a pencil icon you can click on the edit the business information. The edit information comes up in a partial inside of a modal pop up box. The only problem is that once they make the changes they want and click update, it sends them to the 'show' page for that business. What I want to happen is have the pop up box close and have it update the information. This is my update function in my controller. def update @business = Business.find(params[:id]) respond_to do |format| if @business.update_attributes(params[:business]) flash[:notice] = 'Business was successfully updated.' format.html { redirect_to(business_url(@business)) } format.js else format.html { render :action => "edit" } format.xml { render :xml => @business.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity } end end end I tried following railscast 43 and i created an .rjs file but I couldn't get that to work at all. My update was still taking me to the show page. Any help would be appreciated. EDIT: Added some more code. <% form_for(@business) do |f| %> <%= f.error_messages %> <p> <%= f.label :name %><br /> <%= f.text_field :name %> </p> ... <%= f.label :business_category %><br /> <%= f.select :business_category_id, @business_categories_map, :selected => @business.business_category_id %> </p> <p> <%= f.label :description %><br /> <%= f.text_area :description %> </p> <p> <%= f.submit 'Update' %> </p> <% end %> This is my form inside of my edit page which is being called through the index in a pop up by: <div id="popupEdit<%=h business.id %>" class="popupContact"> <a class="popupClose<%=h business.id %>" id="popupClose">x</a> <% if business.business_category_id %> <% @business = business %> <%= render "business/edit" %> <% end %> </div>

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• Writing OpenGL enabled GUI

  - by Jaen

  I am exploring a possibility to write a kind of a notebook analogue that would reproduce the look and feel of using a traditional notebook, but with the added benefit of customizing the page in ways you can't do on paper - ask the program to lay ruled paper here, grid paper there, paste an image, insert a recording from the built-in camera, try to do handwriting recognition on the tablet input, insert some latex for neat formulas and so on. I'm pretty interested in developing it just to see if writing notes on computer can come anywhere close to the comfort plain paper + pencil offer (hard to do IMO) and can always turn it in as a university C++ project, so double gain there. Coming from the type of project there are certain requirements for the user interface: the user will be able to zoom, move and rotate the notebook as he wishes and I think it's pretty sensible delegate it to OpenGL, so the prospective GUI needs to work well with OGL (preferably being rendered in it) the interface should be navigable with as little of keyboard input as user wishes (incorporating some sort of gestures maybe) up to limiting the keyboard keys as modifiers to the pen movements and taps; this includes tablet and possible multitouch support the interface should keep out of the way where not needed and come up where needed and be easily layerable the notebook sheet itself will be a container for objects representing the notebook blurbs, so it would be nice if the GUI would be able to overlay some frames over the exact parts of the OpenGL-drawn sheet to signify what can be done with given part (like moving, rotating, deleting, copying, editing etc.) and it's extents In terms of interface it's probably going to end up similar to Alias' Sketch Book Pro: [picture][http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_GGxlzvZW-CY/SeKYA_oBdSI/AAAAAAAAErE/J6A0kyXiuqA/s400/Autodesk_Alias_SketchBook_Pro_2.jpg] As far as toolkits go I'm considering Qt and nui, but I'm not really aware how well would they match up the requirements and how well would they handle such an application. As far as I know you can somehow coerce Qt into doing widget drawing with OpenGL, but on the other hand I heard voices it's slot-signal framework isn't exactly optimal and requires it's own preprocessor and I don't know how hard would be to do all the custom widgets I would need (say color-wheel, ruler, blurb frames, blurb selection, tablet-targeted pop-up menu etc.) in the constraints of Qt. Also quite a few Qt programs I've had on my machine seemed really sluggish, but it may be attributed to me having old PC or programmers using Qt suboptimally rather to the framework itself. As for [nui][http://www.libnui.net/] I know it's also cross-platform and all of the basic things you would require of a GUI toolkit and what is the biggest plus it is OpenGL-enabled from the start, but I don't know how it is with custom widgets and other facets and it certainly has smaller userbase and less elaborate documentation than Qt. The question goes as this: Does any of these toolkits fulfill (preferably all of) the requirements or there is a well fitting toolkit I haven't come across or maybe I should just roll up my sleeves, get SFML (or maybe Clutter would be more suited to this?) and something like FastDelegates or libsigc++ and program the GUI framework from the ground up myself? I would be very glad if anyone had experience with a similar GUI project and can offer some comments on how well these toolkits hold up or is it worthwhile to pursue own GUI toolkit in this case. Sorry for longwindedness, duh.

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• A Good Developer is So Hard to Find

  - by James Michael Hare

  Let me start out by saying I want to damn the writers of the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever – 2. It is eating every last shred of my free time! But as I've been churning through each puzzle and marvelling at the brain teasers and trivia within, I began to think about interviewing developers and why it seems to be so hard to find good ones.  The problem is, it seems like no matter how hard we try to find the perfect way to separate the chaff from the wheat, inevitably someone will get hired who falls far short of expectations or someone will get passed over for missing a piece of trivia or a tricky brain teaser that could have been an excellent team member.   In shops that are primarily software-producing businesses or other heavily IT-oriented businesses (Microsoft, Amazon, etc) there often exists a much tighter bond between HR and the hiring development staff because development is their life-blood. Unfortunately, many of us work in places where IT is viewed as a cost or just a means to an end. In these shops, too often, HR and development staff may work against each other due to differences in opinion as to what a good developer is or what one is worth.  It seems that if you ask two different people what makes a good developer, often you will get three different opinions.   With the exception of those shops that are purely development-centric (you guys have it much easier!), most other shops have management who have very little knowledge about the development process.  Their view can often be that development is simply a skill that one learns and then once aquired, that developer can produce widgets as good as the next like workers on an assembly-line floor.  On the other side, you have many developers that feel that software development is an art unto itself and that the ability to create the most pure design or know the most obscure of keywords or write the shortest-possible obfuscated piece of code is a good coder.  So is it a skill?  An Art?  Or something entirely in between?   Saying that software is merely a skill and one just needs to learn the syntax and tools would be akin to saying anyone who knows English and can use Word can write a 300 page book that is accurate, meaningful, and stays true to the point.  This just isn't so.  It takes more than mere skill to take words and form a sentence, join those sentences into paragraphs, and those paragraphs into a document.  I've interviewed candidates who could answer obscure syntax and keyword questions and once they were hired could not code effectively at all.  So development must be more than a skill.   But on the other end, we have art.  Is development an art?  Is our end result to produce art?  I can marvel at a piece of code -- see it as concise and beautiful -- and yet that code most perform some stated function with accuracy and efficiency and maintainability.  None of these three things have anything to do with art, per se.  Art is beauty for its own sake and is a wonderful thing.  But if you apply that same though to development it just doesn't hold.  I've had developers tell me that all that matters is the end result and how you code it is entirely part of the art and I couldn't disagree more.  Yes, the end result, the accuracy, is the prime criteria to be met.  But if code is not maintainable and efficient, it would be just as useless as a beautiful car that breaks down once a week or that gets 2 miles to the gallon.  Yes, it may work in that it moves you from point A to point B and is pretty as hell, but if it can't be maintained or is not efficient, it's not a good solution.  So development must be something less than art.   In the end, I think I feel like development is a matter of craftsmanship.  We use our tools and we use our skills and set about to construct something that satisfies a purpose and yet is also elegant and efficient.  There is skill involved, and there is an art, but really it boils down to being able to craft code.  Crafting code is far more than writing code.  Anyone can write code if they know the syntax, but so few people can actually craft code that solves a purpose and craft it well.  So this is what I want to find, I want to find code craftsman!  But how?   I used to ask coding-trivia questions a long time ago and many people still fall back on this.  The thought is that if you ask the candidate some piece of coding trivia and they know the answer it must follow that they can craft good code.  For example:   What C++ keyword can be applied to a class/struct field to allow it to be changed even from a const-instance of that class/struct?  (answer: mutable)   So what do we prove if a candidate can answer this?  Only that they know what mutable means.  One would hope that this would infer that they'd know how to use it, and more importantly when and if it should ever be used!  But it rarely does!  The problem with triva questions is that you will either: Approve a really good developer who knows what some obscure keyword is (good) Reject a really good developer who never needed to use that keyword or is too inexperienced to know how to use it (bad) Approve a really bad developer who googled "C++ Interview Questions" and studied like hell but can't craft (very bad) Many HR departments love these kind of tests because they are short and easy to defend if a legal issue arrises on hiring decisions.  After all it's easy to say a person wasn't hired because they scored 30 out of 100 on some trivia test.  But unfortunately, you've eliminated a large part of your potential developer pool and possibly hired a few duds.  There are times I've hired candidates who knew every trivia question I could throw out them and couldn't craft.  And then there are times I've interviewed candidates who failed all my trivia but who I took a chance on who were my best finds ever.    So if not trivia, then what?  Brain teasers?  The thought is, these type of questions measure the thinking power of a candidate.  The problem is, once again, you will either: Approve a good candidate who has never heard the problem and can solve it (good) Reject a good candidate who just happens not to see the "catch" because they're nervous or it may be really obscure (bad) Approve a candidate who has studied enough interview brain teasers (once again, you can google em) to recognize the "catch" or knows the answer already (bad). Once again, you're eliminating good candidates and possibly accepting bad candidates.  In these cases, I think testing someone with brain teasers only tests their ability to answer brain teasers, not the ability to craft code. So how do we measure someone's ability to craft code?  Here's a novel idea: have them code!  Give them a computer and a compiler, or a whiteboard and a pen, or paper and pencil and have them construct a piece of code.  It just makes sense that if we're going to hire someone to code we should actually watch them code.  When they're done, we can judge them on several criteria: Correctness - does the candidate's solution accurately solve the problem proposed? Accuracy - is the candidate's solution reasonably syntactically correct? Efficiency - did the candidate write or use the more efficient data structures or algorithms for the job? Maintainability - was the candidate's code free of obfuscation and clever tricks that diminish readability? Persona - are they eager and willing or aloof and egotistical?  Will they work well within your team? It may sound simple, or it may sound crazy, but when I'm looking to hire a developer, I want to see them actually develop well-crafted code.

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