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  • APress Deal of the Day 19/Oct/2013 - Software Projects Secrets Why Projects Fail

    - by TATWORTH
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/10/19/apress-deal-of-the-day-19oct2013---software-projects-secrets.aspxTod\y's $10 deal of the day from APress at http://www.apress.com/9781430251019 is Software Projects Secrets Why Projects Fail "Software Project Secrets: Why Software Projects Fail airs dirty laundry about the software industry—how putting project management's priorities above all else is the root cause of problems in software development projects. This book offers solutions to integrate project management with agile methodologies that really work for software development."

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  • Why is multithreading often preferred for improving performance?

    - by user1849534
    I have a question, it's about why programmers seems to love concurrency and multi-threaded programs in general. I'm considering 2 main approaches here: an async approach basically based on signals, or just an async approach as called by many papers and languages like the new C# 5.0 for example, and a "companion thread" that manages the policy of your pipeline a concurrent approach or multi-threading approach I will just say that I'm thinking about the hardware here and the worst case scenario, and I have tested this 2 paradigms myself, the async paradigm is a winner at the point that I don't get why people 90% of the time talk about multi-threading when they want to speed up things or make a good use of their resources. I have tested multi-threaded programs and async program on an old machine with an Intel quad-core that doesn't offer a memory controller inside the CPU, the memory is managed entirely by the motherboard, well in this case performances are horrible with a multi-threaded application, even a relatively low number of threads like 3-4-5 can be a problem, the application is unresponsive and is just slow and unpleasant. A good async approach is, on the other hand, probably not faster but it's not worst either, my application just waits for the result and doesn't hangs, it's responsive and there is a much better scaling going on. I have also discovered that a context change in the threading world it's not that cheap in real world scenario, it's in fact quite expensive especially when you have more than 2 threads that need to cycle and swap among each other to be computed. On modern CPUs the situation it's not really that different, the memory controller it's integrated but my point is that an x86 CPUs is basically a serial machine and the memory controller works the same way as with the old machine with an external memory controller on the motherboard. The context switch is still a relevant cost in my application and the fact that the memory controller it's integrated or that the newer CPU have more than 2 core it's not bargain for me. For what i have experienced the concurrent approach is good in theory but not that good in practice, with the memory model imposed by the hardware, it's hard to make a good use of this paradigm, also it introduces a lot of issues ranging from the use of my data structures to the join of multiple threads. Also both paradigms do not offer any security abut when the task or the job will be done in a certain point in time, making them really similar from a functional point of view. According to the X86 memory model, why the majority of people suggest to use concurrency with C++ and not just an async approach ? Also why not considering the worst case scenario of a computer where the context switch is probably more expensive than the computation itself ?

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  • Google Analytics Views - Why Use Them?

    - by pee2pee
    I've been reading about Google Analytics views but still not sure why I would use them. I'm the only person in the company who understands and uses Google Analytics. We have no subdomains. Is there any reason why I would want to use views? Google Analytics has been going for some years now and I just created a copy of the original view but this has zero data, so I can't see how it would benefit me.

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  • Why is MaybeChannelBound callable?

    - by William Payne
    The Queue class in the python kombu library inherits from MaybeChannelBound, which in turn implements the call method (making it callable). The call() method itself is a thin wrapper around the bind() method. It is not clear why this was done, as calling the bind() method seems (to my simple mind, at least) to be clearer and more descriptive of the intent of the function. Why would somebody use the call() method in a situation like this?

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  • Why do we need a format for binary executable files

    - by user3671483
    When binary files (i.e. executables) are saved they usually have a format (e.g. ELF or .out) where we have a header containing pointers to where data or code is stored inside the file. But why don't we store the binary files directly in the form of sequence of machine instructions.Why do we need to store data separately from the code?Secondly when the assembler creates a binary file is the file is among the above formats?

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  • Maps We Like, and Why We Like Them

    Maps We Like, and Why We Like Them Live from Sydney (now in HD!) Paul and Chris talk about their favorite maps, why we like them, and how we find cool maps. 1:40 Showcase | 5:45 Geo Developer Blog | 8:25 GTA4 Street View map | 11:00 Internet Map | 14:40 How we find cool maps | 20:30 Map of the Dead | 24:50 Old Maps Online | 27:10 Wind Map From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 3 0 ratings Time: 29:18 More in Science & Technology

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  • Why Isn't Linux the Standard Secondary OS?

    <b>OSTATIC: </b>"Among other reasons why Linux can function as a great sidekick to the more prevalent operating systems is that it's more secure. If you're going to jump into, say, an online banking app, why not do it in Linux, where the hackers and script kiddies aren't?"

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  • Why Outsourcing Your Cosmetic Surgery Marketing is the Only Way to Go

    Your specialty and skill set makes you an expert in cosmetic surgery, perhaps reconstructive surgery as well. Every day you exercise your expertise with your patients, skillfully crafting, sculpting, and improving their appearance. That's why it is best for both you and your patients if you stick with what you do best. Hire a cosmetic surgery marketing expert to handle your practice's marketing strategy online. Here are some helpful tips for what to outsource and why.

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  • Why does GtkCalendar counts months from 0?

    - by int_ua
    So I spent several hours in rage, figuring out why isn't my code writing to the /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm correctly. The problem is that it doesn't return anything if the value is wrong. And finally I noticed this small 5 between the year and the day. Why isn't it counting days and years from zero for consistency? For comparison: QCalendarWidget counts month from 1 to 12 (docs) So GtkCalendar... F**k You!

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  • Why use other bases when programming [closed]

    - by JMD
    Possible Duplicate: Why use other number bases when programming My coworkers and I have been bending our minds to figuring out why anyone would go out of their way to program numbers in a base other than base 10. I suggested that perhaps you could optimize longer equations by putting the variables in the correct base you are working with (for instance, if you have only sets of 5 of something with no remainders you could use base 5), but I'm not sure if that's true. Any thoughts?

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  • Why enumerator structs are a really bad idea

    - by Simon Cooper
    If you've ever poked around the .NET class libraries in Reflector, I'm sure you would have noticed that the generic collection classes all have implementations of their IEnumerator as a struct rather than a class. As you will see, this design decision has some rather unfortunate side effects... As is generally known in the .NET world, mutable structs are a Very Bad Idea; and there are several other blogs around explaining this (Eric Lippert's blog post explains the problem quite well). In the BCL, the generic collection enumerators are all mutable structs, as they need to keep track of where they are in the collection. This bit me quite hard when I was coding a wrapper around a LinkedList<int>.Enumerator. It boils down to this code: sealed class EnumeratorWrapper : IEnumerator<int> { private readonly LinkedList<int>.Enumerator m_Enumerator; public EnumeratorWrapper(LinkedList<int> linkedList) { m_Enumerator = linkedList.GetEnumerator(); } public int Current { get { return m_Enumerator.Current; } } object System.Collections.IEnumerator.Current { get { return Current; } } public bool MoveNext() { return m_Enumerator.MoveNext(); } public void Reset() { ((System.Collections.IEnumerator)m_Enumerator).Reset(); } public void Dispose() { m_Enumerator.Dispose(); } } The key line here is the MoveNext method. When I initially coded this, I thought that the call to m_Enumerator.MoveNext() would alter the enumerator state in the m_Enumerator class variable and so the enumeration would proceed in an orderly fashion through the collection. However, when I ran this code it went into an infinite loop - the m_Enumerator.MoveNext() call wasn't actually changing the state in the m_Enumerator variable at all, and my code was looping forever on the first collection element. It was only after disassembling that method that I found out what was going on The MoveNext method above results in the following IL: .method public hidebysig newslot virtual final instance bool MoveNext() cil managed { .maxstack 1 .locals init ( [0] bool CS$1$0000, [1] valuetype [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator CS$0$0001) L_0000: nop L_0001: ldarg.0 L_0002: ldfld valuetype [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator EnumeratorWrapper::m_Enumerator L_0007: stloc.1 L_0008: ldloca.s CS$0$0001 L_000a: call instance bool [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator::MoveNext() L_000f: stloc.0 L_0010: br.s L_0012 L_0012: ldloc.0 L_0013: ret } Here, the important line is 0002 - m_Enumerator is accessed using the ldfld operator, which does the following: Finds the value of a field in the object whose reference is currently on the evaluation stack. So, what the MoveNext method is doing is the following: public bool MoveNext() { LinkedList<int>.Enumerator CS$0$0001 = this.m_Enumerator; bool CS$1$0000 = CS$0$0001.MoveNext(); return CS$1$0000; } The enumerator instance being modified by the call to MoveNext is the one stored in the CS$0$0001 variable on the stack, and not the one in the EnumeratorWrapper class instance. Hence why the state of m_Enumerator wasn't getting updated. Hmm, ok. Well, why is it doing this? If you have a read of Eric Lippert's blog post about this issue, you'll notice he quotes a few sections of the C# spec. In particular, 7.5.4: ...if the field is readonly and the reference occurs outside an instance constructor of the class in which the field is declared, then the result is a value, namely the value of the field I in the object referenced by E. And my m_Enumerator field is readonly! Indeed, if I remove the readonly from the class variable then the problem goes away, and the code works as expected. The IL confirms this: .method public hidebysig newslot virtual final instance bool MoveNext() cil managed { .maxstack 1 .locals init ( [0] bool CS$1$0000) L_0000: nop L_0001: ldarg.0 L_0002: ldflda valuetype [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator EnumeratorWrapper::m_Enumerator L_0007: call instance bool [System]System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList`1/Enumerator::MoveNext() L_000c: stloc.0 L_000d: br.s L_000f L_000f: ldloc.0 L_0010: ret } Notice on line 0002, instead of the ldfld we had before, we've got a ldflda, which does this: Finds the address of a field in the object whose reference is currently on the evaluation stack. Instead of loading the value, we're loading the address of the m_Enumerator field. So now the call to MoveNext modifies the enumerator stored in the class rather than on the stack, and everything works as expected. Previously, I had thought enumerator structs were an odd but interesting feature of the BCL that I had used in the past to do linked list slices. However, effects like this only underline how dangerous mutable structs are, and I'm at a loss to explain why the enumerators were implemented as structs in the first place. (interestingly, the SortedList<TKey, TValue> enumerator is a struct but is private, which makes it even more odd - the only way it can be accessed is as a boxed IEnumerator!). I would love to hear people's theories as to why the enumerators are implemented in such a fashion. And bonus points if you can explain why LinkedList<int>.Enumerator.Reset is an explicit implementation but Dispose is implicit... Note to self: never ever ever code a mutable struct.

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  • Why does TDD work?

    - by CesarGon
    Test-driven development (TDD) is big these days. I often see it recommended as a solution for a wide range of problems here in Programmers SE and other venues. I wonder why it works. From an engineering point of view, it puzzles me for two reasons: The "write test + refactor till pass" approach looks incredibly anti-engineering. If civil engineers used that approach for bridge construction, or car designers for their cars, for example, they would be reshaping their bridges or cars at very high cost, and the result would be a patched-up mess with no well thought-out architecture. The "refactor till pass" guideline is often taken as a mandate to forget architectural design and do whatever is necessary to comply with the test; in other words, the test, rather than the user, sets the requirement. In this situation, how can we guarantee good "ilities" in the outcomes, i.e. a final result that is not only correct but also extensible, robust, easy to use, reliable, safe, secure, etc.? This is what architecture usually does. Testing cannot guarantee that a system works; it can only show that it doesn't. In other words, testing may show you that a system contains defects if it fails a test, but a system that passes all tests is not safer than a system that fails them. Test coverage, test quality and other factors are crucial here. The false safe feelings that an "all green" outcomes produces to many people has been reported in civil and aerospace industries as extremely dangerous, because it may be interepreted as "the system is fine", when it really means "the system is as good as our testing strategy". Often, the testing strategy is not checked. Or, who tests the tests? I would like to see answers containing reasons why TDD in software engineering is a good practice, and why the issues that I have explained above are not relevant (or not relevant enough) in the case of software. Thank you.

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  • Why is Quicksort called "Quicksort"?

    - by Darrel Hoffman
    The point of this question is not to debate the merits of this over any other sorting algorithm - certainly there are many other questions that do this. This question is about the name. Why is Quicksort called "Quicksort"? Sure, it's "quick", most of the time, but not always. The possibility of degenerating to O(N^2) is well known. There are various modifications to Quicksort that mitigate this problem, but the ones which bring the worst case down to a guaranteed O(n log n) aren't generally called Quicksort anymore. (e.g. Introsort). I just wonder why of all the well-known sorting algorithms, this is the only one deserving of the name "quick", which describes not how the algorithm works, but how fast it (usually) is. Mergesort is called that because it merges the data. Heapsort is called that because it uses a heap. Introsort gets its name from "Introspective", since it monitors its own performance to decide when to switch from Quicksort to Heapsort. Similarly for all the slower ones - Bubblesort, Insertion sort, Selection sort, etc. They're all named for how they work. The only other exception I can think of is "Bogosort", which is really just a joke that nobody ever actually uses in practice. Why isn't Quicksort called something more descriptive, like "Partition sort" or "Pivot sort", which describe what it actually does? It's not even a case of "got here first". Mergesort was developed 15 years before Quicksort. (1945 and 1960 respectively according to Wikipedia) I guess this is really more of a history question than a programming one. I'm just curious how it got the name - was it just good marketing?

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  • Why does DataContractJsonSerializer not include generic like JavaScriptSerializer?

    - by Patrick Magee
    So the JavaScriptSerializer was deprecated in favor of the DataContractJsonSerializer. var client = new WebClient(); var json = await client.DownloadStringTaskAsync(url); // http://example.com/api/people/1 // Deprecated, but clean looking and generally fits in nicely with // other code in my app domain that makes use of generics var serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer(); Person p = serializer.Deserialize<Person>(json); // Now have to make use of ugly typeof to get the Type when I // already know the Type at compile type. Why no Generic type T? var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(Person)); Person p = serializer.ReadObject(json) as Person; The JavaScriptSerializer is nice and allows you to deserialize using a type of T generic in the function name. Understandably, it's been deprecated for good reason, with the DataContractJsonSerializer, you can decorate your Type to be deserialized with various things so it isn't so brittle like the JavaScriptSerializer, for example [DataMember(name = "personName")] public string Name { get; set; } Is there a particular reason why they decided to only allow users to pass in the Type? Type type = typeof(Person); var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(type); Person p = serializer.ReadObject(json) as Person; Why not this? var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(); Person p = serializer.ReadObject<Person>(json); They can still use reflection with the DataContract decorated attributes based on the T that I've specified on the .ReadObject<T>(json)

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  • Why doesn't my IDE do background compiling/building?

    - by MKO
    Today I develop on a fairly complex computer, it has multiple cores, SSD drives and what not. Still, most of the time I'm programming the computer is leasurely doing nothing. When I need to compile and run/deploy a somewhat complex project at best it still takes a couple of seconds. Why? Now that we're living more and more in the "age of instant" why can't I press F5 in Visual studio and launch/deploy my application instantly? A couple of seconds might not sound so bad but it's still cognitive friction and time that adds up, and frankly it makes programming less fun. So how could compilation be instant? Well, People tend to edit files in different assemblies, what if Visual Studio/The IDE constantly did compilation/and building of everything that I modified anytime that it might be appropriate. Heck if they wanted to go really advanced they could do per-class compilation. The compilation might not work but then it could just silently do nothing (except adding error messages to the error window). Surely todays computer could dedicate a core or two to this task, and if someone found it annoying it could be disabled by option. I know there's probably a thousand technical issues and some fancy shadow copying that would need to be resolved for this to be seamless and practical but it sure would make programming more seamless. Is there any practical reason why this scenario isn't possible? Would the wear and tear of continually writing binaries be too much? Couldn't assemblies be held in memory until deployed/run?

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  • Why are embedded device apps still written in C/C++? Why not Java programming language?

    - by hinkmond
    At the recent Black Hat 2014 conference in Sin City, the Black Hatters were focusing on Embedded Devices and IoT. You know? Make your networked-toaster burn your bread 10,000 miles away, over the Web for grins and giggles. Well, apparently the Black Hatters say it can be done pretty easily these days, which is scary. See: Securing Embedded Devices & IoT Here's a quote: All these devices are still written in C and C++. The challenges associated with developing securely in these languages have been fought for nearly two decades. "You often hear people say, 'Well, why don't we just get rid of the C and C++ language if it's so problematic. Why don't we just write everything in C# or Java, or something that is a little safer to develop in?'," DeMott says. Gah! Why are all these IoT devices still using C/C++? Of course they should be using Java SE Embedded technology! It's a natural fit to use for better security on embedded devices. Or, I guess, developers really don't mind if their networked-toasters do char their breakfast. If it can be burned, it will be... That's what I say. Unless they use Java. Hinkmond

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  • Why do we have to use break in switch

    - by trejder
    Who decided, and basing on what concepts, that switch construction (in many languages) has to be, like it is? Why do we have to use break in each statement? Why do we have to write something like this: switch(a) { case 1: result = 'one'; break; case 2: result = 'two'; break; default: result = 'not determined'; break; } I've noticed this construction in PHP and JS, but there are probably many other languages that uses it. If switch is an alternative of if, why we can't use the same construction for switch, as for if? I.e.: switch(a) { case 1: { result = 'one'; } case 2: { result = 'two'; } default: { result = 'not determined'; } } It is said, that break prevents execution of a blocks following current one. But, does someone really run into situation, where there was any need for execution of current block and following ones? I didn't. For me, break is always there. In every block. In every code.

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  • Why can't I run any Android NDK commands?

    - by TheBuzzSaw
    I had been running Mint 12 before, and everything was working there. I switched to Ubuntu 12.04, and now I am very frustrated. When I run ndk-build, I get /home/buzz/ndk/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/make: not found So, I changed to that folder directly. When I type in ./make, I get bash: ./make: No such file or directory Typing ls clearly shows the file where I am! I did some hacking around (pointing to external tools) to get past each error (just to experiment), and I ran into this! /home/buzz/ndk/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.6/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-gcc: Command not found Why? Why are all these files unable to be found? As I said above, this was all working just fine in another distro. What changed? What's extra frustrating is that if I push TAB to auto-complete, it works. So, the file is clearly there (and clearly marked with execution permissions). So, why can't it be found?

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  • Why not commit unresolved changes?

    - by Explosion Pills
    In a traditional VCS, I can understand why you would not commit unresolved files because you could break the build. However, I don't understand why you shouldn't commit unresolved files in a DVCS (some of them will actually prevent you from committing the files). Instead, I think that your repository should be locked from pushing and pulling, but not committing. Being able to commit during the merging process has several advantages (as I see it): The actual merge changes are in history. If the merge was very large, you could make periodic commits. If you made a mistake, it would be much easier to roll back (without having to redo the entire merge). The files could remain flagged as unresolved until they were marked as resolved. This would prevent pushing/pulling. You could also potentially have a set of changesets act as the merge instead of just a single one. This would allow you to still use tools such as git rerere. So why is committing with unresolved files frowned upon/prevented? Is there any reason other than tradition?

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  • Why using Fragments?

    - by ahmed_khan_89
    I have read the documentation and some other questions' threads about this topic and I don't really feel convinced; I don't see clearly the limits of use of this technique. Fragments are now seen as a Best Practice; every Activity should be basically a support for one or more Fragments and not call a layout directly. Fragments are created in order to: allow the Activity to use many fragments, to change between them, to reuse these units... == the Fragment is totally dependent to the Context of an activity , so if I need something generic that I can reuse and handle in many Activities, I can create my own custom layouts or Views ... I will not care about this additional Complexity Developing Layer that fragments would add. a better handling to different resolution == OK for tablets/phones in case of long process that we can show two (or more) fragments in the same Activity in Tablets, and one by one in phones. But why would I use fragments always ? handling callbacks to navigate between Fragments (i.e: if the user is Logged-in I show a fragment else I show another fragment). === Just try to see how many bugs facebook SDK Log-in have because of this, to understand that it is really (?) ... considering that an Android Application is based on Activities... Adding another life cycles in the Activity would be better to design an Application... I mean the modules, the scenarios, the data management and the connectivity would be better designed, in that way. === This is an answer of someone who's used to see the Android SDK and Android Framework with a Fragments vision. I don't think it's wrong, but I am not sure it will give good results... And it is really abstract... ==== Why would I complicate my life, coding more, in using them always? else, why is it a best practice if it's just a tool for some cases? what are these cases?

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