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  • Subsumption architecture vs. perceptual control theory

    - by Yasir G.
    I'm a new person to AI field and I have to research and compare 2 different architectures for a thesis I'm writing. Before you scream (homework thread), I've been reading on these 2 topics only to find that I'm confusing myself more.. let me first start with stating briefly what I know so far. Subsumption is based on the fact that targets of a system are different in sophistication, thus that requires them to be added as layers, each layer can suppress (modify) the command of the layers below it, and there are inhibitors to stop signals from execution lets say. PCT stresses on the fact that there are nodes to handle environmental changes (negative feedback), so the inputs coming from an environment go through a comparator node and then an action is generated by that node, HPCT or (Hierarchical PCT) is based on nesting these cycles inside each other so a small cycle to avoid crashing would be nested in a more sophisticated cycle that targets a certain location for example. My questions, am I getting this the right way? am I missing any critical understanding about these 2 models? also any idea where I can find simplified explanations for each theory (so far been struggling trying to understand the papers from Google scholar :< ) /Y

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  • Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?

    - by Ken
    As an entrepreneur/programmer who makes a good living from writing and selling software, I'm dumbfounded as to why developers write applications and then put them up on the Internet for free. You've found yourself in one of the most lucrative fields in the world. A business with 99% profit margin, where you have no physical product but can name your price; a business where you can ship a buggy product and the customer will still buy it. Occasionally some of our software will get a free competitor, and I think, this guy is crazy. He could be making a good living off of this but instead chose to make it free. Do you not like giant piles of money? Are you not confident that people would pay for it? Are you afraid of having to support it? It's bad for the business of programming because now customers expect to be able to find a free solution to every problem. (I see tweets like "is there any good FREE software for XYZ? or do I need to pay $20 for that".) It's also bad for customers because the free solutions eventually break (because of a new OS or what have you) and since it's free, the developer has no reason to fix it. Customers end up with free but stale software that no longer works and never gets updated. Customer cries. Developer still working day job cries in their cubical. What gives? PS: I'm not looking to start an open-source/software should be free kind of debate. I'm talking about when developers make a closed source application and make it free.

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  • What kinds of demos are good to make for a software engineer job

    - by user23012
    I have created my cv site and sent out my demos for a while now, but most of my demos are either from my course or games related since my course was a games programming course, I was wondering what kind of demos are good to show off my skills in programming in general. These are what i already have Pennies:just a simple game first coursework i did. Compiler:coursework for compiler writing module Pongout: basic a pong game in 68k using colour detection Snake: snake in 68k same thing as the pong Game Cube Maze: gamecube work BeatmyBot: basic Ai Basic plat-former game: 2d game with different types of collision Turing Lambda Simulation: my dissertation Turing machine simulated in Miranda. alpha and Beta reduction,and SKI calculus simulated in the Turing machine. What I am asking here is what kind of demos are good to add or have, i have been looking and have hit a tough spot I cant think of anything to make more than games. so for a general graduate software engineer what types would be good examples? EDIT: since responding to the comments bellow well for what languages well my main one would be C++, followed by Java, Erlang and abit of Haskell

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  • Leveraging Code in Ever Bigger Games

    - by ashes999
    Summary: The same way that I continually build complex engines and libraries within a single platform and technology to allow me to build increasingly bigger and better games, how to continue this when development crosses into different platforms? If I switch platforms, how do I leverage past code and experiences? Games are hard to build. Big games are even harder to build. I've decided that to be able to make big games, I need to start building smaller games, and building up an asset base of code, assets (graphics, sounds), tools, and most importantly, game engines, so that I can eventually get there. One game at a time. Let me give an analogy. To build an MMO 3D RPG, I would approach this by building and releasing small games with increasingly more features. This could entail, for example: A simple 2D game A tile-based game A game with RPG elements (items, equipment, monsters, battle) A full-fledged RPG A 3D RPG The problem now is if I have to change platforms or tools, I don't know how to leverage past code-bases (and experience) to start with a mature product. Right now, I'm writing Silverlight (FlatRedBall) games. Let's say I stick with this for ten years, and then suddenly decide to write a PS6 game, which is in a different programming language entirely. Granted, I have ten years of game-development experience (and correspondingly ten years of professional software development experience from my day job) to back me up. But I would still like some way to transplant that 2D RPG engine into the new programming language, or else leverage it somehow. Is this even possible? What are my options?

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  • How to practice object oriented programming?

    - by user1620696
    I've always programmed in procedural languages and currently I'm moving towards object orientation. The main problem I've faced is that I can't see a way to practice object orientation in an effective way. I'll explain my point. When I've learned PHP and C it was pretty easy to practice: it was just matter of choosing something and thinking about an algorithm for that thing. In PHP for example, it was matter os sitting down and thinking: "well, just to practice, let me build one application with an administration area where people can add products". This was pretty easy, it was matter of thinking of an algorithm to register some user, to login the user, and to add the products. Combining these with PHP features, it was a good way to practice. Now, in object orientation we have lots of additional things. It's not just a matter of thinking about an algorithm, but analysing requirements deeper, writing use cases, figuring out class diagrams, properties and methods, setting up dependency injection and lots of things. The main point is that in the way I've been learning object orientation it seems that a good design is crucial, while in procedural languages one vague idea was enough. I'm not saying that in procedural languages we can write good software without design, just that for sake of practicing it is feasible, while in object orientation it seems not feasible to go without a good design, even for practicing. This seems to be a problem, because if each time I'm going to practice I need to figure out tons of requirements, use cases and so on, it seems to become not a good way to become better at object orientation, because this requires me to have one whole idea for an app everytime I'm going to practice. Because of that, what's a good way to practice object orientation?

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  • Tracking state of a one time event on a big website

    - by Mattis
    Assume a website with 250 million active users. I add a new feature to the website. Once a user visits I want to use a short tutorial to teach them how to use said feature. I only want them to complete the tutorial once (or actively click it away). What is the smart way to code the verification check for this? How do I track the progress in the database? Having a separate table with like NewTutorial_completed = 1 for user_id = 21312315 would just snowball. It also feels intuitively bad to check for every one-time event for every user on every page view. While writing the question I got one idea, to have a separate event log that is checked periodically for any new action the user need to see or perform. I push events to this log and once they are completed they are removed from the log. No need to store NewTutorial_completed = 1-type variables this way. I am sure this is a common problem. I would appreciate any input on what best practice is.

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  • Learning from jQuery - Solid fundament for experienced jQuery developers

    Frankly speaking, I had to sleep a night over before typing this review. And even now it is not an easy, straight-forward task to write this recension. I'm not sure whether I'm the right kind of audience this title is actually addressed to. It clearly states that this book is for web developers which are very familiar with jQuery library but would like to extend their knowledge to vanilla JavaScript. Not being part of this particular group it felt strange to go through the various chapters after all. This title is clearly addressed to experienced jQuery users and developers especially while looking for improvements in performance and better ways of optimisations. Sometimes just to simplify the existing jQuery code in order to avoid the heavy load of the complete jQuery library and sometimes for the better understanding of JavaScript and its syntax. Callum's style of writing is clear and the numerous code samples used to emphasize the various techniques are good ones and easy to understand. Quite interestingly, it put a light smile on my face when I compared his sample code of sending an AJAX request to some code in one of my own blog articles I wrote back in 2006 (in German language). JavaScript is clearly a mature language and certain requirements are simply done this way. And Callum explains the nuts and bolts of JavaScript very well. Personally, I gained most out of this book from chapter 5 - JavaScript Conventions. The paragraphs and code snippets on Optimizations and Common Antipatterns gave me a better understanding on various aspects of JavaScript development, and I definitely have to revise a couple of code fragments I have written in the past. Overall the book provides solid information on JavaScript for jQuery developers and is worth the money spent. Just be sure that you're part of the targeted audience.

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  • How can I re-enable the typing break in 11.10?

    - by Hamish Downer
    I've just upgraded to beta 2 of Oneiric/11.10 and the typing break has gone. I've gone into the system settings and looked in "Keyboard Layout" and "Keyboard" and can't find anything. Has it just been dropped? Is there some hidden way to re-enable it? Update: Thought I'd write an update based on some stuff that has happened since this question (and the two answers) were written. Workrave has now been re-instated in oneiric-backports and for 12.04 (how to enable backports). It works fine, though if you want to put it in your systray then you need to allow it in there. The easy/lazy command line way to allow workrave into the notification area is to do something like: gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']" But read this question if you want a more detailed explanation about what you're doing here. Meanwhile the Gnome typing break has been split out into an app called DrWright, however it has not (at time of writing) been packaged for 11.10 (or later). And as mentioned in the other answer, another option is RSIBreak. It is a KDE app but works fine in Unity.

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  • What is the best way to "carve" a terrain created from a heightmap?

    - by tigrou
    I have a 3d landscape created from a heightmap. I'd like to "carve" some holes in that terrain. That will allow me to create bridges, caverns and tunnels inside it. That operation will be done in the game editor so it doesn't need to be realtime. In the end, rendering is done using traditional polygons. What would be the best/easiest way to do that ? I already think about several solutions : Solution 1 1) Create voxels from the heightmap (very easy). In other words, fill a 3D array like this : voxels[32][32][32] from the heightmap values. 2) Carve holes in the voxels as i want (easy too). 3) Convert voxels to polygons using some iso-surface extraction technique (like marching cubes). 4) Reduce (decimate) polygons created in 3). This technique seems to be the most promising for giving good results (untested). However the problem with marching cubes is that they tends to produce lots of polygons thus reducing them is mandatory. Implementing 4) also seems not trivial, i have read several papers on the web and it seems pretty complex. I was also unable to find an example, code snippet or something to start writing an algorithm for triangle mesh decimation. Maybe there is a special decimation algorithm (simpler) for meshes created from marching cubes ? Solution 2 1) Create some triangle mesh from the heighmap (easy). 2) Apply severals 3D boolean operation (eg: subtraction with a sphere) to carve the mesh. 3) apply some procedure to reduce polygons (optional). Operation 2) seems to be very complex and to be honest i have no idea how to do that. Also applying many boolean operation seems to be slow and will maybe degrade the triangle mesh every time a boolean operation is applied.

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  • Forwarding a subdomain to main domain using Godaddy

    - by Ryan Hayes
    I have current blog, which was hosted on Tumblr at http://blog.ryanhayes.net. I'm moving it over to http://ryanhayes.net, and have all the 301 redirects set up for the blog entries to map to my new blog, which is hosted using Godaddy (domain included). When I try to set up a subdomain forward, I'm greeted with a nice 403 Forbidden response (as of this writing, you can see it at http://blog.ryanhayes.net. When I try to ping both the subdomain and domain, they point to the same IP address, so I know blog subdomain has at least switched over to point to the same content. I don't really understand why I would get a 403 Forbidden on the same content that I can see perfectly fine via another domain. Currently, I have a CNAME of blog pointing to @, which is how "www" is set up to forward, so I'm assuming it would do the same thing. My question is what is the proper way to set up my DNS to make the blog subdomain forward to my main domain (301) using the GoDaddy DNS manager? Bonus: What is the background on why I am getting a 403 error the current way? Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. UPDATE 12/7/2010 Error on site has been fixed, you can no longer view it from my site.

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  • How to change CapsLock key to produce "a"?

    - by Pit
    While typing I often hit the CapsLock key instead of the a key. (QWERTZU keyboard) This is quite annoying because the moment I realise that I hit the wrong key, I will have to delete multiple character/lines of text an rewrite them in the right form. I am searching for a way to prevent this. I have found a possibility to disable the CapsLock key in Keyboard Layout Options. But this would in my case mean that instead of writing an a I would write nothing. Positive - I don't have to rewrite a whole line, but only one character Negative - It's not that obvious that I hit the wrong key, as a missing character is not perceivable as an upper-case line of text. I would therefore prefer a possibility to map CapsLock to a . Thus when hitting CapsLock an a character would be written. Positive - If I hit CapsLock instead of a I get the output I actually wanted to type. Negative - If I hit CapsLock in any other context I will get an a character. As I don't ever intentionally use the CapsLock key this would not really pose a problem. (I think, or does it?) My Question: So how do I change to a ? And is there any case where this could be dangerous/provoke unwanted behaviour?

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  • Where to put code documentation?

    - by Patrick
    I am currently using two systems to write code documentation (am using C++): Documentation about methods and class members are added next to the code, using the Doxygen format. On a server Doxygen is run on the sources so the output can be seen in a web browser Overview pages (describing a set of classes, the structure of the application, example code, ...) is added to a Wiki I personally think that this approach is easy because the documentation about members and classes is really close to the code, while the overview pages are really easy to edit in the Wiki (and it's also easy to add images, tables, ...). A web browser allows you to see both documentations. My co-worker now suggests to put everything in Doxygen, because we can then create one big help file with everything in it (using either Microsoft's HTML WorkShop or Qt Assistant). My concern is that editing Doxygen-style documentation is much harder (compared to Wiki), especially when you want to add tables, images, ... (or is there a 'preview' tool for Doxygen that doesn't require you to generate the code before you can see the result?) What do big open-source (or closed source) projects use to write their code documentation? Do they also split this up between Doxygen-style and a Wiki? Or do they use another system? What is the most appropriate way to expose the documentation? Via a Web server/browser, or via a big (several 100MB) help file? Which approach do you take when writing code documentation?

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  • ASP.NET MVC Cookbook &ndash; public review

    - by Andrew Siemer - www.andrewsiemer.com
    I have recently started writing another book.  The topic of this book is ASP.NET MVC.  This book differs from my previous book in that rather than working towards building one project from end to end – this book will demonstrate specific topics from end to end.  It is a recipe book (hence the cookbook name) and will be part of the Packt Publishing cookbook series.  An example recipe in this book might be how to consume JSON, creating a master /details page, jquery modal popups, custom ActionResults, etc.  Basically anything recipe oriented around the topic of ASP.NET MVC might be acceptable.  If you are interested in helping out with the review process you can join the “ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook-review” group on Google here: http://groups.google.com/group/aspnet-mvc-2-cookbook-review Currently the suggested TOC for the project is listed.  Also, chapters 1, 2, and most of 8 are posted.  Chapter 5 should be available tonight or tomorrow. In addition to reporting any errors that you might find (much appreciated), I am very interested in hearing about recipes that you want included, expanded, or removed (as being redundant or overly simple).  Any input is appreciated!  Hearing user feedback after the book is complete is a little late in my opinion (unless it is positive feedback of course). Thank you!

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  • Be careful when installing the Blend Windows Phone 7 Add-In

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    There was a small issue today with the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (April 2010 Refresh) refresh. The issue is that the Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone (April Refresh) is not compatible with Blend 4.0.20408.0, which was the public RC (release candidate). A few days ago, the Blend team released a fix for an issue that was sometimes causing a crash when Blend was starting up. This new release (V4.0.20421.0) was not very well announced however, and many people (including me) did not install it. After all, Blend did not crash at startup of either of my machines, so I didn’t deem necessary to install yet a new RC. However, it is now clear that the Windows Phone 7 Add-In needs this latest-and-greatest version to work. If you have Blend 4.0.20408.0, you won’t be able to work with Windows Phone 7 in Blend. To add to the confusion, the page where you can download V4.0.20421.0 from has an error, and the wrong version number is wrong (at least at the time of writing). Do not let this confuse you. You must download this version and install it. Hopefully this helps clarify some of the confusion… Happy WinPhone7 coding :) Laurent

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  • Managing flash animations for a game

    - by LoveMeSomeCode
    Ok, I've been writing C# for a while, but I'm new to ActionScript, so this is a question about best practices. We're developing a simple match game, where the user selects tiles and tries to match various numbers - sort of like memory - and when the match is made we want a series of animations to take place, and when they're done, remove the tile and add a new one. So basically it's: User clicks the MC Animation 1 on the MC starts Animation 1 ends Remove the MC from the stage Add a new MC Start the animation on the new MC The problem I run into is that I don't want to make the same timeline motion tween on each and every tile, when the animation is all the same. It's just the picture in the tile that's different. The other method I've come up with is to just apply the tweens in code on the main stage. Then I attach an event handler for MOTION_FINISH, and in that handler I trigger the next animation and listen for that to finish etc. This works too, but not only do I have to do all the tweening in code, I have a seperate event handler for each stage of the animation. So is there a more structured way of chaining these animations together?

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  • is it possible to execute keyboard input programmaticly in linux?

    - by Taylor Hawkes
    For example is there a Linux command or way that I could from a program (c++ | python| or other) enter a serious of keyboard inputs that are interpreted as though they are keyboard inputs. I have a bad case of RSI from typing. To ease my pain I developed a voice controlled interface using pocket sphinx and a custom grammar and to run a number of very common commands. ex: "open chrome" , "open vim". basically what is shown here, but with slightly diff tools: http://bloc.eurion.net/archives/2008/writing-a-command-and-control-application-with-voice-recognition/ I have run into some limitation as I can only execute command line commands given a voice command. Rather than having a "voice command" - "command line command" mapping I would like to have "voice command" - "keyboard input" mapping. So when my active window is a browser and i type + n, and new tab opens. If i'm in vim and new vim tab opens. Any suggestions, ideas, tools or approaches to this problem would be much appreciated. I understand the answer may not be simple, but would like to develop it none the less.

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  • The current state of a MERGE Destination for SSIS

    - by jamiet
    Hugo Tap asked me on Twitter earlier today whether or not there existed a SSIS Dataflow Destination component that enabled one to MERGE data into a table rather than INSERT it. Its a common request so I thought it might be useful to summarise the current state of play as regards a MERGE destination for SSIS. Firstly, there is no MERGE destination component in the box; that is, when you install SSIS no MERGE Destination will be available. That being said the SSIS team have made available a MERGE destination component via Codeplex which you can get from http://sqlsrvintegrationsrv.codeplex.com/releases/view/19048. I have never used it so cannot vouch for its usefulness although judging by some of the reviews you might not want to set your expectations too high. Your mileage may vary.   In the past it has occurred to me that a built-in way to provide MERGE from the SSIS pipeline would be highly valuable. I assume that this would have to be provided by the database into which you were merging hence in March 2010 I submitted the following two requests to Connect: BULK MERGE (111 votes at the time of writing) [SSIS] BULK MERGE Destination (15 votes) If you think these would be useful feel free to vote them up and add a comment. Lastly, this one is nothing to do with SSIS but if you want to perform a minimally logged MERGE using T-SQL Sunil Agarwal has explained how at Minimal logging and MERGE statement. @Jamiet

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  • How to implement fast search on Azure Blob?

    - by Vicky
    I am done with writing the code to upload files (text files) to azure blob storage. Now I want to provide search based on text files content. For ex. If I search for "Hello" then the name of files that contains "Hello" words should appear in search result. Here my code to search class BlobSearch { static void Main(string[] args) { string searchText = "Hello"; CloudStorageAccount account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(azureConString); CloudBlobClient blobClient = account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); CloudBlobContainer blobContainer = blobClient.GetContainerReference("MyBlobContainer"); blobContainer.FetchAttributes(); var blobItemList = blobContainer.ListBlobs(); foreach (var item in blobItemList) { string line = string.Empty; CloudBlockBlob blockBlob = blobContainer.GetBlockBlobReference(item.Uri.ToString()); if(blockBlob.Name.Contains(".txt")) { int lineno = 1; using (var stream = blockBlob.OpenRead()) { using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream)) { while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null) { if (line.IndexOf(searchText) != -1) { Console.WriteLine("Line : " + lineno +" => "+ blockBlob.Name); } lineno++; } } } } } Console.WriteLine("SEARCH COMPLETE"); Console.ReadLine(); } } Above code is working but it is too slow. Is there any way to do it faster or Can improve above code.

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  • C++ and function pointers assessment: lack of inspiration

    - by OlivierDofus
    I've got an assessment to give to my students. It's about C++ and function pointers. Their skill is middle: it the first year of a programming school after bachelor. To give you something precise, here's a sample of a solution of one of 3 exercices they had to do in 30 minutes (the question was: "here's a version of a code that could be written with function pointers, write down the same thing but with function pointers"): typedef void (*fcPtr) (istream &); fcPtr ArrayFct [] = { Delete , Insert, Swap, Move }; void HandleCmd (const string && Cmd) { string AvalaibleCommands ("DISM"); string::size_type Pos; istringstream Flux (Cmd); char CodeOp; Flux >> CodeOp; Pos = AvalaibleCommands.find (toupper (CodeOp)); if (Pos != string::npos) { ArrayFct [Pos](Flux); } } Any idea where I could find some inspiration? Some of the students have understood the principles, even though it's very hard for them to write C++ code. I know them, I know they're clever, and I'm pretty sure they should be very good project managers. So, writing C++ code is not that important after all. Understanding is the most important part (IMHO). I'm wondering about maybe break the habits, and give half of the questions about the principle, or even better, give some sample in other language and ask them why it's better to use function pointers instead of classical programming (usually a big switch case). Any idea where I could look? Find some inspiration?

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  • When to use http status code 404

    - by Sybiam
    I am working on a project and after arguing with people at work for about more than a hour. I decided to know what people on stack-exchange might say. We're writing an API for a system, there is a query that should return a tree of Organization or a tree of Goals. The tree of Organization is the organization in which the user is present, In other words, this tree should always exists. In the organization, a tree of goal should be always present. (that's where the argument started). In case where the tree doesn't exist, my co-worker decided that it would be right to answer response with status code 200. And then started asking me to fix my code because the application was falling apart when there is no tree. I'll try to spare flames and fury. I suggested to raise a 404 error when there is no tree. It would at least let me know that something is wrong. When using 200, I have to add special check to my response in the success callback to handle errors. I'm expecting to receive an object, but I may actually receive an empty response because nothing is found. It sounds totally fair to mark the response as a 404. And then war started and I got the message that I didn't understand HTTP status code schema. So I'm here and asking what's wrong with 404 in this case? I even got the argument "It found nothing, so it's right to return 200". I believe that it's wrong since the tree should be always present. If we found nothing and we are expecting something, it should be a 404. Extra Also, I believe the best answer to the problem is to create default objects when organizations are created, having no tree shouldn't be a valid case and should be seen as an undefined behavior. There is no way an account can be used without both trees. For that reasons, they should be always present.

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  • JEE frameworks, a road map to learn? and should I learn them?

    - by vibhor
    Background Information I have been into programming since past 1 years professionally, my day to day work includes writing BIRT reports, designing and validating forms using JEE (struts/spring, hibernate). I don't have a comp Sci 4 year degree (Electronics), so I have very Limited experience in comp Sci. Question JEE frameworks (struts1/2, spring, hibernate etc) are hot nowadays, however java world have a tendency of building A4j, B4J... mayway4J kind of stuff (and I am tired of it). AFAIK, frameworks are nothing but bunch of XML config files and hundreds of classes built to cram (by developer). And sooner then later a new framework come into picture that says I am the best among all. So My Question is - 1.What will you do to learn a framework (many frameworks) considering that it can be obsolete till you'll be master in it (Learning frameworks can take significant amount of time)? 2.Considering early into your career, will you give a damn that how well someone knows framework (knowing frame work is important but still..) and why/how should I learn a framework knowing I have to (un)learn it in order to learn other one (plenty of of 4Js....)? I am just trying to get a big picture, that, if you're in place of me, what would be your learning/cramming strategy (Road map)? I am not intended to start a holy war between A versus B, (frameworks are more or less essential).

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  • Should Professional Development occur on company time?

    - by jshu
    As a first-time part-time software developer at a small consulting company, I'm struggling to organise time to further my own software development knowledge - whether that's reading a book, keeping up with the popular questions on StackOverflow, researching a technology we're using in-depth, or following the front page of Hacker News. I can see results borne from my self-allocated study time, but listing and demonstrating the skills and knowledge gained through Professional Development is difficult. The company does not have any defined PD policy, and there's a lot of pressure to get something deliverable done now! when working for consultants. I've checked what my coworkers do, and they don't appear to allocate any time to self-improvement; they just work at the problems they're given, looking up specific MSDN references, code samples, and the like as they need them. I realise that PD policy is going to vary across companies of different size and culture, and a company like my own is probably a bit of an edge case. I'd love to hear views and experiences from more seasoned developers; especially those who have to make the PD policy choices in their team or company. I'd also like to learn about the more radical approaches to PD, even if they're completely out there; it's always interesting to see what other people are trying. Not quite a summary, but what I'm trying to ask: Is it common or recommended for companies to allocate PD time? Whose responsibility is it to ensure a developer's knowledge and skills are up to date? Should a part-time work schedule inspire a lower ratio of PD time : work? How can a developer show non-developer coworkers that reading blogs and books is net productive? Is reading blogs and books actually net productive? (references welcomed) Is writing blogs effective as a way of PD? (a recent theme on Hacker News) This is sort of a broad question because I don't know exactly which questions I need to ask here, so any thoughts on relevant issues I haven't addressed are very welcome.

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  • Bad DMA/do_IRQ errors on suspend/resume, with occasional freezing

    - by Steve Kroon
    Every time I suspend or resume my laptop (Dell Latitude E6520, bought this year), I get 2 messages of the form displayed on the console just before shutting down/starting up: [ 407.107610] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: dma_pool_free buffer-128, f6f18000/36f18000 (bad dma) On occasion, I get a message of the form: [ 3753.979066] do_IRQ: 0.177 No irq handler for vector (irq -1) On occasion, my machine freezes with a flashing Caps Lock button when suspending, after which I need to do a hard shutdown. This never happened before the messages started appearing (a while back), and I think it never happens without a do_IRQ message appearing (although I'm not sure about that). [There's nothing in the owner's manual on a flashing Caps Lock button; apparently it may be a kernel panic if the scroll lock also flashes, but the laptop doesn't have a scroll lock light, and there's no message on the console saying kernel panic.] Are these bad DMA/do IRQ messages serious, and what can I do to investigate/troubleshoot them and the freezing? Edit: I've also now received the following error messages a few times: [246943.023908] JBD: I/O error detected when updating journal superblock for sdb1. [246943.023958] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 0 [246943.023996] EXT3-fs (sdb1): I/O error while writing superblock Edit: Output of dmesg at http://pastebin.com/ra7MTQEj ; contents of /var/log/kern.log at http://pastebin.com/i6jf0Md9 Edit: the output of some smartctl (-a, -x, --log=error, --log=xerror) instructions is available at http://paste.ubuntu.com/1088488/ . Edit (31/8/2012): Output of dmesg|grep -i ehci available at http://paste.ubuntu.com/1177246/ .

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  • Is Linq having a mind-numbing effect on .NET programmers?

    - by Aaronaught
    A lot of us started seeing this phenomenon with jQuery about a year ago when people started asking how to do absolutely insane things like retrieve the query string with jQuery. The difference between the library (jQuery) and the language (JavaScript) is apparently lost on many programmers, and results in a lot of inappropriate, convoluted code being written where it is not necessary. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I swear I'm starting to see an uptick in the number of questions where people are asking to do similarly insane things with Linq, like find ranges in a sorted array. I can't get over how thoroughly inappropriate the Linq extensions are for solving that problem, but more importantly the fact that the author just assumed that the ideal solution would involve Linq without actually thinking about it (as far as I can tell). It seems that we are repeating history, breeding a new generation of .NET programmers who can't tell the difference between the language (C#/VB.NET) and the library (Linq). What is responsible for this phenomenon? Is it just hype? Magpie tendencies? Has Linq picked up a reputation as a form of magic, where instead of actually writing code you just have to utter the right incantation? I'm hardly satisfied with those explanations but I can't really think of anything else. More importantly, is it really a problem, and if so, what's the best way to help enlighten these people?

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  • Managing the Domino Effect (with Tutor Publisher Reports)

    - by [email protected]
    When an organization upgrades their business application or improves a process, it triggers changes that will reverberate throughout an organization, like a falling row of dominoes standing on end. A tangible and repeatable way to communicate change is with updated process documentation. But how do organizations get their arms around all the documents that are impacted by an application upgrade or process improvement? A small change in one place will trigger subsequent changes in other areas. A simple domino chain of questions can go like this. What screens have changed? Do the new screens change the process in place? In what procedural documents are the screens referenced? Who uses the screens and must be notified of the changes? What other documents are affected? Will the change affect current company policy? Tutor Publisher compiles focused, easy to read impact analysis reports of your process documentation library that answer these tough questions. Tutor reports make it easy to quickly target the information and documents that require updating. In turn, the updated documents are used to communicate the change. The Tutor writing methodology and Publisher reports provide organizations the means to confidently keep documentation in sync with the way the business runs. Start managing the domino effect in your organization. Get a grip on it here!

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