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  • How to implement line of sight restriction in actionscript?

    - by Michiel Standaert
    I have a problem with a game i am programming. I am making some sort of security game and i would like to have some visual line of sight. The problem is that i can't restrict my line of sight so my cops can't see through the walls. Below you find the design, in which they can look through windows, but not walls. Further below you find an illustration of what my problem is exactly. this is what it looks like now. As you can see, the cops can see through walls. This is the map i would want to use to restrict the line of sight. So the way i am programming the line of sight now is just by calculating some points and drawing the sight accordingly, as shown below. Note that i also check for a hittest using bitmapdata to check whether or not my player has been spotted by any of the cops. private function setSight(e:Event=null):Boolean { g = copCanvas.graphics; g.clear(); for each(var cop:Cop in copCanvas.getChildren()) { var _angle:Number = cop.angle; var _radians:Number = (_angle * Math.PI) / 180; var _radius:Number = 50; var _x1:Number = cop.x + (cop.width/2); var _y1:Number = cop.y + (cop.height/2); var _baseX:Number = _x1 + (Math.cos(_radians) * _radius); var _baseY:Number = _y1 - (Math.sin(_radians) * _radius); var _x2:Number = _baseX + (25 * Math.sin(_radians)); var _y2:Number = _baseY + (25 * Math.cos(_radians)); var _x3:Number = _baseX - (25 * Math.sin(_radians)); var _y3:Number = _baseY - (25 * Math.cos(_radians)); g.beginFill(0xff0000, 0.3); g.moveTo(_x1, _y1); g.lineTo(_x2, _y2); g.lineTo(_x3, _y3); g.endFill(); } var _cops:BitmapData = new BitmapData(width, height, true, 0); _cops.draw(copCanvas); var _bmpd:BitmapData = new BitmapData(10, 10, true, 0); _bmpd.draw(me); if(_cops.hitTest(new Point(0, 0), 10, _bmpd, new Point(me.x, me.y), 255)) { gameover.alpha = 1; setTimeout(function():void{ gameover.alpha = 0; }, 5000); stop(); return true; } return false; } So now my question is: Is there someone who knows how to restrict the view so that the cops can't look through the walls? Thanks a lot in advance. ps: i have already looked at this tutorial by emanuele feronato, but i can't use the code to restric the visual line of sight.

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  • Recommendations on eReader for technical reference material

    - by Aaron Kowall
    I’ve been thinking that an eBook reader would be handy since I travel a lot.  I’m not really all that worried about taking novels and pleasure reading as much as taking along work related books and reference material. I haven’t really done a lot of research into the various options (Sony, Kindle, Nook, iPad, etc.) but am aware that not all content can be read on all readers even if it is in ePub format due to DRM. Anybody got a recommendation on which device/store combination offers the best selection of technical reference for a .Net developer with a particular interest in software process engineering? HELP!! Technorati Tags: eBook,eReader,iPad,Kindle,Nook,Sony,ePub,PDF

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  • Replica Myst Book Actually Plays all the Myst Games

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Runaway 1990s gaming hit Myst features books that had the power to transport you to other worlds. One dedicated fan has gone so far as to make a book that, when opened, transports you to the Myst universe. From hand-crafting the book itself to populating the guts of the book with carefully selected (and frequently modified) parts, Mike Ando left no part of his project uncustomized. The end result is a stunning mod and tribute to the Myst franchise–a beautiful book you can open and play through all the games in the series. Check out the video above to see it in action then hit up the link below to check out Mike’s build album. Myst Book [via Hack A Day] What Is the Purpose of the “Do Not Cover This Hole” Hole on Hard Drives? How To Log Into The Desktop, Add a Start Menu, and Disable Hot Corners in Windows 8 HTG Explains: Why You Shouldn’t Use a Task Killer On Android

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  • Difference between $ and # in ADF/JSF/JSP

    - by pavan.pvj
    Found this one interesting. So, picked it from one of the books and posting here.JSP 2.1 and JSF 1.2 - both of them use a unified Expression language. One major and the most obvious difference is between $ and #. JSP 2.1 uses $ and JSF 1.2 uses # in an EL. $ - immediate evaluation# - deferred evaluation$ - $ syntax executes expressions eagerly/immediately, which means that the result is returned immediately when the page renders.# - # syntax defers the expression evaluation to a point defined by the implementing technology. In general, JSF uses deferred EL evaluation because of its multiple lifecycle phases in which events are handled. To ensure the model is prepared before the values are accessed by EL, it must defer EL evaluation until the appropriate point in the life cycle.Note: This is picked up from Oracle Fusion Developer Guide (ISBN: 9780071622547). There is also a very good article here:http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/reference/techart/unifiedEL.html

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  • How does a programmer who doesn't know how to program get a job ? [closed]

    - by A programmer
    I often read about this and I'm curious: if there programmers who can't program, how did they get a programming job in the first place? They must bring some value to the company they're working for, otherwise they would be fired. I don't think "programmers who don't know how to program" means "bad programmers" in this case ? Even if they are bad programmers, they still know (badly) how to write (bad) programs. So what defines programmers who can't program ?

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  • SQL SERVER – Quiz and Video – Introduction to SQL Error Actions

    - by pinaldave
    This blog post is inspired from SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – SQL Exam Prep Series 70-433 – Volume 4. [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] | [IndiaPlaza] This is follow up blog post of my earlier blog post on the same subject - SQL SERVER – Introduction to SQL Error Actions – A Primer. In the article we discussed various basics terminology of the error handling. The article further covers following important concepts of error handling. Introduction to SQL Error Actions Statement Termination Scope Abortion Batch Termination Above three are the most important concepts related to error handling and SQL Server.  There are many more things one has to learn but without beginners fundamentals one can’t learn the advanced concepts. Let us have small quiz and check how many of you get the fundamentals right. Quiz 1.) Which SQL Server error action happens for errors with a severity of 11-16 when you set the XACT_ABORT setting to ON? You will get Statement Termination. You will get Scope Abortion. You will get Batch Abortion. You will get Connection Termination. SQL Server will pick the error action. 2.) Which SQL Server error action happens for errors with a severity of 11-16 when you set the XACT_ABORT setting to OFF? You will get Statement Termination You will get Scope Abortion You will get Batch Abortion You will get Connection Termination SQL Server will pick the error action Now make sure that you write down all the answers on the piece of paper. Watch following video and read earlier article over here. If you want to change the answer you still have chance. Solution 1) 3 2) 5 Now compare let us check the answers and compare your answers to following answers. I am very confident you will get them correct. Available at USA: Amazon India: Flipkart | IndiaPlaza Volume: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Please leave your feedback in the comment area for the quiz and video. Did you know all the answers of the quiz? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Ruby on Rails resources

    - by andrewpthorp
    I was hoping I could find some good ruby on rails reading/resources. Please note, I currently am aware of the following: Pragmatic Bookshelf (Exceptional Ruby, Agile web development with rails, etc) Addison Wesley (Rails AntiPatterns, The Rails 3 Way, etc) freenode #rubyonrails RSS Feeds (thoughtbot, pivotal blabs) railscasts I am looking for any other good resources. What are the best RSS feeds? What are the best books? Blogs? Videos? Any information you can share would be great!

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  • What is the origin of the name string? [closed]

    - by Andrej M.
    Possible Duplicate: Etymology of “String” Every programmer knows the meaning of the name string. In programming, it is traditionally a sequence of characters. But historically, who has decided that a sequence of characters will be called a string? Has there ever been an attempt to name a sequence of characters differently, but was ultimately abandoned due to the rising popularity of the name string?

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  • Will I have an easier time learning OpenGL in Pygame or Pyglet? (NeHe tutorials downloaded)

    - by shadowprotocol
    I'm looking between PyGame and Pyglet, Pyglet seems to be somewhat newer and more Pythony, but it's last release according to Wikipedia is January '10. PyGame seems to have more documentation, more recent updates, and more published books/tutorials on the web for learning. I downloaded both the Pyglet and PyGame versions of the NeHe OpenGL tutorials (Lessons 1-10) which cover this material: lesson01 - Setting up the window lesson02 - Polygons lesson03 - Adding color lesson04 - Rotation lesson05 - 3D lesson06 - Textures lesson07 - Filters, Lighting, input lesson08 - Blending (transparency) lesson09 - 2D Sprites in 3D lesson10 - Moving in a 3D world What do you guys think? Is my hunch that I'll be better off working with PyGame somewhat warranted?

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  • How do I prove or disprove "god" objects are wrong?

    - by honestduane
    Problem Summary: Long story short, I inherited a code base and an development team I am not allowed to replace and the use of God Objects is a big issue. Going forward, I want to have us re-factor things but I am getting push-back from the teams who want to do everything with God Objects "because its easier" and this means I would not be allowed to re-factor. I pushed back citing my years of dev experience, that I'm the new boss who was hired to know these things, etc, and so did the third party offshore companies account sales rep, and this is now at the executive level and my meeting is tomorrow and I want to go in with a lot of technical ammo to advocate best practices because I feel it will be cheaper in the long run (And I personally feel that is what the third party is worried about) for the company. My issue is from a technical level, I know its good long term but I'm having trouble with the ultra short term and 6 months term, and while its something I "know" I cant prove it with references and cited resources outside of one person (Robert C. Martin, aka Uncle Bob), as that is what I am being asked to do as I have been told having data from one person and only one person (Robert C Martin) is not good enough of an argument. Question: What are some resources I can cite directly (Title, year published, page number, quote) by well known experts in the field that explicitly say this use of "God" Objects/Classes/Systems is bad (or good, since we are looking for the most technically valid solution)? Research I have already done: I have a number of books here and I have searched their indexes for the use of the words "god object" and "god class". I found that oddly its almost never used and the copy of the GoF book I have for example, never uses it (At least according to the index in front of me) but I have found it in 2 books per the below, but I want more I can use. I checked the Wikipedia page for "God Object" and its currently a stub with little reference links so although I personally agree with that it says, It doesn't have much I can use in an environment where personal experience is not considered valid. The book cited is also considered too old to be valid by the people I am debating these technical points with as the argument they are making is that "it was once thought to be bad but nobody could prove it, and now modern software says "god" objects are good to use". I personally believe that this statement is incorrect, but I want to prove the truth, whatever it is. In Robert C Martin's "Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#" (ISBN: 0-13-185725-8, hardcover) where on page 266 it states "Everybody knows that god classes are a bad idea. We don't want to concentrate all the intelligence of a system into a single object or a single function. One of the goals of OOD is the partitioning and distribution of behavior into many classes and many function." -- And then goes on to say sometimes its better to use God Classes anyway sometimes (Citing micro-controllers as an example). In Robert C Martin's "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" page 136 (And only this page) talks about the "God class" and calls it out as a prime example of a violation of the "classes should be small" rule he uses to promote the Single Responsibility Principle" starting on on page 138. The problem I have is all my references and citations come from the same person (Robert C. Martin), and am from the same single person/source. I am being told that because he is just one guy, my desire to not use "God Classes" is invalid and not accepted as a standard best practice in the software industry. Is this true? Am I doing things wrong from a technical perspective by trying to keep to the teaching of Uncle Bob? God Objects and Object Oriented Programming and Design: The more I think of this the more I think this is more something you learn when you study OOP and its never explicitly called out; Its implicit to good design is my thinking (Feel free to correct me, please, as I want to learn), The problem is I "know" this, but but not everybody does, so in this case its not considered a valid argument because I am effectively calling it out as universal truth when in fact most people are statistically ignorant of it since statistically most people are not programmers. Conclusion: I am at a loss on what to search for to get the best additional results to cite, since they are making a technical claim and I want to know the truth and be able to prove it with citations like a real engineer/scientist, even if I am biased against god objects due to my personal experience with code that used them. Any assistance or citations would be deeply appreciated.

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  • Will my self-taught code be fine, or should I take it to the professional level?

    - by G1i1ch
    Lately I've been getting professional work, hanging out with other programmers, and making friends in the industry. The only thing is I'm 100% self-taught. It's caused my style to extremely deviate from the style of those that are properly trained. It's the techniques and organization of my code that's different. It's a mixture of several things I do. I tend to blend several programming paradigms together. Like Functional and OO. I lean to the Functional side more than OO, but I see the use of OO when something would make more sense as an abstract entity. Like a game object. Next I also go the simple route when doing something. When in contrast, it seems like sometimes the code I see from professional programmers is complicated for the sake of it! I use lots of closures. And lastly, I'm not the best commenter. I find it easier just to read through my code than reading the comment. And most cases I just end up reading the code even if there are comments. Plus I've been told that, because of how simply I write my code, it's very easy to read it. I hear professionally trained programmers go on and on about things like unit tests. Something I've never used before so I haven't even the faintest idea of what they are or how they work. Lots and lots of underscores "_", which aren't really my taste. Most of the techniques I use are straight from me, or a few books I've read. Don't know anything about MVC, I've heard a lot about it though with things like backbone.js. I think it's a way to organize an application. It just confuses me though because by now I've made my own organizational structures. It's a bit of a pain. I can't use template applications at all when learning something new like with Ubuntu's Quickly. I have trouble understanding code that I can tell is from someone trained. Complete OO programming really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, yet that seems to be what EVERYONE else is strictly using. It's left me not that confident in the look of my code, or wondering whether I'll cause sparks when joining a company or maybe contributing to open source projects. In fact I'm rather scared of the fact that people will eventually be checking out my code. Is this just something normal any programmer goes through or should I really look to change up my techniques?

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  • Junior software developer - How to understand web applications in depth?

    - by nat_gr
    I am currently a junior developer in web applications and specifically in ASP.NET MVC technology. My problem is that the C# senior developer in the company has no experience with this technology and I try to learn without any guidance. I went through all tutorials (e.g music store), codeplex projects and also read Pro ASP.NET MVC 4. However, most of the examples are about CRUD and e-commerce applications. What I don't understand is how dependency injection fits in web applications (I have realized that is not only used for facilitating unit testing) or when I should use a custom model binder or how to model the business logic when there is already a database schema in place. I read the forum quite often and it would very helpful if some experienced developer could give me an insight about how to proceed. Do I need to read some books to understand the overall idea behind web applications? And what kind of application should I start building myself - I don't think it would be useful to create similar examples with the tutorials.

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  • Delegates in c#

    - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama
    I have used delegates in my programming since C# 2.0. But I have seen there are lots of confusion going on with delegates so I have decided to blog about it. In this blog I will explain about delegate basics and use of delegates in C#. What is delegate? We can say a delegate is a type safe function pointer which holds methods reference in object. As per MSDN it's a type that references to a method. So you can assign more than one methods to delegates with same parameter and same return type. Following is syntax for the delegate public delegate int Calculate(int a, int b); Here you can see the we have defined the delegate with two int parameter and integer parameter as return parameter. Now any method that matches this parameter can be assigned to above delegates. To understand the functionality of delegates let’s take a following simple example. using System; namespace Delegates { class Program { public delegate int CalculateNumber(int a, int b); static void Main(string[] args) { int a = 5; int b = 5; CalculateNumber addNumber = new CalculateNumber(AddNumber); Console.WriteLine(addNumber(5, 6)); Console.ReadLine(); } public static int AddNumber(int a, int b) { return a + b; } } } Here in the above code you can see that I have created a object of CalculateNumber delegate and I have assigned the AddNumber static method to it. Where you can see in ‘AddNumber’ static method will just return a sum of two numbers. After that I am calling method with the help of the delegates and printing out put to the console application. Now let’s run the application and following is the output as expected. That’s it. You can see the out put of delegates after adding a number. This delegates can be used in variety of scenarios. Like in web application we can use it to update one controls properties from another control’s action. Same you can also call a delegates whens some UI interaction done like button clicked. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more. In next post I am going to explain about multicast delegates. Till then happy programming.

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  • What word processor can manage left and right pages separately?

    - by chtfn
    I was after a word processor that can manage left and right pages separately so I can have my text on the right pages and my illustrations on the left pages. I know LibeOffice can set "left page" and "right page" formats, but there is no simple way to make the text jump from right page to right page when writing. I don't know what would be the best way to do that, but I guess I need an app that is designed for writing books and do that kind of thing, or an app that can associate a page format with an object format (so the "illustration" format can be exclusively associated with "left page" format, and "text body" exclusively associated with "right page", for example). Or is there an extension for LO or OOo out there that I didn't hear about? Cheers!

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  • Learning curve regarding the transition from Windows to Linux from a Java developer perspective [closed]

    - by Geek
    I am a Java developer who has worked on windows platform all through . Now I have shifted job and my new job requires me to do the development work in Red Hat Linux environment . The IDE they use is JDeveloper . I do not have any prior experience in Linux and JDeveloper . So what suggestion would you guys give me so that I can have a smooth and incremental transition from Windows to Linux ? I do not want to short circuit my learning curve . I want to learn it the correct way . Any suggestions regrading any good books,links etc that will help to get started is welcome .

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  • SQLAuthority News – 7th Anniversary of Blog – A Personal Note

    - by Pinal Dave
    Special Day Today is a very special day – seven years ago I blogged for the very first time.  Seven years ago, I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know how to blog, or even what a blog was or what to write.  I was working as a DBA, and I was trying to solve a problem – at my job, there were a few issues I had to fix again and again and again.  There were days when I was rewriting the same solution over and over, and there were times when I would get very frustrated because I could not write the same elegant solution that I had written before.  I came up with a solution to this problem – posting these solutions online, where I could access them whenever I needed them.  At that point, I had no idea what a blog was, or even how the internet worked, I had no idea that a blog would be visible to others.  Can you believe it? Google it on Yahoo! After a few posts on this “blog,” there was a surprise for me – an e-mail saying that someone had left me a comment.  I was surprised, because I didn’t even know you could comment on a blog!  I logged on and read my comment.  It said: “I like your script,but there is a small bug.  If you could fix it, it will run on multiple other versions of SQL Server.”  I was like, “wow, someone figured out how to find my blog, and they figured out how to fix my script!”  I found the bug, I fixed the script, and a wrote a thank you note to the guy.  My first question for him was: how did you figure it out – not the script, but how to find my blog?  He said he found it from Yahoo Search (this was in the time before Google, believe it or not). From that day, my life changed.  I wrote a few more posts, I got a few more comments, and I started to watch my traffic.  People were reading, commenting, and giving feedback.  At the end of the day, people enjoyed what I was writing.  This was a fantastic feeling!  I never thought I would be writing for others.  Even today, I don’t feel like I am writing for others, but that I am simply posting what I am learning every day.  From that very first day, I decided that I would not change my intent or my blog’s purpose. 72 Million Views – 2600 Posts – 57000 comments – 10 books – 9 courses Today, this blog is my habit, my addiction, my baby.  Every day I try to learn something new, and that lesson gets posted on the blog.  Lately there have been days where I am traveling for a full 24 hours, but even on those days I try to learn something new, and later when I have free time, I will still post it to the blog.  Because of this habit, this blog has over 72 millions views, I have written more than 2600 posts, and there are 57,000 comments and counting.  I have also written 10 books, 9 courses, and learned so many things.  This blog has given me back so much more than I ever put it into it.  It gave me an education, a reason to learn something new every day, and a way to connect to people.  I like to think of it as a learning chain, a relay where we all pass knowledge from one to another. Never Ending Journey When I started the blog, I thought I would write for a few days and stop, but now after seven years I haven’t stopped and I have no intention of stopping!  However, change happens, and for this blog it will start today.  This blog started as a single resource for SQL Server, but now it has grown beyond, to Sharepoint, Personal Development, Developer Training, MySQL, Big Data, and lots of other things.  Truly speaking, this blog is more than just SQL Server, and that was always my intention.  I named it “SQL Authority,” not “SQL Server Authority”!  Loudly and clearly, I would like to announce that I am going to go back to my roots and start writing more about SQL, more about big data, and more about the other technology like relational databases, MySQL, Oracle, and others.  My goal is not to become a comprehensive resource for every technology, my goal is to learn something new every day – and now it can be so much more than just SQL Server.  I will learn it, and post it here for you. I have written a very long post on this anniversary, but here is the summary: Thank You.  You all have been wonderful.  Seven years is a long journey, and it makes me emotional.  I have been “with” this blog before I met my wife, before we had our daughter.  This blog is like a fourth member of the family.  Keep reading, keep commenting, keep supporting.  Thank you all. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: About Me, MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL

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  • Apache cannot find mysql database modules

    - by user809857
    I've created a simple django project and setup a mysql database. My simple project just creates an entry on the database. The project works fine when I use the built in development server provided by django (runserver) and it works well. But when I deployed the project on Apache and mod_Wsgi (Ubuntu server), django could not find 'books', which is in this case my table in the database. The mysql database that I use in runserver and apache are just the same. I also did rebuild the database using sqlall,validate and syncdb of django but still i get the error. What could be wrong with what I'm doing? Thanks

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  • Do employers hiring for Software jobs care about the classes you took in CS masters program?

    - by Joey Green
    I'm torn between two classes right now for next semester( Software Design and Advanced Computer Graphics ). I would enjoy Advanced Computer Graphics more, but I feel the software design class would help me when approaching anything I ever build for the rest of my career. I feel though I could just buy the book( I already have both books actually ) of the Software Design class and go through it, if I wanted. But think it would be a bit tougher to pick up the Advanced Computer Graphics class on my own. So do employers look at the graduate classes you've taken to decide if you would be a good fit or not? I think more importantly what I'm wanting to know is if I wanted to work for a high-end software company like Apple or Google would a company like that be more impressed by someone that took software engineering classes or hardcore CS classes?

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  • Latest SolidQ Journal Plus Giveaways

    - by Andrew Kelly
      You can find the latest edition of the SolidQ Journal here that is always good reading but if you register over the next 3 weeks you may be eligible for a prize including:  One $500 Amazon gift card and 5 $150 gift cards; books from Itzik Ben-Gan, Greg Low, and Erik Veerman/Jay Hackney/Dejan Sarka; and chats with MarkTab and Kevin Boles.   The deadline for the giveaway is January 7th and you can register for it HERE .  So be a good little boy or girl and maybe Santa will bring...(read more)

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  • Is it fine to put different category of stuff in a single domain name?

    - by Fahad Uddin
    I own a website which is regarding startups and finance. I am looking forward to work on Wordpress programming in which I would be selling wordpress themes. I thought of buying a domain name for Wordpress website but it takes quite lot of time to setup a website and then do its SEO. Is it fine(in terms of SEO and professionalism) to put the Wordpress category inside my old domain like, Domain: www.startupsandfinance.com Wordpress domain, www.wp.startupsandfinance.com

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  • What are algorithmic paradigms?

    - by Vaibhav Agarwal
    We generally talk about paradigms of programming as functional, procedural, object oriented, imperative etc but what should I reply when I am asked the paradigms of algorithms? For example are Travelling Salesman Problem, Dijkstra Shortest Path Algorithm, Euclid GCD Algorithm, Binary search, Kruskal's Minimum Spanning Tree, Tower of Hanoi paradigms of algorithms? Should I answer the data structures I would use to design these algorithms?

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  • Installation Error, "Unable to lock the administration directory"

    - by kern
    Whenever I try to install any software through Terminal or Software on my Ubuntu 11.04, I'm getting this response: In Terminal: E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable) E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it? In Software Center An unhandlable error occured There seems to be a programming error in aptdaemon, the software that allows you to install/remove software and to perform other package management related tasks. What should I do?

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  • Interviews: Going Beyond the Technical Quiz

    - by Tony Davis
    All developers will be familiar with the basic format of a technical interview. After a bout of CV-trawling to gauge basic experience, strengths and weaknesses, the interview turns technical. The whiteboard takes center stage and the challenge is set to design a function or query, or solve what on the face of it might seem a disarmingly simple programming puzzle. Most developers will have experienced those few panic-stricken moments, when one’s mind goes as blank as the whiteboard, before un-popping the marker pen, and hopefully one’s mental functions, to work through the problem. It is a way to probe the candidate’s knowledge of basic programming structures and techniques and to challenge their critical thinking. However, these challenges or puzzles, often devised by some of the smartest brains in the development team, have a tendency to become unnecessarily ‘tricksy’. They often seem somewhat academic in nature. While the candidate straight out of IT school might breeze through the construction of a Markov chain, a candidate with bags of practical experience but less in the way of formal training could become nonplussed. Also, a whiteboard and a marker pen make up only a very small part of the toolkit that a programmer will use in everyday work. I remember vividly my first job interview, for a position as technical editor. It went well, but after the usual CV grilling and technical questions, I was only halfway there. Later, they sat me alongside a team of editors, in front of a computer loaded with MS Word and copy of SQL Server Query Analyzer, and my task was to edit a real chapter for a real SQL Server book that they planned to publish, including validating and testing all the code. It was a tough challenge but I came away with a sound knowledge of the sort of work I’d do, and its context. It makes perfect sense, yet my impression is that many organizations don’t do this. Indeed, it is only relatively recently that Red Gate started to move over to this model for developer interviews. Now, instead of, or perhaps in addition to, the whiteboard challenges, the candidate can expect to sit with their prospective team, in front of Visual Studio, loaded with all the useful tools in the developer’s kit (ReSharper and so on) and asked to, for example, analyze and improve a real piece of software. The same principles should apply when interviewing for a database positon. In addition to the usual questions challenging the candidate’s knowledge of such things as b-trees, object permissions, database recovery models, and so on, sit the candidate down with the other database developers or DBAs. Arm them with a copy of Management Studio, and a few other tools, then challenge them to discover the flaws in a stored procedure, and improve its performance. Or present them with a corrupt database and ask them to get the database back online, and discover the cause of the corruption.

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  • What are current Biggest Challenges faced by Ecommerce Applications ?

    - by Rachel
    I am in the process to start Product Development for E-commerce and Online Retail domain but before starting I would like to know what are the biggest challenges faced by current state of Art E-Commerce Application ? Also I have not experience building e-commerce products and so what things should I keep in mind before developing one ? Is there are books, articles, blogs outside which I should refer to gain some knowledge before starting out ? Update: What are you thoughts on the recommendation engines for ecommerce applications ? What challenges we have with current state of recommendations engines for ecommerce web application and how can we overcome them ?

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  • learning on the clock

    - by T. Webster
    Some might argue this question is too general, but because keeping up seems especially relevant to programming, is anyone's experience that: do employers expect you to stay current? what is the "industry standard" of expected time a programmer should spend keeping up-to-date? is it generally acceptable that a programmer can spend some time during working hrs on meeting the expectation to keep skills current? If not, how do most programmers find the time? -

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