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  • Which web site gives the most accurate indication of a programmer's capabilities?

    - by Jerry Coffin
    If you were hiring programmers, and could choose between one of (say) the top 100 coders on topcoder.com, or one of the top 100 on stackoverflow.com, which would you choose? At least to me, it would appear that topcoder.com gives a more objective evaluation of pure ability to solve problems and write code. At the same time, despite obvious technical capabilities, this person may lack any hint of social skills -- he may be purely a "lone coder", with little or no ability to help/work with others, may lack mentoring ability to help transfer his technical skills to others, etc. On the other hand, stackoverflow.com would at least appear to give a much better indication of peers' opinion of the coder in question, and the degree to which his presence and useful and helpful to others on the "team". At the same time, the scoring system is such that somebody who just throws up a lot of mediocre (or even poor answers) will almost inevitably accumulate a positive total of "reputation" points -- a single up-vote (perhaps just out of courtesy) will counteract the effects of no fewer than 5 down-votes, and others are discouraged (to some degree) from down-voting because they have to sacrifice their own reputation points to do so. At the same time, somebody who makes little or no technical contribution seems unlikely to accumulate a reputation that lands them (even close to) the top of the heap, so to speak. So, which provides a more useful indication of the degree to which this particular coder is likely to be useful to your organization? If you could choose between them, which set of coders would you rather have working on your team?

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  • OOP vs Frameworks (DRY, Organisation, Readability)

    - by benhowdle89
    In terms of organisation, code-readability and DRY programming, which, between OOP and Frameworks shows more of these 3 attributes? I'm aware that inline, procedural coding is viewed by many as a thing of the past, so which is the best route to take for these two? Just to clarify what i mean by OOP and frameworks From Wikipedia: Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which common code providing generic functionality can be selectively overridden or specialized by user code, thus providing specific functionality

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  • How to write efficient code in spite of heavy deadlines

    - by gladysbixly
    Hi all, I am working in an environment wherein we have many projects with strict deadlines on deliverables. We even talk directly to the clients so getting the jobs done and fast is a must. My issue is that i'd always write code for the first solution that comes to my mind, which of course I thought as best at that moment. It always ends up ugly though and i'd later realize that there are better ways to do it but can't afford to change due to time restrictions. Are there any tips by which I could make my code efficient yet deliver on time?

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  • C: What is a good source to teach standard/basic code conventions to someone newly learning the language ?

    - by shan23
    I'm tutoring someone who can be described as a rank newcomer in C. Understandably, she does not know much about coding conventions generally practiced, and hence all her programs tend to use single letter vars, mismatched spacing/indentation and the like, making it very difficult to read/debug her endeavors. My question is, is there a link/set of guidelines and examples which she can use for adopting basic code conventions ? It should not be too arcane as to scare her off, yet inclusive enough to have the basics covered (so that no one woulc wince looking at the code). Any suggestions ?

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  • How do you track bugs in your personal projects?

    - by bedwyr
    I'm trying to decide if I need to reassess my defect-tracking process for my home-grown projects. For the last several years, I really just track defects using TODO tags in the code, and keeping track of them in a specific view (I use Eclipse, which has a decent tagging system). Unfortunately, I'm starting to wonder if this system is unsustainable. The defects I find are typically associated with a snippet of code I'm working on; bugs which are not immediately understood tend to be forgotten, or ignored. I wrote an application for my wife which has had a severe defect for almost 9 months, and I keep forgetting to fix it. What mechanism do you use to track defects in your personal projects? Do you have a specific system, or a process for prioritizing and managing them?

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  • Why to say, my function is of IFly type rather than saying it's Airplane type

    - by Vishwas Gagrani
    Say, I have two classes: Airplane and Bird, both of them fly. Both implement the interface IFly. IFly declares a function StartFlying(). Thus both Airplane and Bird have to define the function, and use it as per their requirement. Now when I make a manual for class reference, what should I write for the function StartFlying? 1) StartFlying is a function of type IFly . 2) StartFlying is a function of type Airplane 3) StartFlying is a function of type Bird. My opinion is 2 and 3 are more informative. But what i see is that class references use the 1st one. They say what interface the function is declared in. Problem is, I really don't get any usable information from knowing StartFlying is IFly type. However, knowing that StartFlying is a function inside Airplane and Bird, is more informative, as I can decide which instance (Airplane or Bird ) to use. Any lights on this: how saying StartFlying is a function of type IFly, can help a programmer understanding how to use the function?

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  • Generalise variable usage inside code

    - by Shirish11
    I would like to know if it is a good practice to generalize variables (use single variable to store all the values). Consider simple example Strings querycre,queryins,queryup,querydel; querycre = 'Create table XYZ ...'; execute querycre ; queryins = 'Insert into XYZ ...'; execute queryins ; queryup = 'Update XYZ set ...'; execute queryup; querydel = 'Delete from XYZ ...'; execute querydel ; and Strings query; query= 'Create table XYZ ... '; execute query ; query= 'Insert into XYZ ...'; execute query ; query= 'Update XYZ set ...'; execute query ; query= 'Delete from XYZ ...'; execute query ; In first case I use 4 strings each storing data to perform the actions mentioned in their suffixes. In second case just 1 variable to store all kinds the data. Having different variables makes it easier for someone else to read and understand it better. But having too many of them makes it difficult to manage. Also does having too many variables hamper my performance?

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  • Could someone break this nasty habit of mine please?

    - by MimiEAM
    I recently graduated in cs and was mostly unsatisfied since I realized that I received only a basic theoretical approach in a wide range of subjects (which is what college is supposed to do but still...) . Anyway I took the habit of spending a lot of time looking for implementations of concepts and upon finding those I will used them as guides to writing my own implementation of those concepts just for fun. But now I feel like the only way I can fully understand a new concept is by trying to implement from scratch no matter how unoptimized the result may be. Anyway this behavior lead me to choose by default the hard way, that is time consuming instead of using a nicely written library until I hit my head again a huge wall and then try to find a library that works for my purpose.... Does anyone else do that and why? It seems so weird why would anyone (including me) do that ? Is it a bad practice ? and if so how can i stop doing that ?

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  • Is it good practice to use functions just to centralize common code?

    - by EpsilonVector
    I run across this problem a lot. For example, I currently write a read function and a write function, and they both check if buf is a NULL pointer and that the mode variable is within certain boundaries. This is code duplication. This can be solved by moving it into its own function. But should I? This will be a pretty anemic function (doesn't do much), rather localized (so not general purpose), and doesn't stand well on its own (can't figure out what you need it for unless you see where it is used). Another option is to use a macro, but I want to talk about functions in this post. So, should you use a function for something like this? What are the pros and cons?

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  • Which is a better practice - helper methods as instance or static?

    - by Ilian Pinzon
    This question is subjective but I was just curious how most programmers approach this. The sample below is in pseudo-C# but this should apply to Java, C++, and other OOP languages as well. Anyway, when writing helper methods in my classes, I tend to declare them as static and just pass the fields if the helper method needs them. For example, given the code below, I prefer to use Method Call #2. class Foo { Bar _bar; public void DoSomethingWithBar() { // Method Call #1. DoSomethingWithBarImpl(); // Method Call #2. DoSomethingWithBarImpl(_bar); } private void DoSomethingWithBarImpl() { _bar.DoSomething(); } private static void DoSomethingWithBarImpl(Bar bar) { bar.DoSomething(); } } My reason for doing this is that it makes it clear (to my eyes at least) that the helper method has a possible side-effect on other objects - even without reading its implementation. I find that I can quickly grok methods that use this practice and thus help me in debugging things. Which do you prefer to do in your own code and what are your reasons for doing so?

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  • How often is seq used in Haskell production code?

    - by Giorgio
    I have some experience writing small tools in Haskell and I find it very intuitive to use, especially for writing filters (using interact) that process their standard input and pipe it to standard output. Recently I tried to use one such filter on a file that was about 10 times larger than usual and I got a Stack space overflow error. After doing some reading (e.g. here and here) I have identified two guidelines to save stack space (experienced Haskellers, please correct me if I write something that is not correct): Avoid recursive function calls that are not tail-recursive (this is valid for all functional languages that support tail-call optimization). Introduce seq to force early evaluation of sub-expressions so that expressions do not grow to large before they are reduced (this is specific to Haskell, or at least to languages using lazy evaluation). After introducing five or six seq calls in my code my tool runs smoothly again (also on the larger data). However, I find the original code was a bit more readable. Since I am not an experienced Haskell programmer I wanted to ask if introducing seq in this way is a common practice, and how often one will normally see seq in Haskell production code. Or are there any techniques that allow to avoid using seq too often and still use little stack space?

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  • Snake Game Help

    - by MuhammadA
    I am making a snake game and learning XNA at the same time. I have 3 classes : Game.cs, Snake.cs and Apple.cs My problem is more of a conceptual problem, I want to know which class is really responsible for ... detecting collision of snake head on apple/itself/wall? which class should increase the snakes speed, size? It seems to me that however much I try and put the snake stuff into snake.cs that game.cs has to know a lot about the snake, like : -- I want to increase the score depending on size of snake, the score variable is inside game.cs, which means now I have to ask the snake its size on every hit of the apple... seems a bit unclean all this highly coupled code. or -- I DO NOT want to place the apple under the snake... now the apple suddenly has to know about all the snake parts, my head hurts when I think of that. Maybe there should be some sort of AppleLayer.cs class that should know about the snake... Whats the best approach in such a simple scenario? Any tips welcome. Game.cs : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Design; namespace Snakez { public enum CurrentGameState { Playing, Paused, NotPlaying } public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { private GraphicsDeviceManager _graphics; private SpriteBatch _spriteBatch; private readonly Color _niceGreenColour = new Color(167, 255, 124); private KeyboardState _oldKeyboardState; private SpriteFont _scoreFont; private SoundEffect _biteSound, _crashSound; private Vector2 _scoreLocation = new Vector2(10, 10); private Apple _apple; private Snake _snake; private int _score = 0; private int _speed = 1; public Game1() { _graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { _spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); _scoreFont = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("Score"); _apple = new Apple(800, 480, Content.Load<Texture2D>("Apple")); _snake = new Snake(Content.Load<Texture2D>("BodyBlock")); _biteSound = Content.Load<SoundEffect>("Bite"); _crashSound = Content.Load<SoundEffect>("Crash"); } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { Content.Unload(); } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { KeyboardState newKeyboardState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Escape)) { this.Exit(); // Allows the game to exit } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Up); } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Down); } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Left); } else if (newKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right) && !_oldKeyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { _snake.SetDirection(Direction.Right); } _oldKeyboardState = newKeyboardState; _snake.Update(); if (_snake.IsEating(_apple)) { _biteSound.Play(); _score += 10; _apple.Place(); } base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(_niceGreenColour); float frameRate = 1 / (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; _spriteBatch.Begin(); _spriteBatch.DrawString(_scoreFont, "Score : " + _score, _scoreLocation, Color.Red); _apple.Draw(_spriteBatch); _snake.Draw(_spriteBatch); _spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } } Snake.cs : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Snakez { public enum Direction { Up, Down, Left, Right } public class Snake { private List<Rectangle> _parts; private readonly Texture2D _bodyBlock; private readonly int _startX = 160; private readonly int _startY = 120; private int _moveDelay = 100; private DateTime _lastUpdatedAt; private Direction _direction; private Rectangle _lastTail; public Snake(Texture2D bodyBlock) { _bodyBlock = bodyBlock; _parts = new List<Rectangle>(); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX + bodyBlock.Width, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX + (bodyBlock.Width) * 2, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _parts.Add(new Rectangle(_startX + (bodyBlock.Width) * 3, _startY, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height)); _direction = Direction.Right; _lastUpdatedAt = DateTime.Now; } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { foreach (var p in _parts) { spriteBatch.Draw(_bodyBlock, new Vector2(p.X, p.Y), Color.White); } } public void Update() { if (DateTime.Now.Subtract(_lastUpdatedAt).TotalMilliseconds > _moveDelay) { //DateTime.Now.Ticks _lastTail = _parts.First(); _parts.Remove(_lastTail); /* add new head in right direction */ var lastHead = _parts.Last(); var newHead = new Rectangle(0, 0, _bodyBlock.Width, _bodyBlock.Height); switch (_direction) { case Direction.Up: newHead.X = lastHead.X; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y - _bodyBlock.Width; break; case Direction.Down: newHead.X = lastHead.X; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y + _bodyBlock.Width; break; case Direction.Left: newHead.X = lastHead.X - _bodyBlock.Width; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y; break; case Direction.Right: newHead.X = lastHead.X + _bodyBlock.Width; newHead.Y = lastHead.Y; break; } _parts.Add(newHead); _lastUpdatedAt = DateTime.Now; } } public void SetDirection(Direction newDirection) { if (_direction == Direction.Up && newDirection == Direction.Down) { return; } else if (_direction == Direction.Down && newDirection == Direction.Up) { return; } else if (_direction == Direction.Left && newDirection == Direction.Right) { return; } else if (_direction == Direction.Right && newDirection == Direction.Left) { return; } _direction = newDirection; } public bool IsEating(Apple apple) { if (_parts.Last().Intersects(apple.Location)) { GrowBiggerAndFaster(); return true; } return false; } private void GrowBiggerAndFaster() { _parts.Insert(0, _lastTail); _moveDelay -= (_moveDelay / 100)*2; } } } Apple.cs : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Snakez { public class Apple { private readonly int _maxWidth, _maxHeight; private readonly Texture2D _texture; private readonly Random random = new Random(); public Rectangle Location { get; private set; } public Apple(int screenWidth, int screenHeight, Texture2D texture) { _maxWidth = (screenWidth + 1) - texture.Width; _maxHeight = (screenHeight + 1) - texture.Height; _texture = texture; Place(); } public void Place() { Location = GetRandomLocation(_maxWidth, _maxHeight); } private Rectangle GetRandomLocation(int maxWidth, int maxHeight) { // x and y -- multiple of 20 int x = random.Next(1, maxWidth); var leftOver = x % 20; x = x - leftOver; int y = random.Next(1, maxHeight); leftOver = y % 20; y = y - leftOver; return new Rectangle(x, y, _texture.Width, _texture.Height); } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw(_texture, Location, Color.White); } } }

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  • How to estimate freight / shipping costs ??

    - by Vani
    Hi, I am working on a PHP web application and want to know the best way to estimate freight costs in USA. The site deals with construction materials that uses LTL or Truck loads. I found a few sites like www.freightCenter.com that provide quotes using webservice. Two drawbacks, its paid service and the other, my site response time is slow if I use the webservice. Is there a open source tool/logic avaliable for estimating shipping / freight costs?? Or a way to determine the rate per mile per pound for different freight classes? Thank you, Vani

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  • Several domains using 302 redirect to our domain

    - by Yamaha32088
    I am wondering what implications we can run into if one of our dealers is redirecting several of their domains using a 302 to our domain. The reason they are doing this is because they want to have time to build on their current sites but still want some content on the domains they own. Currently our domain is under a Manual Penalty for back links that we are working on removing. I do not like the idea of them linking back to our site but I need logical reasons other than "because I don't want you to".

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  • How often is your "Go-To" language the same as your favorite??

    - by K-RAN
    I know that there's already a question asking for your favorite programming language here. I'm curious though, what's your go-to language? The two can be very different. For example, I love Haskell. I learned it this past semester and I fell in love with it's very concise solutions and awesome syntax (I love theoretical math so something like fib = 1 : 1 : [ f | f <- zipWith (+) fibSeq (tail fibSeq)] makes my inner mathematician and computer scientist jump with joy!). However, the majority of my projects for classes and jobs have been in C/C++ & Java. As a result, most of the time when I'm testing something like an algorithm or Data Structure I go straight to C++. What about you guys? What languages do you love and why? What about your go-to language? What language do you use most often to get things done for work or personal projects and why? How often does a language fall into both categories??

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  • Refactor or Concentrate on Completing App

    - by Jiew Meng
    Would you refactor your app as you go or focus on completing app first? Refactoring will mean progress of app app will slow down. Completing app will mean you get a possibly very hard to maintain app later on? The app is a personal project. I don't really know how to answer "What drives the functionality and design", but I guess it's to solve inefficiencies in current software out there. I like minimal easy to use software too. So I am removing some features and add some that I feel will help.

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  • Is nesting types considered bad practice?

    - by Rob Z
    As noted by the title, is nesting types (e.g. enumerated types or structures in a class) considered bad practice or not? When you run Code Analysis in Visual Studio it returns the following message which implies it is: Warning 34 CA1034 : Microsoft.Design : Do not nest type 'ClassName.StructueName'. Alternatively, change its accessibility so that it is not externally visible. However, when I follow the recommendation of the Code Analysis I find that there tend to be a lot of structures and enumerated types floating around in the application that might only apply to a single class or would only be used with that class. As such, would it be appropriate to nest the type sin that case, or is there a better way of doing it?

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  • Is it bad practice to call a controller action from a view that was rendered by another controller?

    - by marco-fiset
    Let's say I have an OrderController which handles orders. The user adds products to it through the view, and then the final price gets calculated through an AJAX call to a controller action. The price calculation logic is implemented in a seperate class and used in a controller action. What happens is that I have many views from different controllers that need to use that particular action. I'd like to have some kind of a PriceController that I could call an action on. But then the view would have to know about that PriceController and call an action on it. Is it bad practice for a view to call an action on a different controller from which it was rendered?

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  • How to export 3D models that consist of several parts (eg. turret on a tank)?

    - by Will
    What are the standard alternatives for the mechanics of attaching turrets and such to 3D models for use in-game? I don't mean the logic, but rather the graphics aspects. My naive approach is to extend the MD2-like format that I'm using (blender-exported using a script) to include a new set of properties for a mesh that: is anchored in another 'parent' mesh. The anchor is a point and normal in the parent mesh and a point and normal in the child mesh; these will always be colinear, giving the child rotation but not translation relative to the parent point. has a normal that is aligned with a 'target'. Classically this target is the enemy that is being engaged, but it might be some other vector e.g. 'the wind' (for sails and flags (and smoke, which is a particle system but the same principle applies)) or 'upwards' (e.g. so bodies of riders bend properly when riding a horse up an incline etc). that the anchor and target alignments have maximum and minimum and a speed coeff. there is game logic for multiple turrets and on a model and deciding which engages which enemy. 'primary' and 'secondary' or 'target0' ... 'targetN' or some such annotation will be there. So to illustrate, a classic tank would be made from three meshes; a main body mesh, a turret mesh that is anchored to the top of the main body so it can spin only horizontally and a barrel mesh that is anchored to the front of the turret and can only move vertically within some bounds. And there might be a forth flag mesh on top of the turret that is aligned with 'wind' where wind is a function the engine solves that merges environment's wind angle with angle the vehicle is travelling in an velocity, or something fancy. This gives each mesh one degree of freedom relative to its parent. Things with multiple degrees of freedom can be modelled by zero-vertex connecting meshes perhaps? This is where I think the approach I outlined begins to feel inelegant, yet perhaps its still a workable system? This is why I want to know how it is done in professional games ;) Are there better approaches? Are there formats that already include this information? Is this routine?

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  • Inspiring the method of teaching. Example- C++ :)

    - by Ashwin
    A year ago I graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering. Considering C++ as the first choice of programming language I have been in the process of learning C++ in many ways. At first - five years back - I had many conceptions, most of which were so abstract to me. It started when I knew almost everything about Structs in C and nothing about Classes in C++. I went through a great time experimenting them all and learning a lot. I had a hard time evaluating Procedural programming vs Object-Oriented Programming. Deciding when to choose Procedural or Object-Oriented Programming took a great deal of patience for me. I knew that I cannot underestimate any of these Programming styles... Though Procedural programming is often a better choice than simple sequential unstructured programming, when solving problems with procedural programming, we usually divide one problem into several steps in order regarded as functions. Then we call these functions one by one to get the result of the problem. When solving problems with Object Oriented Priciples we divide one problem into several classes and form the interaction between them. Evaluating these two at the beginning (as a learner) required a lot of inspiration and thoughts. Instructing to think step by step. Relative concepts to understand deeply. Intensive interests to contrast both solving in both POP and OOP. If you were ever a mentor: What ideas/methods would you teach to students in which it will Inspire them to learn a programming language (in general, computer sciences)?

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  • Struggling with the Single Responsibility Principle

    - by AngryBird
    Consider this example: I have a website. It allows users to make posts (can be anything) and add tags that describe the post. In the code, I have two classes that represent the post and tags. Lets call these classes Post and Tag. Post takes care of creating posts, deleting posts, updating posts, etc. Tag takes care of creating tags, deleting tags, updating tags, etc. There is one operation that is missing. The linking of tags to posts. I am struggling with who should do this operation. It could fit equally well in either class. On one hand, the Post class could have a function that takes a Tag as a parameter, and then stores it in a list of tags. On the other hand, the Tag class could have a function that takes a Post as a parameter and links the Tag to the Post. The above is just an example of my problem. I am actually running into this with multiple classes that are all similar. It could fit equally well in both. Short of actually putting the functionality in both classes, what conventions or design styles exist to help me solve this problem. I am assuming there has to be something short of just picking one? Maybe putting it in both classes is the correct answer?

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  • How to become a good team player?

    - by Nick
    I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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  • Should I forward the a call to .Equals onto .Equals<T>?

    - by Jaimal Chohan
    So, I've got you bog standard c# object, overriding Equalsand implementing IEquatable public override int GetHashCode() { return _name.GetHashCode(); } public override bool Equals(object obj) { return Equals(obj as Tag) } #region IEquatable<Tag> Members public bool Equals(Tag other) { if (other == null) return false; else return _name == other._name; } #endregion Now, for some reason, I used to think that forwarding the calls from Equals into Equals was bad, no idea why, perhaps I read it a long time ago, anyway I'd write separate (but logically same) code for each method. Now I think forwarding Equals to Equals is okay, for obvious reasons, but for the life me I can't remember why I thought it wasn't before. Any thoughts?

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  • Adding complexity by generalising: how far should you go?

    - by marcog
    Reference question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4303813/help-with-interview-question The above question asked to solve a problem for an NxN matrix. While there was an easy solution, I gave a more general solution to solve the more general problem for an NxM matrix. A handful of people commented that this generalisation was bad because it made the solution more complex. One such comment is voted +8. Putting aside the hard-to-explain voting effects on SO, there are two types of complexity to be considered here: Runtime complexity, i.e. how fast does the code run Code complexity, i.e. how difficult is the code to read and understand The question of runtime complexity is something that requires a better understanding of the input data today and what it might look like in the future, taking the various growth factors into account where necessary. The question of code complexity is the one I'm interested in here. By generalising the solution, we avoid having to rewrite it in the event that the constraints change. However, at the same time it can often result in complicating the code. In the reference question, the code for NxN is easy to understand for any competent programmer, but the NxM case (unless documented well) could easily confuse someone coming across the code for the first time. So, my question is this: Where should you draw the line between generalising and keeping the code easy to understand?

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  • How can I optimize my development machines files/dirs?

    - by LuxuryMode
    Like any programmer, I've got a lot of stuff on my machine. Some of that stuff is projects of my own, some are projects I'm working on for my employer, others are open-source tools and projects, etc. Currently, I have my files organized as follows: /Code --/development (things I'm sort of hacking on plus maybe libraries used in other projects) --/scala (organized by language...why? I don't know!) --/android --/ruby --/employer_name -- /mobile --/android --/ios --/open-source (basically my forks that I'm pushing commits back upstream from) --/some-awesome-oss-project --/another-awesome-one --/tools random IDE settings sprinkled in here plus some other apps As you can see, things are kind of a mess here. How can I keep things organized in some sort of coherent fashion?

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