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  • Chrome Web Browser Messages: Some Observations

    - by ultan o'broin
    I'm always on the lookout for how different apps handle errors and what kind of messages are shown (I probably need to get out more), I use this 'research' to reflect on our own application error messages patterns and guidelines and how we might make things better for our users in future. Users are influenced by all sorts of things, but their everyday experiences of technology, and especially what they encounter on the internet, increasingly sets their expectations for the enterprise user experience too. I recently came across a couple of examples from Google's Chrome web browser that got me thinking. In the first case, we have a Chrome error about not being able to find a web page. I like how simple, straightforward messaging language is used along with an optional ability to explore things a bit further--for those users who want to. The 'more information' option shows the error encountered by the browser (or 'original' error) in technical terms, along with an error number. Contrasting the two messages about essentially the same problem reveals what's useful to users and what's not. Everyone can use the first message, but the technical version of the message has to be explicitly disclosed for any more advanced user to pursue further. More technical users might search for a resolution, using that Error 324 number, but I imagine most users who see the message will try again later or check their URL again. Seems reasonable that such an approach be adopted in the enterprise space too, right? Maybe. Generally, end users don't go searching for solutions based on those error numbers, and help desk folks generally prefer they don't do so. That's because of the more critical nature of enterprise data or the fact that end users may not have the necessary privileges to make any fixes anyway. What might be more useful here is a link to a trusted source of additional help provided by the help desk or reputable community instead. This takes me on to the second case, this time more closely related to the language used in messaging situations. Here, I first noticed by the using of the (s) approach to convey possibilities of there being one or more pages at the heart of the problem. This approach is a no-no in Oracle style terms (the plural would be used) and it can create translation issues (though it is not a show-stopper). I think Google could have gone with the plural too. However, of more interest is the use of the verb "kill", shown in the message text and as an action button label. For many writers, words like "kill" and "abort" are to be avoided as they can give offense. I am not so sure about that judgment, as really their use cannot be separated from the context. Certainly, for more technical users, they're fine and have been in use for years, so I see no reason to avoid these terms if the audience has accepted them. Most end users too, I think would find the idea of "kill" usable and may even use the term in every day speech. Others might disagree--Apple uses a concept of Force Quit, for example. Ultimately, the only way to really know how to proceed is to research these matter by asking users of differing roles and expertise to perform some tasks, encounter these messages and then make recommendations based on those findings for our designs. Something to do in 2011!

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  • Why is 0 false?

    - by Morwenn
    This question may sound dumb, but why does 0 evaluates to false and any other [integer] value to true is most of programming languages? String comparison Since the question seems a little bit too simple, I will explain myself a little bit more: first of all, it may seem evident to any programmer, but why wouldn't there be a programming language - there may actually be, but not any I used - where 0 evaluates to true and all the other [integer] values to false? That one remark may seem random, but I have a few examples where it may have been a good idea. First of all, let's take the example of strings three-way comparison, I will take C's strcmp as example: any programmer trying C as his first language may be tempted to write the following code: if (strcmp(str1, str2)) { // Do something... } Since strcmp returns 0 which evaluates to false when the strings are equal, what the beginning programmer tried to do fails miserably and he generally does not understand why at first. Had 0 evaluated to true instead, this function could have been used in its most simple expression - the one above - when comparing for equality, and the proper checks for -1 and 1 would have been done only when needed. We would have considered the return type as bool (in our minds I mean) most of the time. Moreover, let's introduce a new type, sign, that just takes values -1, 0 and 1. That can be pretty handy. Imagine there is a spaceship operator in C++ and we want it for std::string (well, there already is the compare function, but spaceship operator is more fun). The declaration would currently be the following one: sign operator<=>(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); Had 0 been evaluated to true, the spaceship operator wouldn't even exist, and we could have declared operator== that way: sign operator==(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); This operator== would have handled three-way comparison at once, and could still be used to perform the following check while still being able to check which string is lexicographically superior to the other when needed: if (str1 == str2) { // Do something... } Old errors handling We now have exceptions, so this part only applies to the old languages where no such thing exist (C for example). If we look at C's standard library (and POSIX one too), we can see for sure that maaaaany functions return 0 when successful and any integer otherwise. I have sadly seen some people do this kind of things: #define TRUE 0 // ... if (some_function() == TRUE) { // Here, TRUE would mean success... // Do something } If we think about how we think in programming, we often have the following reasoning pattern: Do something Did it work? Yes -> That's ok, one case to handle No -> Why? Many cases to handle If we think about it again, it would have made sense to put the only neutral value, 0, to yes (and that's how C's functions work), while all the other values can be there to solve the many cases of the no. However, in all the programming languages I know (except maybe some experimental esotheric languages), that yes evaluates to false in an if condition, while all the no cases evaluate to true. There are many situations when "it works" represents one case while "it does not work" represents many probable causes. If we think about it that way, having 0 evaluate to true and the rest to false would have made much more sense. Conclusion My conclusion is essentially my original question: why did we design languages where 0 is false and the other values are true, taking in account my few examples above and maybe some more I did not think of? Follow-up: It's nice to see there are many answers with many ideas and as many possible reasons for it to be like that. I love how passionate you seem to be about it. I originaly asked this question out of boredom, but since you seem so passionate, I decided to go a little further and ask about the rationale behind the Boolean choice for 0 and 1 on Math.SE :)

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  • Syntax Recognition for XML-Based Languages in Oracle JDeveloper

    - by Ramkumar Menon
      @Thanks Jeffrey Stephenson If you are looking at using any one of the new XML Based languages, lets say a docbook xml, or xproc, or what not, you can make use of JDeveloper's syntax highlighting and completion insight feature to ease out those extra keystrokes. All you need is a URL/local copy of the XML Schema for the language. Once you have, you can register it via Tools --> Preferences --> XML Schemas.   Remember to provide a new extension name [Using a default .xml extension did not work for me.] I provided my own extension .dbk for my docbook files. Once you save these settings, you can create new files that conform to the schema, and you get validation/completion insight/prompting for free.      

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  • Alternative to pyGame ?

    - by stighy
    Hi, i'm learning something about game programming from a book about "pyGame". pyGame is simple, but... python is a little complex and different from my previous knoweledge about programming. I know "classical" language: C# (also C/C++), Java ... I know a lot of people love Python but for me is a little harder to learn! So i'm looking something like "pyGame" but for java or for c# ... A library with which i can do almost the same thing i can do with pygame (so .. do more with less code ... and headhace). Thank you Ps: excuse my "poor" english!

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  • What's wrong with JavaScript

    - by ts01
    There is a lot of buzz around Dart recently, often questioning Google motivations and utility of Dart as replacement for JavaScript. I was searching for rationale of creating Dart rather than investing more effort in ECMAScript. In well known leaked mail its author is saying that Javascript has historical baggage that cannot be solved without a clean break. But there is only one concrete example given (apart of performance concerns) of "fundamental language problems", which is an existence of a single Number primitive So, my questions are: How an existence of a single Number primitive can be a "fundamental problem"? Are there other known "fundamental problems" in JavaScript?

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  • Using idle time in turn-based (RPG) games for updating

    - by The Communist Duck
    If you take any turn based RPG game there will be large periods of time when nothing is happening because the game is looping over 'wait_for_player_input'. Naturally it seems sensible to use this time to update things. However, this immediately seems to suggest that it would need to be threaded. Is this sort of design possible in a single thread? loop: if not check_something_pressed: update_a_very_small_amount else keep going But if we says 'a_very_small_amount' is only updating a single object each loop, it's going to be very slow at updating. How would you go about this, preferably in a single thread? EDIT: I've tagged this language-agnostic as that seems the sensible thing, though anything more specific to Python would be great. ;-)

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  • how to learn ios game development using swift.. good starting point?

    - by hamobi
    I've published a simple app on the app store using objective-c. That was a good learning experience but I never grew to love the language. Later on I jumped into learning cocos2d in order to begin developing a game.. but objective-c always seemed really cumbersome to write. Eventually I put my project aside. Now that swift has come out.. It has made me think about developing games again.. I know that xcode has some project types geared towards game development, but since I'm a beginner in this area I really need some hand holding (books / tutorials) to get started. Cocos2d seems like its really stuck in that objective-c world. What's the best way for a beginner to learn game development using swift?

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  • Is the slow performance of programming languages a bad thing?

    - by Emanuil
    Here's how I see it. There's machine code and it's all that the computers needs in order to run something. The computers don't care about programming languages. It doesn't matter to them if the machine code comes from Perl, Python or PHP. Programming languages exist to serve programmers. Some programming languages run slower than others but that's not necessarily because there is something wrong with them. In many cases it's just because they do more things that otherwise programmers would have to do and by doing these things, they do better what they are supposed to do - serve programmers. So is the slower performance (at runtime) of a programming language really a bad thing?

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  • Online training modules / programs for best software engineering practices?

    - by Steve
    We're taking over a team in a foreign country and the programming standards there aren't up to par with US standards. Folks there lack the formal training and basic understanding of computing concepts of databases, how computers work, what good software engineering practices are. Short of sending these ppl to college again, are there good online courses available that we can enroll them into so that they can upgrade their skills? I am specifically looking for online training courses, but recommendations for books are also welcome. This is language-agnostic.

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  • Is case after case in a switch efficient?

    - by RandomGuy
    Just a random question regarding switch case efficiency in case after case; is the following code (assume pseudo code): function bool isValid(String myString){ switch(myString){ case "stringA": case "stringB": case "stringC": return true; default: return false; } more efficient than this: function bool isValid(String myString){ switch(myString){ case "stringA": return true; case "stringB": return true; case "stringC": return true; default: return false; } Or is the performance equal? I'm not thinking in a specific language but if needed let's assume it's Java or C (for this case would be needed to use chars instead of strings).

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  • How do I change a local apps locale in LTSP?

    - by Danil Zvyagintsev
    I'm wondering how to change locale (UI gtk) inside local apps to ru_RU for example instead of en_US. Ror example i install chromium-browser inside client image chroot /opt/ltsp/i386 apt-get -y install chromium-browser ltsp-update-image --arch=i386 booted from thin client i see LDM in ru_RU lang login to x session (gnome) everything is in ru_RU but trying run ltsp-localapps chromium-browser and see chromium with en_US interface...BUT i need in RUSSIAN i've added file on both host (/etc/default/locale) and thin client image (/opt/ltsp/i386/etc/default/locale) with LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=ru_RU.UTF-8 LC_ALL=ru_RU.UTF-8 but nothing changed lts.conf also has LDM_LANG=ru_RU.utf-8 in it... Is it possible to change lang of localapps?

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  • Benchmarking CPU processing power

    - by Federico Zancan
    Provided that many tools for computers benchmarking are available already, I'd like to write my own, starting with processing power measurement. I'd like to write it in C under Linux, but other language alternatives are welcome. I thought starting from floating point operations per second, but it is just a hint. I also thought it'd be correct to keep track of CPU number of cores, RAM amount and the like, to more consistently associate results with CPU architecture. How would you proceed to the task of measuring CPU computing power? And on top of that: I would worry about a properly minimum workload induced by concurrently running services; is it correct to run benchmarking as a standalone (and possibly avulsed from the OS environment) process?

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  • OUAB Europe Globalization Topics

    - by ultan o'broin
    Pleased to announce that the Oracle Usability Advisory Board has added a globalization workgroup for 2011. This will be headed up my myself. The aims of this workgroup are: To understand how our customers use translated versions of applications To identify key international support, translation and localization-related usability issues in deployed applications To make recommendations to Oracle usability and development teams about meeting global customer usability requirements in current and future versions of our applications. Issues include: How international users use applications when working, ethnography opportunities, key cultural impacts on usability; multilingual feature usage, localization of forms and reports, language quality, extensibility, translation of user assistance, user-generated and rich-media content like UPK, and international mobile application opportunities. More details will be available on the usableapps.oracle.com website shortly.

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  • Will Swift or any upcoming Apple developer tools be incompatible with .xibs? [on hold]

    - by user
    I'm still letting the sudden announcement of a language change (Swift) sink in, and I'm wondering if the upcoming platform changes will still be highly compatible with using .xibs for interface development. I've used Storyboards in multiple production projects but I don't feel very productive with them, and I get tired of managing multiple storyboards, links, and xib connections for complex views. I don't see why Swift and Xcode 6 wouldn't cooperate with Xibs indefinitely if it still allows @IBOutlets and @IBActions, but I have realized that Apple purposely shuns old methodologies for the sake of doing so. If there's any reasons to turn away from xibs in iOS8 besides the use-the-new-stuff conventional wisdom, I'd like to know before its too late.

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  • Why are Javascript for/in loops so verbose?

    - by Matthew Scharley
    I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind why the language designers would make the for (.. in ..) loops so verbose. For example: for (var x in Drupal.settings.module.stuff) { alert("Index: " + x + "\nValue: " + Drupal.settings.module.stuff[x]); } It makes trying to loop over anything semi-complex like the above a real pain as you either have to alias the value locally inside the loop yourself, or deal with long access calls. This is especially painful if you have two to three nested loops. I'm assuming there is a reason why they would do things this way, but I'm struggling with the reasoning.

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  • Programming languages specifications ebooks

    - by Oxinabox
    In this talk Jon Skeet talks about the advantages of reading programming language specifications. I have an Ebook Reader (a Sony, one of the better ones for PDF's, though EPub is still much better). Does anyone know any sources for specifications, optimised for ebook readersm that can be downloaded? I expect someone would have gone through the effort of optimising the websites for ebook reader reading, ideally: EPUB Format (though pdf will do) Annotated (eg XML) Most specifications I find don't have obvious download links. I'm having trouble googling because everytime I seach for say: "F# Spec EPUB" or "Python Spec PDF" most of the results are for the EPUB or PDF specifications.

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  • Examples of "Lost art" on software technology/development

    - by mamcx
    With the advent of a new technology, some old ideas - despite been good - are forgotten in the process. I read a lot how some "new" thing was already present in Lisp like 60 years ago, but only recently resurface with other name or on top of another language. Now look like the new old thing is build functional, non-mutable, non-locking-thread stuff... and that make me wonder what have been "lost" in the art of development of software? What ideas are almost forgotten, waiting for resurface? One of my, I remember when I code in foxpro. The idea of have a full stack to develop database apps without impedance mismatch is something I truly miss. In the current languages, I never find another environment that match how easy was develop in fox back them. What else is missing?

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  • C programming in 2011

    - by Duncan Bayne
    Many moons ago I cut C code for a living, primarily while maintaining a POP3 server that supported a wide range of OSs (Linux, *BSD, HPUX, VMS ...). I'm planning to polish the rust off my C skills and learn a bit about language implementation by coding a simple FORTH in C. But I'm wondering how (or whether?) have things changed in the C world since 2000. When I think C, I think ... comp.lang.c ANSI C wherever possible (but C89 as C99 isn't that widely supported) gcc -Wall -ansi -pedantic in lieu of static analysis tools Emacs Ctags Autoconf + make (and see point 2 for VMS, HP-UX etc. goodness) Can anyone who's been writing in C for the past eleven years let me know what (if anything ;-) ) has changed over the years? (In other news, holy crap, I've been doing this for more than a decade).

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  • Chrome says my website is Serbian...how do I "force" chrome to use english?

    - by kristen
    Our website is based in the U.S. and all of our users are in the U.S. and the site is written in english. When we open the page in chrome, an alert comes up "This page is in Serbian...would you like to translate it"? I imagine it is some javascript or other code that is triggering that. Is there a way to force chrome to use "English" as the language? We tried googling this question but came up with nothing. thx!

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  • What should NOT be included in comments? (opinion on a dictum by the inventor of Forth)

    - by AKE
    The often provocative Chuck Moore (inventor of the Forth language) gave the following advice (paraphrasing): "Use comments sparingly. Programs are self-documenting, with a modicum of help from mnemonics. Comments should say WHAT the program is doing, not HOW." My question: Should comments say WHY the program is doing what it is doing? Update: In addition to the answers below, these two provide additional insight. 1: Beginner's guide to writing comments? 2: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/98609/62203

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  • How to name setter that does data conversion?

    - by IAdapter
    I'm struggling with how to name this method, I don't like the "set" prefix, because I feel it should be reserved for normal "dumb" setters and some tools might not like it (i did not check it in checkstyle, pmd, etc., but I got a feeling they won't like it.) for example (in java, but I feel its language agnostic) public void setActionListenerClicked(boolean actionListenerClicked) { this.actionListenerClicked = actionListenerClicked ? "1" : "0"; } The only purpose of this method is ONLY to set, this method is needed and cannot be joined with any other (because of framework used). P.S. I DO know that question is similar to How to name multi-setter?, but I feel its not the same question.

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  • How to name multi-setter?

    - by IAdapter
    I'm struggling with how to name this method, I don't like the "set" prefix, because I feel it should be reserved for normal "dumb" setters and some tools might not like it (i did not check it in checkstyle, pmd, etc., but I got a feeling they won't like it.) for example (in java, but I feel its language agnostic) public void setField1Field2(String field1, String field2) { this.field1 = field1; this.field2 = field2; } The only purpose of this method is ONLY to set, this method is needed and cannot be joined with any other (because of framework used).

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  • (Joomla 1.6) Template position descriptions don't refresh

    - by avanwieringen
    I want to change a description of a template position, so when I go to Admin-Extensions-Module Manager I see a different description of a module position in the position list when I edit a module. However, when I change (for instance) the template 'beez_20' and want to rename the name of the position 'debug', I change the description (TPL_BEEZ_20_POSITION_DEBUG) in the language file 'languages\en-GB\en-GB.tpl_beez_20.sys.ini' to something different, say 'Abracadabra'. However, the changes don't appear in the position list and I can find no reference whatsoever of how or when the ini files are read or maybe cached. Does anyone has a clue?

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  • (Joomla 1.6) Template position descriptions don't refresh

    - by user6301
    I want to change a description of a template position, so when I go to Admin-Extensions-Module Manager I see a different description of a module position in the position list when I edit a module. However, when I change (for instance) the template 'beez_20' and want to rename the name of the position 'debug', I change the description (TPL_BEEZ_20_POSITION_DEBUG) in the language file 'languages\en-GB\en-GB.tpl_beez_20.sys.ini' to something different, say 'Abracadabra'. However, the changes don't appear in the position list and I can find no reference whatsoever of how or when the ini files are read or maybe cached. Does anyone has a clue?

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  • Vim and emacs usage/use case/user statistics

    - by G. Kayaalp
    I wonder if there are statistical documents/research based on use of the two major text editors, in which amount of usage is compared to use case, be it programming language, industry, user age, OS and/or many other things I can't think of now. I don't need this information for an assignment/homework or something, I'm just curious about it. I've been searching this for some time, not very intensively, and only thing I have found was this: Emacs user base size Lastly, I want to denote that I'm not looking for estimations. I'm not asking if one editor is better that the other, nor I am expecting help on choice between them. I'm not asking for opinions.

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