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• About Me

  - by Jeffrey West

  I’m new to blogging.  This is the second blog post that I have written, and before I go too much further I wanted the readers of my blog to know a bit more about me… Kid’s Stuff By trade, I am a programmer (or coder, developer, engineer, architect, etc).  I started programming when I was 12 years old.  When I was 7, we got our first ‘family’ computer – an Apple IIc.  It was great to play games on, and of course what else was a 7-year-old going to do with it.  I did have one problem with it, though.  When I put in my 5.25” floppy to play a game, sometimes, instead loading my game I would get a mysterious ‘]’ on the screen with a flashing cursor.  This, of course, was not my game.  Much like the standard ‘Microsoft fix’ is to reboot, back then you would take the floppy out, shake it, and restart the computer and pray for a different result. One day, I learned at school that I could topple my nemesis – the ‘]’ and flashing cursor – by typing ‘load’ and pressing enter.  Most of the time, this would load my game and then I would get to play.  Problem solved.  However, I began to wonder – what else can I make it do? When I was in 5th grade my dad got a bright idea to buy me a Tandy 1000HX.  He didn’t know what I was going to do with it, and neither did I.  Least of all, my mom wasn’t happy about buying a 5th grader a $1,000 computer.  Nonetheless, Over time, I learned how to write simple basic programs out of the back of my Math book: 10 x=5 20 y=6 30 PRINT x+y That was fun for all of about 5 minutes.  I needed more – more challenges, more things that I could make the computer do.  In order to quench this thirst my parents sent me to National Computer Camps in Connecticut.  It was one of the best experiences of my childhood, and I spent 3 weeks each summer after that learning BASIC, Pascal, Turbo C and some C++.  There weren’t many kids at the time who knew anything about computers, and lets just say my knowledge of and interest in computers didn’t score me many ‘cool’ points.  My experiences at NCC set me on the path that I find myself on now, and I am very thankful for the experience.  Real Life I have held various positions in the past at different levels within the IT layer cake.  I started out as a Software Developer for a startup in the Dallas, TX area building software for semiconductor testing statistical process control and sampling.  I was the second Java developer that was hired, and the ninth employee overall, so I got a great deal of experience developing software.  Since there weren’t that many people in the organization, I also got a lot of field experience which meant that if I screwed up the code, I got yelled at (figuratively) by both my boss AND the customer.  Fun Times!  What made it better was that I got to help run pilot programs in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Malta.  Getting yelled at in Taiwan is slightly less annoying that getting yelled at in Dallas… I spent the next 5 years at Accenture doing systems integration in the ‘SOA’ group.  I joined as a Consultant and left as a Senior Manager.  I started out writing code in WebLogic Integration and left after I wrapped up project where I led a team of 25 to develop the next generation of a digital media platform to deliver HD content in a digital format.  At Accenture, I had the pleasure of working with some truly amazing people – mentoring some and learning from many others – and on some incredible real-world IT projects.  Given my background with the BEA stack of products I was often called in to troubleshoot and tune WebLogic, ALBPM and ALSB installations and have logged many hours digging through thread dumps, running performance tests with SoapUI and decompiling Java classes we didn’t have the source for so I could see what was going on in the code. I am now a Senior Principal Product Manager at Oracle in the Application Grid practice.  The term ‘Application Grid’ refers to a collection of software and hardware products within Oracle that enables customers to build horizontally scalable systems.  This collection of products includes WebLogic, GlassFish, Coherence, Tuxedo and the JRockit/HotSpot JVMs (HotSprocket, maybe?).  Now, with the introduction of Exalogic it has grown to include hardware as well. Wrapping it up… I love technology and have a diverse background ranging from software development to HW and network architecture & tuning.  I have held certifications for being an Oracle Certified DBA, MSCE and Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP), among others and I have put those to great use over my career.  I am excited about programming & technology and I enjoy helping people learn and be successful.  If you are having challenges with WebLogic, BPM or Service Bus feel free to reach out to me and I’ll be happy to help as I have time. Thanks for stopping by!   --Jeff

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• IndyTechFest Recap

  - by Johnm

  The sun had yet to raise above the horizon on Saturday, May 22nd and I was traveling toward the location of the 2010 IndyTechFest. In my freshly awaken, and pre-coffee, state I reflected on the months that preceded this day and how quickly they slipped away. The big day had finally come and the morning dew glistened with a unique brightness that morning. What is this all about? For those who are unfamiliar with IndyTechFest, it is a regional conference held in Indianapolis and hosted by the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association (IndyNDA) and the Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (IndyPASS).  The event presents multiple tracks and sessions covering subjects such as Business Intelligence,  Database Administration, .NET Development, SharePoint Development, Windows Mobile Development as well as non-Microsoft topics such as Lean and MongoDB. This year's event was the third hosting of IndyTechFest. No man is an island No event such as IndyTechFest is executed by a single person. My fellow co-founders, with their highly complementary skill sets and philanthropy make the process very enjoyable. Our amazing volunteers and their aid were indispensible. The generous financial support of our sponsors that made the event and fabulous prizes possible. The spectacular line up of speakers who came from near and far to donate their time and knowledge. Our beloved attendees who sacrificed the first sunny Saturday in weeks to expand their skill sets and network with their peers. We are deeply appreciative. Challenges in preparation With the preparation of any event comes challenges. It is these challenges that makes the process of planning an event so interesting. This year's largest challenge was the location of the event. In the past two years IndyTechFest was held at the Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Center in Indianapolis. This facility has been the hub of the Indy technical community for many years. As the big day drew near, the facility's availability came into question due to some recent changes that had occurred with those who operated the facility. We began our search for an alternative option. Thankfully, the Marriott Indianapolis East was available, was very spacious and willing to work within the range of our budget. Within days of our event, the decision to move proved to be wise since the prior location had begun renovations to the interior. Whew! Always trust your gut. Every day it's getting better At the ending of each year, we huddle together, review the evaluations and identify an area in which the event could improve. This year's big opportunity for improvement resided in the prize give-away portion at the end of the day. In the 2008 event, admittedly, this portion was rather chaotic, rushed and disorganized. This year, we broke the drawing into two sections, of which each attendee received two tickets. The first ticket was a drawing for the mountain of books that were given away. The second ticket was a drawing for the big prizes, the 2 Xboxes, 3 laptops and iPad. We peppered the ticket drawings with gift card raffles and tossing t-shirts into the audience. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again Each year of IndyTechFest, we have offered a means for ad-hoc sessions or discussion groups to pop-up. To our disappointment it was something that never quite took off. We have always believed that this unique type of session was valuable and wanted to figure out a way to make it work for this year. A special thanks to Alan Stevens, who took on and facilitated the "open space" track and made it an official success. Share with your tweety When the attendee badges were designed we decided to place an emphasis on the attendee's Twitter account as well as the events hash-tag (#IndyTechFest) to encourage some real-time buzz during the day. At the host table we displayed a Twitter feed for all to enjoy. It was quite successful and encouraging use of social media. My badge was missing my Twitter account since it was recently changed. For those who care to follow my rather sparse tweets, my address is @johnnydata. Man, this is one long blog post! All in all it was a very successful event. It is always great to see new faces and meet old friends. The planning for the 2011 IndyTechFest will kick off very soon. We have more capacity for future growth and a truck full of great ideas. Stay tuned!

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• Death March

  - by Nick Harrison

  It is a horrible sight to watch a project fail. There are few things as bad. Watching a project fail regardless of the reason is almost like sitting in a room with a "Dementor" from Harry Potter. It will literally suck all of the life and joy out of the room. Nearly every project that I have seen fail has failed because of political challenges or management challenges. Sometimes there are technical challenges that bring a project to its knees, but usually projects fail for less technical reasons. Here a few observations about projects failing for political reasons. Both the client and the consultants have to be committed to seeing the project succeed. Put simply, you cannot solve a problem when the primary stake holders do not truly want it solved. This could come from a consultant being more interested in extended the engagement. It could come from a client being afraid of what will happen to them once the problem is solved. It could come from disenfranchised stake holders. Sometimes a project is beset on all sides. When you find yourself working on a project that has this kind of threat, do all that you can to constrain the disruptive influences of the bad apples. If their influence cannot be constrained, you truly have no choice but to move on to a new project. Tough choices have to be made to make a project successful. These choices will affect everyone involved in the project. These choices may involve users not getting a change request through that they want. Developers may not get to use the tools that they want. Everyone may have to put in more hours that they originally planned. Steps may be skipped. Compromises will be made, but if everyone stays committed to the end goal, you can still be successful. If individuals start feeling disgruntled or resentful of the compromises reached, the project can easily be derailed. When everyone is not working towards a common goal, it is like driving with one foot on the break and one foot on the accelerator. Not only will you not get to where you are planning, you will also damage the car and possibly the passengers as well.   It is important to always keep the end result in mind. Regardless of the development methodology being followed, the end goal is not comprehensive documentation. In all cases, it is working software. Comprehensive documentation is nice but useless if the software doesn't work.   You can never get so distracted by the next goal that you fail to meet the current goal. Most projects are ultimately marathons. This means that the pace must be sustainable. Regardless of the temptations, you cannot burn the team alive. Processes will fail. Technology will get outdated. Requirements will change, but your people will adapt and learn and grow. If everyone on the team from the most senior analyst to the most junior recruit trusts and respects each other, there is no challenge that they cannot overcome. When everyone involved faces challenges with the attitude "This is my project and I will not let it fail" "You are my teammate and I will not let you fail", you will in fact not fail. When you find a team that embraces this attitude, protect it at all cost. Edward Yourdon wrote a book called Death March. In it, he included a graph for categorizing Death March project types based on the Happiness of the Team and the Chances of Success.   Chances are we have all worked on Death March projects. We will all most likely work on more Death March projects in the future. To a certain extent, they seem to be inevitable, but they should never be suicide or ugly. Ideally, they can all be "Mission Impossible" where everyone works hard, has fun, and knows that there is good chance that they will succeed. If you are ever lucky enough to work on such a project, you will know that sense of pride that comes from the eventual success. You will recognize a profound bond with the team that you worked with. Chances are it will change your life or at least your outlook on life. If you have not already read this book, get a copy and study it closely. It will help you survive and make the most out of your next Death March project.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Static Char Methods

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Often times in our code we deal with the bigger classes and types in the BCL, and occasionally forgot that there are some nice methods on the primitive types as well.  Today we will discuss some of the handy static methods that exist on the char (the C# alias of System.Char) type. The Background I was examining a piece of code this week where I saw the following: 1: // need to get the 5th (offset 4) character in upper case 2: var type = symbol.Substring(4, 1).ToUpper(); 3:  4: // test to see if the type is P 5: if (type == "P") 6: { 7: // ... do something with P type... 8: } Is there really any error in this code?  No, but it still struck me wrong because it is allocating two very short-lived throw-away strings, just to store and manipulate a single char: The call to Substring() generates a new string of length 1 The call to ToUpper() generates a new upper-case version of the string from Step 1. In my mind this is similar to using ToUpper() to do a case-insensitive compare: it isn’t wrong, it’s just much heavier than it needs to be (for more info on case-insensitive compares, see #2 in 5 More Little Wonders). One of my favorite books is the C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices by Sutter and Alexandrescu.  True, it’s about C++ standards, but there’s also some great general programming advice in there, including two rules I love:         8. Don’t Optimize Prematurely         9. Don’t Pessimize Prematurely We all know what #8 means: don’t optimize when there is no immediate need, especially at the expense of readability and maintainability.  I firmly believe this and in the axiom: it’s easier to make correct code fast than to make fast code correct.  Optimizing code to the point that it becomes difficult to maintain often gains little and often gives you little bang for the buck. But what about #9?  Well, for that they state: “All other things being equal, notably code complexity and readability, certain efficient design patterns and coding idioms should just flow naturally from your fingertips and are no harder to write then the pessimized alternatives. This is not premature optimization; it is avoiding gratuitous pessimization.” Or, if I may paraphrase: “where it doesn’t increase the code complexity and readability, prefer the more efficient option”. The example code above was one of those times I feel where we are violating a tacit C# coding idiom: avoid creating unnecessary temporary strings.  The code creates temporary strings to hold one char, which is just unnecessary.  I think the original coder thought he had to do this because ToUpper() is an instance method on string but not on char.  What he didn’t know, however, is that ToUpper() does exist on char, it’s just a static method instead (though you could write an extension method to make it look instance-ish). This leads me (in a long-winded way) to my Little Wonders for the day… Static Methods of System.Char So let’s look at some of these handy, and often overlooked, static methods on the char type: IsDigit(), IsLetter(), IsLetterOrDigit(), IsPunctuation(), IsWhiteSpace() Methods to tell you whether a char (or position in a string) belongs to a category of characters. IsLower(), IsUpper() Methods that check if a char (or position in a string) is lower or upper case ToLower(), ToUpper() Methods that convert a single char to the lower or upper equivalent. For example, if you wanted to see if a string contained any lower case characters, you could do the following: 1: if (symbol.Any(c => char.IsLower(c))) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Which, incidentally, we could use a method group to shorten the expression to: 1: if (symbol.Any(char.IsLower)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Or, if you wanted to verify that all of the characters in a string are digits: 1: if (symbol.All(char.IsDigit)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Also, for the IsXxx() methods, there are overloads that take either a char, or a string and an index, this means that these two calls are logically identical: 1: // check given a character 2: if (char.IsUpper(symbol[0])) { ... } 3:  4: // check given a string and index 5: if (char.IsUpper(symbol, 0)) { ... } Obviously, if you just have a char, then you’d just use the first form.  But if you have a string you can use either form equally well. As a side note, care should be taken when examining all the available static methods on the System.Char type, as some seem to be redundant but actually have very different purposes.  For example, there are IsDigit() and IsNumeric() methods, which sound the same on the surface, but give you different results. IsDigit() returns true if it is a base-10 digit character (‘0’, ‘1’, … ‘9’) where IsNumeric() returns true if it’s any numeric character including the characters for ½, ¼, etc. Summary To come full circle back to our opening example, I would have preferred the code be written like this: 1: // grab 5th char and take upper case version of it 2: var type = char.ToUpper(symbol[4]); 3:  4: if (type == 'P') 5: { 6: // ... do something with P type... 7: } Not only is it just as readable (if not more so), but it performs over 3x faster on my machine:    1,000,000 iterations of char method took: 30 ms, 0.000050 ms/item.    1,000,000 iterations of string method took: 101 ms, 0.000101 ms/item. It’s not only immediately faster because we don’t allocate temporary strings, but as an added bonus there less garbage to collect later as well.  To me this qualifies as a case where we are using a common C# performance idiom (don’t create unnecessary temporary strings) to make our code better. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,char,string

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• RightNow CX @ OpenWorld: What to Experience

  - by Tony Berk

  We want to welcome our RightNow CX customers to Oracle OpenWorld next week. Get ready for a great week and a whole new experience! For a high level overview of what is going on during the week, please review these previous posts: Is There a Cloud Over OpenWorld? and What to "CRM" in San Francisco? CRM Highlights for OpenWorld '12. Also, don't forget you can add on the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld to make your week even more complete and get involved with the Experience Revolution! Below is a highlight of only some of the RightNow related sessions at OpenWorld. Please use OpenWorld Schedule Builder or check the OpenWorld Content Catalog for all of the session details and any time or location changes. Tip: Pre-enrolled session registrants via Schedule Builder are allowed into the session rooms before anyone else, so Schedule Builder will guarantee you a seat. Many of the sessions below will likely be at capacity. No better way to start off than hearing where Oracle RightNow is going! Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Vision and Roadmap (CON9764) - Oct 1, 10:45 AM. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service combines Web, social, and contact center experiences for a unified, cross-channel service solution in the cloud, enabling organizations to increase sales and adoption, build trust, strengthen relationships, and reduce costs and effort. Come to this session to hear from David Vap and his team of Oracle experts about where the product is going and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value to its customers. Interested in the Cloud and want to know why some leading CIOs are moving to the cloud? You can hear first hand from CIOs from Emerson, Intuit and Overstock.com: CIOs and Governance in the Cloud (CON9767) - Oct 3, 11:45 AM.   And of course there are a number of sessions that drill down into more specific areas. Here are just a few: Deliver Outstanding Customer Experiences: Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service (CON9771) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. This session covers how companies have delivered exceptional customer experiences and how the Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service roadmap will evolve in the future. The Oracle RightNow Contact Center Experience suite includes incident management, knowledge, guided processes, and other service capabilities to unify the customer experience across channels. Come learn about the powerful tools that enable even your junior agents to consistently provide outstanding service across all customer interaction channels. Self-Service in the Age of Data Intimacy (CON11516) - Oct 1, 3:15. Even though businesses are generating more and more data around their relationships and interactions with customers, very little of the information a business generates ends up available to the contact center and even less is made available to the online service experience. The generic one-size-fits-all approach that typifies most online service experiences ultimately fails to address all user needs, and that failure ultimately leads to the continued use of high-cost agent-assisted channels for low-value interactions. This session introduces Oracle RightNow Web Experience’s Virtual Assistant and discusses how you can deliver rich, engaging, highly personalized experiences with the quality of agent-assisted service at a much lower cost. Improve Chat Experiences: Best Practices for Chat Pilots and Deployments (CON11517) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. Today’s organizations are challenged to grow revenue and retain customers with fewer resources, and many have turned to chat as an approach to improving the customer experience, increasing sales conversions, and reducing costs at the same time. From setting goals and metrics and training staff to customizing and tuning the solution, this session provides best practices and lessons learned from a broad set of implementations to help you get the most out of your chat solution. Differentiated Experience with Web Service (CON9770) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. A reputation for excellent customer service can differentiate your brand and drive revenue. In this session, learn how to develop that reputation by transforming your online self-service into a highly interactive, branded customer experience. See live examples of how Oracle RightNow Web Experience has helped customers deliver on their Web service strategies. Unifying the Agent’s Engagement Console (CON11518) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. Does your customer experience suffer because your agents are toggling between multiple tools? Do your agent productivity and morale suffer as well? Come to this session to learn how Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service seamlessly unifies these disparate systems into a single engagement console. Regardless of channel, powerful adaptive tools consistently guide agents across contextually aware personalized workflows. Great agent experiences drive great customer experiences. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service and the Oracle Customer Experience Portfolio (CON9775) - Oct 3, 10:15 AM. This session covers how Oracle’s integrated suite of customer experience (CX) products fits with the Oracle CX portfolio of products (Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management; the Oracle ATG, Oracle Endeca, and Oracle Knowledge product families; and Oracle Business Intelligence) to increase revenues, strengthen customer relationships, and reduce costs across the entire end-to-end customer lifecycle for companies that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses. Greater Insights from Customer Engagements (CON9773) Oct 4, 12:45 PM. In this session, hear how to leverage service interaction insights, customer feedback, and segmented service engagements to improve the customer experience. Discover how customers, such as J&P Cycles, learn and take action based on business insights gained through their customer engagements. Again, these are just some of the sessions, so check out the Content Catalog for details on Knowledge Management, Customization, Integration and more in the Oracle Develop stream for Customer Experience. Be sure to visit the Oracle DEMOgrounds in the Moscone West Exhibit Hall. If this is your first OpenWorld, welcome! If you are returning, hi again and enjoy!

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• Session Report - Modern Software Development Anti-Patterns

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  In this standing-room-only session, building upon his 2011 JavaOne Rock Star “Diabolical Developer” session, Martijn Verburg, this time along with Ben Evans, identified and explored common “anti-patterns” – ways of doing things that keep developers from doing their best work. They emphasized the importance of social interaction and team communication, along with identifying certain psychological pitfalls that lead developers astray. Their emphasis was less on technical coding errors and more how to function well and to keep one’s focus on what really matters. They are the authors of the highly regarded The Well-Grounded Java Developer and are both movers and shakers in the London JUG community and on the Java Community Process. The large room was packed as they gave a fast-moving, witty presentation with lots of laughs and personal anecdotes. Below are a few of the anti-patterns they discussed.Anti-Pattern One: Conference-Driven DeliveryThe theme here is the belief that “Real pros hack code and write their slides minutes before their talks.” Their response to this anti-pattern is an expression popular in the military – PPPPPP, which stands for, “Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance.”“Communication is very important – probably more important than the code you write,” claimed Verburg. “The more you speak in front of large groups of people the easier it gets, but it’s always important to do dry runs, to present to smaller groups. And important to be members of user groups where you can give presentations. It’s a great place to practice speaking skills; to gain new skills; get new contacts, to network.”They encouraged attendees to record themselves and listen to themselves giving a presentation. They advised them to start with a spouse or friends if need be. Learning to communicate to a group, they argued, is essential to being a successful developer. The emphasis here is that software development is a team activity and good, clear, accessible communication is essential to the functioning of software teams. Anti-Pattern Two: Mortgage-Driven Development The main theme here was that, in a period of worldwide recession and economic stagnation, people are concerned about keeping their jobs. So there is a tendency for developers to treat knowledge as power and not share what they know about their systems with their colleagues, so when it comes time to fix a problem in production, they will be the only one who knows how to fix it – and will have made themselves an indispensable cog in a machine so you cannot be fired. So developers avoid documentation at all costs, or if documentation is required, put it on a USB chip and lock it in a lock box. As in the first anti-pattern, the idea here is that communicating well with your colleagues is essential and documentation is a key part of this. Social interactions are essential. Both Verburg and Evans insisted that increasingly, year by year, successful software development is more about communication than the technical aspects of the craft. Developers who understand this are the ones who will have the most success. Anti-Pattern Three: Distracted by Shiny – Always Use the Latest Technology to Stay AheadThe temptation here is to pick out some obscure framework, try a bit of Scala, HTML5, and Clojure, and always use the latest technology and upgrade to the latest point release of everything. Don’t worry if something works poorly because you are ahead of the curve. Verburg and Evans insisted that there need to be sound reasons for everything a developer does. Developers should not bring in something simply because for some reason they just feel like it or because it’s new. They recommended a site run by a developer named Matt Raible with excellent comparison spread sheets regarding Web frameworks and other apps. They praised it as a useful tool to help developers in their decision-making processes. They pointed out that good developers sometimes make bad choices out of boredom, to add shiny things to their CV, out of frustration with existing processes, or just from a lack of understanding. They pointed out that some code may stay in a business system for 15 or 20 years, but not all code is created equal and some may change after 3 or 6 months. Developers need to know where the code they are contributing fits in. What is its likely lifespan? Anti-Pattern Four: Design-Driven Design The anti-pattern: If you want to impress your colleagues and bosses, use design patents left, right, and center – MVC, Session Facades, SOA, etc. Or the UML modeling suite from IBM, back in the day… Generate super fast code. And the more jargon you can talk when in the vicinity of the manager the better.Verburg shared a true story about a time when he was interviewing a guy for a job and asked him what his previous work was. The interviewee said that he essentially took patterns and uses an approved book of Enterprise Architecture Patterns and applied them. Verburg was dumbstruck that someone could have a job in which they took patterns from a book and applied them. He pointed out that the idea that design is a separate activity is simply wrong. He repeated a saying that he uses, “You should pay your junior developers for the lines of code they write and the things they add; you should pay your senior developers for what they take away.”He explained that by encouraging people to take things away, the code base gets simpler and reflects the actual business use cases developers are trying to solve, as opposed to the framework that is being imposed. He told another true story about a project to decommission a very long system. 98% of the code was decommissioned and people got a nice bonus. But the 2% remained on the mainframe so the 98% reduction in code resulted in zero reduction in costs, because the entire mainframe was needed to run the 2% that was left. There is an incentive to get rid of source code and subsystems when they are no longer needed. The session continued with several more anti-patterns that were equally insightful.

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• Specs, Form and Function – What am I Missing?

  - by Barry Shulam

  0 0 1 628 3586 08041 29 8 4206 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Friday October 26th the Microsoft Surface RT arrived at the office.  I was summoned to my boss’s office for the grand unpacking.  If I had planned ahead I could have used my iPhone 4 to film the event and post it on YouTube however the desire to hold the device and turn it ON was more inviting than becoming a proxy reviewer for Engadget’s website.  1980 was the first time we had a personal computer in our house.  It was a  Kaypro computer. It weighed 29 pounds more than any persons lap could hold.  Then the term “portable computer” meant you could remove it from the building and take it else where.  Today I am typing on this entry on a Macbook Air which weighs 2.38 pounds. This morning Amazons front page main title is: “Much More for Much Less” I was born at the right time to start with the CPM operating system on the Kaypro thru the DOS, Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and mobile phone operating systems and languages.  If you are not aware Technology is moving at a rapid pace.  The New iPad (those who are keeping score – iPad4) is replacing a 7 month old machine the New iPad (iPad 3) I have used and owned many technology devices in my life.  The main point that most of the reader who are in the USA overlook is the fact that we are in the USA.  The devices we purchase have a great digital garden to support them.  The Kaypro computer had a 7-inch screen.  It was a TV tube with two colors – Black and Green.  You could see the 80-column screen flicker with characters – have you every played Pac-Man emulated on the screen with the ABC characters. Traveling across the world you will find that not all apps on your device will function as they did back home because they are not offered outside of your country of origin. I think the main question a buyer of technology should be asking is Function.  The greatest Specs with out function limit you.  The most beautiful form with out function is the same as a crystal vase on your shelf – not a good cereal bowl in the morning. Microsoft Surface RT, Amazon Kindle Fire and Apple iPad all great devices in their respective customers hands. My advice for those looking to purchase on this year:  If the device is your only technology device you buy what you WANT and LIKE. Consider this parallel universe if its not your only device?  Ever go shopping for clothing, shoes, and accessories with your wife, girlfriend, sister or mother?  If you listen carefully you will hear the little voices coming out of there heads saying:  “This goes well with that and I can use it also with that outfit” ”Do you think this clashes with that?”  “Ohh I love how that combination looks on you”.  Portable devices such as tablets and computers can offer a whole lot more when they are combined with the digital echo system you have at home and the manufacturer offers online. Pros of each Device: Microsoft Surface RT: There is a new functionality named SmartGlass which will let you share the content off your tablet to your XBOX 360.  Microsoft office is loaded on the tablet.  You can have more than one user profile on the tablet if you share it with others.   Amazon Kindle or Kindle HD: If you are an Amazon consumer with an annual Amazon Prime service you can consume videos and read books off the Amazon site.  Its the cheapest device.  Its a step up from the kindle reader in many ways.   Apple Ipad or Ipad mini: Over 270 Thousand applications.  Airplay permits you the ability to share to your TV screen. If you are a cord cutter (a person who gets their entertainment content over the web or air vs Cable Providers) the Airplay or Smart glass are a huge bonus.  iPad mini or not: The mini will fit in a purse where the larger one will not.  Its lighter which makes it nice to hold for prolonged periods.  It has an option for LTE wireless which non of the other sub 9 inch tables offer.  The screen is non retina which means the applications are smaller.  Speaking with individuals who are above 50 in age that wear glasses they retina does not make a difference for them however they prefer the larger iPad over the new mini.   Happy Shopping this Channuka Season.   The Kosher Coder.   Follow me on twitter @KosherCoder

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• Myths about Coding Craftsmanship part 2

  - by tom

  Myth 3: The source of all bad code is inept developers and stupid people When you review code is this what you assume?  Shame on you.  You are probably making assumptions in your code if you are assuming so much already.  Bad code can be the result of any number of causes including but not limited to using dated techniques (like boxing when generics are available), not following standards (“look how he does the spacing between arguments!” or “did he really just name that variable ‘bln_Hello_Cats’?”), being redundant, using properties, methods, or objects in a novel way (like switching on button.Text between “Hello World” and “Hello World “ //clever use of space character… sigh), not following the SOLID principals, hacking around assumptions made in earlier iterations / hacking in features that should be worked into the overall design.  The first two issues, while annoying are pretty easy to spot and can be fixed so easily.  If your coding team is made up of experienced professionals who are passionate about staying current then these shouldn’t be happening.  If you work with a variety of skills, backgrounds, and experience then there will be some of this stuff going on.  If you have an opportunity to mentor such a developer who is receptive to constructive criticism don’t be a jerk; help them and the codebase will improve.  A little patience can improve the codebase, your work environment, and even your perspective. The novelty and redundancy I have encountered has often been the use of creativity when language knowledge was perceived as unavailable or too time consuming.  When developers learn on the job you get a lot of this.  Rather than going to MSDN developers will use what they know.  Depending on the constraints of their assignment hacking together what they know may seem quite practical.  This was not stupid though I often wonder how much time is actually “saved” by hacking.  These issues are often harder to untangle if we ever do.  They can also grow out of control as we write hack after hack to make it work and get back to some development that is satisfying. Hacking upon an existing hack is what I call “feeding the monster”.  Code monsters are anti-patterns and hacks gone wild.  The reason code monsters continue to get bigger is that they keep growing in scope, touching more and more of the application.  This is not the result of dumb developers. It is probably the result of avoiding design, not taking the time to understand the problems or anticipate or communicate the vision of the product.  If our developers don’t understand the purpose of a feature or product how do we expect potential customers to do so? Forethought and organization are often what is missing from bad code.  Developers who do not use the SOLID principals should be encouraged to learn these principals and be given guidance on how to apply them.  The time “saved” by giving hackers room to hack will be made up for and then some. Not as technical debt but as shoddy work that if not replaced will be struggled with again and again.  Bad code is not the result of dumb developers (usually) it is the result of trying to do too much without the proper resources and neglecting the right thing that needs doing with the first thoughtless thing that comes into our heads. Object oriented code is all about relationships between objects.  Coders who believe their coworkers are all fools tend to write objects that are difficult to work with, not eager to explain themselves, and perform erratically and irrationally.  If you constantly find you are surrounded by idiots you may want to ask yourself if you are being unreasonable, if you are being closed minded, of if you have chosen the right profession.  Opening your mind up to the idea that you probably work with rational, well-intentioned people will probably make you a better coder and it might even make you less grumpy.  If you are surrounded by jerks who do not engage in the exchange of ideas who do not care about their customers or the durability of the code you are building together then I suggest you find a new place to work.  Myth 4: Customers don’t care about “beautiful” code Craftsmanship is customer focused because it means that the job was done right, the product will withstand the abuse, modifications, and scrutiny of our customers.  Users can appreciate a predictable timeline for a release, a product delivered on time and on budget, a feature set that does not interfere with the task(s) it is supporting, quick turnarounds on exception messages, self healing issues, and less issues.  These are all hindered by skimping on craftsmanship.  When we write data access and when we write reusable code.   What do you think?  Does bad code come primarily from low IQ individuals?  Do customers care about beautiful code?

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• My rhythm game runs choppy even with high frame rate

  - by felipedrl

  I'm coding a rhythm game and the game runs smoothly with uncapped fps. But when I try to cap it around 60 the game updates in little chunks, like hiccups, as if it was skipping frames or at a very low frame rate. The reason I need to cap frame rate is because in some computers I tested, the fps varies a lot (from ~80 - ~250 fps) and those drops are noticeable and degrade response time. Since this is a rhythm game this is very important. This issue is driving me crazy. I've spent a few weeks already on it and still can't figure out the problem. I hope someone more experienced than me could shed some light on it. I'll try to put here all the hints I've tried along with two pseudo codes for game loops I tried, so I apologize if this post gets too lengthy. 1st GameLoop: const uint UPDATE_SKIP = 1000 / 60; uint nextGameTick = SDL_GetTicks(); while(isNotDone) { // only false when a QUIT event is generated! if (processEvents()) { if (SDL_GetTicks() > nextGameTick) { update(UPDATE_SKIP); render(); nextGameTick += UPDATE_SKIP; } } } 2nd Game Loop: const uint UPDATE_SKIP = 1000 / 60; while (isNotDone) { LARGE_INTEGER startTime; QueryPerformanceCounter(&startTime); // process events will return false in case of a QUIT event processed if (processEvents()) { update(frameTime); render(); } LARGE_INTEGER endTime; do { QueryPerformanceCounter(&endTime); frameTime = static_cast<uint>((endTime.QuadPart - startTime.QuadPart) * 1000.0 / frequency.QuadPart); } while (frameTime < UPDATE_SKIP); } [1] At first I thought it was a timer resolution problem. I was using SDL_GetTicks, but even when I switched to QueryPerformanceCounter, supposedly less granular, I saw no difference. [2] Then I thought it could be due to a rounding error in my position computation and since game updates are smaller in high FPS that would be less noticeable. Indeed there is an small error, but from my tests I realized that it is not enough to produce the position jumps I'm getting. Also, another intriguing factor is that if I enable vsync I'll get smooth updates @60fps regardless frame cap code. So why not rely on vsync? Because some computers can force a disable on gfx card config. [3] I started printing the maximum and minimum frame time measured in 1sec span, in the hope that every a few frames one would take a long time but still not enough to drop my fps computation. It turns out that, with frame cap code I always get frame times in the range of [16, 18]ms, and still, the game "does not moves like jagger". [4] My process' priority is set to HIGH (Windows doesn't allow me to set REALTIME for some reason). As far as I know there is only one thread running along with the game (a sound callback, which I really don't have access to it). I'm using AudiereLib. I then disabled Audiere by removing it from the project and still got the issue. Maybe there are some others threads running and one of them is taking too long to come back right in between when I measured frame times, I don't know. Is there a way to know which threads are attached to my process? [5] There are some dynamic data being created during game run. But It is a little bit hard to remove it to test. Maybe I'll have to try harder this one. Well, as I told you I really don't know what to try next. Anything, I mean, anything would be of great help. What bugs me more is why at 60fps & vsync enabled I get an smooth update and at 60fps & no vsync I don't. Is there a way to implement software vsync? I mean, query display sync info? Thanks in advance. I appreciate the ones that got this far and yet again I apologize for the long post. Best Regards from a fellow coder.

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• Is software support an option for your career?

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 If you have a technical background, why should you choose a career in support? We have invited Serban to answer these questions and to give us an overview of one of the biggest technical teams in Oracle Romania. He’s been with Oracle for 7 years leading the local PeopleSoft Financials & Supply Chain Support team. Back in 2013 Serban started building a new support team in Romania – Fusion HCM. His current focus is building a strong support team for Fusion HCM, latest solution for Business HR Professionals from Oracle. The solution is offered both on Premise (customer site installation) but more important as a Cloud offering – SaaS.  So, why should a technical person choose Software Support over other technical areas?  “I think it is mainly because of the high level of technical skills required to provide the best technical solutions to our customers. Oracle Software Support covers complex solutions going from Database or Middleware to a vast area of business applications (basically covering any needs that a large enterprise may have). Working with such software requires very strong skills both technical and functional for the different areas, going from Finance, Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Sales to other very specific business processes. Our customers are large enterprises that already have a support layer inside their organization and therefore the Oracle Technical Support Engineers are working with highly specialized staff (DBA’s, System/Application Admins, Implementation Consultants). This is a very important aspect for our engineers because they need to be highly skilled to match our customer’s specialist’s expectations”.  What’s the career path in your team? “Technical Analysts joining our teams have a clear growth path. The main focus is to become a master of the product they will support. I think one need 1 or 2 years to reach a good level of understanding the product and delivering optimal solutions because of the complexity of our products. At a later stage, engineers can choose their professional development areas based on the business needs and preferences and then further grow towards as technical expert or a management role. We have analysts that have more than 15 years of technical expertise and they still learn and grow in technical area. Important fact is, due to the expansion of the Romanian Software support center, there are various management opportunities. So, if you want to leverage your experience and if you want to have people management responsibilities Oracle Software Support is the place to be!”  Our last question to Serban was about the benefits of being part of Oracle Software Support. Here is what he said: “We believe that Oracle delivers “State of the art” Support level to our customers. This is not possible without high investment in our staff. We commit from the start to support any technical analyst that joins us (being junior or very senior) with any training needs they have for their job. We have various technical trainings as well as soft-skills trainings required for a customer facing professional to be successful in his role. Last but not least, we’re aiming to make Oracle Romania SW Support a global center of excellence which means we’re investing a lot in our employees.”  If you’re looking for a job where you can combine your strong technical skills with customer interaction Oracle Software Support is the place to be! Send us your CV at [email protected]. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Plagued by multithreaded bugs

  - by koncurrency

  On my new team that I manage, the majority of our code is platform, TCP socket, and http networking code. All C++. Most of it originated from other developers that have left the team. The current developers on the team are very smart, but mostly junior in terms of experience. Our biggest problem: multi-threaded concurrency bugs. Most of our class libraries are written to be asynchronous by use of some thread pool classes. Methods on the class libraries often enqueue long running taks onto the thread pool from one thread and then the callback methods of that class get invoked on a different thread. As a result, we have a lot of edge case bugs involving incorrect threading assumptions. This results in subtle bugs that go beyond just having critical sections and locks to guard against concurrency issues. What makes these problems even harder is that the attempts to fix are often incorrect. Some mistakes I've observed the team attempting (or within the legacy code itself) includes something like the following: Common mistake #1 - Fixing concurrency issue by just put a lock around the shared data, but forgetting about what happens when methods don't get called in an expected order. Here's a very simple example: void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status) { m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status); } void Foo::Shutdown() { m_pBar->Cleanup(); delete m_pBar; m_pBar=nullptr; } So now we have a bug in which Shutdown could get called while OnHttpNetworkRequestComplete is occuring on. A tester finds the bug, captures the crash dump, and assigns the bug to a developer. He in turn fixes the bug like this. void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status) { AutoLock lock(m_cs); m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status); } void Foo::Shutdown() { AutoLock lock(m_cs); m_pBar->Cleanup(); delete m_pBar; m_pBar=nullptr; } The above fix looks good until you realize there's an even more subtle edge case. What happens if Shutdown gets called before OnHttpRequestComplete gets called back? The real world examples my team has are even more complex, and the edge cases are even harder to spot during the code review process. Common Mistake #2 - fixing deadlock issues by blindly exiting the lock, wait for the other thread to finish, then re-enter the lock - but without handling the case that the object just got updated by the other thread! Common Mistake #3 - Even though the objects are reference counted, the shutdown sequence "releases" it's pointer. But forgets to wait for the thread that is still running to release it's instance. As such, components are shutdown cleanly, then spurious or late callbacks are invoked on an object in an state not expecting any more calls. There are other edge cases, but the bottom line is this: Multithreaded programming is just plain hard, even for smart people. As I catch these mistakes, I spend time discussing the errors with each developer on developing a more appropriate fix. But I suspect they are often confused on how to solve each issue because of the enormous amount of legacy code that the "right" fix will involve touching. We're going to be shipping soon, and I'm sure the patches we're applying will hold for the upcoming release. Afterwards, we're going to have some time to improve the code base and refactor where needed. We won't have time to just re-write everything. And the majority of the code isn't all that bad. But I'm looking to refactor code such that threading issues can be avoided altogether. One approach I am considering is this. For each significant platform feature, have a dedicated single thread where all events and network callbacks get marshalled onto. Similar to COM apartment threading in Windows with use of a message loop. Long blocking operations could still get dispatched to a work pool thread, but the completion callback is invoked on on the component's thread. Components could possibly even share the same thread. Then all the class libraries running inside the thread can be written under the assumption of a single threaded world. Before I go down that path, I am also very interested if there are other standard techniques or design patterns for dealing with multithreaded issues. And I have to emphasize - something beyond a book that describes the basics of mutexes and semaphores. What do you think? I am also interested in any other approaches to take towards a refactoring process. Including any of the following: Literature or papers on design patterns around threads. Something beyond an introduction to mutexes and semaphores. We don't need massive parallelism either, just ways to design an object model so as to handle asynchronous events from other threads correctly. Ways to diagram the threading of various components, so that it will be easy to study and evolve solutions for. (That is, a UML equivalent for discussing threads across objects and classes) Educating your development team on the issues with multithreaded code. What would you do?

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• iPhone / Objective-C: NSMutableArray writeToFile won't write to file. Always returns NO

  - by Joel

  I'm trying to serialize two NSMutableArrays of NSObjects that implement the NSCoding protocol. However it works for one (stacks) and not the other (cards). I have the following block of code: -(void) saveCards { NSArray* paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES); NSString* documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0]; NSString* cardsFile = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"cards.state"]; NSString* stacksFile = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"stacks.state"]; BOOL c = [rootStack.cards writeToFile:cardsFile atomically:YES]; BOOL s = [rootStack.stacks writeToFile:stacksFile atomically:YES]; } I step through this method using the debugger, and after the last two lines of code run, I check the values of the two BOOLs. BOOL c is NO and BOOL s is YES. The stacks array is actually empty (which is probably why it works). The cards array has contents. Why is it that the array with contents is failing? I can't figure this out. I've looked through numerous threads on SOF, each of them say the problem is because the protection level of the files they were writing were preventing them from writing. This is not my problem, as I'm writing to the Documents folder. I've double and tripple checked that neither rootStack.cards nor rootStack.stacks is nil. And I've checked that cards does indeed have content. Here are the coder methods for my Notecard class (I added all the if statments as part of trying to solve this problem to make sure trying to encode nil values doesn't break something): -(void) encodeWithCoder:(NSCoder *)encoder { if(text) [encoder encodeObject:text forKey:@"text"]; if(backText) [encoder encodeObject:backText forKey:@"backText"]; if(x) [encoder encodeObject:x forKey:@"x"]; if(y) [encoder encodeObject:y forKey:@"y"]; if(width) [encoder encodeObject:width forKey:@"width"]; if(height) [encoder encodeObject:height forKey:@"height"]; if(timeCreated) [encoder encodeObject:timeCreated forKey:@"timeCreated"]; if(audioManagerTicket) [encoder encodeObject:audioManagerTicket forKey:@"audioManagerTicket"]; if(backgroundColor) [encoder encodeObject:backgroundColor forKey:@"backgroundColor"]; } -(id) initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)decoder { self = [super init]; if(!self) return nil; self.text = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:@"text"]; self.backText = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:@"backText"]; self.x = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:@"x"]; self.y = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:@"y"]; self.width = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:@"width"]; self.height = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:@"height"]; self.timeCreated = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:@"timeCreated"]; self.audioManagerTicket = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:@"audioManagerTicket"]; self.backgroundColor = [decoder decodeObjectForKey:@"backgroundColor"]; return self; } each field is either an NSString, NSNumber, or UIColor. Thanks for any help

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• Vs2010 MvcBuildViews Not firing

  - by Maslow

  This project in Vs2008 targeting .net 3.5 used to compile views. Vs2010 Targeting .net 4.0 the following view code is not picked up as an error, and I have not found anyway to listen to the mvcBuildview trace/debug output: <%{ %> A completely unmatched code block declaration is not being picked up, neither was a partial view inheriting from a non existent namespace/class. <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'DebugWithBuildViews|AnyCPU' "> <!--<BaseIntermediateOutputPath>bin/intermediate</BaseIntermediateOutputPath>--> <!--<MvcBuildViews Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == 'DebugWithBuildViews' ">true</MvcBuildViews>--> <EnableUpdateable>false</EnableUpdateable> <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews> <DebugSymbols>true</DebugSymbols> <OutputPath>bin</OutputPath> <DefineConstants>DEBUG;TRACE</DefineConstants> <DebugType>full</DebugType> <PlatformTarget>AnyCPU</PlatformTarget> <CodeAnalysisUseTypeNameInSuppression>true</CodeAnalysisUseTypeNameInSuppression> <CodeAnalysisModuleSuppressionsFile>GlobalSuppressions.cs</CodeAnalysisModuleSuppressionsFile> <ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport> <CodeAnalysisRuleSet>AllRules.ruleset</CodeAnalysisRuleSet> <RunCodeAnalysis>true</RunCodeAnalysis> </PropertyGroup> My BeforeBuild: <Target Name="BeforeBuild"> <WriteLinesToFile File="$(OutputPath)\env.config" Lines="$(Configuration)" Overwrite="true"> </WriteLinesToFile> My AfterBuild: <Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'"> <!--<BaseIntermediateOutputPath>[SomeKnownLocationIHaveAccessTo]</BaseIntermediateOutputPath>--> <Message Importance="high" Text="Precompiling views" /> <!--<AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)..\$(ProjectName)" />--> <!--<AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" />--> <!--PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)"--> I know the MvcBuildViews property is true because the Precompiling views message comes through. The compile is a success but it does not catch the view compilation errors. I have Vs2010 ultimate, vs 2008 developer+database edition on this machine. So either it compiles ignoring the errors with some combinations of the fixes I've tried, or it errors with Error 410 It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level. This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS. web.config 100 The commented out sections are things I have tried Previously I have tried the fixes from these posts: Compile Views in Asp.net Mvc AllowDefinitionMachinetoApplicationError MvcBuildviews Issue Turning on MVC Build Views in 2010 TFS Johnny Coder

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• Dropdown OnSelectedIndexChanged not firing

  - by Jim

  The OnSelectedIndexChanged event is not firing for my dropdown box. All forums I have looked at told me to add the AutoPostBack="true", but that didn't change the results. HTML: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text="Current Time: " /> <br /> <asp:Label ID="lblCurrent" runat="server" Text="Label" /><br /><br /> <asp:DropDownList ID="cboSelectedLocation" runat="server" AutoPostBack="true" OnSelectedIndexChanged="cboSelectedLocation_SelectedIndexChanged" /><br /><br /> <asp:Label ID="lblSelectedTime" runat="server" Text="Label" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> Code behind: public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page { string _sLocation = string.Empty; string _sCurrentLoc = string.Empty; TimeSpan _tsSelectedTime; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { AddTimeZones(); cboSelectedLocation.Focus(); lblCurrent.Text = "Currently in " + _sCurrentLoc + Environment.NewLine + DateTime.Now; lblSelectedTime.Text = _sLocation + ":" + Environment.NewLine + DateTime.UtcNow.Add(_tsSelectedTime); } //adds all timezone displaynames to combobox //defaults combo location to seoul, South Korea //defaults current location to current location private void AddTimeZones() { foreach(TimeZoneInfo tz in System.TimeZoneInfo.GetSystemTimeZones()) { string s = tz.DisplayName; cboSelectedLocation.Items.Add(s); if (tz.StandardName == "Korea Standard Time") cboSelectedLocation.Text = s; if (tz.StandardName == System.TimeZone.CurrentTimeZone.StandardName) _sCurrentLoc = tz.StandardName; } } //changes timezone name and time depending on what is selected in the cbobox. protected void cboSelectedLocation_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { foreach (TimeZoneInfo tz in System.TimeZoneInfo.GetSystemTimeZones()) { if (cboSelectedLocation.Text == tz.DisplayName) { _sLocation = tz.StandardName; _tsSelectedTime = tz.GetUtcOffset(DateTime.UtcNow); } } } } Any advice into what to look at for a rookie asp coder? EDIT: added more code behind

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• How can arguments to variadic functions be passed by reference in PHP?

  - by outis

  Assuming it's possible, how would one pass arguments by reference to a variadic function without generating a warning in PHP? We can no longer use the '&' operator in a function call, otherwise I'd accept that (even though it would be error prone, should a coder forget it). What inspired this is are old MySQLi wrapper classes that I unearthed (these days, I'd just use PDO). The only difference between the wrappers and the MySQLi classes is the wrappers throw exceptions rather than returning FALSE. class DBException extends RuntimeException {} ... class MySQLi_throwing extends mysqli { ... function prepare($query) { $stmt = parent::prepare($query); if (!$stmt) { throw new DBException($this->error, $this->errno); } return new MySQLi_stmt_throwing($this, $query, $stmt); } } // I don't remember why I switched from extension to composition, but // it shouldn't matter for this question. class MySQLi_stmt_throwing /* extends MySQLi_stmt */ { protected $_link, $_query, $_delegate; public function __construct($link, $query, $prepared) { //parent::__construct($link, $query); $this->_link = $link; $this->_query = $query; $this->_delegate = $prepared; } function bind_param($name, &$var) { return $this->_delegate->bind_param($name, $var); } function __call($name, $args) { //$rslt = call_user_func_array(array($this, 'parent::' . $name), $args); $rslt = call_user_func_array(array($this->_delegate, $name), $args); if (False === $rslt) { throw new DBException($this->_link->error, $this->errno); } return $rslt; } } The difficulty lies in calling methods such as bind_result on the wrapper. Constant-arity functions (e.g. bind_param) can be explicitly defined, allowing for pass-by-reference. bind_result, however, needs all arguments to be pass-by-reference. If you call bind_result on an instance of MySQLi_stmt_throwing as-is, the arguments are passed by value and the binding won't take. try { $id = Null; $stmt = $db->prepare('SELECT id FROM tbl WHERE ...'); $stmt->execute() $stmt->bind_result($id); // $id is still null at this point ... } catch (DBException $exc) { ... } Since the above classes are no longer in use, this question is merely a matter of curiosity. Alternate approaches to the wrapper classes are not relevant. Defining a method with a bunch of arguments taking Null default values is not correct (what if you define 20 arguments, but the function is called with 21?). Answers don't even need to be written in terms of MySQL_stmt_throwing; it exists simply to provide a concrete example.

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• Really "wow" them in the interview

  - by Juliet

  Let me put it to you this way: I'm a top-notch programmer, but a notoriously bad interviewee. I've flunked 3 interviews consecutively because I get so nervous that my voice tightens at least 2 octaves higher and I start visibly shaking -- mind you, I can handle whatever technical questions the interviewer throws at me in that state, but I think it looks bad to come off as a quivering, squeaky-voiced young woman during a job interview. I've just got the personality type of a shy computer programmer. No matter how technical I am, I'm going to get passed up in favor of a smooth talker. I have another interview coming up shortly, and I want to really impress the company. Here are my trouble spots: What can I do to be less nervous during my interview? I always get really excited when I hear I have a face-to-face interview, but get more and more anxious as D-Day the interview approaches. My employers wants me to explain what I used to do at my prior employment. I'm a very chatty person and tend to talk/squeak for 10 minutes at a time. How long or short should I time my answers? On that note, when I'm explaining what I did at prior jobs, what exactly is my interviewer looking for? At some point, my interviewer will ask "do you have any questions for me while you're here?" I should, but what kinds of questions should I ask to show that I'm interested in being employed? My interviewer always asks why I'm looking for a new job. The real reason is that my present salary is $27K/yr [Edit to add: and I've yet to get a raise since I started], and I want to make more money -- otherwise the work environment is fine. How do I sugarcoat "I want to make more money" into something that sounds nicer? I have only one prior programmer job, and I've worked there for 18 months, but I have the skill of someone with 4 to 6 years of experience. What can I say to compete against applicants with more work experience? I took a low-paying $27K/yr programming job just to get my foot in IT, and I've been trying to leverage that job as a stepping stone to better opportunities. I get interviews because I consistently out-score senior-level developers in aptitude tests, and my desired salary range is right in the ballpark of what most companies want to offer. Unfortunately, while I've been a programming as a hobby for 10 years and I'm geared to graduate with my BA in Comp Sci in May '09, employers see me as a junior-level programmer with no degree. I want to prove them wrong and get a job that matches my skill level. I'd appreciate any advice anyone has to offer, especially if they can help me get a better job in the process.

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• Cases of companies taking IP rights of your own personal projects developed outside company time

  - by GSS

  Hi, I have heard of cases where a developer working for a company is also making his own personal projects in his own time, using his own equipment yet the company he works for tries to claim ownership for the project. I really find this annoying, and bang out of order. It should also be illegal. I am in this position (work for a company and working on my own systems - from small class libraries used to practise what I learn in my exam revision to a large commercial-scale system). While I don't know if the company will try to take ownership, all I know is they say they do not want a conflict of interest. Fair enough, my system is developed in my own time using my own equipment. They also say that work time should be for work only, which it is. Funny thing that as work is so boring, easy and slow that I have plenty of free time, which I wish I could spend on something productive - said system. The problem is, my company does not take hiring technical talent seriously. This is my first job, I am a junior coder (but my status/position doesn't really reflect what I can do), but I am the only developer. Likewise with the guy who controls Windows Server. As the contract does not say anything about taking ownership, I would assume they would. They would try to milk my success (I've made a good impression so I am sure they would). How can this be allowed? Are there any examples of this happening to any fellow Stacker here? It really makes my blood boil. What I find funny is that my company hardly has the expertise and resources to even be able to successfully run a project of my size. What I do at work is an ASP.NET application consisting of five pages, and even then there are flaws in the project. If I told them that they would also have to take responsibility for flaws in the project, then they would think twice! It's exactly because of this I save the best code for myself and at work I write rubbish code full of code smells. The company don't really care about error handling, as long as the business functionality works (ie a scheduled email sends, but there is no error handling). They'd think twice when they see the embarassment and business cost of a YSOD...

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• Is it normal for a programmer with 2 years experience to take a long time to code simple programs?

  - by ajax81

  Hi all, I'm a relatively new programmer (18 months on the scene), and I'm finally getting to the point where I'm comfortable accepting projects and developing solutions under minimal supervision. Unfortunately, this also means that I've become acutely aware of my performance shortfalls, the most prevalent of which is the amount of time it takes me to develop, test, and submit algorithms for review. A great example of what I'm talking about occurred this week when I was tasked with developing a simple XML web service (asp.net 3.5) callable via client-side JavaScript, that accepts a single parameter and returns a dataset output to a modal window (please note this is the first time I've had to develop a web service and have had ZERO experience creating/consuming them...let alone calling them from JS client side). Keeping a long story short -- I worked on it for 4 days straight, all day each day, for a grand total of 36 hours, not including the time I spent dwelling on the problem in the shower, the morning commute, and laying awake in bed at night. I learned a great deal about web services and xml/json/javascript...but was called in for a management review to discuss the length of time it took me to develop the solution. In the meeting, I was praised for the quality of my work and was in fact told that my effort was commendable. However, they (senior leads and pm's) weren't impressed with the amount of time it took me to develop the solution and expressed that they would have liked to see the solution in roughly 1/3 of the time it took me. I guess what concerns me the most is that I've identified this pattern as common for myself. Between online videos, book research, and trial/error coding...if its something I haven't seen before, I can spend up to two weeks on a problem that seems to only take the pros in the videos moments to code up. And of course, knowing that management isn't happy with this pattern has shaken me up a bit. To sum up, I have some very specific questions I'd like to ask, and would greatly appreciate your objective professional feedback. Is my experience as a junior programmer common among new developers? Or is it possible that I'm just not cut out for the work? If you suspect that my experience is not common and that there may be an aptitude issue, do you have any suggestions/solutions that I could propose to management to help bring me up to speed? Do seasoned, professional programmers ever encounter knowledge barriers that considerably delay deliverables? When you started out in the industry, did you know how to "do it all"? If not, how long did it take you to be perceived as "proficient"? Was it a natural progression of trial and error, or was there a particular zen moment when you knew you had achieved super saiyen power level? Anyways, thanks for taking the time to read my question(s). I don't know if this is the right place to ask for professional career guidance, but I greatly appreciate your willingness to help me out. Cheers, Daniel

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• I am using a constructor for my array but why is it saying i need a return type?

  - by JB

  using System; using System.IO; using System.Data; using System.Text; using System.Drawing; using System.Data.OleDb; using System.Collections; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Drawing.Printing; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace Eagle_Eye_Class_Finder { public class GetSchedule { public class IDnumber { public string Name { get; set; } public string ID { get; set; } public string year { get; set; } public string class1 { get; set; } public string class2 { get; set; } public string class3 { get; set; } public string class4 { get; set; } IDnumber[] IDnumbers = new IDnumber[3]; public GetSchedule() //here i get an error saying method must have a return type??? { IDnumbers[0] = new IDnumber() { Name = "Joshua Banks",ID = "900456317", year = "Senior", class1 = "TEET 4090", class2 = "TEET 3020", class3 = "TEET 3090", class4 = "TEET 4290" }; IDnumbers[1] = new IDnumber() { Name = "Sean Ward", ID = "900456318", year = "Junior", class1 = "ENGNR 4090", class2 = "ENGNR 3020", class3 = "ENGNR 3090", class4 = "ENGNR 4290" }; IDnumbers[2] = new IDnumber() { Name = "Terrell Johnson",ID = "900456319",year = "Sophomore", class1 = "BUS 4090", class2 = "BUS 3020", class3 = "BUS 3090", class4 = "BUS 4290" }; } static void ProcessNumber(IDnumber myNum) { StringBuilder myData = new StringBuilder(); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.Name); myData.AppendLine(": "); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.ID); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.year); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.class1); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.class2); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.class3); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.class4); MessageBox.Show(myData); } public string GetDataFromNumber(string ID) { foreach (IDnumber idCandidateMatch in IDnumbers) { if (IDCandidateMatch.ID == ID) { StringBuilder myData = new StringBuilder(); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.Name); myData.AppendLine(": "); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.ID); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.year); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.class1); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.class2); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.class3); myData.AppendLine(IDnumber.class4); return myData; } } return ""; } } } }

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• How to build Lucene / Solr from source code in windows environment in order to add patches

  - by Simon

  I have successfully implemented Apache’s Solr for free text searching a database driven web site build for windows platforms using Visual Studio in c#. I am trying to get a version Solr working with field collapsing (which is not in the release version). There are patches available from apache and discussions on the web of people successfully doing this for the version I am using but my problem is cannot get the build to work. I am a c# coder on windows platforms so java development is new to me. I understand I need to get the correct source code (and revision) from SVN, add the appropriate patches, then build the war file to deploy to my system. I cannot seem to get the source to build and produce the deployment code including jar (and subsequent war) files. My system is: Windows 7 Ultimate for development Visual Studio 2010 for c# / javascript development MyEclipse 8.6 / Eclipse 3.5 for the java build from source Subecplise 1.6x SVN plugin to get the source from apache’s SVN Apache Solr 1.4.1 So far I have: Found the right patches for the function I need: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SOLR-236 Specifically I need to patch: field_collapsing_1.1.0.patch HTTPS //issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12357681/field_collapsing_1.1.0.patch and SOLR-236-1_4_1.patch HTTPS //issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12448216/SOLR-236-1_4_1.patch I downloaded the Lucene trunk version from the day before the patch was released (revision 958303 from 28/6/10) via subeclipse into a java package in myeclipse from: HTTPS //svn.apache.org/repos/asf/lucene/dev/trunk (Solr is the web implementation of Lucene and is in the subfolder solr/) I can apply patches to the solr directory once it has downloaded but the parent Lucene project doesn’t build the war files, copy the jar or other files into the bin folder (it stays empty). The build process starts, but doesn’t do anything apart from creating the folders bin and src. I am building the whole Lucene project, which contains Solr. I have tried building the source without patching and the same happens. If I copy out the Solr directory into a new project, it runs the build and copies all the related files, tests, etc but fails with 4,500 errors and does not produce the jar files or war file, which I assume is because it can’t find the Lucene trunk files which it depends on. I have two interrelated problems 1) I can't get the Lucene downloaded trunk to build 2) The jar, war and associated files are not created Can anyone help with what I am missing to build the war file? I have spent 2 days to get this far as the help online is extremely patchy and I can’t find a walk though tutorial on building a java war file from source in a windows environment. Any help will be much appreciated. Simon

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• iPhone reachability checking

  - by Sneakyness

  I've found several examples of code to do what I want (check for reachability), but none of it seems to be exact enough to be of use to me. I can't figure out why this doesn't want to play nice. I have the reachability.h/m in my project, I'm doing #import <SystemConfiguration/SystemConfiguration.h> And I have the framework added. I also have: #import "Reachability.h" at the top of the .m in which I'm trying to use the reachability. Reachability* reachability = [Reachability sharedReachability]; [reachability setHostName:@"http://www.google.com"]; // set your host name here NetworkStatus remoteHostStatus = [reachability remoteHostStatus]; if(remoteHostStatus == NotReachable) {NSLog(@"no");} else if (remoteHostStatus == ReachableViaWiFiNetwork) {NSLog(@"wifi"); } else if (remoteHostStatus == ReachableViaCarrierDataNetwork) {NSLog(@"cell"); } This is giving me all sorts of problems. What am I doing wrong? I'm an alright coder, I just have a hard time when it comes time to figure out what needs to be put where to enable what I want to do, regardless if I want to know what I want to do or not. (So frustrating) Update: This is what's going on. This is in my viewcontroller, which I have the #import <SystemConfiguration/SystemConfiguration.h> and #import "Reachability.h" set up with. This is my least favorite part of programming by far. FWIW, we never ended up implementing this in our code. The two features that required internet access (entering the sweepstakes, and buying the dvd), were not main features. Nothing else required internet access. Instead of adding more code, we just set the background of both internet views to a notice telling the users they must be connected to the internet to use this feature. It was in theme with the rest of the application's interface, and was done well/tastefully. They said nothing about it during the approval process, however we did get a personal phone call to verify that we were giving away items that actually pertained to the movie. According to their usually vague agreement, you aren't allowed to have sweepstakes otherwise. I would also think this adheres more strictly to their "only use things if you absolutely need them" ideaology as well. Here's the iTunes link to the application, EvoScanner.

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• How do you use technology to memorize set of terms?

  - by user49767

  Always there are few set of items needs to be memorized in short span of time. Here are my following cases. 1) My Job requires some set of items needs to be memorized. 2) I am a developer who has to learn 150+ tags within next 3 days. 3) Fix developer/support has to remember minimum of 125+ tags (set of possible values). 4) It is better if team's SQL developer knows all the table and columns in my database. 5) When guys join new department or job. Memorizing few related items will definitely gives some benefit. Most of the cases, I suggest people to understand the domain better and nothing wrong in using google (but remember correct search-word). But recently I came across a junior developer who took lot of effort in memorizing set of things (150+ table structures, fix protocol tags, almost 300+ configuration items from property file) and was very very successful in his job and was swift in responding for support queries. Needless to say he is smart worker too (not a dumb guy). When I try to recollect some of the successful employees I met, they were so good in remembering entire schema and they did in short span of time. But I don't argue that memorizing alone gives success, but it greatly helps when situation demands. Here my question is, I am not good at remembering things, but it shouldn't be lame excuse. Hence I am evaluating using technolgies better to memorize set of items. Not very much interested in memory techniques (mnemoninc, photography memory, etc..). Even I have recorded 100+ items and listen to that whenever I found free time, defintely there were some fruitful result. Now I need your suggestion about what are all the ways to exploit technology to memorize. There could be so many reason why guys remember a subject (passionate, essential, author, creator, responsbile). Not interested in dissecting why guys remeber. Rather much interested in using ways, and techniques (cheat sheet...) to remember a set of itmes. Note : I appreciate, encourage people who could rephrase my question better. Note : I have kept couple of cheat-sheet close to my monitor, honestly it did not help me :).

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• Parallel.For maintain input list order on output list

  - by romeozor

  I'd like some input on keeping the order of a list during heavy-duty operations that I decided to try to do in a parallel manner to see if it boosts performance. (It did!) I came up with a solution, but since this was my first attempt at anything parallel, I'd need someone to slap my hands if I did something very stupid. There's a query that returns a list of card owners, sorted by name, then by date of birth. This needs to be rendered in a table on a web page (ASP.Net WebForms). The original coder decided he would construct the table cell-by-cell (TableCell), add them to rows (TableRow), then each row to the table. So no GridView, allegedly its performance is bad, but the performance was very poor regardless :). The database query returns in no time, the most time is spent on looping through the results and adding table cells etc. I made the following method to maintain the original order of the list: private TableRow[] ComposeRows(List<CardHolder> queryResult) { int queryElementsCount = queryResult.Count(); // array with the query's size var rowArray = new TableRow[queryElementsCount]; Parallel.For(0, queryElementsCount, i => { var row = new TableRow(); var cell = new TableCell(); // various operations, including simple ones such as: cell.Text = queryResult[i].Name; row.Cells.Add(cell); // here I'm adding the current item to it's original index // to maintain order in the output list rowArray[i] = row; }); return rowArray; } So as you can see, because I'm returning a very different type of data (List<CardHolder> -> TableRow[]), I can't just simply omit the ordering from the original query to do it after the operations. Also, I also thought it would be a good idea to Dispose() the objects at the end of each loop, because the query can return a huge list and letting cell and row objects pile up in the heap could impact performance.(?) How badly did I do? Does anyone have a better solution in case mine is flawed?

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• Release management with a distributed version control system

  - by See Sharp Cheddar

  We're considering a switch from SVN to a distributed VCS at my workplace. I'm familiar with all the reasons for wanting to using a DVCS for day-to-day development: local version control, easier branching and merging, etc., but I haven't seen that much that's compelling in terms of managing software releases. Here's our release process: Discover what changes are available for merging. Run a query to find the defects/tickets associated with these changes. Filter out changes associated with "open" tickets. In our environment, tickets must be in a closed state in order to merged with a release branch. Filter out changes we don't want in the release branch. We are very conservative when it comes to merging changes. If a change isn't absolutely necessary, it doesn't get merged. Merge available changes, preferably in chronological order. We group changes together if they're associated with the same ticket. Block unwanted changes from the release branch (svnmerge block) so we don't have to deal with them again. Sometimes we can be juggling 3-5 different milestones at a time. Some milestones have very different constraints, and the block list can get quite long. I've been messing around with git, mercurial and plastic, and as far as I can tell none of them address this model very well. It seems like they would work very well when you have only one product you're releasing, but I can't imagine using them for juggling multiple, very different products from the same codebase. For example, cherry-picking seems to be an afterthought in mercurial. (You have to use the 'transplant' command). After you cherry-pick a change into a branch it still shows up as an available integration. Cherry-picking breaks the mercurial way of working. DVCS seems to be better suited for feature branches. There's no need for cherry-picking if you merge directly from a feature branch to trunk and the release branch. But who wants to do all that merging all the time? And how do you query for what's available to merge? And how do you make sure all the changes in a feature branch belong together? It sounds like total chaos. I'm torn because the coder in me wants DVCS for day-to-day work. I really want it. But I fear the day when I have to put the release manager hat and sort out what needs to be merged and what doesn't. I want to write code, I don't want to be a merge monkey.

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• How to replicate this button in CSS

  - by jasondavis

  I am trying to create a CSS theme switcher button like below. The top image shows what I have so far and the bottom image shows what I am trying to create. I am not the best at this stuff I am more of a back-end coder. I could really use some help. I have a live demo of the code here http://dabblet.com/gist/2230656 Just looking at what I have and the goal image, some differences. I need to add a gradient The border is not right on mine Radius is a little off Possibly some other stuff? Also here is the code...it can be changed anyway to improve this, the naming and stuff could be improved I am sure but I can use any help I can get. HTML <div class="switch-wrapper"> <div class="switcher left selected"> <span id="left">....</span> </div> <div class="switcher right"> <span id="right">....</span> </div> </div> CSS /* begin button styles */ .switch-wrapper{ width:400px; margin:220px; } .switcher { background:#507190; display: inline-block; max-width: 100%; box-shadow: 1px 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.3); position:relative; } #left, #right{ width:17px; height:11px; overflow:hidden; position:absolute; top:50%; left:50%; margin-top:-5px; margin-left:-8px; font: 0/0 a; } #left{ background-image: url(http://www.codedevelopr.com/assets/images/switcher.png); background-position: 0px px; } #right{ background-image: url(http://www.codedevelopr.com/assets/images/switcher.png); background-position: -0px -19px; } .left, .right{ width: 30px; height: 25px; border: 1px solid #3C5D7E; } .left{ border-radius: 6px 0px 0px 6px; } .right{ border-radius: 0 6px 6px 0; margin: 0 0 0 -6px } .switcher:hover, .selected { background: #27394b; box-shadow: -1px 1px 0px rgba(255,255,255,.4), inset 0 4px 5px rgba(0,0,0,.6), inset 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,.6); }

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