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• Release/Change management - best aproach

  - by Bob Rivers

  I asked this question an year ago in StackOverflow and never got a good answer. Since Programmers seems to be a better place to ask it, I'll give it a try... What is the better way to work with release management? More specifically what would be the best way to release packages? For example, assuming that you have a relatively stable system, a good quality assurance process (QA), etc. How do you prefer to release new versions? Let's assume that we are talking about a mid to large "centralized" web system (no clients), in-house development. This system can be considered "vital" for a corporate operations. I have a tendency to prefer to do this by releasing packets at regular intervals, not greater than 1 to 3 months. During this period, I will include into the package,fixes and improvements and make the implementation in production environment only once. But I've seen some people who prefer to place small changes in production, but with a greater frequency. The claim of these people is that by doing so, it is easier to identify bugs that have gone through the process of QA: in a package with 10 changes and another with only 1, it is much easier to know what caused the problem in the package with just one change... What is the opinion came from you?

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• Self-referencing anonymous closures: is JavaScript incomplete?

  - by Tom Auger

  Does the fact that anonymous self-referencing function closures are so prevelant in JavaScript suggest that JavaScript is an incomplete specification? We see so much of this: (function () { /* do cool stuff */ })(); and I suppose everything is a matter of taste, but does this not look like a kludge, when all you want is a private namespace? Couldn't JavaScript implement packages and proper classes? Compare to ActionScript 3, also based on EMACScript, where you get package com.tomauger { import bar; class Foo { public function Foo(){ // etc... } public function show(){ // show stuff } public function hide(){ // hide stuff } // etc... } } Contrast to the convolutions we perform in JavaScript (this, from the jQuery plugin authoring documentation): (function( $ ){ var methods = { init : function( options ) { // THIS }, show : function( ) { // IS }, hide : function( ) { // GOOD }, update : function( content ) { // !!! } }; $.fn.tooltip = function( method ) { // Method calling logic if ( methods[method] ) { return methods[ method ].apply( this, Array.prototype.slice.call( arguments, 1 )); } else if ( typeof method === 'object' || ! method ) { return methods.init.apply( this, arguments ); } else { $.error( 'Method ' + method + ' does not exist on jQuery.tooltip' ); } }; })( jQuery ); I appreciate that this question could easily degenerate into a rant about preferences and programming styles, but I'm actually very curious to hear how you seasoned programmers feel about this and whether it feels natural, like learning different idiosyncrasies of a new language, or kludgy, like a workaround to some basic programming language components that are just not implemented?

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• What tools should every programmer know?

  - by acidzombie24

  What are some tools every programmer know about? Some examples i thought were Source control. (No explanation needed) Profiler. Many could go without but its good to know how to use one when the occasion arise What else? I was thinking a bug report software but i havent used one so i wasnt sure. Should programmers know how to use TRAC? I remember in the past a person telling me if i was making a shared library i should know (Some Name) which generates docs from the source (in that case C++). What was that called and what else should i know about? -edit- what about team management software? any software you could not live without in a specific project would be a good mention. I'll also mention i use VMs frequently during the prototype or end phase to see if there are any issues on a clean XP or linux distro and if i forgot anything in my redistribution. I cant imagine the end/release and testing phase of a project without a VM.

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• How to break the "php is a bad language" paradigm? [closed]

  - by dukeofgaming

  PHP is not a bad language (or at least not as bad as some may suggest). I had teachers that didn't even know PHP was object oriented until I told them. I've had clients that immediately distrust us when we say we are PHP developers and question us for not using chic languages and frameworks such as Django or RoR, or "enterprise and solid" languages such as Java and ASP.NET. Facebook is built on PHP. There are plenty of solid projects that power the web like Joomla and Drupal that are used in the enterprise and governments. There are frameworks and libraries that have some of the best architectures I've seen across all languages (Symfony 2, Doctrine). PHP has the best documentation I've seen and a big community of professionals. PHP has advanced OO features such as reflection, interfaces, let alone that PHP now supports horizontal reuse natively and cleanly through traits. There are bad programmers and script kiddies that give PHP a bad reputation, but power the PHP community at the same time, and because it is so easy to get stuff done PHP you can often do things the wrong way, granted, but why blame the language?. Now, to boil this down to an actual answerable question: what would be a good and solid and short and sweet argument to avoid being frowned upon and stop prejudice in one fell swoop and defend your honor when you say you are a PHP developer?. (free cookie with teh whipped cream to those with empirical evidence of convincing someone —client or other— on the spot) P.S.: We use Symfony, and the code ends being beautiful and maintainable

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• Why isn't there a culture of paying for frameworks?

  - by Marty Pitt

  One of the side effects of the recent trend of "Lean" startups, and the app store era, is that consumers are more acclimatised to paying small prices for small games / products. Eg.: Online SAAS that charges ~$5 / month (the basecamp style of product) Games which are short, fun, and cheap ($0.99 from the app store This market has been defined by "doing one thing well, and charging people for it." DHH of Rails / 37 Signals fame argues that if your website isn't going to make money, don't bother making it. Why doesn't the same rule apply to frameworks? There are lots of software framework projects out there - many which are mature and feature-rich, which offer developers significant value, yet there doesn't seem to be a market or culture of paying for these. It seems that the projects which do charge money are often things like UI component toolsets, and are often marginalized in favour of free alternatives. Why is this? Surely programmers / businesses see the value in contributing back to projects such as Ruby, Rails, Hibernate, Spring, Ant, Groovy, Gradle, (the list goes on). I'm not suggesting that these frameworks should start charging for anyone who wants to use them, but that there must be a meaningful business model that would allow the developers to earn money from the time they invest developing the framework. Any thoughts as to why this model hasn't emerged / succeeded?

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• Tried teaching myself to program before college, accidently overwhelmed myself, tips?

  - by Gunnar Keith

  I'm sixteen, I'm overly interested in programming, and I'm currently taking IT classes during my mornings in high school. Last year, I tried teaching myself to code. It was quite exciting, but all I did was watch TheNewBoston's videos on YouTube for Python. After his tutorials, I just did research, made some CMD programs, and that's it. After that, I got cocky and got my feet wet in many other languages. Java, C++, C#, Perl, Ruby... and it overwhelmed me. Which made it less fun to code. I want to go to college for a 2 year programming course. And I want to make writing code my profession. But how do you recommend I attack re-learning it all again? Start with Python? Don't even try? Also, I'm not 100% in math, but I'm good friends with a lot of programmers, who say they suck at math, but manage to code just fine. I'm not looking for negative feedback. I just want the proper head-start on things before college.

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• Which language meets my needs? [closed]

  - by Gerald Goward

  I am a junior C# developer, working for half a year now. In my company I am working on some enterprise projects and after doing it for quite some time I understood that I dont like enterprise projects. I have my own browser-game written in PHP+MySql with some simple HTML+CSS and I have 300 active (those, who entered the game at least once per 5 days) players currently :) After thinking quite some time I understood that I am interested in: 1). Web-development AND 2). standalone programs (but not enterprise ones). 3). Development for mobile platforms is also nice, Android/iOs. 1st and 2nd categories are what I want the most. Android/iOs is good too. I am NOT interested in big systems which are hard to integrate, I am not interested in enterprise systems. In future I would like to start my own business/projects. I would like to create my own projects or/and create a small programmers company to create and release own products. Please tell me what programming language(s)/technologies would you advice me for it? Thanks alot! UPD: It's NOT a "which language is better" or any flame/holywar generating topic since I ask for language that suits my EXACT needs better. I believe C++ is better for low-level coding, while PHP is good for web-development and Object-C being made for iOs. I am still newbie at programming so dont hate me please.

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• Is micro-optimisation important when coding?

  - by BozKay

  I recently asked a question on stackoverflow.com to find out why isset() was faster than strlen() in php. This raised questions around the importance of readable code and whether performance improvements of micro-seconds in code were worth even considering. My father is a retired programmer, I showed him the responses and he was absolutely certain that if a coder does not consider performance in their code even at the micro level, they are not good programmers. I'm not so sure - perhaps the increase in computing power means we no longer have to consider these kind of micro-performance improvements? Perhaps this kind of considering is up to the people who write the actual language code? (of php in the above case). The environmental factors could be important - the internet consumes 10% of the worlds energy, I wonder how wasteful a few micro-seconds of code is when replicated trillions of times on millions of websites? I'd like to know answers preferably based on facts about programming. Is micro-optimisation important when coding? EDIT : My personal summary of 25 answers, thanks to all. Sometimes we need to really worry about micro-optimisations, but only in very rare circumstances. Reliability and readability are far more important in the majority of cases. However, considering micro-optimisation from time to time doesn't hurt. A basic understanding can help us not to make obvious bad choices when coding such as if (expensiveFunction() && counter < X) Should be if (counter < X && expensiveFunction()) (example from @zidarsk8) This could be an inexpensive function and therefore changing the code would be micro-optimisation. But, with a basic understanding, you would not have to because you would write it correctly in the first place.

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• Is `break` and `continue` bad programming practice?

  - by Mikhail

  My boss keeps mentioning nonchalantly that bad programmers use break and continue in loops. I use them all the time because they make sense; let me show you the inspiration: function verify(object) { if (object->value < 0) return false; if (object->value > object->max_value) return false; if (object->name == "") return false; ... } The point here is that first the function checks that the conditions are correct, then executes the actual functionality. IMO same applies with loops: while (primary_condition) { if (loop_count > 1000) break; if (time_exect > 3600) break; if (this->data == "undefined") continue; if (this->skip == true) continue; ... } I think this makes it easier to read & debug; but I also don't see a downside. Please comment.

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• How do you motivate peers to become better developers?

  - by Brian Rasmussen

  In my experience there seems to be two kinds of developers (if we simplify matters a great deal of course). On the one hand we have the developers, who may do a perfectly acceptable job, but who do not really care about the computer science part of their craft. They usually know few languages / technologies and are happy to let things stay that way. For whatever reason, they don't try to improve their computer science skills unless this is required in their current position. On the other hand, we have the geeks or the pragmatic programmers if you subscribe to that idea. They play around with other languages and technologies and usually have knowledge about several topics outside the technical domain of their current job. I would like to see more developers, who are enthusiastic about software development. If you share this point of view, what do you do to push your peers in that direction? Edit: follow-up question inspired by one of the answers: As non-managers, should we really care about this? And why/why not?

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• Sucking Less Every Year?

  - by AdityaGameProgrammer

  Sucking Less Every Year -Jeff Atwood I had come across this insightful article.Quoting directly from the post I've often thought that sucking less every year is how humble programmers improve. You should be unhappy with code you wrote a year ago. If you aren't, that means either A) you haven't learned anything in a year, B) your code can't be improved, or C) you never revisit old code. All of these are the kiss of death for software developers. How often does this happen or not happen to you? How long before you see an actual improvement in your coding ? month, year? Do you ever revisit Your old code? How often does your old code plague you? or how often do you have to deal with your technical debt. It is definitely very painful to fix old bugs n dirty code that we may have done to quickly meet a deadline and those quick fixes ,some cases we may have to rewrite most of the application/code. No arguments about that. Some of the developers i had come across argued that they were already at the evolved stage where their coding doesn't need improvement or cant get improved anymore. Does this happen? If so how many years into coding on a particular language does one expect this to happen? Related: Ever look back at some of your old code and grimace in pain? Star Wars Moment in Code "Luke! I am your code!" "No! Impossible! It can't be!"

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• Working with fubar/refuctored code

  - by Keyo

  I'm working with some code which was written by a contractor who left a year ago leaving a number of projects with buggy, disgustingly bad code. This is what I call cowboy PHP, say no more. Ideally I'd like to leave the project as is and never touch it again. Things break, requirements change and it needs to be maintained. Part A needs to be changed. There is a bug I cannot reproduce. Part A is connect to parts B D and E. This kind of work gives me a headache and makes me die a little inside. It kills my motivation and productivity. To be honest I'd say it's affecting my mental health. Perhaps being at the start of my career I'm being naive to think production code should be reasonably clean. I would like to hear from anyone else who has been in this situation before. What did you do to get out of it? I'm thinking long term I might have to find another job. Edit I've moved on from this company now, to a place where idiots are not employed. The code isn't perfect but it's at least manageable and peer reviewed. There are a lot of people in the comments below telling me that software is messy like this. Sure I don't agree with the way some programmers do things but this code was seriously mangled. The guy who wrote it tried to reinvent every wheel he could, and badly. He stopped getting work from us because of his bad code that nobody on the team could stand. If it were easy to refactor I would have. Eventually after many 'just do this small 10minute change' situations had ballooned into hours of lost time (regardless of who on the team was doing the work) my boss finally caved in it was rewritten.

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• What's the best way to learn/increase problem-solving skills?

  - by tucaz

  Hi all! I'm not sure this is the right place to ask this question, neither if this is the right way to ask this question but I hope you help me if it is not. I work as a programmer since I was 15 (will be 24 next week) so learning programming logic was somehow natural during the course of my career and I think that it helped me to get pretty good problem-solving. One thing none of us (programmers) can deny is that programming logic helps us in a lot of fields outside computer programming. So I'd say it is a very valuable resource that one should learn. My girlfriend is not a programmer and graduated in college on a non related course (Foreign Relations) because she didn't know what to study back then. As the years passed she discovered that she liked Logistics and started to work with it almost two years ago. However, since she does not have a technical background (not even basic Math) she is really having a hard time with it. She is already trying to catch up with Math, but even simple questions/brain-teasers are hard to her. For example, trying to find the missing numbers of this sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, _, _, 34 and so on. We know that this is Fibonacci but if we didn't we would probably be able to get to the correct answer just by "guessing" (using our acquired problem-solving skills). I'm not sure if problem-solving skills or logic are the correct name for it, but this is what I mean: quick solve problems, brain-teasers, find patterns, have a "sharp" mind. So, the question is: what is the best way for someone to learn this kind of skills without being a programmer (or studying algorithms and such)? If you say it is a book, could you please recommend one? Thanks a lot!

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• Benefits of Masters of Engineering Professional Practice for the lowly (yet aspiring) programmer

  - by Peter Turner

  I've been looking into in state online degree programs 'to fit my busy lifestyle' (i.e. three children, wife and hour and a half commute). One interesting one I've found is that Master of Engineering in Professional Practice. It looks more useful and practical than a MBA in project management. I'll contact the admission dept there about the specifics. But here I'm just asking in general. Do the courses in this degree apply to software engineering/development in even an abstract sense. The university I'm looking at does not have a Software Engineering major in the school of engineering. I'm not interested in architecture astronomy, but I am interested in helping my company succeed and being able to communicate technical information at a high and effective level as well as being able to lead my co-programmers toward a more robust end product. So my multipart question is: What might be the real benefit to me and my brain and How do I convince my boss (the owner of the company, who does do some tuition reimbursement) that just because it doesn't say anything about software that it might still do us some good? Oh, and how do I get past the fact that a masters degree would make me more qualified to be the project manager than... the project manager? (who is my supervisor)

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• Old programmer disappeared. About to hire another programmer. How do I approach this?

  - by pocto

  After spending over one year working on a social network project for me using WordPress and BuddyPress, my programmer has disappeared, even though he got paid every single week, for the whole period. Yes, he's not dead as I used an email tracker to confirm and see he opens my emails, but he doesn't respond. It seems he got another job. I wonder why he just couldn't say so. And I even paid him an advance salary for work he hasn't done. The problem is that I never asked for full documentation for most of the functions he coded in. And there were MANY functions for this 1+ year period, and some of them have bugs that he still didn't fix. Now it seems all confusing. What's the first thing I should do now? How do I proceed? I guess the first thing to do will be to get another programmer, but I want to start on the right foot by having all the current code documented so that any programmer can work on all the functions without issues. Is that the first thing I should do? If yes, how do I go about it? What's the standard type of documentation required for something like this? Can I get a programmer that will just do the documentation for all the codes and fix the bugs or is documentation not really important? Also, do you think getting another "individual" programmer is better or get a company that has programmers working for them, so that if the programmer assigned to my project disappears, another can replace him, without my involvement? I feel this is the approach I should have taken in the beginning.

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• Was API hooking done as needed for Stuxnet to work? I don't think so

  - by The Kaykay

  Caveat: I am a political science student and I have tried my level best to understand the technicalities; if I still sound naive please overlook that. In the Symantec report on Stuxnet, the authors say that once the worm infects the 32-bit Windows computer which has a WINCC setup on it, Stuxnet does many things and that it specifically hooks the function CreateFileA(). This function is the route which the worm uses to actually infect the .s7p project files that are used to program the PLCs. ie when the PLC programmer opens a file with .s7p the control transfers to the hooked function CreateFileA_hook() instead of CreateFileA(). Once Stuxnet gains the control it covertly inserts code blocks into the PLC without the programmers knowledge and hides it from his view. However, it should be noted that there is also one more function called CreateFileW() which does the same task as CreateFileA() but both work on different character sets. CreateFileA works with ASCII character set and CreateFileW works with wide characters or Unicode character set. Farsi (the language of the Iranians) is a language that needs unicode character set and not ASCII Characters. I'm assuming that the developers of any famous commercial software (for ex. WinCC) that will be sold in many countries will take 'Localization' and/or 'Internationalization' into consideration while it is being developed in order to make the product fail-safe ie. the software developers would use UNICODE while compiling their code and not just 'ASCII'. Thus, I think that CreateFileW() would have been invoked on a WINCC system in Iran instead of CreateFileA(). Do you agree? My question is: If Stuxnet has hooked only the function CreateFileA() then based on the above assumption there is a significant chance that it did not work at all? I think my doubt will get clarified if: my assumption is proved wrong, or the Symantec report is proved incorrect. Please help me clarify this doubt. Note: I had posted this question on the general stackexchange website and did not get appropriate responses that I was looking for so I'm posting it here.

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• My first time in the gambling industry

  - by sfrj

  I am a Java enterprise developer with almost 3 years of professional experience. Soon i am going to have a face to face interview with a company in the gambling industry. I already did successfully a phone screening and now for the personal interview i suppose they will ask me about some kind of white board problem or system design task. I think i am in the right place to ask about this, and would appreciate a lot if someone would give me some tips or share something related to his own experience. The things i am more interested in regarding my interview are: What are the most common challenges for programmers, in this industry? Any idea or suggestion on a white board problem they may ask me? Could you point me to some links where i can find information on the topic or sample problems in this industry?. I personally find this question very interesting not just for me. Also i think, the given answers can help also others in a similar situation. Just what i want to say whit this last comment is: Please avoid, answers like: www.google.com and so on...

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• How to dissuade a customer who just learned a technology and wants to use it everywhere?

  - by MainMa

  My customer recently discovered what is URL Rewriting, without completely understanding what it is, how it works and the pros and cons of it. Now, he asks for lots of strange changes in actual requirements of current projects and changes in old projects in order to implement what he believes is URL Rewriting. On one hand, I'm annoyed being asked to do things which doesn't make any sense instead of doing real work. On the other hand, I can't tell my customer that he doesn't understand anything in the subject despite his interest in it. I think many people have had situations when their manager or their customer just learned a new buzzword or a new technology, and he loved it so much than he wanted to use it in every project, everywhere, rewrite the whole codebase just to use this new thing, etc. Also, I've recently read something related on Programmers.SE where people told about their experiences when there was a huge buzz around XML, and some managers would ask to introduce XML in every project just to show to everyone that they have used it. So those who have been in similar situation, how have you managed it?

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• How do you compare job offers from companies in different countries?

  - by Danny Tuppeny

  This isn't really a programmer-specific question, but I'm not sure of a more appropriate place, and I think the users of this site are best able to answer the question in the context of programmers. Relocating to the US seems fairly common in the programming industry. I live in the UK, and maybe one day, I might do it too. So, if that day comes - how would you go about comparing job offers? Benefits are fairly easy to compare, but given the differences in cost of living, how would you go about comparing salaries and the quality of living you'll have? In a country where the cost of living is lower, you might be able to accept a lower salary (based on exchange rate) and still have the same quality of living. But what can you do to ensure this? In some cases, you may even take a "pay rise" in terms of exchange rate, but end up far worse off. How can you compare job offers across different countries to get an idea of the salary you would need in order to not feel you've gone "backwards"?

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• What do you do to make sure you take proper/enough breaks, while avoiding unwanted side-effects of break taking?

  - by blueberryfields

  preamble It seems to me that computer programmers are one of a select few groups of people who actually take pleasure from sitting in front of computers for long periods of time. Most people in other professions actively dislike their time at computers, and do their best to avoid it (so, I assume, they don't have problems taking breaks). At least for me, having external cues for taking breaks, and clear instructions on what to do with each break (stretch, go for a walk, close my eyes, look into a distance of preferably a few km and focus on faraway objects, etc...), is a must. So far, I've just been making up the breaks and tools to get them as I go along, based on what looks to be low-specificity information found on the net (generic stuff ala ergonomics advice for office staff). This has led to all sorts of side effects - loss of attention as I get distracted if I walk around, breaks in flow with alarm clocks interrupting my thoughts, and people around me assuming I'm low on work due to the frequency of my walking around compared to everyone else. /preamble tl;dr Taking breaks is important My internal break taking system doesn't work, and ad-hoc ones have unwanted side effects What do you do to make sure you take proper breaks? How do you avoid unwanted side-effects, such as getting distracted or interrupting flow or giving your co-workers the impression you're spending a lot of time goofing off?

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• Is there such thing as a "theory of system integration"?

  - by Jeff

  There is a plethora of different programs, servers, and in general technologies in use in organizations today. We, programmers, have lots of different tools at our disposal to help solve various different data, and communication challenges in an organization. Does anyone know if anyone has done an serious thinking about how systems are integrated? Let me give an example: Hypothetically, let's say I own a company that makes specialized suits a'la Iron Man. In the area of production, I have CAD tools, machining tools, payroll, project management, and asset management tools to name a few. I also have nice design space, where designers show off their designs on big displays, some touch, some traditional. Oh, and I also have one of these new fangled LEED Platinum buildings and it has number of different computer controlled systems, like smart window shutters that close when people are in the room, a HVAC system that adjusts depending on the number of people in the building, etc. What I want to know is if anyone has done any scientific work on trying to figure out how to hook all these pieces together, so that say my access control system is hooked to my payroll system, and my phone system allowing my never to swipe a time card, and to have my phone follow me throughout the building. This problem is also more than a technology challenge. Every technology implementation enables certain human behaviours, so the human must also be considered as a part of the system. Has anyone done any work in how effectively weave these components together? FYI: I am not trying to build a system. I want to know if anyone has thoroughly studied the process of doing a large integration project, how they develop their requirements, how they studied the human behaviors, etc.

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• Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code?

  - by Donnied

  This question is phrased in a very specific way - it asks for references. There was a similar question posted which was closed because it was considered a duplicate to a good code question. The Programmers FAQ points out that answers should have references - or its just an unproductive sharing of (seemingly) baseless opinions. There is a difference between shortest code and most elegant code. This becomes clear in several seminal texts: Dijkstra, E. W. (1972). The humble programmer. Communications of the ACM, 15(10), 859–866. Kernighan, B. W., & Plauger, P. J. (1974). Programming style: Examples and counterexamples. ACM Comput. Surv., 6(4), 303–319. Knuth, D. E. (1984). Literate programming. The Computer Journal, 27(2), 97–111. doi:10.1093/comjnl/27.2.97 They all note the importance of clarity over brevity. Kernighan & Plauger (1974) provide descriptions of "good" code, but "good code" is certainly not synonymous with "elegant". Knuth (1984) describes the impo rtance of exposition and "excellence of style" to elegant programs. He cites Hoare - who describes that code should be self documenting. Dijkstra (1972) indicates that beautiful programs optimize efficiency but are not opaque. This sort of conversation is qulaitatively different than a random sharing of opinions. Therefore, the question - Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code? "Which *reference*" is not subjective - anything else will most likely shut the thread down, so please supply *references* not opinions.

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• Is there value in having new developers (graduates) start as testers / bug-fixers?

  - by Nico Huysamen

  Hi Programmers Community. What are your thoughts on the following: Is there value in having new developers (graduates) start as testers / bug-fixers? There are two schools of thought here that I have come across. Having new developers (graduates) start as testers / bug-fixers / doing SLA (Service Level Agreement) work, get's them familiar with the code base. It also allows them the opportunity to learn how to read [other people's] code. Further more, by fixing bugs, they will learn certain bad and good practices, which could hopefully help them in the future. The other way of thinking though, is that if you immediately start new developers on something like testing / bug-fixing / SLA work, their appetite for the development world might go away, and/or they might leave the company and you potentially loose out on a great future resource. Is there a balance that should be kept between these two? Currently where I work there is no clear-cut definition of what new starters do. Some go directly on to client work, while some fall in to the SLA world. Should companies have such a policy? Or should it be handled on a case-by-case or opportunity-based basis? Hope to hear from some of you that have experience in this field. Thanks!

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• Are there any concrete examples of where a paralellizing compiler would provide a value-adding benefit?

  - by jamie

  Paul Graham argues that: It would be great if a startup could give us something of the old Moore's Law back, by writing software that could make a large number of CPUs look to the developer like one very fast CPU. ... The most ambitious is to try to do it automatically: to write a compiler that will parallelize our code for us. There's a name for this compiler, the sufficiently smart compiler, and it is a byword for impossibility. But is it really impossible? Can someone provide a concrete example where a paralellizing compiler would solve a pain point? Web-apps don't appear to be a problem: just run a bunch of Node processes. Real-time raytracing isn't a problem: the programmers are writing multi-threaded, SIMD assembly language quite happily (indeed, some might complain if we make it easier!). The holy grail is to be able to accelerate any program, be it MySQL, Garage Band, or Quicken. I'm looking for a middle ground: is there a real-world problem that you have experienced where a "smart-enough" compiler would have provided a real benefit, i.e that someone would pay for? A good answer is one where there is a process where the computer runs at 100% CPU on a single core for a painful period of time. That time might be 10 seconds, if the task is meant to be quick. It might be 500ms if the task is meant to be interactive. It might be 10 hours. Please describe such a problem. Really, that's all I'm looking for: candidate areas for further investigation. (Hence, raytracing is off the list because all the low-hanging fruit have been feasted upon.) I am not interested in why it cannot be done. There are a million people willing to point to the sound reasons why it cannot be done. Such answers are not useful.

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• Thinking skills to be a good programmer

  - by Paul

  I have been programming for last 15 years with non-CS degree. Main reason I got into programming was that I liked to learn new things and apply them to my work. And I was able to find and fix programming errors and their causes faster than others. But I never find myself a a guru or an expert, maybe due to my non-CS major. And when I saw great programmers, I observed they are very good, much better than me of course, at solving problems. One skill I found good in my mid-career is thinking of requirements and tasks in a reverse order and in abstract. In that way, I can see what is really required for me to do without detail and can quickly find parts of solution that already exist. So I wonder if there are other thinking skills to be a good programmer. I've followed Q&As below and actually read some of books recommended there. But I couldn't really pickup good methods directly applicable for my programming work. What non-programming books should a programmer read to help develop programming/thinking skills? Skills and habits to develop to be good at programming (I'm a newbie)

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