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• how can I reliably check that requests to my service file have come from my website?

  - by woot586

  I have a service.php class that I use to service AJAX calls from my website. To prevent other people accessing the service using PHP CURL I would normally check the request has come from mysite, and if they are not then just redirect to my home page e.g. if($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] != "http://www.mysite.com"){ header('location: http://www.mysite.com'); exit; } I read in the PHP holy bible: http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php that "Not all user agents will set this, and some provide the ability to modify HTTP_REFERER as a feature. In short, it cannot really be trusted." So if this method is not reliable, my question is how can I reliably check that requests to my service file have come from my website? Thanks for any help you can provide!

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• Executable Resumes

  - by Liam McLennan

  Over the past twelve months I have been thinking a lot about executable specifications. Long considered the holy grail of agile software development, executable specifications means expressing a program’s functionality in a way that is both readable by the customer and computer verifiable in an automatic, repeatable way. With the current generation of BDD and ATDD tools executable specifications seem finally within the reach of a significant percentage of the development community. Lately, and partly as a result of my craftsmanship tour, I have decided that soon I am going to have to get a job (gasp!). As Dave Hoover describes in Apprenticeship Patters, “you … have mentors and kindred spirits that you meet with periodically, [but] when it comes to developing software, you work alone.” The time may have come where the only way for me to feel satisfied and enriched by my work is to seek out a work environment where I can work with people smarter and more knowledgeable than myself. Having been on both sides of the interview desk many times I know how difficult and unreliable the process can be. Therefore, I am proposing the idea of executable resumes. As a journeyman programmer looking for a fruitful work environment I plan to write an application that demonstrates my understanding of the state of the art. Potential employers can download, view and execute my executable resume and judge wether my aesthetic sensibility matches their own. The concept of the executable resume is based upon the following assertion: A line of code answers a thousand interview questions Asking people about their experiences and skills is not a direct way of assessing their value to your organisation. Often it simple assesses their ability to mislead an interviewer. An executable resume demonstrates: The highest quality code that the person is able to produce. That the person is sufficiently motivated to produce something of value in their own time. That the person loves their craft. The idea of publishing a program to demonstrate a developer’s skills comes from Rob Conery, who suggested that each developer should build their own blog engine since it is the public representation of their level of mastery. Rob said: Luke had to build his own lightsaber – geeks should have to build their own blogs. And that should be their resume. In honour of Rob’s inspiration I plan to build a blog engine as my executable resume. While it is true that the world does not need another blog engine it is as good a project as any, it is a well understood domain, and I have not found an existing blog engine that I like. Executable resumes fit well with the software craftsmanship metaphor. It is not difficult to imagine that under the guild system master craftsmen may have accepted journeymen based on the quality of the work they had produced in the past. We now understand that when it comes to the functionality of an application that code is the final arbiter. Why not apply the same rule to hiring?

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• Silverlight Cream for December 29, 2010 -- #1018

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Arik Poznanski, Derik Whittaker(-2-), Alex Knight, Maurice de Beijer, Jesse Liberty, Jason Ginchereau, Jeff Blankenburg, Mike Snow, and Peter Kuhn. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight: Reading from a File Contained in your XAP" Mike Snow WP7: "A ReorderListBox for Windows Phone 7" Jason Ginchereau Expression Blend: "PathListBox: making rockin' animations" Alex Knight From SilverlightCream.com: Order in Chaos: Dependency Property Value Resolution Arik Poznanski sent me the link to his blog with this Dependency property value resolution post which demonstrates in successive detail xaml for each of the scenarios. Closing the Virtual Keyboard (SIP) and forcing binding in WP7 Derik Whittaker has a couple new posts up... this first is about how to close the SIP and forcing binding in a WP7 app... if you've run many WP7 apps I'm sure you understand the issue. Help my Slider control does not work inside a Grid in WP7 In Derik Whittaker's next post he details a problem he had with a Slider in a Grid that went AWOL... and how he resolved it.. also is asking why the solution works. PathListBox: making rockin' animations Holy Crap ... Alex Knight has his second PathListBox tutorial up and just stop reading and go check it out... dang! ... I'll still be here when you come back! Windows Phone 7, Animations and Data Binding Maurice de Beijer details an interesting problem he ran into where his databinding was hampering a page animation, what the root problem was and how he resolved it.. good information. Windows Phone From Scratch – Navigation Jesse Liberty has the next episode in the Windows Phone from Scratch series up and is talking about Navigation... he demos an ap with 3 pages and simple navigation this time. A ReorderListBox for Windows Phone 7 Found in Jeff Blankenburg's number 11, this post by Jason Ginchereau is a description of a Drag/Drop reodering ListBox drop-in for WP7 ... very cool, and source is on the post. What I Learned In WP7 – #Issue 11 Jeff Blankenburg's number 11 is a couple links itself... one to Jeff Wilcox for Silverlight UnitTest Framework, and one to Jason Ginchereau for Listbox Drag/Drop reordering... going to have to look that one up. Silverlight: Reading from a File Contained in your XAP Mike Snow's latest is on how to load up an extraneous file into your xap for loading at run-time and how to get that to actually work. XNA: Sophisticated primitives Peter Kuhn has a post up on using the XNA PrimitiveBatch class... he had trouble with it at first, and explains how to use it. XNA you say? ... think WP7. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• The best Bar on the globe is ... in Seoul/Korea

  - by Mike Dietrich

  As you know already sometimes I write about things which really don't have to do anything with a database upgrade. So if you are looking for tips and tricks and articles about that topic please stop reading now Actually I'm not a lets-go-to-a-bar person. I enjoy good food and a fine dessert wine afterwards. But last week in Seoul/Korea Ryan, our local host, did ask us after a wonderful dinner at a Korean Barbecue place if we'd like to visit a bar. I was really tired as I flew into Seoul overnight from Sunday to Monday arriving Monday early morning, getting shower, breakfast - and then a full day of very good and productive customer meetings. But one thing Ryan mentioned catched my immediate attention: The owner of the bar collects records and has a huge tube amp stereo system - and you can ask him to play your favorite songs. The bar is called "Peter, Paul and Mary" - honestly not my favorite style of music. And I even coulnd't find a webpage or an address - only that little piece of information on Facebook. But after stepping down the stairs to the cellar my eyes almost poped out of my head. This is the audio system: Enourmus huge corner horn loudspeakers from Western Electric. Pretty old I'd suppose but delivering an incredible present dynamics into the room. And plenty of tube equipment from Jadis, NSA Labs and Shindo Laboratories Western Electric 300B Limited amps from Tokyo. And the owner (I was so amazed I had simply forgotten to ask for his name) collects records since 40 years. And we had many wishes that night. Actually when we did enter Peter, Paul and Mary he played an old Helloween song. That must have been destiny. A German entering a bar in Korea and the owner is playing an old song by one of Germany's best heavy metal bands ever. And it went on with the Doors, Rainbow's Stargazer, Scorpions, later Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers, a bit of Santana, Carly Simon, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie ...Ronnie James Dio's Holy Diver, Gary Moore, Peter Gabriel's San Jacinto ... and many many more great songs ... Of course we were the last guests leaving the place at 2am in the morning - and I've never ever had a better night in a bar before ... I could have stayed days listening to so many records  ... Thanks Ryan, that was a phantastic night! -Mike

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• 302: this blog will be closed

  - by preishuber

  After nearly 7 years I will discontinue blogging on this site. My resources are limited. You can reach my German blog which is used to support my customers. Looking back to a long an interesting journey ASP.NET by ScottGu That was the reason to attend this site and support Microsoft as much as I can. For that I was honored as ASP.NET MVP- thanks again. Meet Scoot several times. Great guy! Forums I have left NNTP forums a few years ago and now Microsoft closed it- It was my idea ;-) AJAX Was the wrong way- JQuery won the game IIS7 That is really a great plattform and the IIS team rules. I am sad that is so silent around that topic. ASP.NET after 2.0 Is no longer my world. I love ASP.NET and ASP.NET Server controls. I hate the discussion about how to follow the holy rules of MVC. Microsoft have dropped the goal to bring ASP.NET to #1 and accepted PHP is it. Facebook & Twittering Microblogging takes over a part of the blogging business. Shorter faster cheaper- or as SteveB mentioned - do more with less. Google Google is taking over the web. I am using Bing every time as I can but Google have more options. Sorry Microsoft you will loose that game. Apple That is not the biggest problem of Microsoft. the Ixxx takes over a small part but big money of the market, but the customers are not strongly linked. New wave new hype- Game over Apple. Silverlight My new home. I can reuse a lot of my skills and love the possibilitys. Silverligth will passing WPF-and strike Flash Windows phone 7 Also my skills fit. I just will use it for fun. I am not really satisfied about what I have heard from MIX. Guys from Redmond, I am sad to say you have been the best Smartphone OS and lost everything. The ADO vNext Story That will be the next mystic point. WCF, REST, JSON, ATOM and now OData. Nothing about SQL commands. LINQ, ORM is also not the final solution for multilayered disconnected async scenarios. Personally I prefere the OData idea and dislike the Swiss Army Knife (German Eierlegende Wollmilchsau) WCF. I am still in INETA Speakers board and I am glad to come to your user group. In all other cases you can hire me over ppedv AG. Good by and have good live.

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• Data Structures usage and motivational aspects

  - by Aubergine

  For long student life I was always wondering why there are so many of them yet there seems to be lack of usage at all in many of them. The opinion didn't really change when I got a job. We have brilliant books on what they are and their complexities, but I never encounter resources which would actually give a good hint of practical usage. I perfectly understand that I have to look at problem , analyse required operations, look for data structure that does them efficiently. However in practice I never do that, not because of human laziness syndrome, but because when it comes to work I acknowledge time priority over self-development. Over time I thought that when I would be better developer I will automatically use more of them - that didn't happen at all or maybe I just didn't. Then I found that the colleagues usually in the same plate as me - knowing more or less some three of data structures and being totally happy about it and refusing to discuss this matter further with me, coming back to conversations about 'cool new languages' 'libraries that do jobs for you' and the joy to work under scrumban etc. I am stuck with ArrayLists, Arrays and SortedMap , which no matter what I do always suffice or either I tweak them to be capable of fulfilling my task. Yes, it might be inefficient but do we really have to care if Intel increases performance over years no matter if we improve our skills? Does new Xeon or IBM machines really care what we use? What if I like build things, but I am not particularly excited whether it is n log(n) or just n? Over twenty years the processing power increased enormously, which gives us freedom of not being critical about which one to use? On top of that new more optimized languages appear which support multiple cores more efficiently. To be more specific: I would like to find motivational material on complex real areas/cases of possible effective usages of data structures. I would be really grateful if you would provide relevant resources. There is similar question ,but in the end the links again mostly describe or do dumb example(vehicles, students or holy grail quest - yes, very relevant) them and people keep referring to the "scenario decides the data structure to use". I want to know these complex scenarios to be able to identify similarities to my scenario and then use them. The complex scenarios where it really matters and not necessarily of quantitive nature. It seems that data structures only concern is efficiency and nothing else? There seems to be no particular convenience for developer in use one over another. (only when I found scientific resources on why exactly simple carbohydrates are evil I stopped eating sugar and candies completely replacing it with less harmful fruits - I hope you can see the analogy)

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• Insanity&ndash;Day 1

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Some people do those posts about “Here’s what I’m going to do to change my life”. I don’t really like those. I’m a “don’t tell me what you’re going to do, tell me what you’re doing/have done” type of guy. So while I could say how I’m going to change my life and be healthier and happier and thinner in 60 days, I’m just going to tell you how I’m progressing through the Insanity workout. Insanity is a workout-in-a-box. It’s a collection of DVDs that you work out to. Nothing new here, except that the program is intense. It’s core tenet of the program is intensity – you workout at an elevated heart rate for 3 minutes with a short break in between, as opposed to traditional interval training where you go hard for a short time and recover for a few minutes. The other aspect of it is commitment. There is a timetable to follow – you workout 6 days a week with one rest day. This isn’t meant to be a “pick it up whenever you feel like it” type of program. The videos themselves are kind of…I don’t want to say low quality, but not as polished as I expected. Maybe that’s what they were going for. By that I mean they show shots of cameramen and the production equipment during the workout. Otherwise, it’s the Insanity leader Shawn T. leading a group of pretty fit folks through this gruelling workout. And ultimately, those little production nit-picks are irrelevant compared to the actual workout. Holy crap. I haven’t done an aerobics class in like…ever. And watching the video before my actual workout, I thought “That doesn’t look too hard”. Believe me, it is. No weights, no machines, just various exercises done in circuits and with increasing speed. By the end of the workout, I was drenched. So that was day one. Some stats just so I can track it: I’m 286 lbs at my last weigh-in a week ago or so. Should be interesting to see what 60 days of this does! D

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• jQuery i++ and i-- problems ... what on earth???

  - by michael

  Could someone please tell me what I am doing wrong? I'm not a newbie at programming but I feel like it tonight! Every time I increment the incrementing variable it throws a fit! When add one to it, it behaves fine, but if I try to add one more to it it wants to add 2 more. And then if I try to de-increment it wants to subtract from the original number that it was assigned to. I've tried: i++; i = i+1; i = i++; Nothing seems to work. It's got to be a stupid mistake. Press the buttons to increment and de-increment. http://michaelreynolds.net/iphone/ here's the code: var dayNum = 30; //---------------------------------------------------------------------- $.jQTouch({ icon: 'dailyqoteicon.png', statusBar: false, initializeTouch: 'a.touch' }); //---------------------------------------------------------------------- $(document).ready(function(){ //$(function(){}); $(function(){ $('a.touch').swipe( function(event, info){ //alert("jQTouch swipe event"); //alert(info.direction); }); }); $(function updateVerse(){ //alert("updateVerse called"); $.ajax({ type: "GET", dataType: 'JSON', data: 'day='+ dayNum, url: 'forward.php', success: function(data){ var obj = $.parseJSON(data); $("h2.quote").html(""); $("h3.reference").html(""); $("h2.quote").append(obj.quote); $("h3.reference").append(obj.reference, " ", obj.version); //$("span.version").append(obj.version); //----------------------------------- // JSON string {"id":"1","quote":"For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain","reference":"Philippians 1:21","version":"NKJV"} }, error: function(request, error){ alert("problem retrieving json data string"); } }); function addDayNum(){ dayNum = dayNum + 1; //dayNum = dayNum++; } function subDayNum(){ dayNum = dayNum - 1; //dayNum = dayNum--; } $("div#header a.next").tap( function(){ addDayNum(); //dayNum++;// doesn't work at all //dayNum = dayNum + 1;//doesn't work at all updateVerse(); //alert(dayNum); //alert("next clicked"); }); $("div#header a.prev").live('click', function(){ subDayNum(); //dayNum--;//doesn't work at all //dayNum = dayNum - 1;// doesn't work at all updateVerse(); //alert(dayNum); //alert("previous clicked"); }); }); });

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• XNA Notes 008

  - by George Clingerman

  This week has been a rough one. I’ve been sick and then in some kind of slump for my afternoon coding sessions. It could be from the cold, could be I’m still tired from writing that Windows Phone 7 game development book (which is out now!) or it could just be I’m tired of winter and want some sunshine. All I know is that even while I’m stick, the XNA world keeps going along at it’s whirlwind pace. Below are the things I caught in between my coughing fits.. Time Critical XNA News: The 2011 MVP summit is almost here so pass along your feelings and thoughts so the MVPs can take them and share them with the team in person http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/76317/464136.aspx#464136 Dream Build Play - there’s no new announcement yet, but you can’t get much more to the end of February than this! http://www.dreambuildplay.com/Main/Home.aspx XNA Team: Dean Johnson from the XNA team shares an excellent way of handling Guide.IsTrialMode on WP7 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dejohn/archive/2011/02/21/calling-guide-istrialmode-on-windows-phone-7.aspx Nick Gravelyn tries a new tactic in deciding if there’s enough interest to develop a sequel or not. Don’t YOU want Pixel Man 2 to come out? http://nickgravelyn.com/pixelman2/ XNA MVPs: Andy “The ZMan” Dunn finally shares what he’s been secretly working on these past 4 months http://twitter.com/#!/The_Zman/status/40590269392887808 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg8Z0ZdYbvg&feature=youtu.be Joel Martinez lets developers around NYC know they should by signing up for Game Hack Day http://twitter.com/joelmartinez/statuses/41118590862102528 http://gamehackday.org/71fdk XNA Developers: Michael McLaughlin shares an XNA RenderTarget2D Sample http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/18/xna-rendertarget2d-sample.aspx Martin Caine starts a new series on Deferred Rendering in XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/#!/MartinCaine/status/39735221339291648 http://martincaine.com/xna/deferred_rendering_in_xna_4_introduction ElemenyCy posts about his fun time with the IntermediateSerializer http://www.ubergamermonkey.com/xna/holy-bloated-xml-batman/ Ben Kane releases a narrated dev diary video for Project Splice. Let him know if you’d like to see more! (I know I do!) http://twitter.com/#!/benkane/status/39846959498002432 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EmziXZUo08&feature=youtu.be Jason Swearingen (of Novaleaf) posts his part 1 of Spatial Partitioning solutions http://altdevblogaday.org/2011/02/21/spatial-partitioning-part-1-survey-of-spatial-partitioning-solutions/ Brian Lawson of Dark Flow Studios shares what his been up to lately with lots of pretty screenshots and hints of announcements from Microsoft... http://www.darkflowstudios.com/entry/short-and-sweet-part-1 Luke Avery starts a new blog where he plans on making XNA tutorials for beginners (and he’s got a few started already!) http://programmingwithovery.wordpress.com/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): GameMarx Episode 10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/24/ep-10-february-18-2010.aspx Minecraft clone FortressCraft coming to XBLIG http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-23-minecraft-clone-fortresscraft-hits-xblig ezMuze+ starts an IndieGoGo fundraiser campaign to help fund their second game and get it onto even more devices! http://www.indiegogo.com/ezmuze Gamergeddon XBLIG round up http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/20/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-20th/?utm_campaign=twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter JForce Games loses their Ego http://jforcegames.com/blog/index.php?itemid=121&catid=4 XNA Game Development: @BallerIndustry reminds all XNA developers that the Maths are important ;) http://twitter.com/#!/BallerIndustry/status/39317618280243200 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjV3XDFsjP4&feature=player_embedded#at=106 @suhinini stumbles on an older but extremely useful post on XNA Content Pipeline debugging http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/39270189476352000 http://badcorporatelogo.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/xna-content-pipeline-debugging-4-0/ XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://innovativesingapore.com/2011/02/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities/ Indiefreaks announces that IGF v0.3 is out with Xbox 360 support, SunBurn 2.0.12 and it’s now Open Source! http://twitter.com/#!/indiefreaks/status/39391953971982336 @liotral announces a new series on properly designing a game http://twitter.com/#!/liortal53/status/39466905081217024 http://liortalblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/hello-cosmos/ Indies and XNA at CodeStock 2011 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/20/indies-and-xna-at-codestock-2011.aspx Train Frontier Express posts about XNA Content Hotloading http://trainfrontierexpress.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-content-hotloading-overview.html Slyprid announces a new character editor in Transmute http://twitter.com/#!/slyprid/status/40146992818696192 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKhFAc78LDs&feature=youtu.be The XNA 2D from the ground up tutorial series http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/23/recap-the-xna-2d-from-the-ground-up-tutorial-series.aspx Sgt.Conker posts a “Clingerman” (hey that’s me!) to stay relevant http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/posting-a-clingerman-to-stay-relevant/

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• POP Forums v9 Beta 1 for ASP.NET MVC 3 posted to CodePlex!

  - by Jeff

  As promised, I posted a beta build of my forum app for ASP.NET MVC 3. Get the new goodies here: http://popforums.codeplex.com/releases/view/58228 This is the first beta for the ASP.NET MVC 3 version of POP Forums. It is nearly feature complete, and ready for testing and feedback. For previous release notes, look here, here and here.Check out the live preview: http://preview.popforums.com/ForumsSetup instructions are on the home page of this project. The new hotness in the beta, or what has been done since the last preview: All views converted to use Razor E-mail subscription/notification of new posts New post indicators/mark read buttons Permalinks to posts Jump to newest post (from new post indicators) Recent topics Favorite topics Moderator functions for topics (pin/close/delete, plus move and rename) Search, ported from v8. Not a ton of optimization here, or new unit testing, but the old version worked pretty well User posts (topics the user posted in) Forgot password Vanity items (signatures and avatars) Hide vanity items per user preference Some minor data caching where appropriate A little bit of UI refinement Lots-o-bug fixes Lots-o-unit tests What's next? The plan between now and the next beta is as follows: Continue working through features/tasks, and fix bugs as they're reported Integrate the forum into a real, production site Refine the UI Refactor as much as possible... the code organization is not entirely logical in some places After the second beta, a release candidate will follow, with a real "final" release after that. Subsequent releases should come relatively frequently and without a lot of risk. The trick in building this thing has been that it mostly tossed the previous WebForms version, which was all full of crusties. The time table for this is a little harder to pin down, as day jobs and families will have their effect. Other notes Refactoring will be a priority. As the features of MVC have evolved, so have my desires to use it in a fashion that makes things clear and easy to follow. I don't even know if anyone will ever start mucking around in the code, but on the off chance they do, I'd like what they find to not suck. Other nice-to-haves are builds to target Windows Azure and SQL CE. A nice setup UI would be super too. I think the ASP.NET MVC world has gone long enough without a decent forum.The biggest challenge that I've found is making the forum something that can be dropped in any app. While it does rope its views into an area, areas are mostly just routing details. I haven't thought of a clever way yet to limit dependency injection, for example, to just the forum bits. I mean, everyone should be using Ninject, but how realistic is that? ;)How much time and effort should you spend on POP Forums in its current state? Change is inevitable, but at this point I'm reasonably committed to not changing the database schema. I really think it will stay as-is. All bets are off for the various interfaces throughout the app, but the data should generally resist change. It's not even that different from v8, which was one of the original goals because I didn't want to rewrite SQL or introduce a new ORM or whatever. My point is that if you wanted to build a site around this today, even though it's not entirely functional, I think it's low risk in terms of data loss. I can't vouch for whether or not you know what you're doing.I've been having some chats with people lately about quoting posts, and honestly there has to be something better and straight forward. That continues to be a holy grail of mine, and some day, I hope to find it.Enjoy... it's starting to feel more real every day!

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• Silverlight Firestarter thoughts, and thanks to one and all!

  - by Dave Campbell

  A few metrics that of course got out of hand, but some may find interesting:   1/2 My share of the MVP of the Year award in February of 2009 with Laurent Bugnion 2 Number of degrees I hold: B.S., M.S. Electrical Engineering 3 Number of years in the U.S. Army 3.5 Number of years SilverlighCream has been posted 4 Number of times awarded MVP 6 Number of professional positions I've worked: Antenna Rigger, Boilermaker, Musician, Electronic Technician, Hardware Engineer, Software Engineer 16 Number of companies I've worked for during my career as an Engineer 19 Age at which I turned my first line of code 28 Age at which I hit the workforce as an Engineer 33 Number of years working as an Engineer 43 Number of years writing code 62 Number of years since instantiation 116 Number of tags to search SilverlightCream with 645 Number of blogs I view to find articles (at this moment) 664 Number of articles tagged wp7dev at SilverlightCream right now 700 Number of Twitter followers for WynApse 981 Number of individual bloggers in the SilverlightCream database 1002 Number of SilverlightCream blogposts 1100 Number of people live in Redmond for the Firestarter (I think) 1428 Number of total blogposts at GeeksWithBlogs (not counting this one) 4200 Number of Feedburner subscribers (approximately) 6500 Number of Twitter followers for SilverlightNews (approximately) 7087 Number of posts tagged and aggregated at SilverlightCream right now 13000 Number of people registered to watch the Firestarter online (I think) The overwhelming feeling I have returning from the Silverlight Firestarter: Priceless There is absolutely no way that I could personally thank everyone that over the last few years has held their hand out and offered me a step up to get to the point that Scott Guthrie called me out in his keynote. So I'm just going to hit the highlights here... Scott Guthrie Thanks for not only being the level you are at Microsoft, but for being so approachable, easy to talk to, willing to help everyone, and above all knowledgable. My first level manager at my last position asked if Visual Studio was a graphics program... and you step up to a laptop at a conference and type "File->New Program" ... 'nuff said... oh yeah, thanks for the shoutout! John Papa Thanks for being a good friend, ramroding the Firestarter, being a great guy to be around, and for the poster... holy crap is that cool. Tim Heuer Thanks for all you did as a great DE in Phoenix, and for helping out so many of us, of course being a great guy, and for the poster as well... I think you and John shared that task. In no order at all my buddy Michael Washington, Laurent Bugnion (the other half of the first Silverlight MVP of the Year) Tim Sneath, Mike Harsh, Chad Campbell and Bryant Likes (from back in the day), Adam Kinney, Jesse Liberty, Jeff Paries, Pete Brown, András Velvárt, David Kelly, Michael Palermo, Scott Cate, Erik Mork, and on and on... don't feel bad if your name didn't appear, I have simply too many supporters to name. Silverlight Firestarter Indeed All the people mentioned here, and all the MVPs knew Silverlight was NOT dead, but because of a very unfortunate circumstance, the popular media opinion became that. Consequently the Firestarter exploded from a laid-back event to a global conference. People worked their ass off getting bits ready and presentations using those bits. All to stem the flow of misinformation. All involved please accept my personal thanks for an absolutely awesome job. I had the priviledge of watching the 'prep' on Wednesday afternoon, and was blown away the first time I saw the 3D demo... and have been blown away every time I've seen it since. Not to mention all the other goodness in Silverlight 5. Yes I hit 1000 on my blog, but more importantly, all of you are blogging and using Silverlight, and Microsoft hit one completely out of the park... no... they knocked it out of the neighborhood with the Firestarter. It was amazing to be there for it, and it will be awesome to use the new bits as we get them. Keep reading, there's tons more to come with Silverlight and SilverlightCream following along behind. As usual, this old hacker is humbled to be allowed to play with all the cool kids... Thanks one and all for everything, and Stay in the 'Light

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• Does *every* project benefit from written specifications?

  - by nikie

  I know this is holy war territory, so please read the question to the end before answering. There are many cases where written specifications make a lot of sense. For example, if you're a contractor and you want to get paid, you need written specs. If you're working in a team with 20 persons, you need written specs. If you're writing a programming language compiler or interpreter (and it's not perl), you'll usually write a formal specification. I don't doubt that there are many more cases where written specifications are a really good idea. I just think that there are cases where there's so little benefit in written specs, that it doesn't outweigh the costs of writing and maintaining them. EDIT: The close votes say that "it is difficult to say what is asked here", so let me clarify: The usefulness of written, detailed specifications is often claimed like a dogma. (If you want examples, look at the comments.) But I don't see the use of them for the kind of development I'm doing. So what is asked here is: How would written specifications help me? Background information: I work for a small company that's developing vertical market software. If our product is easier to use and has better performance than the competition, it sells. If it's harder to use, even if it behaves 100% as the specification says, it doesn't sell. So there are no "external forces" for having written specs. The advantage would have to be somewhere in the development process. Now, I can see how frozen specifications would make a developer's life easier. But we'll never have frozen specs. If we see in the middle of development that feature X is not intuitive to use the way it's specified, then we can only choose between changing the specification or developing a product that won't sell. You'll probably ask by now: How do you know when you're done? Well, we're continually improving our product. The competition does the same. So (hopefully) we're never done. We keep improving the software, and when we reach a point when the benefits of the improvements we've added since the last release outweigh the costs of an update, we create a new release that is then tested, localized, documented and deployed. This also means that there's rarely any schedule pressure. Nobody has to do overtime to make a deadline. If the feature isn't done by the time we want to release the next version, it'll simply go into the next version. The next question might be: How do your developers know what they're supposed to implement? The answer is: They have a lot of domain knowledge. They know the customers business well enough, so a high-level description of the feature (or even just the problem that the customer needs solved) is enough to implement it. If it's not clear, the developer creates a few fake screens to get feedback from marketing/management or customers, but this is nowhere near the level of detail of actual specifications. This might be inefficient for larger teams, but for a small team with low turnover it works quite well. It has the additional benefit that the developer in question often comes up with a better solution than the person writing the specs might have. This question is already getting very long, but let me address one last point: Testing. Like I said in the beginning, if our software behaves 100% like the spec says, it still can be crap. In fact, if it's so unintuitive that you need a spec to know how to test it, it probably is crap. It makes sense to have fixed, written tests for some core functionality and for regression bugs, but again, this is nowhere near a full written spec of how the software should behave when. The main test is: hand the software to a user who doesn't know it yet and tell him to use the new feature X. If she can figure out how to use it and it works, it works.

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• iOS 5.0 AVAudioPlayer Error loading audio clip: The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -50.)

  - by Jason Catudal

  So I'm trying to test out the audio player on the iPhone, and I went off Troy Brant's iOS book. I have the Core Audio, Core Foundation, AudioToolbox, and AVFoundation frameworks added to my project. The error message I get is in the subject field. I read like 20 pages of Google search results before resorting to asking here! /sigh. Thanks if you can help. Here's my code, pretty much verbatim out of his book: NSString *soundFilePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Yonah" ofType:@"caf"]; NSLog(@"%@", soundFilePath); NSURL *fileURL = [NSURL URLWithString:soundFilePath]; NSError *error; audioPlayer = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:fileURL error:&error]; if (!error) { audioPlayer.delegate = self; //audioPlayer.numberOfLoops = -1; [audioPlayer play]; } else { NSLog(@"Error loading audio clip: %@", [error localizedDescription]); } EDIT: Holy Shinto. I figured out what it was. I changed NSURL *fileURL = [NSURL URLWithString:soundFilePath]; to NSURL *fileURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:soundFilePath]; to the latter and I was getting a weird error, weirder than the one in the subject BUT I googled that and I changed my OS input device from my webcam to my internal microphone and guess what, it worked under the fileURLWithPath method. I'll be. Damned.

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• Distinguishing between .NET exception types

  - by Swingline Rage

  For the love of all things holy, how do you distinguish between different "exception flavors" within the predefined .NET exception classes? For example, a piece of code might throw an XmlException under the following conditions: The root element of the document is NULL Invalid chars are in the document The document is too long All of these are thrown as XmlException objects and all of the internal "tell me more about this exception" fields (such as Exception.HResult, Exception.Data, etc.) are usually empty or null. That leaves Exception.Message as the only thing that allows you to distinguish among these exception types, and you can't really depend on it because, you guessed it, the Exception.Message string is glocabilized, and can change when the culture changes. At least that's my read on the documentation. Exception.HResult and Exception.Data are widely ignored across the .NET libraries. They are the red-headed stepchildren of the world's .NET error-handling code. And even assuming they weren't, the HRESULT type is still the worst, downright nastiest error code in the history of error codes. Why we are still looking at HRESULTs in 2010 is beyond me. I mean if you're doing Interop or P/Invoke that's one thing but... HRESULTs have no place in System.Exception. HRESULTs are a wart on the proboscis of System.Exception. But seriously, it means I have to set up a lot of detailed specific error-handling code in order to figure out the same information that should have been passed as part of the exception data. Exceptions are useless if they force you to work like this. What am I doing wrong?

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• Opinions on Unladen Swallow?

  - by vartec

  What are your opinions and expectations on Google's Unladen Swallow? From their project plan: We want to make Python faster, but we also want to make it easy for large, well-established applications to switch to Unladen Swallow. Produce a version of Python at least 5x faster than CPython. Python application performance should be stable. Maintain source-level compatibility with CPython applications. Maintain source-level compatibility with CPython extension modules. We do not want to maintain a Python implementation forever; we view our work as a branch, not a fork. And even sweeter: In addition, we intend to remove the GIL and fix the state of multithreading in Python. We believe this is possible through the implementation of a more sophisticated GC It almost looks too good to be true, like the best of PyPy and Stackless combined. More info: Jesse Noller: "Pycon: Unladen-Swallow" ArsTechnica: "Google searches for holy grail of Python performance" Update: as DNS pointed out, there was related question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/695370/what-is-llvm-and-how-is-replacing-python-vm-with-llvm-increasing-speeds-5x

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• How to create a variadic (with variable length argument list) function wrapper in JavaScript

  - by U-D13

  The intention is to build a wrapper to provide a consistent method of calling native functions with variable arity on various script hosts - so that the script could be executed in a browser as well as in the Windows Script Host or other script engines. I am aware of 3 methods of which each one has its own drawbacks. eval() method: function wrapper () { var str = ''; for (var i=0; i<arguments.lenght; i++) str += (str ?', ':'') + ',arguments['+i+']'; return eval('[native_function] ('+str+')'); } switch() method: function wrapper () { switch (arguments.lenght) { case 0: return [native_function] (arguments[0]); break; case 1: return [native_function] (arguments[0], arguments[1]); break; ... case n: return [native_function] (arguments[0], arguments[1], ... arguments[n]); } } apply() method: function wrapper () { return [native_function].apply([native_function_namespace], arguments); } What's wrong with them you ask? Well, shall we delve into all the reasons why eval() is evil? And also all the string concatenation... Not a solution to be labeled "elegant". One can never know the maximum n and thus how many cases to prepare. This also would strech the script to immense proportions and sin against the holy DRY principle. The script could get executed on older (pre- JavaScript 1.3 / ECMA-262-3) engines that don't support the apply() method. Now the question part: is there any another solution out there?

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• Running Magento for multiple clients - single Installaton vs. multiple installations

  - by Chris Hopkins

  Hi There I am looking to set-up a Magento (Community Edition) installation for multiple clients and have researched the matter for a few days now. I can see that the Enterprise Edition has what I need in it, but surprisingly I am not willing to shell out the $12,000 odd yearly subscription. It seems there are a few options available to be but I am worried about the performance I will get out of the various options. Option 1) Single install using AITOC advanced permissions module So this is really what I am after; one installation so that I can update my core files all at the same time and also manage all my store users from one place. The problems here are that I don't know anything about the reliability of this extra product and that I have to pay a bit extra. I am also worried that if I have 10 stores running off this one installation it might all slow down so much and keel over as I have heard allot about Magento's slowness. Module Link: http://www.aitoc.com/en/magentomods_advanced_permissions.html Option 2) Multiple installations of Magento on one server for each shop So here I have 10 Magento installations on one server all running happily away not using any extra money, but I now have 10 separate stores to update and maintain which could be annoying. Also I haven't been able to find a whole lot of other people using this method and when I have they are usually asking how to stop their servers from dying. So this route seems like it could be even worse on my server as I will have more going on on my server but if my server could take it each Magento installation would be simpler and less likely to slow down due to each one having to run 10 shops on its own? Option 3) Use lots of servers and lots of Magento installations I just so do not want to do this. Option 4) Buy Magento Enterprise I do not have the money to do this. So which route is less likely to blow up my server? And does anyone have experience with this holy grail of a module? Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any help - Chris Hopkins

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• What is best practice (and implications) for packaging projects into JAR's?

  - by user245510

  What is considered best practice deciding how to define the set of JAR's for a project (for example a Swing GUI)? There are many possible groupings: JAR per layer (presentation, business, data) JAR per (significant?) GUI panel. For significant system, this results in a large number of JAR's, but the JAR's are (should be) more re-usable - fine-grained granularity JAR per "project" (in the sense of an IDE project); "common.jar", "resources.jar", "gui.jar", etc I am an experienced developer; I know the mechanics of creating JAR's, I'm just looking for wisdom on best-practice. Personally, I like the idea of a JAR per component (e.g. a panel), as I am mad-keen on encapsulation, and the holy-grail of re-use accross projects. I am concerned, however, that on a practical, performance level, the JVM would struggle class loading over dozens, maybe hundreds of small JAR's. Each JAR would contain; the GUI panel code, necessary resources (i.e. not centralised) so each panel can stand alone. Does anyone have wisdom to share?

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• Are we DELPHI, VCL or Pascal programmers?

  - by José Eduardo

  i´ve been a delphi database programmer since D2. Now i´m facing some digital imaging and 3D challenges that make me to start study OpenGL, DirectX, Color Spaces and so on. I´m really trying but nobody seems to use Delphi for this kind of stuff, just the good-old-paycheck Database programming. ok, i know that we have some very smart guys behind some clever components, some of this open-source. Is there any PhotoShop, Blender, Maya, Office, Sonar, StarCraft, Call of Dutty written in Delphi? Do i have to learn C++ to have access to zillions of books about that kind of stuff? What is the fuzz/hype behind this: int *varName = &anhoterThing? Why pointers seems to be the holy graal to this apps? I´ve downloaded MSVC++ Express and start to learn some WPF and QT integration, and i think: "Man, Delphi does this kind of stuff, with less code, less headaches, since the wheels were invented" This lead my mind to the following... Do you ever tried to write a simple notepad program using just notepad and dcc32 in Pascal/Delphi? if so embarcadero could make our beloved pascal compiler free, and sell just the ide, the vcl, the customer support ... and back to the question: Are we DELPHI, VCL or Pascal programmers?

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• Documentation and Build system for Mono/C#

  - by dcolish

  I'm starting out on a new project and a team member has decided to use C# as the implementation language. I don't have a lot of experience in C#, but a brief reading shows that it's very capable of being a complete cross-platform vm. Beyond the language, I've been having trouble selecting tools and workflows for managing the code as the project grows. It should be fairly small (<10K lines) but I would like to have the ability to generate documentation as the project grows, manage any external dependencies that we decide to use, and automate builds and testing. I am wondering what tools are commonly used or considered best practices for this language. I am mainly concerned with how would a build system potentially work on *nix as well as windows? Are there C# specific tools or is Make more common? In addition, I'd like to use a dvcs, but it doesn't look like Visual Studio and MonoDevelop support the same ones. What's the common vcs of choice for C#? For testing sort of Unit testing is available for C#/Mono? Finally, I know that there are good doc generators, but with the question of the build system, I would really like to have that just be a single step in the build similar to how testing is a step. Normally I'd automate with Hudson, but I am wondering if there is something more specific to the platform. Overall, I'd love to see a solution that provides a decent workflow on both windows and *nix without a heavy admin burden. I am pretty sure this is the holy grail of project management, so anything that puts me on that path is awesome.

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• VB.NET vs. C#.NET?

  - by Onion-Knight

  Hello everyone, The company I work for has all of its legacy ("legacy" being used rather liberally in this context) code in VB.NET. They have about 6000+ lines of VB.NET code, so all of the developers are comfortable with it. We have started to develop a new product, and are finding that some modules are easier to complete in C# than in VB.NET, such as Interprocess Communication via WCF. The things our product will eventually need to do are as follows: Communicate via IPC between Windows Services, Silverlight, and WinForms Handle parallization, and all the complexity that comes along with it Windows Service and WinForms development ASP.NET, AJAX, and Silverlight development Database (SQL) access Lots of event handling (Sync and Async events) My question is: Given the type of work we will be doing to complete our product, are there features of one language that will make life easier that the other does not have? And if so, it is worth asking the developers to switch to a language they are less comfortable with? I was hoping to keep this as objective as possible, by listing exactly what type of work we will be doing with the product. Please don't turn this into a VB/C# holy war. Thanks, Onion-Knight

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• Straw Poll - K&R vs BSD

  - by Gordon Mackie JoanMiro

  No holy wars please - (ultimately a standardised and consistently-observed house-style on a project always wins out whatever is chosen), but I am genuinely interested in the preferences of people for K&R style formatting: public bool CompareObjects(object first, object second) { if (first == second) { return true; } else { return false; } } over BSD style: public bool CompareObjects(object first, object second) { if (first == second) { return true; } else { return false; } } K&R seems to be making a bit of a comeback recently (I'm an old programmer, so I've seen these things fluctuate); do people think K&R looks more professional, more cool, more readable, is compactness when viewing more important than extending the structure down the screen? Please use the 2 community wiki answers below to vote for K&R vs. BSD. Polls shouldn't earn rep for the first person that manages to type "BSD FTW!" My God! This question is nearly 2 years old and people are still down-voting it; ENOUGH!

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• Do you use an architectural framework for Flex/AIR development?

  - by Christophe Herreman

  Given that Flex is still a relatively young technology, there are already a bunch of architectural frameworks available for Flex/AIR (and Flash) development, the main ones being Cairngorm and PureMVC. The amount of architectural frameworks is remarkable compared to other technologies. I was wondering how many of you use an architectural framework for Flex development. If so, why, or why not if you don't use any? To share my own experience and point of view: I have used Cairngorm (and ARP for Flash development) on a variety of projects and found that at times, we needed to write extra code just to fit into the framework, which obviously didn't feel right. Although I haven't used PureMVC on many occasions, I have the same gut feeling after looking at the examples applications. Architectural frameworks equal religion in some way. Most followers are convinced that their framework is THE framework and are not open or very skeptical when it comes to using other frameworks. (I also find myself hesitant and skeptical to check out new frameworks, but that is mainly because I would rather wait until the hype is over.) In conclusion, I'm thinking that it is better to have a sound knowledge of patterns and practices that you can apply in your application instead of choosing a framework and sticking to it. There is simply no right or wrong and I don't believe that there will ever be a framework that is considered the holy grail.

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• How do the major C# DI/IoC frameworks compare?

  - by Slomojo

  At the risk of stepping into holy war territory, What are the strengths and weaknesses of these popular DI/IoC frameworks, and could one easily be considered the best? ..: Ninject Unity Castle.Windsor Autofac StructureMap Are there any other DI/IoC Frameworks for C# that I haven't listed here? In context of my use case, I'm building a client WPF app, and a WCF/SQL services infrastructure, ease of use (especially in terms of clear and concise syntax), consistent documentation, good community support and performance are all important factors in my choice. Update: The resources and duplicate questions cited appear to be out of date, can someone with knowledge of all these frameworks come forward and provide some real insight? I realise that most opinion on this subject is likely to be biased, but I am hoping that someone has taken the time to study all these frameworks and have at least a generally objective comparison. I am quite willing to make my own investigations if this hasn't been done before, but I assumed this was something at least a few people had done already. Second Update: If you do have experience with more than one DI/IoC container, please rank and summarise the pros and cons of those, thank you. This isn't an exercise in discovering all the obscure little containers that people have made, I'm looking for comparisons between the popular (and active) frameworks.

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• Basic SWIG C++ use for Java

  - by duckworthd

  I've programmed a couple years in both C++ and Java, but I've finally come to a point where I need to bring a little unification between the two -- ideally, using SWIG. I've written a tiny and fairly pointless little class called Example: #include <stdio.h> class Example { public: Example(); ~Example(); int test(); }; #include "example.h" Example::Example() { printf("Example constructor called\n"); } Example::~Example() { printf("Example destructor called\n"); } int Example::test() { printf("Holy sh*t, I work!\n"); return 42; } And a corresponding interface file: /* File: example.i */ %module test %{ #include "example.h" %} %include "example.h" Now I have questions. Firstly, when I want to actually run SWIG initially, am I supposed to use the example_wrap.c (from swig -java example.i) or example_wrap.cxx (from swig -c++ example.i) file when recompiling with my original example.cpp? Or perhaps both? I tried both and the latter seemed most likely, but when I recompile as so: g++ example.cpp example_wrap.cxx -I/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-.../include/ I get a host of errors regarding TcL of all things, asking me for the tcl.h header. I can't even wrap my mind around why it wants that much less needs it, and as such have found myself where I don't even know how to begin using SWIG.

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