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• How do you maintain focus when a particular aspect of programming takes 10+ seconds to complete?

  - by Jer

  I have a very difficult time focusing on what I'm doing (programming-wise) when something (compilation, startup time, etc.) takes more than just a few seconds. Anecdotally it seems that threshold is about 10 seconds (and I recall reading about study that said the same thing, though I can't find it now). So what typically happens is I make a change and then run the program to test it. That takes about 30 seconds, so I start reading something else, and before I know it 20 minutes have passed, and then it takes (if I'm lucky!) another 10+ minutes to deal with the context switch to getting back into programming. It's not an exaggeration to say that some things that should take me minutes literally take hours to complete. I'm very curious about what other programmers do to combat this tendency (or if I'm unique and they don't have this tendency?). Suggestions of any type at all are welcome - anything from "sit on your hands after hitting the compile button", to mental tricks, to "if it takes 30 seconds to start up something to test a change, then something's wrong with your development process!"

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• "A good programmer can be as 10+ times more productive as a mediocre one"

  - by m3th0dman

  I had read an interview with a great programmer (it is not in English) and in it he said that "a great programmer can be as 100 times as good as a mediocre one" giving reason for why good programmers are very well paid and why programming companies give many facilities for their employees. The idea was that there is a very large demand for good programmers, because of the above reason and that's why companies pay very much to bring them. Do you agree with this statement? Do you know any objective facts that could support it? Edit: The question has nothing to do with experience; if you talk about one great programmer with 1 year experience then s/he should be 10 times more productive than a mediocre programmer with 1 year experience. I agree that from certain experience years onwards, things start to dissipate but that's not the purpose of the question.

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• How to determine the right amount of up front design?

  - by Gian

  Software developers occasionally are called upon to write fairly complex bits of software under tight deadlines. Often, it seems like the quickest thing to do is to simply start coding, and solve the problems as they arise. However, this approach can come back to bite you—often costing time or money in the long run! How do we determine the right amount of up front design work? If your work environment actively discourages you from thinking about things up front, how do you handle that? How can we manage risk if we eschew up-front thinking (by choice or under duress) and figure out the problems as they arise? Does the amount of up front design depend entirely on the size or complexity of the task, or is it based on something else?

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• Current activity logger

  - by user72605

  Very inexperienced coder here: Does anyone know of an app (for iOS or Mac) that asks for my current activity every hour or so? I see tons of apps that let you log your activities, but none that use popups/notifications to actively ask you. I found a script that looks promising (source), but I'm having trouble implementing it so that it repeats every hour: #!/bin/bash echo What are you doing right now? read -e what echo `date` - $what >> timelog.txt Thanks!

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• How to stop gold-plating and just be content to release working developments

  - by Andy Bowskill

  The development team that I'm a member of has recently adapted to work according to Agile practices. This has personally highlighted the fact that I can't stop myself gold-plating code (and documentation) and I consequently exceed original estimates, when I could've delivered solutions that meet the requirements much earlier. I think my ethic is bordering on the obsessive in that I become too attached to my code and am rarely content to release before I've refactored and perfected it to the nth degree. I am happy that I have realised this but how can I change my attitude/mentality to be content with my progress and release on-time instead?

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• International multi-OS keyboard layout for both coding and surfing?

  - by Nikolai Prokoschenko

  So yes, the problem has been raised in parts multiple times already. Still I'm looking for a keyboard layout that has the following features: Easy on fingers (Dvorak-like layouts welcome) Easy for coding Includes German characters (typing ä with AltGr-p is not ok). Works well with web-browsing (Ctrl-t and Ctrl-w on one hand, left one very much preferred, since that's where my ex-CapsLock, now Ctrl lies) Works well with default Emacs bindings Works on both Windows and Linux (at least easily installable) I've looked at Dvorak and Neo, they both have a "shortcut problem", i.e. web-browsing and most frequent Emacs combinations use both parts of the keyboard. Using right Ctrl is usually not an option, since it'll give me RSI much faster than keeping QWERTY/Z. Funnily enough, mirroring the default Neo layout would probably be enough for me. So, any ideas?

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• CIOs: Stop Mandating Training

  - by merrillaldrich

  I love to learn about new technology, and I especially love a long deep-dive technical session with a real expert or a well-crafted, inches thick technical book. Even if either one is expensive. Learning is probably my favorite thing to do. Yet I stand before you with an appeal: Stop “sending people to training.” Why would I say such a thing? Because failure is baked right into that very phrase: “sending people to training.” Death by Training Most of us in the IT world have probably experienced this...(read more)

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• In which fields does quality of the software product matter as much as the completion time?

  - by Nav

  Someone told me that if the software product meets clients expectations, it is good quality. But I've worked with Interaction Designers (the same kind of people who made Gmail's interface and usability so cool!), and I've loved working with them because even though they came up with hundreds of changes in requirements, and emphasised on many many subtle details, when the software was complete, I could look at the product and say WOW! The current place I work, the only thing that matters is completing the project on time. As long as it works and as long as the client says it's ok, nobody bothers to improve it. I'm not talking about gold-plating, but I believe that for a programmer to enjoy his (well, maybe her too ;) ) job, they should be able to proudly say that "Hey, I made that software" and that comes only when the product is of good quality. Apart from your opinions on this, I'd also like to know which fields (Eg. Aerospace, Finance etc.) could I find companies (or you could mention the company name) where the quality of a product is as important as completing the project on time?

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• If you were the manager of a team of 25 developers, how would you motivate them?

  - by Pierre 303

  Imagine yourself hired by a new startup backed with few millions coming from venture capitalists. Your mission: organize the development of the next killer app. 25 developers is too much to take care of each individually, so what decision(s) you would make to motivate them? I will appreciate any answers from stock options to free cookies ;) Of course the trick here (unless you are really a manager of a such startup), is put yourself in the shoes of one of those programmers. EDIT: it's an imaginary context. The purpose of this story is to stimulate your wishes. I want to capture what motivates developers.

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• How to avoid jumping to a solution when under pressure? [closed]

  - by GlenPeterson

  When under a particularly strict programming deadline (like an hour), if I panic at all, my tendency is to jump into coding without a real plan and hope I figure it out as I go along. Given enough time, this can work, but in an interview it's been pretty unsuccessful, if not downright counter-productive. I'm not always comfortable sitting there thinking while the clock ticks away. Is there a checklist or are there techniques to recognize when you understand the problem well enough to start coding? Maybe don't touch the keyboard for the first 5-10 minutes of the problem? At what point do you give up and code a brute-force solution with the hope of reasoning out a better solution later? When is it most productive to think and design more vs. code some experiments to and figure out the design later? Here is a list of techniques for taking a math test and another for taking an oral exam. Is there is a similar list of techniques for handling a programming problem under pressure? ANSWERS: I think this is a valid answer: How To Solve It. I found the link as an answer to Steps to solve or approach towards a solution. There were also some really good tips at Is thinking out loud during an interview really the best strategy?. A great and concise argument for TDD is the first answer to TDD Writing code vs Figuring out the answer to a problem?. My question may be a near-duplicate of that one.

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• How to cut the line between quality and time?

  - by m3th0dman

  On one hand, I have been taught by various software engineering books ([1] as example) that my job as a programmer is to make the best possible software: great design, flexibility, to be easily maintained etc. One the other hand although I realize that I actually write software for money and not for entertainment, although is very nice to write good code and plan ahead and refactor after writing and ... I wonder if it is always best for the business (after all we should be responsible). Is the business always benefiting from a best code? Maybe I'm over-engineering something, and it's not always useful? So how should I know when to stop in the process to achieving the best possible code? I am sure that experience is something that makes a difference here, but I believe this cannot be the only answer. [1] Uncle Bob's in Clean Code says at page 6 about the fact that: They [managers] may defend the schedule and requirements with passion; but that’s their job. It’s your job to defend the code with equal passion.

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• "A good programmer can be as 10+ times more productive than a mediocre one"

  - by m3th0dman

  I had read an interview with a great programmer (it is not in English) and in it he said that "a great programmer can be as 100 times as good as a mediocre one" giving reason for why good programmers are very well paid and why programming companies give many facilities for their employees. The idea was that there is a very large demand for good programmers, because of the above reason and that's why companies pay very much to bring them. Do you agree with this statement? Do you know any objective facts that could support it? Edit: The question has nothing to do with experience; if you talk about one great programmer with 1 year experience then s/he should be 10 times more productive than a mediocre programmer with 1 year experience. I agree that from certain experience years onwards, things start to dissipate but that's not the purpose of the question.

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• I've had some free time at work during maintenance releases, but all I do is surf the Internet.

  - by hal10001

  I'm really having trouble with this, since it is the perfect opportunity to learn something new, begin a personal project... essentially do just about anything, but all I do is surf the Internet. I find that I don't want to look at anything programming related, and I'm seriously wondering if I'm letting boredom get the best of me, I'm depressed, or experiencing burnout? Any suggestions for how to go about taking back this unproductive time would be greatly appreciated.

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• Is OOP becoming easier or harder?

  - by tunmise fasipe

  When the concepts of Object Oriented Programming were introduced to programmers years back it looks interesting and programming was cleaner. OOP was like this Stock stock = new Stock(); stock.addItem(item); stock.removeItem(item); That was easier to understand with self-descriptive name. But now OOP, with pattern like Data Transfer Objects (or Value Objects), Repository, Dependency Injection etc, has become more complex. To achieve the above you may have to create several classes (e.g. abstract, factory, DAO etc) and Implement several interfaces Note: I am not against best practices that makes Collaboration, Testing and Integration easier

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• Chemical alternatives to caffeine / coffee for mental clarity and alertness? [on hold]

  - by einsteinx2

  Currently I drink about 2 cups of coffee or tea a day (one in the morning and one in the afternoon usually). However I'm very sensitive to stimulants and drinking caffeine regularly keeps my resting heart rate really high, causes occasional heart palpitations, and sometimes trouble sleeping. I've tried going without coffee, and while I can do it, I have trouble concentrating at work and even just enjoying my work. I'm borderline ADD (or possibly full on ADD, but haven't been checked). And I tend to lose focus easily if I don't have some coffee or tea in me. For health reasons, I'd like to cut it out completely, but when I do my work performance seriously suffers. I already work out (cardio and/or weight lifting) 5 - 6 days a week, and get an average of about 8 hours of sleep, but I still can't focus throughout the day without caffeine. Are there any over the counter chemical or supplement alternatives for mental clarity that you've used with success don't cause the additional unwanted physical side effects that come with regular stimulants like caffeine?

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• How to avoid "DO YOU HAZ TEH CODEZ" situations?

  - by volothamp

  I have a strange situation at work, where a colleague of mine often asks me and other co-workers for working code. I would like to help him, but this constant request of trivial snippets interrupts my thoughts and sometimes makes it hard to concentrate. Plus, I have the impression (...) that this requests are generated by lack of competence, more than by laziness. In fact, he often asks things pretending to know the answer, since when I solve the problem he usually says things like "Sure", "Yes, that's what I thought", giving me the impression that my answer isn't worth it. How can I solve this embarrassing situation? Should I show more explicitly in front of other colleagues his lack of knowledge (by saying things like: "do it yourself if you can, please") or continue giving him what he wants? I think that he should aggregate all his answers in one, so that I can give him a portion of my time and he can work all by himself on his things. There is no hierarchy in the team, I must say we both have a similar seniority of five years, more or less. For the same reason I believe I cannot report to management, since trivial questions are often ignored. I discussed with other two members and they agree with me: in fact he often ask things cycling through colleagues.

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• What do you do when one think the code isn't complicated enough?

  - by Chris

  After six months of development on a project, our stakeholders have had a "gut check" and have decided that the path that we've been walking (a custom designed application framework and data access layer) is holding us (the developers) back from quickly developing the features they would like to see. After several days of debate management and the development team have decided to scrap the current incarnation and start over using ASP.net MVC, with Entity Framework as the bases of the a 'quick and dirty', lets just get it done project. In days following, our senior developer who has never worked with MVC or Entity Framework has finally gotten into a sample project and done some work. His take on ASP.net MVC, "this is not software engineering". So my question is this; what do you do, when one doesn't think the code is complicated enough?

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• Should a software developer get a yearly equipment budget?

  - by CrazyDart

  I am looking at a new position with a new company. I have talked to some people in the past (in general, not at this company) that they had been given a yearly budget to buy new computer stuff to keep up to date. Now why I feel this question is worth asking here is that Joel comes right out and says an employer should pay for the best equipment money can buy... within reason of course. From The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code 9. Do you use the best tools money can buy? Writing code in a compiled language is one of the last things that still can't be done instantly on a garden variety home computer... Top notch development teams don't torture their programmers. Even minor frustrations caused by using underpowered tools add up, making programmers grumpy and unhappy. And a grumpy programmer is an unproductive programmer... Does anyone know if the industry has such a standard to offer an allowance or budget? I have never worked for a company like this, but I am thinking I should toss this in the ring for negotiations. Seems reasonable. How do bigger companies like MS, Google, and Apple handle this? If you say yes, give a range... I have been told numbers from $5k to $10k. Seems high to me, but hey I would gladly take it.

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• What do you do when the code isn't complicated enough?

  - by Chris

  After six months of development on a project, our stakeholders have had a "gut check" and have decided that the path that we've been walking (a custom designed application framework and data access layer) is holding us (the developers) back from quickly developing the features they would like to see. After several days of debate management and the development team have decided to scrap the current incarnation and start over using ASP.net MVC, with Entity Framework as the bases of the a 'quick and dirty', lets just get it done project. In days following, our senior developer who has never worked with MVC or Entity Framework has finally gotten into a sample project and done some work. His take on ASP.net MVC, "this is not software engineering". So my question is this; what do you do, when one doesn't think the code is complicated enough?

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• More productive alone than in a team?

  - by Furry

  If I work alone, I used to be superproductive, if I want to be. Running prototypes within a day, something that you can deploy and use within a few days. Not perfect, but good enough. I also had this experience a few times when working directly with someone else. Everybody could do the whole thing, but it was more fun not to do it alone and also quicker. The right two people can take an admittedly not too large project onto new levels. Now at work we have a seven person team and I do not feel nearly as productive. Not even nearly. Certain stuff needs to be checked against something else, which then needs to also take care of some new requirement, which just came in three days ago. All sorts of stuff, mostly important, but often just a technical debt from long ago or misconception or different vocabulary for the same thing or sometimes just a not too technically thought out great idea from someone who wants to have their say, and so on. Digging down the rabbit hole, I think to myself, I could do larger portions of this work faster alone (and somewhat better, too), but it's not my responsibility (someone else gets paid for that), so by design I should not care. But I do, because certain things go hand in hand (as you may experience it, when you done sideprojects on your own). I know this is something Fred Brooks has written about, but still, what's your strategy for staying as productive as you know you could be in the cubicle? Or did you quit for some related reason; and if so where did you go?

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• How to deal with fellow programmer who likes to delegate task with lack any support from boss [closed]

  - by Rudy

  I have a problem with my fellow programmer. We are currently working together in a small project that need to be shipped every 2 weeks. She has a tendency to ask for help for every issues that she is facing. Whether it's a compile error, algorithm problem or even sync/merge issue that caused by herself. She does not even bother to check Google or try to find out by herself. I can be asked to help her for 5-10 times a day. Everyday her husband keeps calling (4-6 times a day), and most of the code that has been delivered by her are actually incorrect. Today she framed me for sending the wrong delivery product. She went home after lunch on the delivery day without telling PM and other team member on that day and her code she commited does not work at all. It's not even tested. I have no choice to roll back her code and cleaning her code just for sake to able to run the product. I have warned her about her defective codes for almost 3 iterations. She said when she was not around I should be able to test her module for her. I snapped and yelled that I am not her slave and directly reported to my boss. However, my boss is not a person that can manage and care about software quality. What is the most important thing to my boss is delivery of product, whether it tested or not. He can even asked us to deliver something that not even tested by QA to the client, on the next day. Most of our suggestion is not followed by him. He even asked me to apologize to her because I snapped. I am tired of the whole situation. This kind of thing keeps repeated. I do have saving to be able to survive for 6 months and the idea of resigning is keep haunting. There is nothing else that can be learned in my current job and I had been in a better environment than this. What should I do with the situation?

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• How can I optimize my development machine's files and directories? [closed]

  - by LuxuryMode

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

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• How do you combat programming fatigue?

  - by Karpie

  Not fatigue as in 'I need sleep' but fatigue as in 'I just can't be bothered anymore' which usually sets in when you hit roadblocks in whatever project you're working on, generally the closer you get to deadlines. It can be in work projects or personal projects, but it's something I keep hitting more and more lately. I'll get an idea, get into working on it, have a few really good days and make progress, then just some niggly things will trip me up, I can't get things working the way you want, I've hit limitations in the framework, I've got problems I can't find documentation for, etc. and it just gets too frustrating. Or am I alone in this?

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• Effective methods for managing work tasks? (documenting/remembering/prioritizing)

  - by Kaleb Brasee

  I'm looking for suggestions on effective methods that I can use to document, remember and prioritize tasks at work. Many of the these tasks belong to a primary project, but they also exist for independent initiatives. The tasks themselves cover everything from development to documentation to discussions, with varying priorities, and deadlines ranging from right away to a few months from now. Historically I have used a notepad to keep track of these tasks, with a star next to an item indicating it needs to be done and a check mark when it's completed. However, as I gain more responsibilities and more things to manage: it becomes harder to make sure I've done everything (because some things get lost 5 pages back) it becomes harder to remember what's most important to do next it becomes harder to keep track of dependencies between tasks Has anyone found methods that have made their tasks easier to manage? I've considered adding some meta-data to keep track of what's most important and dependencies, or possibly switching to an app that could automate this (if such a thing exists). Something that's accessible anywhere would definitely be a plus.

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• Counting product releases if you work on the backend/online services?

  - by stackoverflowuser2010

  I am trying to update my resume, and I would like to count the number of "product releases" that I was directly involved in with a company. It would seem to serve as a performance metric. The problem is that I was working on the backend of a very large distributed system, like along the lines of Hadoop or other huge database. We had regular 6-month major releases and other minor releases. My manager kept saying that "shipped" these releases, but "shipping" a product to me sounds like releasing single pieces of software, like Microsoft would ship Office 11 or something. Any ideas on "product releases" for backend service engineers, or any other type of performance metric?

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