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• Clang warning flags for Objective-C development

  - by Macmade

  As a C & Objective-C programmer, I'm a bit paranoid with the compiler warning flags. I usually try to find a complete list of warning flags for the compiler I use, and turn most of them on, unless I have a really good reason not to turn it on. I personally think this may actually improve coding skills, as well as potential code portability, prevent some issues, as it forces you to be aware of every little detail, potential implementation and architecture issues, and so on... It's also in my opinion a good every day learning tool, even if you're an experienced programmer. For the subjective part of this question, I'm interested in hearing other developers (mainly C, Objective-C and C++) about this topic. Do you actually care about stuff like pedantic warnings, etc? And if yes or no, why? Now about Objective-C, I recently completely switched to the LLVM toolchain (with Clang), instead of GCC. On my production code, I usually set this warning flags (explicitly, even if some of them may be covered by -Wall): -Wall -Wbad-function-cast -Wcast-align -Wconversion -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wdeprecated-implementations -Wextra -Wfloat-equal -Wformat=2 -Wformat-nonliteral -Wfour-char-constants -Wimplicit-atomic-properties -Wmissing-braces -Wmissing-declarations -Wmissing-field-initializers -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wmissing-noreturn -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnested-externs -Wnewline-eof -Wold-style-definition -Woverlength-strings -Wparentheses -Wpointer-arith -Wredundant-decls -Wreturn-type -Wsequence-point -Wshadow -Wshorten-64-to-32 -Wsign-compare -Wsign-conversion -Wstrict-prototypes -Wstrict-selector-match -Wswitch -Wswitch-default -Wswitch-enum -Wundeclared-selector -Wuninitialized -Wunknown-pragmas -Wunreachable-code -Wunused-function -Wunused-label -Wunused-parameter -Wunused-value -Wunused-variable -Wwrite-strings I'm interested in hearing what other developers have to say about this. For instance, do you think I missed a particular flag for Clang (Objective-C), and why? Or do you think a particular flag is not useful (or not wanted at all), and why?

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• Would Java programmers hire C# programmers?

  - by Linx

  I learned and used Java in college. After graduating, I got a job in C#. Two years after, there are a lot more positions in Java. Would I have a good chance to be hired as a Java programmer? What interview questions would I be asked? Update (07/10/2012): Thank you for all your answers and comments. I really appreciate it. I had a chance to work on a Java project for 9 months. It was with a mix of Perl because we were trying to migrate from Perl to Java. Eclipse has definitely improved a lot. I used Maven and Spring MVC. Pretty fun. So, after the project ended, I did Ruby on Rails. That was a year-long fun project also. Two years later, I am back to .NET. Overall, being a programmer has been very sweet. Wouldn't trade it for anything else!

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• What's your experience with female programmers?

  - by Rachel

  Let me start by saying I'm female, but every single other female programmer I've known has been pretty terrible. The extent of their knowledge seems to be copy/paste and modify some values. Quite often they don't even try to learn new concepts, or understand what they're doing. I'm not saying good female programmers aren't out there, just that the ratio of good/bad programmers seems much worse then males. Perhaps its because everyone feels they have to give female programmers a chance to prove they are not biased? Or is this just me?? What has your experiences been with them? UPDATE: Just want to say thanks for all the responses. I've learned some interesting things and am happy to know that female programmers have such support :) My experience has been very limited with them but all bad, and I agree that it is probably due to my small sample size (around 5). I wasn't trying to be sexist with such a question, I just wanted to find out if it was really that abnormal to be a female programmer. I'm abnormal about a lot of things you'd expect from a female... I play video games in most of my spare time, I liked Math so much I completed my entire math book during christmas break one year (What can I say, I found the subject interesting), I'm not very social, I dislike shopping, I only have 2 pairs of shoes, my significant other doesn't work but does all the housework/laundry/etc... but anyways, thanks :)

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• Using Completed User Stories to Estimate Future User Stories

  - by David Kaczynski

  In Scrum/Agile, the complexity of a user story can be estimated in story points. After completing some user stories, a programmer or team of programmers can use those experiences to better estimate how much time it might take to complete a future user story. Is there a methodology for breaking down the complexity of user stories into quantifiable or quantifiable attributes? For example, User Story X requires a rich, new view in the GUI, but User Story X can perform most of its functionality using existing business logic on the server. On a scale of 1 to 10, User Story X has a complexity of 7 on the client and a complexity of 2 on the server. After User Story X is completed, someone asks how long would it take to complete User Story Y, which has a complexity of 3 on the client and 6 on the server. Looking at how long it took to complete User Story X, we can make an educated estimate on how long it might take to complete User Story Y. I can imagine some other details: The complexity of one attribute (such as complexity of client) could have sub-attributes, such as number of steps in a sequence, function points, etc. Several other attributes that could be considered as well, such as the programmer's familiarity with the system or the number of components/interfaces involved These attributes could be accumulated into some sort of user story checklist. To reiterate: is there an existing methodology for decomposing the complexity of a user story into complexity of attributes/sub-attributes, or is using completed user stories as indicators in estimating future user stories more of an informal process?

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• Looking for good Regex book

  - by Cyberherbalist

  I've been trying to get a good grounding with Regular Expressions, and am looking for a single book to do so. I've been going through Amazon.com's listings on this subject, and I've identified a few possibilities, but am unsure which would be best for a C# developer who can write very simple Regexs, but wants to learn more. On a scale of 0-9 where 0 is knowing how to spell "Regex" but nothing else, and 9 where I could write a book on the subject out of my own head, I would place myself at 2. Which of the following would be your choice: Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey E F Friedl Regular Expressions Cookbook by Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan Sams Teach Yourself Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes by Ben Forta Beginning Regular Expressions (Programmer to Programmer) by Andrew Watt Regular Expression Recipes for Windows Developers: A Problem-Solution Approach by Nathan A. Good Regular Expression Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach by Nathan A. Good Now, according to Amazon, "Regular Expressions Cookbook" (REC) above is rated the highest according to user ratings, but only based on 20 reviews. The first one, "Mastering Regular Expressions" (MRE) is rated second based on 140 reviews. This alone suggests that MRE might be by far the best one. But is it best for a relative beginner? Would I perhaps be better getting "Beginning Regular Expressions" (BRE) instead, to start with? Please help me resolve my confusion!

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• Does software architect/designer require more skills and intellectual than software engineer (implementation)?

  - by Amumu

  So I heard the positions for designing software and writing spec for developers to implement are higher and getting paid more. I think many companies are using the Software Engineering title to depict the person to implement software, which means using tools and technologies to write the actual code. I know that in order to be a software architecture, one needs to be good at implementation in order to have an architectural overview of a system using a set of specific technologies. This is different than I thought of a Software Engineer. My thinking is similar to the standard of IEEE: A software engineer is an engineer who is capable of going from requirement analysis until the software is deployed, based on the SWEBOK (IEEE). Just look at the table of content. The IEEE even has the certificate for Software Engineering, since ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) seems to not have an official qualification test for Software Engineer (although IEEE is a member of ABET). The two certificates are CSDA and CSDP. I intend to take on these two examination in the future to be qualified as a software engineer, although I am already working as one (Junior position). On a side note on the issues of Software Engineer, you can read the dicussion here: Just a Programmer and Just a Software Engineer. The information of ABET does not accredit Software Engineer is in "Just a Software Engineer". On the other hand, why is Programmer/Softwar Engineer who writes code considered a low level position? Suppose if two people have equal skills after the same years of experience, one becomes a software architect and one keeps focus on implementation aspect of Software Engineering (of course he also has design skill to compose a system, since he's a software engineer as well, but maybe less than the specialized software architect), how comes work from Software Engineer is less complicated than the Software Architect? In order to write great code with turn design into reality, it requires far greater skill than just understanding a particular language and a framework. I don't think the ones who wrote and contributing Linux OS are lower level job and easier than conceptual design and writing spec. Can someone enlighten me?

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• Service Level Loggin/Tracing

  - by Ahsan Alam

  We all love to develop services, right? First timers want to learn technologies like WCF and Web Services. Some simply want to build services; whereas, others may find services as natural architectural decision for particular systems. Whatever the reason might be, services are commonly used in building wide range of systems. Developers often encapsulates various functionality (small or big) within one or more services, and expose them for multiple applications. Sometimes from day one (and definitely over time) these services may evolve into a set of black boxes. Services or not, black boxes or not, issues and exceptions are sometimes hard to avoid, especially in highly evolving and transactional systems. We can try to be methodical with our unit testing, QA and overall process; but we may not be able to avoid some type of system issues. When issues arise from one or more highly transactional services, it becomes necessary to resolve them very quickly. When systems handle thousands of transaction in matter of hours, some issues may not surface immediately. That is when service level logging becomes very useful. Technologies such as WCF, allow us to enable service level tracing with minimal effort; but that may not provide us with complete picture. Developers may need to add tracing within critical areas of the code with various degrees of verbosity. Programmer can always utilize some logging framework such as the 'Logging Application Block' to get the job done. It may seem overkill sometimes; but I have noticed from my experience that service level logging helps programmer trace many issues very quickly.

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• Why are data structures so important in interviews?

  - by Vamsi Emani

  I am a newbie into the corporate world recently graduated in computers. I am a java/groovy developer. I am a quick learner and I can learn new frameworks, APIs or even programming languages within considerably short amount of time. Albeit that, I must confess that I was not so strong in data structures when I graduated out of college. Through out the campus placements during my graduation, I've witnessed that most of the biggie tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft etc focused mainly on data structures. It appears as if data structures is the only thing that they expect from a graduate. Adding to this, I see that there is this general perspective that a good programmer is necessarily a one with good knowledge about data structures. To be honest, I felt bad about that. I write good code. I follow standard design patterns of coding, I do use data structures but at the superficial level as in java exposed APIs like ArrayLists, LinkedLists etc. But the companies usually focused on the intricate aspects of Data Structures like pointer based memory manipulation and time complexities. Probably because of my java-ish background, Back then, I understood code efficiency and logic only when talked in terms of Object Oriented Programming like Objects, instances, etc but I never drilled down into the level of bits and bytes. I did not want people to look down upon me for this knowledge deficit of mine in Data Structures. So really why all this emphasis on Data Structures? Does, Not having knowledge in Data Structures really effect one's career in programming? Or is the knowledge in this subject really a sufficient basis to differentiate a good and a bad programmer?

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• How do I completely self study computer science?

  - by Optimus

  Being a completely self taught programmer I would like it if I could better myself by self-learning computer science course taught to a typical CS grad. Finding different resources on internet has been easy, there is of course MIT open course ware, and there are Coursera courses from Stanford and other universities. There are numerous other open resources scattered around the Internet and some good books that are repeatedly recommended. I have been learning a lot but my study is heavily fragmented, which really bugs me, I would love If somewhere I could find a path I should follow and a stack I should limit myself to so that I can be sure about what essential parts of computer science I have studied and systematically approach those I haven't. The problem with Wikipedia is it doesn't tell you whats essential but insists on being a complete reference. MIT open course ware for Computer science and Electrical Engg. has a huge list of courses also not telling you what courses are essential and what optional as per person's interest/requirement. I found no mention of an order in which one should study different subjects. What I would love is to create a list that I can follow like this dummy one SUBJECTS DONE Introduction to Computer Science * Introduction to Algorithms * Discrete Mathematics Adv. Discrete Mathematics Data structures * Adv. Algorithms ... As you can clearly see I have little idea of what specific subjects computer science consists of. It would be hugely helpful even if some one pointed out essential courses from MIT Course ware ( + essential subjects not present at MIT OCW) in a recommended order of study. I'll list the Posts I already went through (and I didn't get what I was looking for there) Computer science curriculum for non-CS major? - top answer says it isn't worth studying cse How can a self-taught programmer learn more about Computer Science? - points to MIT OCW Studying computer science - what am I getting myself into? Overview of computer science, programming

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• Did you forget me?

  - by Ratman21

  I know it has been a long time since I last blogged. Still at it, looking for work in the “IT” field. Had another phone interview (only found out during the interview that it was for one year contract job, but I still would take it) for a Help Desk job. Didn’t get it, they thought I was not a application support person and more of a hardware support. Gee..I started out in “IT” as a programmer. Then a programmer/computer operator, then a Tandem/Lan operator and finally a Network operator. I had to deal with so many different operating systems, software and applications.   And they thought I was too hardware. Well I am working a temp day job with the U.S. Census. It gets me out of the house and out in the country. If find getting paid to check for living quarters not bad job, except for the many houses I find that are up for sale and looks like it was not the owners (former owners it seems) idea, with the kids toys still in the yards. Not good for some one with a over active imagine or for my truck. So far I have backed in to ditch (and had to be pulled out), in to power pole (no damage to pole and very little to truck) and a mail box (no damage to truck but mail box was leaning a little) in the last two weeks.   Oh an I have started reading/using “The Love Dare” book from the movie “Fireproof”. I restarted (yes I have had to go back to day one from day five) the dare this Sunday. Dare one dare/day one “Love Is Patient” and the first dare is (reading from the book is): “The first part of this dare is fairly simple. Although Love is communicated in a number of ways. Our words often reflect the condition of our heart. For the next day, resolve to demonstrate patience and to sys nothing negative to your spouse at all. If the temptation arises, choose not to say anything. It’s better to hold your tongue that to say something you’ll regret. “. This was almost too easy as I can hold back from saying anything bad to any one but, this can also be a problem in life (you hold back for so long and!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Boom). Check back for dare/day two “Love Is Kind”.

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• Computer Science Degrees and Real-World Experience

  - by Steven Elliott Jr

  Recently, at a family reunion-type event I was asked by a high school student how important it is to get a computer science degree in order to get a job as a programmer in lieu of actual programming experience. The kid has been working with Python and the Blender project as he's into making games and the like; it sounds like he has some decent programming chops. Now, as someone that has gone through a computer science degree my initial response to this question is to say, "You absolutely MUST get a computer science degree in order to get a job as a programmer!" However, as I thought about this I was unsure as to whether my initial reaction was due in part to my own suffering as a CS student or because I feel that this is actually the case. Now, for me, I can say that I rarely use anything that I learned in college, in terms of the extremely hard math, algorithms, etc, etc. but I did come away with a decent attitude and the willingness to work through tough problems. I just don't know what to tell this kid; I feel like I should tell him to do the CS degree but I have hired so many programmers that majored in things like English, Philosophy, and other liberal arts-type degrees, even some that never went to college. In fact my best developer, falls into this latter category. He got started writing software for his church or something and then it took off into a passion. So, while I know this is one of those juicy potential down vote questions, I am just curious as to what everyone else thinks about this topic. Would you tell a high school kid about this? Perhaps if he/she already knows a good deal of programming and loves it he doesn't need a CS degree and could expand his horizons with a liberal arts degree. I know one of the creators of the Django web framework was a American Literature major and he is obviously a pretty gifted developer. Anyway, thanks for the consideration.

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• Estimating cost of labor for a controlled experiment

  - by Lorin Hochstein

  Let's say you are a software engineering researcher and you are designing a controlled experiment to compare two software technologies or techniques (e.g., TDD vs. non-TDD, Python vs. Go) with respect to some qualities of interest (e.g., quality of resulting code, programmer productivity). According to your study design, participants will work alone to implement a non-trivial software system. You estimate it should take about six months for a single programmer to complete the task. You also estimate via power analysis that you will need around sixty study participants to obtain statistically significant results, assuming the technologies actually do yield different outcomes. To maximize external validity, you want to use professional programmers as study participants. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to find professional programmers who can volunteer for several months to work full-time on implementing a software system. You decide to go the simplest route and contract with a large IT consulting firm to obtain access to programmers to participate in the study. What is a reasonable estimate of the cost range, per person-month, for the programming labor? Assume you are constrained to work with a U.S.-based firm, but it doesn't matter where in the U.S. the firm itself or the programmers or located. Note: I'm looking for a reasonable order-of-magnitude range suitable for back-of-the-envelope calculations so that when people say "Why doesn't somebody just do a study to measure X", I can say, "Because running that study properly would cost $Y", and have a reasonable argument for the value of $Y.

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• How to become an expert web-developer?

  - by John Smith

  I am currently a Junior PHP developer and I really LOVE it, I love internet from first time I got into it, I always loved smartly-created websites, always was wondering how it all works, always admired websites with good design and rich functionality, and finally I am creating web-sites on my own and it feels really great. My goals are to become expert web-developer (aiming for creating websites for small and medium business, not enterprise-sized systems), to have a great full-time job, to do freelance and to create my own startup in future. General question: What do I do to be an expert, professional and demanded web-programmer? More concrete questions: 1). How do I choose languages and technologies needed? I know that every web-developer must know HTML+CSS+JS+AJAX+JQuery, I am doing some design aswell cause I like it and I need it for freelance also. But what about backend languages? Currently I picked PHP cause it's most demanded in my area and most of web uses it, but what would happen in future? Say, in 3 years, I am good at PHP and PHP frameworks by than, but what if some other languages get most popular? Do I switch to them? I know that good programmer is not about languages and frameworks but about ability to learn and to aim the goals, but still I think that learning frameworks for some language can take quite some time. Am I wrong? 2). In general, what are basic guidelines to be expert web-developer? What are most important things I should focus on? Thank you!

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• Oracle University Partner Enablement-Update (November)

  - by swalker

  Zwei neue Bootcamps nur für OPN verfügbar Ab sofort stehen folgende Bootcamps nur für OPN zur Verfügung: 3-tägiges Oracle Exadata 11g technisches Bootcamp: Bereitet Sie darauf vor, Oracle Exadata 11g Certified Implementation Specialist zu werden. Termine derzeit geplant für Deutschland, Großbritannien Termine in allen Ländern möglich Termine für Live Virtual Class Schulung: 15.-17. Februar 2012 & 16.-18. Mai 2012 5-tägiges Oracle BI Enterprise Edition 11g Implementation Bootcamp Termine derzeit geplant für Schweden Termine in allen Ländern möglich Alle Termine für Bootcamps nur für OPN anzeigen Neuigkeiten zur Zertifizierung: Java SE 7 Gehören Sie zu den Ersten, die eine Java SE 7-Zertifizierung erhalten. Für Beta-Tests stehen folgende Prüfungen zur Verfügung: Nummer und Name der Prüfung Zertifizierung 1Z1-805 Upgrade to Java SE 7 Programmer (Beta bis 17. Dezember 2011) Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 7 Programmierer 1Z1-803 Java SE 7 Programmer I (Beta bis 17. Dezember 2011) Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE 7 Programmierer Die Beta-Prüfungen bietet Ihnen zwei entscheidende Vorteile: Sie gehören Sie zu den Ersten, die eine Zertifizierung erhalten. Sie haben einen Preisvorteil. Die Beta-Prüfungen können in jedem Pearson VUE Testcenter absolviert werden. Oracle University Oracle University-Nachrichten in diesem Monat: Neue Kurse - Klicken Sie hier, um ausführlichere Informationen und weiterführende Links zu diesen Themen zu erhalten. Möchten Sie vom Know-how der Oracle University-Experten profitieren? Informieren Sie sich mithilfe der folgenden Oracle University-Newsletter: Technologie-Newsletter Applications-Newsletter Bleiben Sie in Verbindung mit Oracle University: OracleMix Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

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• Programming by dictation?

  - by Andrew M

  ie. you speak out the code, and someone else across the room types it in Anyone tried this? Obviously the person taking the dictation would need to be a coder too, so you didn't have to explain everything and go into tedious detail (not 'open bracket, new line...' but more like 'create a new class called myParser that takes three arguments, first one is...'). I thought of it because sometimes I'm too easily distracted at my computer. Surrounded by buttons, instant gratification a click away, the world at my fingertips. To get stuff done, I want to get away, write my code on paper. But that would mean losing access to necessary resources, and necessitate tedious typing-up later on. The solution? Dictate. Pros: no chance to check reddit, stackexchange, gmail, etc. code while you pace the room, lie down, play billiards, whatever train your brain to think more abstractedly (have to visualize things if you can't just see the screen) skip the tedious details (closing brackets etc.) the typist gets to shadow a more experienced programmer and learn how they work the typist can provide assistance/suggestions external pressure of typist expecting instructions, urging you to stay focussed Cons might be too hard might not work any better rather inefficient use of assisting programmer need to find/pay someone to do this

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• "Don't do programming after a few years of starting career". Is this a fair advice?

  - by Muhammad Yasir

  I am a little experienced developer having approximately 5 years experience in PHP and somewhat less in Java, C# and trying to learn some Python nowadays. Since the start of my career as a programmer I have been told every now and then by fellow programmers that programming is suitable for a few early years of a career (most of them take it as 5 years) and that one must change the direction after it. The reason they present include headaches and pressures associated with programming. They also say that programmers are less social and don't usually like to give time to their families, etc. and especially "Oh come on, you can not do programming your entire life!" I am somewhat confused here and need to ask others about it. If I leave programming then what do I do?! I guess teaching may be a good option in this case, but it will require to first earn a PhD degree perhaps. It may also be noteworthy that in my country (Pakistan) the life of a programmer is not very good in that normally they must give 2-3 extra hours in the office to accomplish urgent programming tasks. I have a sense that situation is somewhat similar in other countries and regions as well. Do you think it is fair advice to change career from programming to something else after spending 5 years in this field? UPDATE Oh wow... I never knew people can have 40+ years of experience in this field. I am both excited and amazed seeing that people are doing it since 1971... That means 15 years before my birth! It is nice to be able to talk to such experienced people, we don't get such a chance here in Pakistan.

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• New college grad, psychology major, wants to code professionally. Should I get Sun Java-certified?

  - by Anita

  I just graduated from a fairly well-known liberal arts college in May. Interestingly, I majored in psychology, with a concentration in social psychology. In college I took Intro to Computer Science and hated it (used to blame it on myself; now I blame it on the professor :) However, I've always wanted to be a programmer, and finally got my wish by getting hired by a company that was willing to let me learn coding from scratch in exchange for low pay. Well, what do you know, I just got laid off this morning, and need a new job by November to pay the bills. I loved the coding part of my job at the company, and managed to learn enough Java to feel competent in the job and curious to learn more. I think my goal now is to become a professional programmer. I still know very little (never used Swing, for example) but nothing that a good book can't fix. That's the background anyway; sorry for the rambling - I'm still in shock from the layoff :( It seems to me the quickest way to get noticed by companies, without a CS degree, is by getting certification. I'm halfway through studying for the SCJP and can probably sit for an exam in a week or two. Am I right in my assumption that certs will help in my case? And in general, do I have a bat's chance in hell of making it against formally trained programmers? My assets are really just raw intelligence and intense curiosity; well, maybe a love for problem-solving too. Thanks all - feel free to edit/tag the post!

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• Social IT guy barrier [closed]

  - by sergiol

  Possible Duplicate: How do you deal with people who ask you to fix their computer? Hello. Almost every person that deserves the title of being a programmer as faced the problem of persons that do not even remember the mere existence of those professionals, unless they have serious problems in their computer or some other IT related problem. May be my post will be considered off-topic, but I think it is a very important question. As Joel Spolsky says, IT guys are not Asperger geeks, and they need social life like everybody. But the people that is always asking for favors from us, can ruin deeply our social and personal life. I could experience this by myself. This fact as generated articles like http://www.lifereboot.com/2007/10-reasons-it-doesnt-pay-to-be-the-computer-guy/ and http://ecraazul.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/o-gajo-da-informatica-de-a-a-z/ (I received this one in my mailbox. It is in Portuguese, but I believe it is translated from English). Basically the idea is to criticize people that is always asking us favors. It is even more annoying if you are person very specialized in some subject and a person asks you a completely out-of-that-context question. For example, you are a VBA programmer and somebody says you to that his/her Mobile Internet Pen stopped to work five days ago and needs your help to put it working again. When you go to a doctor to fix your legs, you don't go to an ophthalmologist. You go to an orthopedist. And you pay. I don't how it works in other countries, but in Portugal being a doctor is so an overvalued job, that they earn very much money and almost nobody asks them free favors. So, my question is: what kind of social barrier (or whatever else) do you use to protect yourself from that situation?

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• "Don't do programming after a few years of starting career" Is this a fair advice?

  - by Muhammad Yasir

  I am a little experienced developer having around 5 years experience in PHP and somewhat less in Java, C# and trying to learn some Python now a days. Since the start of my career as a programmer I have been told every now and then by fellow programmers that programming is suitable for a few early years of carrier (most of them take it as 5 years) and that one must change the direction after it. The reason they present is that headaches and pressures associated with programming. They also say that programmers are less social and don't usually like to give time to their families etc. and specially "Oh come on, you can not do programming in your entire life!" I am somewhat confused here and need to ask others about it. If I leave programming then what do I do?! I guess teaching may be a good option in this case but it will require to first earn a PhD degree perhaps. It may also be noteworthy that in my country (Pakistan) the life of a programmer is not very good in that normally they must give 2-3 extra hours in office to accomplish urgent programming tasks. I have a sense that situation is somewhat similar in other countries and regions as well. So the question is, do you think it is a fair advice to change career from programming to something else after spending 5 years in this field? Thanks for sharing thoughts!

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• What type of career path / jobs for a developer to have best work life balance?

  - by programmx10

  I know some people may look down on a question like this but I've been thinking lately a lot about what direction I can take my career to have a good work life balance, since I have been working for a startup where hours tend to drag on, etc and I find it often drains the life out of me. I have been going to interviews and some other companies are also startups / new companies and seem to have a similar attitude about working long hours. Maybe its the technologies I use, the type of development, I don't know but I'm curious if anyone can offer advice on what a path is to be a programmer / developer but work for a company that respects a regular work week and would only rarely find the need to move past this. I realize this won't lead to being the highest paid in my field but I'm ok with that and feel the tradeoff would be worth it as it would also give me time for my own projects, etc. I know some people may say this is too general but I believe it is a programmer specific question because I believe there tends to be a higher than average rate of working overtime, etc and people working in "startup" venture situations than in many other fields and there is definitely a mindset among a lot of people in the field of working long hours that doesn't exist in every industry.

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• How do you stay productive when dealing with extremely badly written code?

  - by gaearon

  I don't have much experience in working in software industry, being self-taught and having participated in open source before deciding to take a job. Now that I work for money, I also have to deal with some unpleasant stuff, which is normal of course. Recently I was assigned to add logging to a large SharePoint project which is written by some programmer who obviously was learning to code on the job. After 2 years of collaboration, the client switched to our company, but the damage was done, and now somehow I need to maintain this code. Not that the code was too hard to read. Despite problems - each project has one class with several copy-pasted methods, enormous if nestings, Systems Hungarian, undisposed connections — it's still readable. However, I found myself absolutely unproductive despite working on something as simple as adding logging. Basically, I just need to go through the code step by step and add some trace calls. However, the idiocy of the code is so annoying that I get tired within 10 minutes of starting. In the beginning, I used to add using constructs, reduce nesting by reversing if's, rename the variables to readable names—but the project is large, and eventually I gave up. I know this is not the task I should be doing, but at least reducing the mess gave me some kind of psychological reward so I could keep going. Now the trick stopped working, and I still have 60% of my work to do. I started having headaches after work, and I no longer get the feeling of satisfaction I used to get - which would usually allow me to code for 10 hours straight and still feel fresh. This is not just one big rant, for I really do have an actual question: Is there a way to stay productive and not to fight the windmills? Is there some kind of psychological trick to stay focused on the task, instead of thinking “How stupid is that?” each time I see another clever trick by the previous programmer? The problem with adding logging is that I actually have to understand what the code does, and doing so hurts my brain in an unpleasant fashion.

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• What can you do to decrease the number of live issues with applications?

  - by User Smith

  First off I have seen this post which is slightly similar to my question. : What can you do to decrease the number of deployment bugs of a live website? Let me layout the situation for you. The team of programmers that I belong to have metrics associated with our code. Over the last several months our errors in our live system have increased by a large amount. We require that our updates to applications be tested by at least one other programmer prior to going live. I personally am completely against this as I think that applications should be tested by end users as end users are much better testers than programmers, I am not against programmers testing, obviously programmers need to test code, but they are most of the times too close to the code. The reason I specify that I think end users should test in our scenario is due to the fact that we don't have business analysts, we just have programmers. I come from a background where BAs took care of all the testing once programmers checked off it was ready to go live. We do have a staging environment in place that is a clone of the live environment that we use to ensure that we don't have issues between development and live environments this does catch some bugs. We don't do end user testing really at all, I should say we don't really have anyone testing our code except programmers, which I think gets us into this mess (Ideally, we would have BAs or QA or professional testers test). We don't have a QA team or anything of that nature. We don't have test cases for our projects that are fully laid out. Ok, I am just a peon programmer at the bottom of the rung, but I am probably more tired of these issues than the managers complaining about them. So, I don't have the ability to tell them you are doing it all wrong.....I have tried gentle pushes in the correct direction. Any advice or suggestions on how to alleviate this issue is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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• Fixed-Function vs Shaders: Which for beginner?

  - by Rob Hays

  I'm currently going to college for computer science. Although I do plan on utilizing an existing engine at some point to create a small game, my aim right now is towards learning the fundamentals: namely, 3D programming. I've already done some research regarding the choice between DirectX and OpenGL, and the general sentiment that came out of that was that whether you choose OpenGL or DirectX as your training-wheels platform, a lot of the knowledge is transferrable to the other platform. Therefore, since OpenGL is supported by more systems (probably a silly reason to choose what to learn), I decided that I'm going to learn OpenGL first. After I made this decision to learn OpenGL, I did some more research and found out about a dichotomy that I was somewhere unaware of all this time: fixed-function OpenGL vs. modern programmable shader-based OpenGL. At first, I thought it was an obvious choice that I should choose to learn shader-based OpenGL since that's what's most commonly used in the industry today. However, I then stumbled upon the very popular Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming by Jason L. McKesson, located here: http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ I read through the introductory bits, and in the "About This Book" section, the author states: "First, much of what is learned with this approach must be inevitably abandoned when the user encounters a graphics problem that must be solved with programmability. Programmability wipes out almost all of the fixed function pipeline, so the knowledge does not easily transfer." yet at the same time also makes the case that fixed-functionality provides an easier, more immediate learning curve for beginners by stating: "It is generally considered easiest to teach neophyte graphics programmers using the fixed function pipeline." Naturally, you can see why I might be conflicted about which paradigm to learn: Do I spend a lot of time learning (and then later unlearning) the ways of fixed-functionality, or do I choose to start out with shaders? My primary concern is that modern programmable shaders somehow require the programmer to already understand the fixed-function pipeline, but I doubt that's the case. TL;DR == As an aspiring game graphics programmer, is it in my best interest to learn 3D programming through fixed-functionality or modern shader-based programming?

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• Is there any research out there on geographic differences in work environments (e.g., respect) for programmers?

  - by Ethel Evans

  One thing I've learned from this website is that software developers are not treated the same as what I've seen in the companies I've worked at, and some of the differences seem to be related to the culture or other factors of the geographical location where the programmer works. In some areas, it seems like programmers can expect many perks and a great deal of professional respect, but in others it sounds like programmers are seen as laborers who are told what to do and then should go do it without question. Even in just the USA, there seem to be major differences in "the norm" between the various regions of this country. I'm wondering how much of this is just my perception, and how much is real differences about how programmers are perceived in their different locations. Is there any research out there discussing major differences in programmer work environments or attitudes about how to treat or respect programmers by geography? I'd be interested in multiple articles tackling different ways of looking at this. Edit: Research, specifically, doesn't seem to be available, so I'm making the question broader. Any good, thoughtful writing on the topic of any kind available?

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• What can be done to decrease the number of live issues with applications?

  - by User Smith

  First off I have seen this post which is slightly similar to my question. : What can you do to decrease the number of deployment bugs of a live website? Let me layout the situation for you. The team of programmers that I belong to have metrics associated with our code. Over the last several months our errors in our live system have increased by a large amount. We require that our updates to applications be tested by at least one other programmer prior to going live. I personally am completely against this as I think that applications should be tested by end users as end users are much better testers than programmers, I am not against programmers testing, obviously programmers need to test code, but they are most of the times too close to the code. The reason I specify that I think end users should test in our scenario is due to the fact that we don't have business analysts, we just have programmers. I come from a background where BAs took care of all the testing once programmers checked off it was ready to go live. We do have a staging environment in place that is a clone of the live environment that we use to ensure that we don't have issues between development and live environments this does catch some bugs. We don't do end user testing really at all, I should say we don't really have anyone testing our code except programmers, which I think gets us into this mess (Ideally, we would have BAs or QA or professional testers test). We don't have a QA team or anything of that nature. We don't have test cases for our projects that are fully laid out. Ok, I am just a peon programmer at the bottom of the rung, but I am probably more tired of these issues than the managers complaining about them. So, I don't have the ability to tell them you are doing it all wrong.....I have tried gentle pushes in the correct direction. Any advice or suggestions on how to alleviate this issue ?

  Read the article

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