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• Torvalds' quote about good programmer

  - by beyeran

  Accidentally I've stumbled upon the following quote by Linus Torvalds: "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships." I've thought about it for the last few days and I'm still confused (which is probably not a good sign), hence I wanted to discuss the following: What interpretation of this possible/makes sense? What can be applied/learned from it?

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• Why do most of us use 'i' as a loop counter variable?

  - by kprobst

  Has anyone thought about why so many of us repeat this same pattern using the same variable names? for (int i = 0; i < foo; i++) { // ... } It seems most code I've ever looked at uses i, j, k and so on as iteration variables. I suppose I picked that up from somewhere, but I wonder why this is so prevalent in software development. Is it something we all picked up from C or something like that? Just an itch I've had for a while in the back of my head.

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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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• Data Access Objects old fashioned? [on hold]

  - by Bono

  A couple of weeks ago I delivered some work for a university project. After a code review with some teachers I got some snarky remarks about the fact that I was (still) using Data Access Objects. The teacher in question who said this mentions the use of DAO's in his classes and always says something along the lines of "Back then we always used DAO's". He's a big fan of Object Relational Mapping, which I also think is a great tool. When I was talking about this with some of my fellow students, they also mentioned that they prefer the use of ORM, which I can understand. It did make me wonder though, is using DAO's really so old fashioned? I know that at my work DAO's are still being used, but this is due to the fact that some of the code is rather old and therefor can't be coupled with ORM. We also do use ORM at my work. Trying to find some more information on Google or Stack Exchange sites didn't really enlighten me. Should I step away from the use of DAO's and only start implementing ORM? I just feel that ORM's can be a bit overkill for some simple projects. I'd love to hear your opinions (or facts) about this.

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• Website Remodel Redirects

  - by inKit

  We've recently built a site for a new client who has not inserted all the content that they had from their old site into their new one. Also a lot of content is dynamic with ID's not matching from the old site to the new one. We have added dynamic redirects for most of the patterns we could find in pages that were 404ing, but there are still a lot of pages that had content, or just jumbled urls that we cannot match up with content pages on the new site. Is it better to redirect these leftover pages to the homepage? Or leave them 404ing?

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• Dynamic Fields/Columns

  - by DanMark

  What is the best way to allow for dynamic fields/database columns? For example, let's say we have a payroll system that allows a user to create unique salary structures for each employee. How could/should one handle this scenario? I thought of using a "salary" table that hold the salary component fields and joining these columns to a "salary_values" table that hold the actual values. Does this make sense? Example Salary Structures: Notice how the components of the salary can be shared or unique. -- Jon's Salary -- Basic 100 Annual Bonus 25 Tel. Allowances 15 -- Jane's Salary -- Basic 100 Travel Allowances 10 Bi-annual Bonus 30

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• When decomposing a large function, how can I avoid the complexity from the extra subfunctions?

  - by missingno

  Say I have a large function like the following: function do_lots_of_stuff(){ { //subpart 1 ... } ... { //subpart N ... } } a common pattern is to decompose it into subfunctions function do_lots_of_stuff(){ subpart_1(...) subpart_2(...) ... subpart_N(...) } I usually find that decomposition has two main advantages: The decomposed function becomes much smaller. This can help people read it without getting lost in the details. Parameters have to be explicitly passed to the underlying subfunctions, instead of being implicitly available by just being in scope. This can help readability and modularity in some situations. However, I also find that decomposition has some disadvantages: There are no guarantees that the subfunctions "belong" to do_lots_of_stuff so there is nothing stopping someone from accidentally calling them from a wrong place. A module's complexity grows quadratically with the number of functions we add to it. (There are more possible ways for things to call each other) Therefore: Are there useful convention or coding styles that help me balance the pros and cons of function decomposition or should I just use an editor with code folding and call it a day? EDIT: This problem also applies to functional code (although in a less pressing manner). For example, in a functional setting we would have the subparts be returning values that are combined in the end and the decomposition problem of having lots of subfunctions being able to use each other is still present. We can't always assume that the problem domain will be able to be modeled on just some small simple types with just a few highly orthogonal functions. There will always be complicated algorithms or long lists of business rules that we still want to correctly be able to deal with. function do_lots_of_stuff(){ p1 = subpart_1() p2 = subpart_2() pN = subpart_N() return assembleStuff(p1, p2, ..., pN) }

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• "Testing Plan Lite" for web project

  - by Emmmmm

  How do you draft a quick & easy "Testing Plan Lite" for a medium-sized web project (70k lines, 2 developers)? I've seen many tutorials/articles on methods of testing, but all seem cumbersome. For us, the goal is to be able to be able to divide up and delegate testing instructions to our friends for different project segments, browsers, etc. What's the quick & easy way to write test plans for web apps? (the 20 of the 20/80 rule) Thanks!

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• Determine Better Coding Practice

  - by footprint.

  As a new programmer, it has always been hard to create applications, because I am still at the learning stage. I understand that to achieve a particular affect or function in an application, there will be numerous ways to achieve the same result. However, should I just purely create a function to it's working state, which means that as long as it works, just as the way I want it to, then it should be fine. Can any fellow programmers of a higher level kindly let me know the right way of doing things?

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• How should UI layer pass user input to BL layer?

  - by BornToCode

  I'm building an n-tier application, I have UI, BL, DAL & Entities (built from POCO) projects. (All projects have a reference to the Entities). My question is - how should I pass user input from the UI to the BL, as a bunch of strings passed to the BL method and the BL will build the object from the parameters, or should I build the objects inside the UI submit_function and send objects as parameters? EDIT: I wrote n-tier application, but what I actually meant was just layers.

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• To reorganize code, what to choose between library and service?

  - by essbeev

  I want to reorganize a large application with lot of code duplication into multiple components. Plus, some code is also duplicated over other applications. The common set of functionality that can be taken out of main application is clearly defined. Now, do I write a library or do I write a service for this functionality; so that all such applications continue to work and there is only one code-base (of common functionality) to maintain ?

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• Lazy Processing of Streams

  - by Giorgio

  I have the following problem scenario: I have a text file and I have to read it and split it into lines. Some lines might need to be dropped (according to criteria that are not fixed). The lines that are not dropped must be parsed into some predefined records. Records that are not valid must be dropped. Duplicate records may exist and, in such a case, they are consecutive. If duplicate / multiple records exist, only one item should be kept. The remaining records should be grouped according to the value contained in one field; all records belonging to the same group appear one after another (e.g. AAAABBBBCCDEEEFF and so on). The records of each group should be numbered (1, 2, 3, 4, ...). For each group the numbering starts from 1. The records must then be saved somewhere / consumed in the same order as they were produced. I have to implement this in Java or C++. My first idea was to define functions / methods like: One method to get all the lines from the file. One method to filter out the unwanted lines. One method to parse the filtered lines into valid records. One method to remove duplicate records. One method to group records and number them. The problem is that the data I am going to read can be too big and might not fit into main memory: so I cannot just construct all these lists and apply my functions one after the other. On the other hand, I think I do not need to fit all the data in main memory at once because once a record has been consumed all its underlying data (basically the lines of text between the previous record and the current record, and the record itself) can be disposed of. With the little knowledge I have of Haskell I have immediately thought about some kind of lazy evaluation, in which instead of applying functions to lists that have been completely computed, I have different streams of data that are built on top of each other and, at each moment, only the needed portion of each stream is materialized in main memory. But I have to implement this in Java or C++. So my question is which design pattern or other technique can allow me to implement this lazy processing of streams in one of these languages.

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• Is programming or computer science in general, all about algorithms?

  - by wakandan

  As a grad student, I find it more and more common for prestigious companies (like Google, Facebook, Microsoft,...) to put algorithm questions in their test and interviews. A few startups I applied to also asked about algorithms. I wonder if algorithms fluency is the most important thing for software developer in those companies? If the answer being yes, what are the best method or resources for one to learn & practice about algorithms effectively? I can't seem to get interested in solving seemingly too complicated problems found in most textbook or websites. Though easily understand basic algorithms (like quicksort, bubblesort,...), I find it immensely difficult to remember and reuse them later. Thanks. P/S: If you ask me what I like, it's building good softwares to solve users' problems innovatively. I suppose that does not necessarily mean the software has to be very complicated.

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• Pending and Approval process

  - by zen

  So let's say I have a DB table with 8 columns, one is a unique auto-incrementing used as ID. So I have a page that pulls in the info for each row based on query string ID. I want to give my users the ability to propose changes. Kinda like a wiki setup. So I was thinking I should just have another duplicate table or maybe database altogether (without the auto-incrementing column and maybe with a date edited column) that keeps all proposed changes in queue and then when I approve them, the script can move the row from the proposed DB to the real DB. Does this sound good or is there a better process for this?

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• What is the possible disadvantage of putting declarations in inner blocks, instead of at beginning of function?

  - by shan23

  At the place where I work, there are explicit guidelines for placement of declarations of variables. According to that, it is required to put them at the global level and / or at the beginning of functions, and not in inner blocks (such as a for loop). Since they've been specified by persons more experienced than I am, I'm sure that there must be a good reason for it, but I cannot figure out what that might be. It would be nice to know if there are any compile time / run time advantages at having them declared at a bigger scope.

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• Is "convention over configuration" not violating basic programming principles?

  - by Geerten

  I was looking at the WPF MVVM framework Caliburn.Micro and read that a lot of standard things are based on naming conventions. For example, automatic binding of properties in the View to properties in the ViewModel. Although this seems to be convenient (removes some boilerplate code), my first instinct reaction is that it isn't completely obvious to a new programmer that will read this code. In other words, the functionality of the application is not completely explained by its own code, but also by the documentation of the framework. EDIT: So this approach is called convention over configuration. Since I could not find any questions concerning this, I altered my question: My question is: Is convention over configuration a correct way of simplifying things, or is it violating some programming principles (and if so, which ones)?

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• How often do you review fundamentals?

  - by mlnyc

  So I've been out of school for a year and a half now. In school, of course we covered all the fundamentals: OS, databases, programming languages (i.e. syntax, binding rules, exception handling, recursion, etc), and fundamental algorithms. the rest were more in-depth topics on things like NLP, data mining, etc. Now, a year ago if you would have told me to write a quicksort, or reverse a singly-linked list, analyze the time complexity of this 'naive' algorithm vs it's dynamic programming counterpart, etc I would have been able to give you a decent and hopefully satisfying answer. But if you would have asked me more real world questions I might have been stumped (things like how would handle logging for an application, or security difference between GET and POST, differences between SQL Server and Oracle SQL, anything I list on my resume as currently working with [jQuery questions, ColdFusion questions, ...] etc) Now, I feel things are the opposite. I haven't wrote my own sort since graduating, and I don't really have to worry much about theoretical things that do not naturally fall into problems I am trying to solve. For example, I might give you some great SQL solutions using an analytical function that I would have otherwise been stumped on or write a cool web application using angular or something but ask me to write an algo for insertAfter(Element* elem) and I might not be able to do it in a reasonable time frame. I guess my question here to the experienced programmers is how do you balance the need to both learn and experiment with new technologies (fun!), working on personal projects (also fun!) working and solving real world problems in a timeboxed environment (so I might reach out to a library that does what I want rather than re-invent the wheel so that I can focus on the problem I am trying to solve) (work, basically), and refreshing on old theoretical material which is still valid for interviews and such (can be a drag)? Do you review older material (such as famous algorithms, dynamic programming, Big-O analysis, locking implementations) regularly or just when you need it? How much time do you dedicate to both in your 'deliberate practice' and do you have a certain to-do list of topics that you want to work on?

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• Is the use of explicit ' == true' comparison always bad? [closed]

  - by Slomojo

  Possible Duplicate: Make a big deal out of == true? I've been looking at a lot of code samples recently, and I keep noticing the use of... if( expression == true ) // do something... and... x = ( expression == true ) ? x : y; I've tended to always use... x = ( expression ) ? x : y; and... if( expression ) // do something... Where == true is implicit (and obvious?) Is this just a habit of mine, and I'm being picky about the explicit use of == true, or is it simply bad practice?

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• Entry level engineer question regarding memory management

  - by Ealianis

  It has been a few months since I started my position as an entry level software developer. Now that I am past some learning curves (e.g. the language, jargon, syntax of VB and C#) I'm starting to focus on more esoteric topics, as to write better software. A simple question I presented to a fellow coworker was responded with "I'm focusing on the wrong things." While I respect this coworker I do disagree that this is a "wrong thing" to focus upon. Here was the code (in VB) and followed by the question. Note: The Function GenerateAlert() returns an integer. Dim alertID as Integer = GenerateAlert() _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, NewErrorInfo(Now(), alertID)) vs... _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, New ErrorInfo(Now(), GenerateAlert())) I originally wrote the latter and rewrote it with the "Dim alertID" so that someone else might find it easier to read. But here was my concern and question: Should one write this with the Dim AlertID, it would in fact take up more memory; finite but more, and should this method be called many times could it lead to an issue? How will .NET handle this object AlertID. Outside of .NET should one manually dispose of the object after use (near the end of the sub). I want to ensure I become a knowledgeable programmer that does not just rely upon garbage collection. Am I over thinking this? Am I focusing on the wrong things?

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• Should I create inner class here or leave as is?

  - by AndroidNoob

  Folks, I have two separate classes. One of them makes http requests/receives response to/from a server and the second one converts received JSON objects into my models (separate classes). I'm thinking it would be an idea to include this class for data converting as an inner class of my first class. Wouldn't my first class be extra big because of it and I need to leave everything as is or this is a good common practice to behave like that?

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• Should I be concerned that I can't program very fast without Google? [closed]

  - by seth

  Possible Duplicate: Google is good or bad for programmer? I'm currently in college to be a software engineer, and one of the main principles taught to us is how to learn for ourselves, and how to search the web when we have a doubt. This leads to a proactive attitude - when I need something, I go get it. Recently, I started wondering how much development would I be able to do without internet access and the answer bugged me quite a bit. I know the concept of the languages and how to use them, but I was amazed by how "slow" things were without having the Google to help in the development. Most of the problems I have are related to specific syntax. For example, reading and writing to a file in Java. I have done this about a dozen times in my life, yet every time I need to do it, I end up googling "read file java" and refreshing my memory. I completely understand the code and fully understand what it does, but I am sure that without Google it would take me a few tries to get the code correct. Is this normal? Should I be worried and try to change something in my programming behaviour?

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• HTML5 article tag application for the iPad

  - by dspencer

  I've used article tags on websites. My understanding and practice is to use the article tag for publication content. I always use HTML/HTML5 tags as their intended purposes and not at will. Recently, I've seen an HTML template that uses the article tag for the non-publication page content such as the content of an About Us page or any other generic page. I asked the why it was used this way and the (vague) explanation was that it had to do with the way the iPad read the tag. Is this true?

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• Are there new flexible texteditors? [closed]

  - by RParadox

  Vi(m) and Emacs are almost 40 years old. Why are they still the standard, and what attempts have been made at coming up with a new flexible editor? Are there any features which can not be built into vim/emacs? My question is similar to this one: Time to drop Emacs and vi? No one had a suggestion, which surprises me. I would have thought that the core of a texteditor is very small and that people brew their own. Perhaps nobody wants to deal with supporting all the modes? Edit to clarify my question: Instead of writing modes and scripts I ask myself, why there is not a much lightweight project, which lets people custom the editor more directly? Vim has 365395 LOC (C lines all included), Emacs 1.5 million LOC. Why is there a project with say 50k LOC, which is the core, why people can use more freely? Perhaps there is such project, I haven't looked very far. I thought about putting together modules from Vim myself and experimenting with some ideas. The core of editing shouldn't be more than 10k? Vim has a lot optimizations which is really an overkill nowadays. Basically I'm looking for a code base for my own editor and Vi/Emacs are I believe not intended to be used in this way. Bill Joy said the following about vi. http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~kirkenda/joy84.html The fundamental problem with vi is that it doesn't have a mouse and therefore you've got all these commands. In some sense, its backwards from the kind of thing you'd get from a mouse-oriented thing. I think multiple levels of undo would be wonderful, too. But fundamentally, vi is still ed inside. You can't really fool it. Its like one of those pinatas - things that have candy inside but has layer after layer of paper mache on top. It doesn't really have a unified concept. I think if I were going to go back - I wouldn't go back, but start over again.

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• Is it a good practice to code in English? [closed]

  - by Milox

  Possible Duplicate: Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English? I have a development comming that is intended to be sold across Latin America (Spanish speakers), but I've heard from some partners that is a good practice to always code in English, I mean just code (methods, classes, pages names, etc), labels on GUI are going to be all in Spanish... Code will be edited in the future by developer of companies across Latin America and just maybe some from outside. What do you think?, any experience with this?

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• Is it a bad practice to have an interface to define constants?

  - by FabianB

  I am writing a set of junit test classes in java. There are several constants, for example strings that I will need in different test classes. I am thinking about an interface that defines them and every test class would implement it. The benefits I see there are: easy access to constants: "MY_CONSTANT" instead of "ThatClass.MY_CONSTANT" each constant defined only once Is this approach rather a good or bad practice? I feel like abusing the concept of interfaces a little bit. You can answer generally about interfaces/constants, but also about unit tests if there is something special about it.

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