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• How to translate the fields of a database model?

  - by Tõnis M

  I have some tables/models in a web app that will have multilingual content. For example a university, with it's description in a default language(english) and the user wants he can see the same information in another language( if the object has it's fields translated). If there were only a few languages then I would just add fields like name_en and name_de and so on, but the number of languages isn't fixed, so that' would create a mess. I could also just create a new object with the translated data but then foreign keys wouldn't work, and only some of the fields can be translated so that would create duplicate data. Storing the translations in a file and using gettext or something similar is also not an option since the objects fields can be translated by the website user, not only developers/admins. What would be the best way to design/architect such a database? Searching from the translated data should also be not too complex - as it should not require creating complex joins which would make the queries slower I'm using PostgreSQL and Ruby of Rails but I'm not looking for a technical solution but for a general idea how to design it.

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• I want to build a Google-friendly web app, where should I start?

  - by ronii

  I have only very basic experience with HTML/CSS and have quite a bit of experience with testing software and web apps from a consumer perspective. I'd love to launch a web application that plays nicely with Google services, similar to some of the apps you'd find on the Google Apps Marketplace, such as ManyMoon, time to note, Socialwok, etc. I'm a huge Google fan and would like to build something that's well integrated with other Google services. If you were a total beginner and wanted to build a complex app like one of examples above (project management, CRM, etc), where would you start? If you worked your ass off 18 hours a day, 24/7, how fast could you do it? I've dabbled into various languages and development frameworks, and read about which apps are using what languages but it's hard to figure out what would be most beneficial to jump into. Ruby on Rails, PHP, Google Web Toolkit, AppEngine. The list goes on and on. I want to be able to build and launch my own scalable web app. Thanks.

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• How to Check Authenticity of an AJAX Request

  - by Alex Reisner

  I am designing a web site in which users solve puzzles as quickly as they can. JavaScript is used to time each puzzle, and the number of milliseconds is sent to the server via AJAX when the puzzle is completed. How can I ensure that the time received by the server was not forged by the user? I don't think a session-based authenticity token (the kind used for forms in Rails) is sufficient because I need to authenticate the source of a value, not just the legitimacy of the request. Is there a way to cryptographically sign the request? I can't think of anything that couldn't be duplicated by a hacker. Is any JavaScript, by its exposed, client-side nature, subject to tampering? Am I going to have to use something that gets compiled, like Flash? (Yikes.) Or is there some way to hide a secret key? Or something else I haven't thought of? Update: To clarify, I don't want to penalize people with slow network connections (and network speed should be considered inconsistent), so the timing needs to be 100% client-side (the timer starts only when we know the user can see the puzzle). Also, there is money involved so no amount of "trusting the user" is acceptable.

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• Syntax errors on Heroku, but not on local server (postgresql related?)

  - by Phil_Ken_Sebben

  I'm trying to deploy my first app on Heroku (rails 3). It works fine on my local server, but when I pushed it to Heroku and ran it, it crashes, giving a number of syntax errors. These are related to a collection of scopes I use like the one below: scope :scored, lambda { |score = nil| score.nil? ? {} : where('products.votes_count >= ?', score) } it produces errors of this form: "syntax error, unexpected '=', expecting '|' " "syntax error, unexpected '}', expecting kEND" Why is this syntax making Heroku choke and how can I correct it? Thanks! EDIT: I was using sqlite on my local machine and Heroku does not support that. Trying to make sure the db is properly configured for PG. I believe I have done that by specifying in the gemfile that sqlite only be used in development. Yet I still get these syntax errors, that interrupt even the db:migrate. EDIT: So now it seems more likely that my scope syntax doesn't work in postgreSQL. Does anyone know how to convert this properly?

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• fastest public web app framework for quick DB apps?

  - by Steve Eisner

  I'd like to pick up a new tech for my toolbox - something for rapid prototyping of web apps. Brief requirements: public access (not hosted on my machine) - like Google's appengine, etc no tricky configuration necessary to build a simple web app host DB access (small storage provided) including some kind of SQLish query language easy front end HTML templating ability to access as a JSON service C# or Java,PHP or Python - or a fun new language to learn is OK free! An example app, very simple: render an AJAXy editable (add/delete/edit/drag) list of rich-data list items via some template language, so I can quickly mock up a UI for a client. ie. I can do most of the work client-side, but need convenient back end to handle the permanent storage. (In fact I suppose it doesn't even need HTML templating if I can directly access a DB via AJAX calls.) I realize this is a bit vague but am wondering if anyone has recommendations. A Rails host might be best for this (but probably not free) or maybe App Engine, or some other choice I'm not aware of? I've been doing everything with heavyweight servers (ASP.NET etc) for so long that I'm just not up on the latest... Thanks - I'll follow up on comments if this isn't clear enough :)

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• getting active records to display as a plist

  - by phil swenson

  I'm trying to get a list of active record results to display as a plist for being consumed by the iphone. I'm using the plist gem v 3.0. My model is called Post. And I want Post.all (or any array or Posts) to display correctly as a Plist. I have it working fine for one Post instance: [http://pastie.org/580902][1] that is correct, what I would expect. To get that behavior I had to do this: class Post < ActiveRecord::Base def to_plist attributes.to_plist end end However, when I do a Post.all, I can't get it to display what I want. Here is what happens: http://pastie.org/580909 I get marshalling. I want output more like this: [http://pastie.org/580914][2] I suppose I could just iterate the result set and append the plist strings. But seems ugly, I'm sure there is a more elegant way to do this. I am rusty on Ruby right now, so the elegant way isn't obvious to me. Seems like I should be able to override ActiveRecord and make result-sets that pull back more than one record take the ActiveRecord::Base to_plist and make another to_plist implementation. In rails, this would go in environment.rb, right?

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• Sinatra: rendering snippets (partials)

  - by Michael

  I'm following along with an O'Reilly book that's building a twitter clone with Sinatra. As Sinatra doesn't have 'partials' (in the way that Rails does), the author creates his own 'snippets' that work like partials. I understand that this is fairly common in Sinatra. Anyways, inside one of his snippets (see the first one below) he calls another snippet text_limiter_js (which is copied below). Text_limiter_js is basically a javascript function. If you look at the javascript function in text_limiter_js, you'll notice that it takes two parameters. I don't understand where these parameters are coming from because they're not getting passed in when text_limiter_js is rendered inside the other snippet. I'm not sure if I've given enough information/code for someone to help me understand this, but if you can, please explain. =snippet :'/snippets/text_limiter_js' %h2.comic What are you doing? %form{:method => 'post', :action => '/update'} %textarea.update.span-15#update{:name => 'status', :rows => 2, :onKeyDown => "text_limiter($('#update'), $('#counter'))"} .span-6 %span#counter 140 characters left .prepend-12 %input#button{:type => 'submit', :value => 'update'} text_limiter_js.haml :javascript function text_limiter(field,counter_field) { limit = 139; if (field.val().length > limit) field.val(field.val().substring(0, limit)); else counter_field.text(limit - field.val().length); }

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• Detecting 'stealth' web-crawlers

  - by Jacco

  What options are there to detect web-crawlers that do not want to be detected? (I know that listing detection techniques will allow the smart stealth-crawler programmer to make a better spider, but I do not think that we will ever be able to block smart stealth-crawlers anyway, only the ones that make mistakes.) I'm not talking about the nice crawlers such as googlebot and Yahoo! Slurp. I consider a bot nice if it: identifies itself as a bot in the user agent string reads robots.txt (and obeys it) I'm talking about the bad crawlers, hiding behind common user agents, using my bandwidth and never giving me anything in return. There are some trapdoors that can be constructed updated list (thanks Chris, gs): Adding a directory only listed (marked as disallow) in the robots.txt, Adding invisible links (possibly marked as rel="nofollow"?), style="display: none;" on link or parent container placed underneath another element with higher z-index detect who doesn't understand CaPiTaLiSaTioN, detect who tries to post replies but always fail the Captcha. detect GET requests to POST-only resources detect interval between requests detect order of pages requested detect who (consistently) requests https resources over http detect who does not request image file (this in combination with a list of user-agents of known image capable browsers works surprisingly nice) Some traps would be triggered by both 'good' and 'bad' bots. you could combine those with a whitelist: It trigger a trap It request robots.txt? It doest not trigger another trap because it obeyed robots.txt One other important thing here is: Please consider blind people using a screen readers: give people a way to contact you, or solve a (non-image) Captcha to continue browsing. What methods are there to automatically detect the web crawlers trying to mask themselves as normal human visitors. Update The question is not: How do I catch every crawler. The question is: How can I maximize the chance of detecting a crawler. Some spiders are really good, and actually parse and understand html, xhtml, css javascript, VB script etc... I have no illusions: I won't be able to beat them. You would however be surprised how stupid some crawlers are. With the best example of stupidity (in my opinion) being: cast all URLs to lower case before requesting them. And then there is a whole bunch of crawlers that are just 'not good enough' to avoid the various trapdoors.

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• ModalPopup CodeBehind Function Wait For User Response

  - by Snave

  I have set up a function which returns an enum of the button that the user clicked in the ModalPopup. I have a variable of type enum to store which button the user clicks in the button click event. In this function, I call the ModalPopupExtender's Show() method. My problem is, the function finishes out and returns the default enum (which is "none" since no button was clicked yet) before the ModalPopup can be shown and store which button the user clicks. So without changing the function to a method and using a different way to store the user's button click, how can I pause the function after the Show() method of the MPE has been called and wait for the user to click a button? Edit(11/20/2009): Clarification: On the aspx page, I include a ScriptManager, PlaceHolder, and an asp:Button with a codebehind click event. What I want is to click the button, then in the click event handler, I want to call a custom static class function that returns a variable. One of the arguments it takes is the PlaceHolder. The function creates all the necessary controls in the PlaceHolder needed to display a ModalPopup. It calls the created ModalPopupExtender's Show() method. What should happen: At this point is the ModalPopup gets displayed, the user clicks a button, that button's event handler fires, the button sets a variable indicating that it was clicked, it then calls the ModalPopupExtender's .Hide() method, and then the function returns the variable that indicates which button was clicked. We then return to the event handler from the original button that was clicked and the programmer can then perform some logic based on what variable was returned. Crux: When the ModalPopupExtender's .Show() method gets called, it does not display the ModalPopup until AFTER the function returns a default variable (because no button was clicked yet) and after the event handler from the original button that was clicked ends. What I need: After the ModalPopupExtender's .Show() method is called, I need the ModalPopup to get displayed immediately and I need the function to wait for a button click to be made from the ModalPopup. My thoughts: Some PostBack needs to be made to the page telling it to update and display the ModalPopup Panel. Then maybe a while loop can be run in the function that waits for a button to be clicked in the ModalPopup.

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• Slow performance when utilizing Interop.DSOFile to search files by Custom Document Property

  - by Gradatc

  I am new to the world of VB.NET and have been tasked to put together a little program to search a directory of about 2000 Excel spreadsheets and put together a list to display based on the value of a Custom Document Property within that spreadsheet file. Given that I am far from a computer programmer by education or trade, this has been an adventure. I've gotten it to work, the results are fine. The problem is, it takes well over a minute to run. It is being run over a LAN connection. When I run it locally (using a 'test' directory of about 300 files) it executes in about 4 seconds. I'm not sure even what to expect as a reasonable execution speed, so I thought I would ask here. The code is below, if anyone thinks changes there might be of use in speeding things up. Thank you in advance! Private Sub listByPt() Dim di As New IO.DirectoryInfo(dir_loc) Dim aryFiles As IO.FileInfo() = di.GetFiles("*" & ext_to_check) Dim fi As IO.FileInfo Dim dso As DSOFile.OleDocumentProperties Dim sfilename As String Dim sheetInfo As Object Dim sfileCount As String Dim ifilesDone As Integer Dim errorList As New ArrayList() Dim ErrorFile As Object Dim ErrorMessage As String 'Initialize progress bar values ifilesDone = 0 sfileCount = di.GetFiles("*" & ext_to_check).Length Me.lblHighProgress.Text = sfileCount Me.lblLowProgress.Text = 0 With Me.progressMain .Maximum = di.GetFiles("*" & ext_to_check).Length .Minimum = 0 .Value = 0 End With 'Loop through all files in the search directory For Each fi In aryFiles dso = New DSOFile.OleDocumentProperties sfilename = fi.FullName Try dso.Open(sfilename, True) 'grab the PT Initials off of the logsheet Catch excep As Runtime.InteropServices.COMException errorList.Add(sfilename) End Try Try sheetInfo = dso.CustomProperties("PTNameChecker").Value Catch ex As Runtime.InteropServices.COMException sheetInfo = "NONE" End Try 'Check to see if the initials on the log sheet 'match those we are searching for If sheetInfo = lstInitials.SelectedValue Then Dim logsheet As New LogSheet logsheet.PTInitials = sheetInfo logsheet.FileName = sfilename PTFiles.Add(logsheet) End If 'update progress bar Me.progressMain.Increment(1) ifilesDone = ifilesDone + 1 lblLowProgress.Text = ifilesDone dso.Close() Next lstResults.Items.Clear() 'loop through results in the PTFiles list 'add results to the listbox, removing the path info For Each showsheet As LogSheet In PTFiles lstResults.Items.Add(Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(showsheet.FileName)) Next 'build error message to display to user ErrorMessage = "" For Each ErrorFile In errorList ErrorMessage += ErrorFile & vbCrLf Next MsgBox("The following Log Sheets were unable to be checked" _ & vbCrLf & ErrorMessage) PTFiles.Clear() 'empty PTFiles for next use End Sub

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• Use bug tracker to get things done and manage personal tasks?

  - by Frank

  This is slightly off-topic, but can only be answered by programmers and is useful to many programmers: Do you think it is useful to use a bug tracking system to keep track of personal todo items and to Get Things Done? I have not tried that; in fact, I don't have much experience with bug tracking systems. For my todo lists, I have played around with Google Tasks and Remember The Milk, but both of them have shortcomings: Google Tasks: I like that you can create todo lists easily, can reorder items in the list and easily create hierarchies. But it is way too simplistic and does not allow to tag tasks or move tasks from one list to another. Remember The Milk: It is nice and sleek, but you cannot create hierarchies of tasks, cannot arbitrarily reorder tasks and cannot set dependencies of tasks. That's where a bug tracking system should come in: Since I think (maybe too much?) like a programmer, my tasks have a natural hierarchy and a tree of dependencies, like in a Makefile. Here are two examples: The task of writing my thesis is done when several milestones are done. Some of these milestones can run in parallel (writing background chapter, running experiments A, running experiments B), others depend on each other (writing main chapter depends on first getting results from experiments A). The same is true for more personal goals: I want to host a dinner party, which requires finding a good date, finishing the guest list, making invitations, finding nice recipes, cooking, ... For me, all these tasks involve hierarchical dependencies and milestones that bug tracking systems should be able to handle? Here is an article that explains how to do advanced GTD with Remember The Milk, but he has to use several workarounds: (1) add a general tag 'wait' to tasks that are waiting for others to be completed but you cannot enter the IDs of the tasks that they are waiting for, (2) starting some special tasks with "." so that they are at the top of the alphabetically sorted list and signal that others are 'below' it as subgoals. Bug tracking systems should be able to handle these things much more naturally? Does anyone have experience and can recommend a lightweight bug tracking system that might be good for this? Other requirements: Should run as web app, should allow me to tag a task with several tags (like 'work', 'fun', 'short-task', 'errands', ...).

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• How to Practice Unix Programming in C?

  - by danben

  After five years of professional Java (and to a lesser extent, Python) programming and slowly feeling my CS education slip away, I decided I wanted to broaden my horizons / general usefulness to the world and do something that feels more (to me) like I really have an influence over the machine. I chose to learn C and Unix programming since I feel like that is where many of the most interesting problems are. My end goal is to be able to do this professionally, if for no other reason than the fact that I have to spend 40-50 hours per week on work that pays the bills, so it may as well also be the type of coding I want to get better at. Of course, you don't get hired to do things you haven't dont before, so for now I am ramping up on my own. To this end, I started with K&R, which was a great resource in part due to the exercises spread throughout each chapter. After that I moved on to Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, followed by ten chapters of Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. When I am done with this book, I will read Unix Network Programming. What I'm missing in the Stevens books is the lack of programming problems; they mainly document functionality and provide examples, with a few end-of-chapter questions following. I feel that I would benefit much more from being challenged to use the knowledge in each chapter ala K&R. I could write some test program for each function, but this is a less desirable method as (1) I would probably be less motivated than if I were rising to some external challenge, and (2) I will naturally only think to use the function in the ways that have already occurred to me. So, I'd like to get some recommendations on how to practice. Obviously, my first choice would be to find some resource that has Unix programming challenges. I have also considered finding and attempting to contribute to some open source C project, but this is a bit daunting as there would be some overhead in learning to use the software, then learning the codebase. The only open-source C project I can think of that I use regularly is Python, and I'm not sure how easy that would be to get started on. That said, I'm open to all kinds of suggestions as there are likely things I haven't even thought of.

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• The most efficient method of drawing multiple quads in OpenGL

  - by CPatton

  I'm not very keen with OpenGL and I was wondering if someone could give me some insight on this. I'm a 'seasoned' programmer, I've read the redbook about VBOs and the like, but I was wondering from a more experienced person about the best/most efficient way of achieving this. I've been producing this 2d tile-based game engine to be used in several projects. I have a class called "ScreenObject" which is mainly composed of a Dictionary<Point, Tile> The Point key is to show where to render the Tile on the screen, and the Tile contains one or more textures to be drawn at that point. This ScreenObject is where the tiles will be modified, deleted, added, etc.. My original method of drawing the tiles in the testing I've done was to iterate through the ScreenObject and draw each quad at each location separately. From what I've read, this is a massive waste of resources. It wasn't horribly slow in the testing, but after I've completed the animation classes and effect classes, I'm sure it would be extremely slow. And one last thing, if you wouldn't mind.. As I said before, the Tile class can contain multiple textures to be drawn at the Point location on the screen. I recognize possibly two options for me here. Either add a quad at that location for each texture to be drawn, or, somehow.. use a multiple texture for the same quad (if it's possible). Even if each tile contained one texture only, that would be 64 quads to be drawn on the screen. Most of the tiles will contain 2-5 textures, so the number of total quads would increase dramatically with this method. Would it be feasible to add a quad for each new texture, or am I ignoring a better way to do this? Just need some help understanding this if you don't mind :) I've tried to be as concise as possible, and I'd greatly appreciate any responses.. and even some criticism. Programming is often a learning process and one who develops seems to never stops learning. Thanks for your time.

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• Gathering Staff anyone interested?

  - by kasene

  Thread Title - Gathering Staff Rush-Soft Game Design is currently looking for staff of a moderate skill level. Team Name - RushSoft Game Design Project Name - N/A We are gathering staff so that we can begin working on a new game. Target Aim - Freeware / Free Version - Paid Version With our first project our aim is to simply get our name out there. Generally we will be targeting a freeware distribution platform or a Free and Paid version. Compensation - Prehaps in the future but don't rely on it If in the future we start developing a game we intend to make any sort of sizable profit from then yes, there will be compensation however currently our low, low funding comes from generous donations. Any money that we make for now will go to the teams funding for things like engine licenses and company registration. Technology - C/C++ RSETech Our primary functional language will be C/C++ as most games are. We will be using a custom built library built on Direct3D called RSETech or RushSoft Engine Technology. Currently its is fully capable of being used for developing a game. The final version is made up of almost entirely C (No C++ or OOP). There is a C++ version currently in the works. Programming: - Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 / 2010 2D Art - Photoshop CS2 - GIMP Talent Needed - We currently are in need of x2 Programmers - With understanding of the following C/C ++ and game programming aspects: -If/Else Conditions -Functions/Methods -Arrays -Pointers (You don't need to fully understand these. Just know when they need to be used.) -Enums -Loops (For and While) -Structs (and How to use . and - syntax) -Classes (and how to call methods and access variables from a class) -State Machines -Switches -Include Guards -Understanding of how game loops work in general. (Init, Update, Render, Deinit) x2 Artists - As long as you have the means to and are able to draw 2D sprites and collab with a game designer to get a good result. 1 or more Game Designers - You can design levels (for platformers) as well as write game scripts and you can come up with good ideas and game mechanics. As long as you can do these things and are able to work well with artists and programmers you're golden. Business Consultant - Someone who knows the industry and how it works. Will inquire about possible distribution platforms as well as contact other developers, websites, and publishers on RushSofts behalf. Team Structure - Kasene Clark - Co-Founder/Lead Programmer/Game Designer Casey W - Co-Founder/Artist(GC/Animation)/Game Designer Nathan Mayworm - Game Designer. Website - RushSoft Websitek Contact - Kasene Clark [email protected] - [email protected] Phone - 12075181967 Feedback - Any Thank You! -Kasene

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• What are five things you hate about your favorite language?

  - by brian d foy

  There's been a cluster of Perl-hate on Stackoverflow lately, so I thought I'd bring my "Five things you hate about your favorite language" question to StackOverflow. Take your favorite language and tell me five things you hate about it. Those might be things that just annoy you, admitted design flaws, recognized performance problems, or any other category. You just have to hate it, and it has to be your favorite language. Don't compare it to another language, and don't talk about languages that you already hate. Don't talk about the things you like in your favorite language. I just want to hear the things that you hate but tolerate so you can use all of the other stuff, and I want to hear it about the language you wished other people would use. I ask this whenever someone tries to push their favorite language on me, and sometimes as an interview question. If someone can't find five things to hate about his favorite tool, he don't know it well enough to either advocate it or pull in the big dollars using it. He hasn't used it in enough different situations to fully explore it. He's advocating it as a culture or religion, which means that if I don't choose his favorite technology, I'm wrong. I don't care that much which language you use. Don't want to use a particular language? Then don't. You go through due diligence to make an informed choice and still don't use it? Fine. Sometimes the right answer is "You have a strong programming team with good practices and a lot of experience in Bar. Changing to Foo would be stupid." This is a good question for code reviews too. People who really know a codebase will have all sorts of suggestions for it, and those who don't know it so well have non-specific complaints. I ask things like "If you could start over on this project, what would you do differently?" In this fantasy land, users and programmers get to complain about anything and everything they don't like. "I want a better interface", "I want to separate the model from the view", "I'd use this module instead of this other one", "I'd rename this set of methods", or whatever they really don't like about the current situation. That's how I get a handle on how much a particular developer knows about the codebase. It's also a clue about how much of the programmer's ego is tied up in what he's telling me. Hate isn't the only dimension of figuring out how much people know, but I've found it to be a pretty good one. The things that they hate also give me a clue how well they are thinking about the subject.

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• Git/Mercurial (hg) opinion

  - by Richard

  First, let me say I'm not a professional programmer, but an engineer who had a need for it and had to learn. I was always working alone, so it was just me and my seven splitted personalities ... and we worked okey as a team :) Most of my stuff is done in C/Fortran/Matlab and so far I've been learning git to manage it all. However, although I've had no unsolvable problems with it, I've never been "that" happy with it ... for everything I cannot do, I hae to look up a book. And, for some time now I've been hearning a lot of good stuff about hg. Now, a coleague of mine will have to work with me on a project (I almost feel sorry for him) and he's started learning hg (says he likes it more), and I'm considering the switch myself. We work almost exclusivly on Windows platform (although I manage relatively ok using unix tools and things that come from that part of the world). So, I was wondering, in a described scenario, what problems could I expect with the switch. I heard that hg is rather more user friendly towards windows users, regarding the user interfaces. How does it handle repositories ? Does it create them the same way as git does (just one subdirectory in a working directory) and can I just copy the whole project directory (including git repo) and just carry them somewhere with no extra thinking ? (I really liked that when I was choosing over git/svn). Are there any good books on it that you can recommend (something like Pro Git, only for Hg). What are good ways to implement hg into Visual Studio/GVim for Windows, or into Windows Explorer so I can work relatively easily (I would like to avoid using the command line for everything regarding it, like in git shell). Is there something else I should be aware of (please, on this don't point me to other questions ... they just give me a ton of info, and I'm not sure what is it that I should take as important, and what to disregard). I'm trying to cut some time, since I cannot spend all that time relearning hg, like I did for git. I've also heard git is c project, while mercurial is python ... is there any noticeable difference in speed. git was pretty speedy ... will I encounter some waiting while working. Notice: All my projects are of let's say, middle size ... mostly numerical simulations ... 10-15000 lines (medium size?)

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• How do you attract programmers in rural areas?

  - by Reed Copsey

  I run a software development group for a very small, but stable and established company in a small town, somewhat outside of the "big city". Unfortunately, the "programmer" labor pool is much smaller due to the size of the city. There are many positives to working in this area, especially in terms of quality of life (particularly for people interested in outdoor activities), lower cost of living, great schools and neighborhoods, etc. However, I've always had difficulty attracting high-qualtiy, experienced developers. For those of you who hire developers outside of large cities: Where do you advertise to find good developers? Many of the large sites are very focused in certain metropolitan areas, and seem inappropriate places to advertise if you're outside of that main region. How do you attract quality developers to rural (or at least less metropolitan) locations? Do you find that you make more sacrifices in your hiring due to a smaller labor pool? Or do you just wait, and take extra time to attract people? What sacrifices do you expect to make if you are outside of the main developer-rich cities? For all of the developers out there... What would entice you to working in a smaller town? Are there things that would stand out and make you willing to relocate or at least apply to a position that was not nearby? What specific qualities would help you want to move outside of the city? In the past, I've had difficulty with finding good people. Most of the people who've applied and been willing to move out to a more rural location seem like the types that can't keep a quality job elsewhere. I'd like to know what advice people have to attracting quality technical staff. I don't believe its the work itself that's been the problem - The work is both interesting and challenging, and nearly 100% new development. The developers I have seem very happy with their situation - they love the work, the atmosphere, etc. It's more a matter of finding willing, able developers. Edit: More info after the first couple of answers: Right now, some of my best developers telecommute (some work from overseas); however, for this question, I'm trying to figure out how to get people who want to live and work full time locally. I need some people with whom I interact every day.

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• Reading Source Code Aloud

  - by Jon Purdy

  After seeing this question, I got to thinking about the various challenges that blind programmers face, and how some of them are applicable even to sighted programmers. Particularly, the problem of reading source code aloud gives me pause. I have been programming for most of my life, and I frequently tutor fellow students in programming, most often in C++ or Java. It is uniquely aggravating to try to verbally convey the essential syntax of a C++ expression. The speaker must give either an idiomatic translation into English, or a full specification of the code in verbal longhand, using explicit yet slow terms such as "opening parenthesis", "bitwise and", et cetera. Neither of these solutions is optimal. On the one hand, an idiomatic translation is only useful to a programmer who can de-translate back into the relevant programming code—which is not usually the case when tutoring a student. In turn, education (or simply getting someone up to speed on a project) is the most common situation in which source is read aloud, and there is a very small margin for error. On the other hand, a literal specification is aggravatingly slow. It takes far far longer to say "pound, include, left angle bracket, iostream, right angle bracket, newline" than it does to simply type #include <iostream>. Indeed, most experienced C++ programmers would read this merely as "include iostream", but again, inexperienced programmers abound and literal specifications are sometimes necessary. So I've had an idea for a potential solution to this problem. In C++, there is a finite set of keywords—63—and operators—54, discounting named operators and treating compound assignment operators and prefix versus postfix auto-increment and decrement as distinct. There are just a few types of literal, a similar number of grouping symbols, and the semicolon. Unless I'm utterly mistaken, that's about it. So would it not then be feasible to simply ascribe a concise, unique pronunciation to each of these distinct concepts (including one for whitespace, where it is required) and go from there? Programming languages are far more regular than natural languages, so the pronunciation could be standardised. Speakers of any language would be able to verbally convey C++ code, and due to the regularity and fixity of the language, speech-to-text software could be optimised to accept C++ speech with a high degree of accuracy. So my question is twofold: first, is my solution feasible; and second, does anyone else have other potential solutions? I intend to take suggestions from here and use them to produce a formal paper with an example implementation of my solution.

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• Mercurial for Beginners: The Definitive Practical Guide

  - by Laz

  Inspired by Git for beginners: The definitive practical guide. This is a compilation of information on using Mercurial for beginners for practical use. Beginner - a programmer who has touched source control without understanding it very well. Practical - covering situations that the majority of users often encounter - creating a repository, branching, merging, pulling/pushing from/to a remote repository, etc. Notes: Explain how to get something done rather than how something is implemented. Deal with one question per answer. Answer clearly and as concisely as possible. Edit/extend an existing answer rather than create a new answer on the same topic. Please provide a link to the the Mercurial wiki or the HG Book for people who want to learn more. Questions: Installation/Setup How to install Mercurial? How to set up Mercurial? How do you create a new project/repository? How do you configure it to ignore files? Working with the code How do you get the latest code? How do you check out code? How do you commit changes? How do you see what's uncommitted, or the status of your current codebase? How do you destroy unwanted commits? How do you compare two revisions of a file, or your current file and a previous revision? How do you see the history of revisions to a file? How do you handle binary files (visio docs, for instance, or compiler environments)? How do you merge files changed at the "same time"? Tagging, branching, releases, baselines How do you 'mark' 'tag' or 'release' a particular set of revisions for a particular set of files so you can always pull that one later? How do you pull a particular 'release'? How do you branch? How do you merge branches? How do you merge parts of one branch into another branch? Other Good GUI/IDE plugin for Mercurial? Advantages/disadvantages? Any other common tasks a beginner should know? How do I interface with Subversion? Other Mercurial references Mercurial: The Definitive Guide Mercurial Wiki Meet Mercurial | Peepcode Screencast

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• Boggling Direct3D9 dynamic vertex buffer Lock crash/post-lock failure on Intel GMA X3100.

  - by nj

  Hi, For starters I'm a fairly seasoned graphics programmer but as wel all know, everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately the codebase is a bit too large to start throwing sensible snippets here and re-creating the whole situation in an isolated CPP/codebase is too tall an order -- for which I am sorry, do not have the time. I'll do my best to explain. B.t.w, I will of course supply specific pieces of code if someone wonders how I'm handling this-or-that! As with all resources in the D3DPOOL_DEFAULT pool, when the device context is taken away from you you'll sooner or later will have to reset your resources. I've built a mechanism to handle this for all relevant resources that's been working for years; but that fact nothingwithstanding I've of course checked, asserted and doubted any assumption since this bug came to light. What happens is as follows: I have a rather large dynamic vertex buffer, exact size 18874368 bytes. This buffer is locked (and discarded fully using the D3DLOCK_DISCARD flag) each frame prior to generating dynamic geometry (isosurface-related, f.y.i) to it. This works fine, until, of course, I start to reset. It might take 1 time, it might take 2 or it might take 5 resets to set off a bug that causes an access violation either on the pointer returned by the Lock() operation on the renewed resource or a plain crash -- regarding a somewhat similar address, but without the offset that it has tacked on to it in the first case because in that case we're somewhere halfway writing -- iside the D3D9 dll Lock() call. I've tested this on other hardware, upgraded my GMA X3100 drivers (using a MacBook with BootCamp) to the latest ones, but I can't reproduce it on any other machine and I'm at a loss about what's wrong here. I have tried to reproduce a similar situation with a similar buffer (I've got a large scratch pad of the same type I filled with quads) and beyond a certain amount of bytes it started to behave likewise. I'm not asking for a solution here but I'm very interested if there are other developers here who have battled with the same foe or maybe some who can point me in some insightful direction, maybe ask some questions that might shed a light on what I may or may not be overlooking. Another interesting artifact is that the vertex buffer starts to bug if I supply both D3DLOCK_DISCARD and D3DLOCK_NOOVERWRITE together which, even though not very logical (you're not going to overwrite if you've just discarded all), gives graphics glitches. Thanks and any corrections are more than welcome. Niels p.s - A friend of mine raised the valid point that it is a huge buffer for onboard video RAM and it's being at least double or triple buffered internally due to it's dynamic nature. On the other hand, the debug output (D3D9 debug DLL + max. warning output) remains silent. p.s 2 - Had it tested on more machines and still works -- it's probably a matter of circumstance: the huge dynamic, internally double/trippled buffered buffer, not a lot of memory and drivers that don't complain when they should.. Unless someone has a better suggestion; I'd still love to hear it :)

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• Armchair Linguists: 'code' vs. 'codes'--or why I write 'code' and my manager asks for 'codes'

  - by Ukko

  I wanted to tap into the collective wisdom here to see if I can get some insight into one of my pet peeves, people who thread "code" as a countable noun. Let me also preface this by saying that I am not talking about anyone who speaks english as a second language, this is a native phenomenon. For those of us who slept through grammar class there are two classes of nouns which basically refer to things that are countable and non-countable (sometimes referred to as count and noncount). For instance 'sand' is a non-count noun and 'apple' is count. You can talk about "two apples" but "two sands" does not parse. The bright students then would point out a word like "beer" where is looks like this is violated. Beer as a substance is certainly a non-count noun, but I can ask for "two beers" without offending the grammar police. The reason is that there are actually two words tied up in that one utterance, Definition #1 is a yummy golden substance and Definition #2 is a colloquial term for a container of said substance. #1 is non-count and #2 is countable. This gets to my problem with "codes" as a countable noun. In my mind the code that we programmers write is non-count, "I wrote some code today." When used in the plural like "Have you got the codes" I can only assume that you are asking if I have the cryptographically significant numbers for launching a missile or the like. Every time my peer in marketing asks about when we will have the new codes ready I have a vision of rooms of code breakers going over the latest Enigma coded message. I corrected the usage in all the documents I am asked to review, but then I noticed that our customer was also using the work "codes" when they meant "code". At this point I have realized that there is a significant sub-population that uses "codes" and they seem to be impervious to what I see as the dominant "correct" usage. This is the part I want some help on, has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? Do you know what group it is associated with, old Fortran programmer perhaps? Is it a regionalism? I have become quick to change my terms when I notice a customer's usage, but it would be nice to know if I am sending a proposal somewhere what style they expect. I would hate to get canned with a review of "Ha, these guy's must be morons they don't even know 'code' is plural!"

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• Advice for Architecture Design Logic for software application

  - by Prasad

  Hi, I have a framework of basic to complex set of objects/classes (C++) running into around 500. With some rules and regulations - all these objects can communicate with each other and hence can cover most of the common queries in the domain. My Dream: I want to provide these objects as icons/glyphs (as I learnt recently) on a workspace. All these objects can be dragged/dropped into the workspace. They have to communicate only through their methods(interface) and in addition to few iterative and conditional statements. All these objects are arranged finally to execute a protocol/workflow/dataflow/process. After drawing the flow, the user clicks the Execute/run button. All the user interaction should be multi-touch enabled. The best way to show my dream is : Jeff Han's Multitouch Video. consider Jeff is playing with my objects instead of the google maps. :-) it should be like playing a jigsaw puzzle. Objective: how can I achieve the following while working on this final product: a) the development should be flexible to enable provision for web services b) the development should enable easy web application development c) The development should enable client-server architecture - d) further it should also enable mouse based drag/drop desktop application like Adobe programs etc. I mean to say: I want to economize on investments. Now I list my efforts till now in design : a) Created an Editor (VB) where the user writes (manually) the object / class code b) On Run/Execute, the code is copied into a main() function and passed to interpreter. c) Catch the output and show it in the console. The interpreter can be separated to become a server and the Editor can become the client. This needs lot of standard client-server architecture work. But some how I am not comfortable in the tightness of this system. Without interpreter is there much faster and better embeddable solution to this? - other than writing a special compiler for these objects. Recently learned about AXIS-C++ can help me - looks like - a friend suggested. Is that the way to go ? Here are my questions: (pl. consider me a self taught programmer and NOT my domain) a) From the stage of C++ objects to multi-touch product, how can I make sure I will develop the parallel product/service models as well.? What should be architecture aspects I should consider ? b) What technologies are best suited for this? c) If I am thinking of moving to Cloud Computing, how difficult/ how redundant / how unnecessary my efforts will be ? d) How much time in months would it take to get the first beta ? I take the liberty to ask if any of the experts here are interested in this project, please email me: [email protected] Thank you for any help. Looking forward.

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• What Can I Do To One Of My Team Number (Good Friend As Well) Who Lost His Passion.

  - by skyflyer

  It seems this question is not program related, but there are lot of similar questions. So please bear with me! By the way, I am programmer and my team is also charging a software project. And SO is the only place which solved me lot of thorny troubles!THANK YOU GUYS! I joined my company with him years ago. At that time he was quite passionate on his job which is a front-end development. He gave us lot of useful suggestions concerning his work like design. And I believed he was a smart guy. I believe he still is smart too by the way. One years later, however, he seemed lost his passion and fooling around every day, did not care about his work any more and produced poorwork. Even worse he literally stopped learning new skills and honing his work related skills. For me it is horrible, we got to keep abreast with new technology development, otherwise we will be throw out. Since we were just coworkers, I did not care about it too much except mentioned my thoughts several times. But last month, we resembled a new group and assigned very important project. And I am the team leader, sadly! My boss gave me lot of support and expectation as well. I did a pretty good job before and I am very optimism to our future. But as a team, if my team does not work hard, we will be doomed to failure no matter how hard I work and push. In order to revitalize his passion, I tried couple of ways like talking to him about my concern and my boss's angry. I offered his new task which is quite new to him. I even persuaded my boss to give him new incentive package. But all of them knocked wall. His reaction was just he did not care. Even worse he did not want to talk about his situation. I want to be hard on him, but since we are friends and coworkers, I really can not see it will work. Even it works, I can not so quickly change my self from friend and coworker into manager. As a novice in management, I am really overwhelmed! I do not want get him fired, we are friends and I do not see him fired as my team number. What can I do? Thank you guys!

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• Performance Optimization for Matrix Rotation

  - by Summer_More_More_Tea

  Hello everyone: I'm now trapped by a performance optimization lab in the book "Computer System from a Programmer's Perspective" described as following: In a N*N matrix M, where N is multiple of 32, the rotate operation can be represented as: Transpose: interchange elements M(i,j) and M(j,i) Exchange rows: Row i is exchanged with row N-1-i A example for matrix rotation(N is 3 instead of 32 for simplicity): ------- ------- |1|2|3| |3|6|9| ------- ------- |4|5|6| after rotate is |2|5|8| ------- ------- |7|8|9| |1|4|7| ------- ------- A naive implementation is: #define RIDX(i,j,n) ((i)*(n)+(j)) void naive_rotate(int dim, pixel *src, pixel *dst) { int i, j; for (i = 0; i < dim; i++) for (j = 0; j < dim; j++) dst[RIDX(dim-1-j, i, dim)] = src[RIDX(i, j, dim)]; } I come up with an idea by inner-loop-unroll. The result is: Code Version Speed Up original 1x unrolled by 2 1.33x unrolled by 4 1.33x unrolled by 8 1.55x unrolled by 16 1.67x unrolled by 32 1.61x I also get a code snippet from pastebin.com that seems can solve this problem: void rotate(int dim, pixel *src, pixel *dst) { int stride = 32; int count = dim >> 5; src += dim - 1; int a1 = count; do { int a2 = dim; do { int a3 = stride; do { *dst++ = *src; src += dim; } while(--a3); src -= dim * stride + 1; dst += dim - stride; } while(--a2); src += dim * (stride + 1); dst -= dim * dim - stride; } while(--a1); } After carefully read the code, I think main idea of this solution is treat 32 rows as a data zone, and perform the rotating operation respectively. Speed up of this version is 1.85x, overwhelming all the loop-unroll version. Here are the questions: In the inner-loop-unroll version, why does increment slow down if the unrolling factor increase, especially change the unrolling factor from 8 to 16, which does not effect the same when switch from 4 to 8? Does the result have some relationship with depth of the CPU pipeline? If the answer is yes, could the degrade of increment reflect pipeline length? What is the probable reason for the optimization of data-zone version? It seems that there is no too much essential difference from the original naive version. EDIT: My test environment is Intel Centrino Duo processor and the verion of gcc is 4.4 Any advice will be highly appreciated! Kind regards!

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• [NEWVERSION]algorithm || method to write prog[UNSOLVED] [closed]

  - by fatai

  I am one of the computer science student. Everyone solve problem with a different or same method, ( but actually I dont know whether they use method or I dont know whether there are such common method to approach problem.) if there are common method, What is it ? If there are different method, which method are you using ? All teacher give us problem which in simple form sometimes, but they donot introduce any approach or method(s) so that we cannot make a decision to choose the method then apply that one to problem , afterward find solution then write code.No help from teacher , push us to find method to solve homework. Ex: my friend is using no method , he says "I start to construct algorithm while I try to write prog." I have found one method when I failed the course, More accurately, my method: When I counter problem in language , I will get more paper and then ; first, input/ output step ; my prog will take this / these there argument(s) and return namely X , ex : in c, input length is not known and at same type , so I must use pointer desired output is in form of package , so use structure second, execution part ; in that step , I am writing all step which are goes to final output ex : in python ; 1.) [ + , [- , 4 , [ * , 1 , 2 ]], 5] 2.) [ + , [- , 4 , 2 ],5 ] 3.) [ + , 2 , 5] 4.) 7 ==> return 7 third, I will write test code ex : in c++ input : append 3 4 5 6 vector_x remove 0 1 desired output vector_x holds : 5 6 now, my other question is ; What is/are other method(s) which have/has been; used to construct class :::: for c++ , python, java used to communicate classes / computers used for solving embedded system problem ::::: for c by other user? Some programmer uses generalized method without considering prog-language(java , perl .. ), what is this method ? Why I wonder , because I learn if you dont costruct algorithm on paper, you may achieve your goal. Like no money no lunch , I can say no algorithm no prog therefore , feel free when you write your own method , a way which is introduced by someone else but you are using and you find it is so efficient

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