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• How to tell your boss that his programming style is really bad?

  - by Roflcoptr

  I'm a student and in my spare time I'm working for a big enterprise as Java developer. The job is good, but the problem is, my boss is writing very strange code. I don't want to complain, but some issues are in my opinion really strange. For example: he doesn't know any booleans. All boolean conditions are Strings called "YesOrNo" and then in the condition he uses if (YesOrNo == "Yes") there are a lot of very strange characters in method names and variables like é õ ô or è all loops are infinite loops in the style of for(;;). Then at the end of the loop the condition is tested and if the conditions is fulfilled break; is called. I don't now if I should tell him that I think this isn't a good practice, since he is my boss and decides how and what to do. On the other hand some of this examples are really very weird. Any hints how to cope with? And is this only me who thinks that's bad style?

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• Generalise variable usage inside code

  - by Shirish11

  I would like to know if it is a good practice to generalize variables (use single variable to store all the values). Consider simple example Strings querycre,queryins,queryup,querydel; querycre = 'Create table XYZ ...'; execute querycre ; queryins = 'Insert into XYZ ...'; execute queryins ; queryup = 'Update XYZ set ...'; execute queryup; querydel = 'Delete from XYZ ...'; execute querydel ; and Strings query; query= 'Create table XYZ ... '; execute query ; query= 'Insert into XYZ ...'; execute query ; query= 'Update XYZ set ...'; execute query ; query= 'Delete from XYZ ...'; execute query ; In first case I use 4 strings each storing data to perform the actions mentioned in their suffixes. In second case just 1 variable to store all kinds the data. Having different variables makes it easier for someone else to read and understand it better. But having too many of them makes it difficult to manage. Also does having too many variables hamper my performance?

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• Backup those keys, citizen

  - by BuckWoody

  Periodically I back up the keys within my servers and databases, and when I do, I blog a reminder here. This should be part of your standard backup rotation – the keys should be backed up often enough to have at hand and again when they change. The first key you need to back up is the Service Master Key, which each Instance already has built-in. You do that with the BACKUP SERVICE MASTER KEY command, which you can read more about here. The second set of keys are the Database Master Keys, stored per database, if you’ve created one. You can back those up with the BACKUP MASTER KEY command, which you can read more about here. Finally, you can use the keys to create certificates and other keys – those should also be backed up. Read more about those here. Anyway, the important part here is the backup. Make sure you keep those keys safe! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Which web site gives the most accurate indication of a programmer's capabilities?

  - by Jerry Coffin

  If you were hiring programmers, and could choose between one of (say) the top 100 coders on topcoder.com, or one of the top 100 on stackoverflow.com, which would you choose? At least to me, it would appear that topcoder.com gives a more objective evaluation of pure ability to solve problems and write code. At the same time, despite obvious technical capabilities, this person may lack any hint of social skills -- he may be purely a "lone coder", with little or no ability to help/work with others, may lack mentoring ability to help transfer his technical skills to others, etc. On the other hand, stackoverflow.com would at least appear to give a much better indication of peers' opinion of the coder in question, and the degree to which his presence and useful and helpful to others on the "team". At the same time, the scoring system is such that somebody who just throws up a lot of mediocre (or even poor answers) will almost inevitably accumulate a positive total of "reputation" points -- a single up-vote (perhaps just out of courtesy) will counteract the effects of no fewer than 5 down-votes, and others are discouraged (to some degree) from down-voting because they have to sacrifice their own reputation points to do so. At the same time, somebody who makes little or no technical contribution seems unlikely to accumulate a reputation that lands them (even close to) the top of the heap, so to speak. So, which provides a more useful indication of the degree to which this particular coder is likely to be useful to your organization? If you could choose between them, which set of coders would you rather have working on your team?

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• How do you track bugs in your personal projects?

  - by bedwyr

  I'm trying to decide if I need to reassess my defect-tracking process for my home-grown projects. For the last several years, I really just track defects using TODO tags in the code, and keeping track of them in a specific view (I use Eclipse, which has a decent tagging system). Unfortunately, I'm starting to wonder if this system is unsustainable. The defects I find are typically associated with a snippet of code I'm working on; bugs which are not immediately understood tend to be forgotten, or ignored. I wrote an application for my wife which has had a severe defect for almost 9 months, and I keep forgetting to fix it. What mechanism do you use to track defects in your personal projects? Do you have a specific system, or a process for prioritizing and managing them?

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• Is nesting types considered bad practice?

  - by Rob Z

  As noted by the title, is nesting types (e.g. enumerated types or structures in a class) considered bad practice or not? When you run Code Analysis in Visual Studio it returns the following message which implies it is: Warning 34 CA1034 : Microsoft.Design : Do not nest type 'ClassName.StructueName'. Alternatively, change its accessibility so that it is not externally visible. However, when I follow the recommendation of the Code Analysis I find that there tend to be a lot of structures and enumerated types floating around in the application that might only apply to a single class or would only be used with that class. As such, would it be appropriate to nest the type sin that case, or is there a better way of doing it?

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• How to stop getting too focused on a train of thought when programming?

  - by LDM91

  I often find myself getting too focused on a train of thought when programming, which results in me having what I guess could be described as "tunnel vision". As a result of this I miss important details/clues, which means I waste a fair amount of time before finally deciding the path I'm taking to solve the task is wrong. Afterwards, I take a step back which almost always results in me discovering what I've missed in a lot less time.. It's becoming really frustrating as it feels like I'm wasting a lot of time and effort, so I was wondering if anyone else had experienced similar issues, and had some suggestions to stop going down dead ends and programming "blindly" as it were!

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• How to deal with tautology in comments?

  - by Tamás Szelei

  Sometimes I find myself in situations when the part of code that I am writing is (or seems to be) so self-evident that its name would be basically repeated as a comment: class Example { /// <summary> /// The location of the update. /// </summary> public Uri UpdateLocation { get; set; }; } (C# example, but please refer to the question as language-agnostic). A comment like that is useless; what am I doing wrong? Is it the choice of the name that is wrong? How could I comment parts like this better? Should I just skip the comment for things like this?

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• How to become a good team player?

  - by Nick

  I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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• What are some reasonable stylistic limits on type inference?

  - by Jon Purdy

  C++0x adds pretty darn comprehensive type inference support. I'm sorely tempted to use it everywhere possible to avoid undue repetition, but I'm wondering if removing explicit type information all over the place is such a good idea. Consider this rather contrived example: Foo.h: #include <set> class Foo { private: static std::set<Foo*> instances; public: Foo(); ~Foo(); // What does it return? Who cares! Just forward it! static decltype(instances.begin()) begin() { return instances.begin(); } static decltype(instances.end()) end() { return instances.end(); } }; Foo.cpp: #include <Foo.h> #include <Bar.h> // The type need only be specified in one location! // But I do have to open the header to find out what it actually is. decltype(Foo::instances) Foo::instances; Foo() { // What is the type of x? auto x = Bar::get_something(); // What does do_something() return? auto y = x.do_something(*this); // Well, it's convertible to bool somehow... if (!y) throw "a constant, old school"; instances.insert(this); } ~Foo() { instances.erase(this); } Would you say this is reasonable, or is it completely ridiculous? After all, especially if you're used to developing in a dynamic language, you don't really need to care all that much about the types of things, and can trust that the compiler will catch any egregious abuses of the type system. But for those of you that rely on editor support for method signatures, you're out of luck, so using this style in a library interface is probably really bad practice. I find that writing things with all possible types implicit actually makes my code a lot easier for me to follow, because it removes nearly all of the usual clutter of C++. Your mileage may, of course, vary, and that's what I'm interested in hearing about. What are the specific advantages and disadvantages to radical use of type inference?

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• Which is a better practice - helper methods as instance or static?

  - by Ilian Pinzon

  This question is subjective but I was just curious how most programmers approach this. The sample below is in pseudo-C# but this should apply to Java, C++, and other OOP languages as well. Anyway, when writing helper methods in my classes, I tend to declare them as static and just pass the fields if the helper method needs them. For example, given the code below, I prefer to use Method Call #2. class Foo { Bar _bar; public void DoSomethingWithBar() { // Method Call #1. DoSomethingWithBarImpl(); // Method Call #2. DoSomethingWithBarImpl(_bar); } private void DoSomethingWithBarImpl() { _bar.DoSomething(); } private static void DoSomethingWithBarImpl(Bar bar) { bar.DoSomething(); } } My reason for doing this is that it makes it clear (to my eyes at least) that the helper method has a possible side-effect on other objects - even without reading its implementation. I find that I can quickly grok methods that use this practice and thus help me in debugging things. Which do you prefer to do in your own code and what are your reasons for doing so?

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• Why to say, my function is of IFly type rather than saying it's Airplane type

  - by Vishwas Gagrani

  Say, I have two classes: Airplane and Bird, both of them fly. Both implement the interface IFly. IFly declares a function StartFlying(). Thus both Airplane and Bird have to define the function, and use it as per their requirement. Now when I make a manual for class reference, what should I write for the function StartFlying? 1) StartFlying is a function of type IFly . 2) StartFlying is a function of type Airplane 3) StartFlying is a function of type Bird. My opinion is 2 and 3 are more informative. But what i see is that class references use the 1st one. They say what interface the function is declared in. Problem is, I really don't get any usable information from knowing StartFlying is IFly type. However, knowing that StartFlying is a function inside Airplane and Bird, is more informative, as I can decide which instance (Airplane or Bird ) to use. Any lights on this: how saying StartFlying is a function of type IFly, can help a programmer understanding how to use the function?

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• How often is seq used in Haskell production code?

  - by Giorgio

  I have some experience writing small tools in Haskell and I find it very intuitive to use, especially for writing filters (using interact) that process their standard input and pipe it to standard output. Recently I tried to use one such filter on a file that was about 10 times larger than usual and I got a Stack space overflow error. After doing some reading (e.g. here and here) I have identified two guidelines to save stack space (experienced Haskellers, please correct me if I write something that is not correct): Avoid recursive function calls that are not tail-recursive (this is valid for all functional languages that support tail-call optimization). Introduce seq to force early evaluation of sub-expressions so that expressions do not grow to large before they are reduced (this is specific to Haskell, or at least to languages using lazy evaluation). After introducing five or six seq calls in my code my tool runs smoothly again (also on the larger data). However, I find the original code was a bit more readable. Since I am not an experienced Haskell programmer I wanted to ask if introducing seq in this way is a common practice, and how often one will normally see seq in Haskell production code. Or are there any techniques that allow to avoid using seq too often and still use little stack space?

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• How to write efficient code in spite of heavy deadlines

  - by gladysbixly

  Hi all, I am working in an environment wherein we have many projects with strict deadlines on deliverables. We even talk directly to the clients so getting the jobs done and fast is a must. My issue is that i'd always write code for the first solution that comes to my mind, which of course I thought as best at that moment. It always ends up ugly though and i'd later realize that there are better ways to do it but can't afford to change due to time restrictions. Are there any tips by which I could make my code efficient yet deliver on time?

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• Quick Tip - Speed a Slow Restore from the Transaction Log

  - by KKline

  Here's a quick tip for you: During some restore operations on Microsoft SQL Server, the transaction log redo step might be taking an unusually long time. Depending somewhat on the version and edition of SQL Server you've installed, you may be able to increase performance by tinkering with the readahead performance for the redo operations. To do this, you should use the MAXTRANSFERSIZE parameter of the RESTORE statement. For example, if you set MAXTRANSFERSIZE=1048576, it'll use 1MB buffers. If you...(read more)

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• Getting solutions off the internet. Bad or Good? [closed]

  - by Prometheus87

  I was looking on the internet for common interview questions. I came upon one that was about finding the occurrences of certain characters in an array. The solution written right below it was in my opinion very elegant. But then another thought came to my mind that, this solution is way better than what came to my mind. So even though I know the solution (that most probably someone with a better IQ had provided) my IQ was still the same. So that means that even though i may know the answer, it still wasn't mine. hence if that question was asked and i was hired upon my answer to that question i couldn't reproduce that same elegance in my other ventures within the organization My question is what do you guys think about such "borrowed intelligence"? Is it good? Do you feel that if solutions are found off the internet, it makes you think in that same more elegant way?

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• Adding complexity by generalising: how far should you go?

  - by marcog

  Reference question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4303813/help-with-interview-question The above question asked to solve a problem for an NxN matrix. While there was an easy solution, I gave a more general solution to solve the more general problem for an NxM matrix. A handful of people commented that this generalisation was bad because it made the solution more complex. One such comment is voted +8. Putting aside the hard-to-explain voting effects on SO, there are two types of complexity to be considered here: Runtime complexity, i.e. how fast does the code run Code complexity, i.e. how difficult is the code to read and understand The question of runtime complexity is something that requires a better understanding of the input data today and what it might look like in the future, taking the various growth factors into account where necessary. The question of code complexity is the one I'm interested in here. By generalising the solution, we avoid having to rewrite it in the event that the constraints change. However, at the same time it can often result in complicating the code. In the reference question, the code for NxN is easy to understand for any competent programmer, but the NxM case (unless documented well) could easily confuse someone coming across the code for the first time. So, my question is this: Where should you draw the line between generalising and keeping the code easy to understand?

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• Could someone break this nasty habit of mine please?

  - by MimiEAM

  I recently graduated in cs and was mostly unsatisfied since I realized that I received only a basic theoretical approach in a wide range of subjects (which is what college is supposed to do but still...) . Anyway I took the habit of spending a lot of time looking for implementations of concepts and upon finding those I will used them as guides to writing my own implementation of those concepts just for fun. But now I feel like the only way I can fully understand a new concept is by trying to implement from scratch no matter how unoptimized the result may be. Anyway this behavior lead me to choose by default the hard way, that is time consuming instead of using a nicely written library until I hit my head again a huge wall and then try to find a library that works for my purpose.... Does anyone else do that and why? It seems so weird why would anyone (including me) do that ? Is it a bad practice ? and if so how can i stop doing that ?

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• Parallel Class/Interface Hierarchy with the Facade Design Pattern?

  - by Mike G

  About a third of my code is wrapped inside a Facade class. Note that this isn't a "God" class, but actually represents a single thing (called a Line). Naturally, it delegates responsibilities to the subsystem behind it. What ends up happening is that two of the subsystem classes (Output and Timeline) have all of their methods duplicated in the Line class, which effectively makes Line both an Output and a Timeline. It seems to make sense to make Output and Timeline interfaces, so that the Line class can implement them both. At the same time, I'm worried about creating parallel class and interface structures. You see, there are different types of lines AudioLine, VideoLine, which all use the same type of Timeline, but different types of Output (AudioOutput and VideoOutput, respectively). So that would mean that I'd have to create an AudioOutputInterface and VideoOutputInterface as well. So not only would I have to have parallel class hierarchy, but there would be a parallel interface hierarchy as well. Is there any solution to this design flaw? Here's an image of the basic structure (minus the Timeline class, though know that each Line has-a Timeline): NOTE: I just realized that the word 'line' in Timeline might make is sound like is does a similar function as the Line class. They don't, just to clarify.

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• Why do we keep using CSV?

  - by Stephen

  Why do we keep using CSV? I recently made a shift to working the health domain and despite the wonderful work in data transfer standards, all data transfer is in CSV, both for reporting to external organisations, and for data migrations when implementing new systems. Unfortunately the use of CSV is the cause of the endless repetition of the same stupid errors, with the same waste of developer time. (bad escaping, failing to handle null fields etc.) I know we can do better, and anything between JSON and XML (depending on the instance) would be fine. (Most of the time this is data going from one MS SQLserver 2005 to another!) I feel as if each time I see this happening I am literally watching one developer waste anothers time. So why do we keep shafting each other? When will we stop?

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• How often is your "Go-To" language the same as your favorite??

  - by K-RAN

  I know that there's already a question asking for your favorite programming language here. I'm curious though, what's your go-to language? The two can be very different. For example, I love Haskell. I learned it this past semester and I fell in love with it's very concise solutions and awesome syntax (I love theoretical math so something like fib = 1 : 1 : [ f | f <- zipWith (+) fibSeq (tail fibSeq)] makes my inner mathematician and computer scientist jump with joy!). However, the majority of my projects for classes and jobs have been in C/C++ & Java. As a result, most of the time when I'm testing something like an algorithm or Data Structure I go straight to C++. What about you guys? What languages do you love and why? What about your go-to language? What language do you use most often to get things done for work or personal projects and why? How often does a language fall into both categories??

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• Programming Interview Question [duplicate]

  - by user136494

  This question already has an answer here: How to prepare yourself for programming interview questions? [duplicate] 6 answers I have an upcoming interview in a couple of days and had a question for you guys. I've heard that programming interviews have whiteboard problems where you solve a simple problem on a whiteboard. My question to you is? How many whiteboard problems do you have to solve? Is there more than 1? What are examples of whiteboard problems? Is FizzBuzz one of them? Where can I find practice problems for them? Anyone know of any good web sites?

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• Inspiring the method of teaching. Example- C++ :)

  - by Ashwin

  A year ago I graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering. Considering C++ as the first choice of programming language I have been in the process of learning C++ in many ways. At first - five years back - I had many conceptions, most of which were so abstract to me. It started when I knew almost everything about Structs in C and nothing about Classes in C++. I went through a great time experimenting them all and learning a lot. I had a hard time evaluating Procedural programming vs Object-Oriented Programming. Deciding when to choose Procedural or Object-Oriented Programming took a great deal of patience for me. I knew that I cannot underestimate any of these Programming styles... Though Procedural programming is often a better choice than simple sequential unstructured programming, when solving problems with procedural programming, we usually divide one problem into several steps in order regarded as functions. Then we call these functions one by one to get the result of the problem. When solving problems with Object Oriented Priciples we divide one problem into several classes and form the interaction between them. Evaluating these two at the beginning (as a learner) required a lot of inspiration and thoughts. Instructing to think step by step. Relative concepts to understand deeply. Intensive interests to contrast both solving in both POP and OOP. If you were ever a mentor: What ideas/methods would you teach to students in which it will Inspire them to learn a programming language (in general, computer sciences)?

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• Is it OK to use dynamic typing to reduce the amount of variables in scope?

  - by missingno

  Often, when I am initializing something I have to use a temporary variable, for example: file_str = "path/to/file" file_file = open(file) or regexp_parts = ['foo', 'bar'] regexp = new RegExp( regexp_parts.join('|') ) However, I like to reduce the scope my variables to the smallest scope possible so there is less places where they can be (mis-)used. For example, I try to use for(var i ...) in C++ so the loop variable is confined to the loop body. In these initialization cases, if I am using a dynamic language, I am then often tempted to reuse the same variable in order to prevent the initial (and now useless) value from being used latter in the function. file = "path/to/file" file = open(file) regexp = ['...', '...'] regexp = new RegExp( regexp.join('|') ) The idea is that by reducing the number of variables in scope I reduce the chances to misuse them. However this sometimes makes the variable names look a little weird, as in the first example, where "file" refers to a "filename". I think perhaps this would be a non issue if I could use non-nested scopes begin scope1 filename = ... begin scope2 file = open(filename) end scope1 //use file here //can't use filename on accident end scope2 but I can't think of any programming language that supports this. What rules of thumb should I use in this situation? When is it best to reuse the variable? When is it best to create an extra variable? What other ways do we solve this scope problem?

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• Database Maintenance Scripting Done Right

  - by KKline

  I first wrote about useful database maintenance scripts on my SQLBlog account way back in 2008. Hmmm - now that I think about it, I first wrote about my own useful database maintenance scripts in a journal called SQL Server Professional back in the mid-1990's on SQL Server v6.5 or some such. But I digress... Anyway, I pointed out a couple useful sites where you could get some good scripts that would take care of preventative maintenance on your SQL Server, such as index defragmentation, updating...(read more)

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