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• Time management and self improvement

  - by Filip

  I hope I can open a discussion on this topic as this is not a specific problem. It's a topic I hope to get some ideas on how people in similar situation as mine manage their time. OK, I'm a single developer on a software project for the last 6-8 months. The project I'm working on uses several technologies, mainly .net stuff: WPF, WF, NHibernate, WCF, MySql and other third party SDKs relevant for the project nature. My experience and knowledge vary, for example I have a lot of experience in WPF but much less in WCF. I work full time on the project and im curios on how other programmers which need to multi task in many areas manage their time. I'm a very applied type of person and prefer to code instead of doing research. I feel that doing research "might" slow down the progress of the project while I recognize that research and learning more in areas which I'm not so strong will ultimately make me more productive. How would you split up your daily time in productive coding time and time to and experiment, read blogs, go through tutorials etc. I would say that Im coding about 90%+ of my day and devoting some but very little time in research and acquiring new knowledge. Thanks for your replies. I think I will adopt a gradual transition to Dominics block parts. I kinda knew that coding was taking up way to much of my time but it feels good having a first version of the project completed and ready. With a few months of focused hard work behind me I hope to get more time to experiment and expand my knowlegde. Now I only hope my boss will cut me some slack and stop pressuring me for features...

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• Numerous Unexpected Obstacles Ruining any Project Plans

  - by Libor

  I am working as software developer and struggling with this problem time and time again for almost thirteen years. There seems not to be any way out of the following problem. And it happens with small projects as well. For example, I plan to write an extension for Microsoft Visual Studio. I dowload learning materials, get some book on the topic and allocate time for learning and development. However, during the development, many seemingly trivial problems arise, for example: Why the script refuses to delete the file? Why Visual Studio does not register the extension? (after two days) OK, it registers it, but now it got broken. How to fix it? each of these "small" obstacles usually take 1-5 days to resolve and the project finally consumes several times more man-hours than planned. Maybe it happens only because I am working on Microsoft platform and many of their Frameworks and architectures are bit confusing and badly documented. I would like to have most problems resolved by finding answer in a book or official documentation (MSDN), but the only answer I usually find is on some weird forum or personal blog googled after desperately searching for any relevant information on the topic. Do you have the same struggles? Do you have techniques on how to prevent these problems? I was thinking of simply multiplying projected time for a given project by some factor, but this does not help. Some projects get done briskly and some take months and the guiding factor here are these small "glitches" which take programmers whole weeks to resolve. I have to admit that lots of these obstacles demoralizes me and drains me of focus and joy of work (who likes to get back to work when he have to resolve some stupid registry problem or weird framework bug instead of doing creative work?) After the project is finally done, I am feeling like dying from thousand cuts.

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• So, "Are Design Patterns Missing Language Features"?

  - by Eduard Florinescu

  I saw the answer to this question: How does thinking on design patterns and OOP practices change in dynamic and weakly-typed languages? There it is a link to an article with an outspoken title: Are Design Patterns Missing Language Features. But where you can get snippets that seem very objective and factual and that can be verified from experience like: PaulGraham said "Peter Norvig found that 16 of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were 'invisible or simpler' in Lisp." and a thing that confirms what I recently seen with people trying to simulate classes in javascript: Of course, nobody ever speaks of the "function" pattern, or the "class" pattern, or numerous other things that we take for granted because most languages provide them as built-in features. OTOH, programmers in a purely PrototypeOrientedLanguage? might well find it convenient to simulate classes with prototypes... I am taking into consideration also that design patterns are a communcation tool and because even with my limited experience participating in building applications I can see as an anti-pattern(ineffective and/or counterproductive) for example forcing a small PHP team to learn GoF patterns for small to medium intranet app, I am aware that scale, scope and purpose can determine what is effective and/or productive. I saw small commercial applications that mixed functional with OOP and still be maintainable, and I don't know if many would need for example in python to write a singleton but for me a simple module does the thing. patterns So are there studies or hands on experience shared that takes into consideration, all this, scale and scope of project, dynamics and size of the team, languages and technologies, so that you don't feel that a (difficult for some)design pattern is there just because there isn't a simpler way to do it or that it cannot be done by a language feature?

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• What happened to Alan Cooper's Unified File Model?

  - by PAUL Mansour

  For a long time Alan Cooper (in the 3 versions of his book "About Face") has been promoting a "unified file model" to, among other things, dispense with what he calls the most idiotic message box ever invented - the one the pops up when hit the close button on an app or form saying "Do you want to discard your changes?" I like the idea and his arguments, but also have the knee-jerk reaction against it that most seasoned programmers and users have. While Cooper's book seems quite popular and respected, there is remarkably little discussion of this particular issue on the Web that I can find. Petter Hesselberg, the author of "Programming Industrial Strength Windows" mentions it but that seems about it. I have an opportunity to implement this in the (desktop) project I am working on, but face resistance by customers and co-workers, who are of course familiar with the MS Word and Excel way of doing things. I'm in a position to override their objections, but am not sure if I should. My questions are: Are there any good discussions of this that I have failed to find? Is anyone doing this in their apps? Is it a good idea that it is unfortunately not practical to implement until, say, Microsoft does it?

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• Relationship between C#, .NET, ASP, ASP.NET etc

  - by Samuel Walker

  I'm really unclear on the difference between C#, C#.NET and the same for ASP and other '.NET' languages. From what I understand, .NET is a library/framework of... things. I think they're essentially access to Windows data such as form elements etc, but that doesn't seem to apply for ASP.NET. In addition, I see people calling themselves '.NET' developers. Does this mean they're fluent in C#, ASP and other languages? Finally, I never see C# without .NET attached. Is C# tied that closely to .NET as to be unusable without it? In summary: what exactly does .NET provide? How does it relate to C# and ASP etc? What does 'a .NET developer' mean? And finally, why do you never see C# without .NET? [As an aside, I realise these are multiple questions, but I think they are very inter-related (or at least that is the impression that browsing Programmers / SO etc has given me)].

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• How to review code that you do not understand?

  - by John Isaacks

  I have been given the role to improve development in our company. The first thing I wanted to start was code reviews since that has never been done here before. There are 3 programmers in our company. I am a web programmer, my known languages are mainly PHP, ActionScript and JavaScript. The other 2 developers write internal applications in VB.net We have been doing code reviews for a couple weeks now. I find it hard to understand VB code. So when they say what its doing, for the most part I just have to take their word for it. If I do see something that looks wrong, I explain my opinion and I explain how I would address it in one of the languages I know. Sometimes my suggestions are welcomed but many times I am told things like "this is the best way of doing it in this language" or "that doesn't apply to this language" or similar things of that nature. This may be true, but without knowing the language I am not sure how to confirm or refute these claims. I know one possible solution would be to learn vb so I can do better code reviews. I really have no interest in learning vb (especially since I have a list of other technologies I am trying to learn for my own projects) and would like to keep this as a last resort but it is an option. Another idea that came to me is, they both have interest in C# and so do I. Its relative to them because its .net and relative to me because its more similar to the languages I know. Yet it is new to all of us. I thought about the benefits of us all collaborating on a pet C#.net project and reviewing each others code from that. I guess theres also the possibility hiring a consultant to come in and give us some code reviews. What would you recommend I do in this situation.

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• What are your suggestions on learning how to think?

  - by Jonathan Khoo

  First of all, this is not the generic 'make me a better programmer' question, even though the outcome of asking this question might seem similar to it. On programmers.SE, I've read and seen these get closed here, here, here, here, and here. We all know there are a multitude of generic suggestions to hone your programming skills (e.g reading SO, reading recommended books, following blogs, getting involved in open-source projects, etc.). This is not what I'm after. I also acknowledge the active readership on this web site and am hoping it works in my favour by yielding some great answers. From reading correspondence here, there appears to be a vast number of experienced people who are working, or have worked, programming-related fields. And most of you can convey thoughts in an eloquent, concise manner. I've recently noticed the distinction between someone who's capable of programming and a programmer who can really think. I refuse to believe that in order to become great at programmer, we simply submit ourselves to a lifetime of sponge-like behaviour (i.e absorb everything related to our field by reading, listening, watching, etc.). I would even state that simply knowing every single programming concept that allows you to solve problem X faster than everyone around you, if you can't think, you're enormously limiting yourself - you're just a fast robot. I like to believe there's a whole other face of being a great programmer which is unrelated to how much you know about programming, but it is how well you can intertwine new concepts and apply them to your programming profession or hobby. I haven't seen anyone delve into, or address, this facet of the human mind and programming. (Yes, it's also possible that I haven't looked hard enough too - sorry if that's the case.) So for anyone who has spent any time thinking about what I've mentioned above - or maybe it's everyone here because I'm a little behind in my personal/professional development - what are your suggestions on learning how to think? Aside from the usual reading, what else have you done to be better than the other people in your/our field?

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• Understanding HTTP Cookies in Indy 10 for Delphi XE2

  - by Jerry Dodge

  I have been working with Indy 10 HTTP Servers / Clients lately in Delphi XE2, and I need to make sure I'm understanding session management correctly. In the server, I have a "bucket" of sessions, which is a list of objects which each represent a unique session. I don't use username and password to authenticate users, but I rather use a unique API key which is issued to a client, and has an expiration. When a client wishes to connect to the server, it first logs in by calling the "login" command, which is a path like this: http://localhost:1234/login?APIKey=abcdefghij. The server checks this API Key against the database, and if it's valid, it creates a new session in the bucket, issues a new cookie (unique string), and sets the response cookies with Success=Y and Cookie=abcdefghij. This is where I have the question. Assuming the client end has its own method of cookie management, the client will receive this login response back from the server and automatically save the cookies as necessary. Any future request from the client to the server shall automatically send along these cookies, and the client side doesn't have to necessarily worry about setting these cookies when sending requests to the server. Right? PS - I'm asking this question here on programmers.stackexchange.com because I didn't see it fit to ask on stackoverflow.com. If anyone thinks this is appropriate enough for stackoverflow.com, please let me know.

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• How to obtain flow while pair programming in agile development?

  - by bizso09

  Flow is is concept introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi In short, it means what most to get into the "zone". You feel immeresed in the task you are doing, you are in deep focus and concentration and the task difficulty is just right for you, but challenging at the same time. When people acquire flow their prodctivity shoots up. Programming requires great deal of mental focus and programmers need to juggle several things in their mind at once. Many like to work in a quite environment where they can direct their full attention to the task. If they are interreupted, it may take several minutes, sometimes hours to get back into flow. I understand that agile way of doing software development is called pair prograaming. This is pormoted in Extreme programming too. It means you put the whole software development team in one room so that communication is seamless. You do programming with your pair because this way you get instant code reviews and fix bugs sooner. However, I alwys had problem obtaining flow while doing pair programming because of the contant stream of interrupts. I'm thinking deep about an issue then all of sudden someone asks me a question from another pair. My train of thought is all lost. How can you obtain and keep flow while doing agile pair programming?

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• Switching from Java/Java EE career path to C POS path?

  - by Muhammad

  I am a Java/Java EE Developer with about 3 years in this field. I like low-level programming so much... I favor back-end code over front-end. I've a knowledge in C and know little about C++. I got an offer to work with C in Point-of-Sale Payment terminals. I don't know much about how POS works (IDE/toolsets, etc). although I have a payment experience (ISO8583, etc...) I need you own opinion from Switching from the Java's High-level world to POS low-level world Although I love low-level world, but I am afraid from not being found what I seek.. I know programmers are not measured by the tools they use (including prog. langs.) but with their minds. I need your opinions of: Is programming POS terminals in C is an interesting thing, or I'll find myself doing usual code-writing job? (especially I am about to switch my whole career path). I find myself writing an elegant code in Java (like: Sobat http://code.google.com/p/sobat/) a code where I find myself in... So do I'll find the same thing in POS C? or It will all about Libraries that I'll call to finish my work?! Lastly, does this thing worse adventure with my current career (stability, conference, etc.. )? (as I currently don't think to move to a new job) Thanks.

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• Are Get-Set methods a violation of Encapsulation?

  - by Dipan Mehta

  In an Object oriented framework, one believes there must be strict encapsulation. Hence, internal variables are not to be exposed to outside applications. But in many codebases, we see tons of get/set methods which essentially open a formal window to modify internal variables that were originally intended to be strictly prohibited. Isn't it a clear violation of encapsulation? How broadly such a practice is seen and what to do about it? EDIT: I have seen some discussions where there are two opinions in extreme: on one hand people believe that because get/set interface is used to modify any parameter, it does qualifies not be violating encapsulation. On the other hand, there are people who believe it is does violate. Here is my point. Take a case of UDP server, with methods - get_URL(), set_URL(). The URL (to listen to) property is quite a parameter that application needs to be supplied and modified. However, in the same case, if the property like get_byte_buffer_length() and set_byte_buffer_length(), clearly points to values which are quite internal. Won't it imply that it does violate the encapsulation? In fact, even get_byte_buffer_length() which otherwise doesn't modify the object, still misses the point of encapsulation, because, certainly there is an App which knows i have an internal buffer! Tomorrow, if the internal buffer is replaced by something like a *packet_list* the method goes dysfunctional. Is there a universal yes/no towards get set method? Is there any strong guideline that tell programmers (specially the junior ones) as to when does it violate encapsulation and when does it not?

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• When too much encapsulation was reached

  - by Samuel

  Recently, I read a lot of gook articles about how to do a good encapsulation. And when I say "good encapsulation", I don't talk about hiding private fields with public properties; I talk about preventing users of your Api to do wrong things. Here is two good articles about this subject: http://blog.ploeh.dk/2011/05/24/PokayokeDesignFromSmellToFragrance.aspx http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2011/03/28/encapsulation-youre-doing-it-wrong/ At my job, the majority a our applications are not destined to other programmers but rather to the customers. About 80% of the application code is at the top of the structure (Not used by other code). For this reason, there is probably no chance ever that this code will be used by other application. An example of encapsulation that prevent user to do wrong thing with your Api is to return an IEnumerable instead of IList when you don't want to give the ability to the user to add or remove items in the list. My question is: When encapsulation could be considered like too much of purism object oriented programming while keeping in mind that each hour of programming is charged to the customer? I want to do good code that is maintainable, easy to read and to use but when this is not a public Api (Used by other programmer), where could we put the line between perfect code and not so perfect code? Thank you.

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• Building a common syntax and scoping framework.

  - by Ben DeMott

  Hello fellow programmers, I was discussing a project the other day with a colleague of mine and I was curious to see what others had to say or if such a thing already existed. Background There are many programming languages. There are many IDE's and source editors that highlight and edit source code. Following perfectly and exactly the rules of a language to present auto-complete options and understand scopes in the code is rather complex. This task is complex enough that most IDE's implement different source-editors as plugins that often re-implement the same features over and over but in a different way (netbeans). From what I can tell most IDE's and source editors re-implement parsers that use regular expressions, or some meta-syntax Naur Form to describe the languages grammer generically. These parsers are implemented over and over and over again. Question Has anyone attempted to unify or describe a set of features through an API and have a consistent interface to parsing various programming languages and dialects. I'm not describing an IDE - but a consistent API for any program to use to parse and obtain meta-information from the source code. I realize various programming languages offer many different features which are difficult to 'abstract' into a set of features, but I feel this would be a worthwhile venture. It seems to me that this could possibly allow the authors of interpreters to help maintain a central grammer intepreter for their language. the Python foundation could maintain the Python grammer api, ANSI the C grammer api, Oracle the Java grammer API, etc Example usage If this was API existed code documentation generators could theoretically work across all dialects and languages to some level. It wouldn't matter if your project used 5 different languages a single application could document all of them and the comments and doc-tags within. Has anyone attempted this comprehensively?

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• Naming conventions: camelCase versus underscore_case ? what are your thoughts about it? [closed]

  - by poelinca

  I've been using underscore_case for about 2 years and I recently switched to camelCase because of the new job (been using the later one for about 2 months and I still think underscore_case is better suited for large projects where there are alot of programmers involved, mainly because the code is easier to read). Now everybody at work uses camelCase because (so they say) the code looks more elegant . What are you're thoughts about camelCase or underscore_case p.s. please excuse my bad english Edit Some update first: platform used is PHP (but I'm not expecting strict PHP platform related answers , anybody can share their thoughts on which would be the best to use , that's why I came here in the first place) I use camelCase just as everibody else in the team (just as most of you recomend) we use Zend Framework which also recommends camelCase Some examples (related to PHP) : Codeigniter framework recommends underscore_case , and honestly the code is easier to read . ZF recomends camelCase and I'm not the only one who thinks ZF code is a tad harder to follow through. So my question would be rephrased: Let's take a case where you have the platform Foo which doesn't recommend any naming conventions and it's the team leader's choice to pick one. You are that team leader, why would you pick camelCase or why underscore_case? p.s. thanks everybody for the prompt answers so far

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• OpenSource License Validation [closed]

  - by Macmade

  I'm basically looking for some kind of FLOSS/OpenSource license validation service. I have special needs for some projects I'd like to open-source. I know there's actually tons of different FLOSS/OpenSource licenses, each one suitable for some specific purpose, and that creating a «new» one is not something recommended, usually. Anyway, even if I'm not an expert in the legal domain, I've got some experience with FLOSS/OpenSource, at a legal level, and it seems there's just no license covering my needs. I actually wrote the license terms I'd like to use, and contacted the FSF, asking them to review that license, as it seems (at least that's written on their website) they can do such review work. No answer. I tried repetitively, but no luck. So I'm currently looking for an alternate legal expertise about that specific license. I don't mind paying such a service, as long as I can be sure the license can be recognised as a FLOSS/OpenSource license. About the license, it's basically a mix of a BSD (third-clause) with a BOOST software license. The difference is about redistribution. Source code redistribution shall retain the copyright novices. The same applies for binary redistribution (like BSD), unless it's distributed as a library (more like BOOST). I hope this question is OK for programmers.stackexchange. I'm usually more active on StackOverflow, but it just seems the right place for such a question. So thank you for your time and enlightened advices. : )

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• How to deal with a 'public' work environment?

  - by Craige

  In the last 6 months, I have changed desks at my office 4 times. I don't mind, as it's due to expansion of the company and acquiring new office space and getting everybody settled. However, I truly miss the semi-private office I sat in 2 desks ago. I am now sitting in a large room with a number of other people. My problem with this isn't with my co-workers; everybody here is great. My problem is that based on the configuration of the room, no matter which desk I sit in, my monitors WILL be facing an open window. This causes a glare on my monitors, and it drives me crazy. I prefer a dark IDE theme as I find it easier on the eyes, however this just makes the glare that much worse. How should programmers cope with public office settings? Secondly, how should I cope with my specific problem? Should I give in and adopt a light IDE theme that will reduce the visibility of the glare but increase eye strain, or should I stick to my guns and find another solution?

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• Computer Science Degrees and Real-World Experience

  - by Steven Elliott Jr

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

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• How would you refactor nested IF Statements?

  - by saunderl

  I was cruising around the programming blogosphere when I happened upon this post about GOTO's: http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2010/12/programmers-tabu.html Here the writer talks about how "one must come to the conclusion that there are situations where GOTOs make for more readable and more maintainable code" and then goes on to show an example similar to this: if (Check#1) { CodeBlock#1 if (Check#2) { CodeBlock#2 if (Check#3) { CodeBlock#3 if (Check#4) { CodeBlock#4 if (Check#5) { CodeBlock#5 if (Check#6) { CodeBlock#6 if (Check#7) { CodeBlock#7 } else { rest - of - the - program } } } } } } } The writer then proposes that using GOTO's would make this code much easier to read and maintain. I personally can think of at least 3 different ways to flatten it out and make this code more readable without resorting to flow-breaking GOTO's. Here are my two favorites. 1 - Nested Small Functions. Take each if and its code block and turn it into a function. If the boolean check fails, just return. If it passes, then call the next function in the chain. (Boy, that sounds a lot like recursion, could you do it in a single loop with function pointers?) 2 - Sentinal Variable. To me this is the easyest. Just use a blnContinueProcessing variable and check to see if it is still true in your if check. Then if the check fails, set the variable to false. How many different ways can this type of coding problem be refactored to reduce nesting and increase maintainability?

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• What are the advantages and disadvantages to using your real name online?

  - by Jon Purdy

  As a programmer, do you see any professional or other advantage in using your real name in online discourse, versus an invented handle? I've always gone by a single username and had my real name displayed whenever possible, for a few reasons: My interests online are almost exclusively professional and aboveboard. It constructs a search-friendly public log of all of my work, everywhere. If someone wants to contact me, there are many ways to do it. My portfolio of work is all tied to me personally. Possible cons to full disclosure include: If you feel like becoming involved in something untoward, it could be harder. The psychopath who inherits your project can more easily find out where you live. You might be spammed by people who are not worth the precious time that could be better spent writing more of the brilliant software you're famous for. Your portfolio of work is all tied to you personally. It seems, anyway, that a vast majority of StackOverflow users go by invented handles rather than real names. Notable exceptions include the best-known users, who are typically well established in the industry. But how could we ever become legendary rockstar programmers if we didn't get our names out there? Discuss.

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• Is Joel Test really a good gauging tool?

  - by henry

  I just learned about Joel Test. I have been computer programmer for 22 years, but somehow never heard about it before. I consider my best job so far to be this small investment managing company with 30 employees and only 3 people in IT department. I am no longer with them but I had being working there for 5 years – my longest streak with any given company. To my surprise they scored extremely poor on Joel Test. The only two questions I would answer “yes” are #4: Do you have a bug database? And #9: Do you use the best tools money can buy? Everything else is either “sometimes” or straight “no”. Here is what I liked about the company however: a) Good pay, they bragged about it to my face and I bragged about it to their face, so it was almost like a family environment. b) I always knew big picture. When writing a code to solve particular problem there were no ambiguity about the business nature of that problem. Even though we did not always had written specs we could ask business users a question anytime, often yelling it across the floor. I could even talk to executives any time I felt like doing it: no appointment necessary. c) Immediate feedback. Once we implement a solution and make business users happy they immediately let us know that, we (programmers) become heroes of the moment. d) No red tape. I could always buy any tools I deem necessary, and design solutions the way my professional judgment dictates. e) Flexibility. If I had mid-day dental appointment that is near my house rather than near the office, I would send email to the company: "FYI: I work from home today". As long as one of 3 IT guys was on the floor (to help traders in case their monitors go dark) they did not care where 2 others are. So the question thus becomes how valuable Joel Test is? Why bother with it?

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• How to advocate Stack Overflow at work

  - by Gordon

  I am thinking of doing a short presentation at work about using Stack Overflow as a resource for your day job. What is the experience doing this? Would you deem it a valid resource to tell you colleagues about or is it similar to telling them about Google as a resource? Is there a better way of doing it? I was leaning toward asking questions side of Stack Overflow rather than answering them to avoid you-shouldn't-be-doing-this-on-work-time argument. Just as a follow up. Originally I didn't want to make the question to specific to my own case. My presentation will only be a quick four minute talk, which I will repeat over an hour to different groups. I may ask a question before the talk on Stack Overflow and refer to it during the presentation. Hopefully I will get some activity during the hour. I am also going to talk briefly about some of the other Stack Exchange sites that would fit the audience as they are not all developers. I think Super User, Server Fault and Programmers should work well. I will not be doing the presentation for another couple of months as it has be rescheduled, but I will update on how I got on.

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• Alternatives to Professional Version Control

  - by greengit

  We're teaming up with some non programmers (writers) who need to contribute to one of our projects. Now they just don't like the idea of using Git (or anything for that matter) for version controlling their work. I think this is because they just don't find it worthwhile to wrap their heads around the twisted concepts of version control. (when I first introduced them to branching and merging -- they looked like I was offending them.) Now, we're not in a position to educate them or convince them to use it. We're just trying to find alternatives so that we get all their work versioned (which is what we need) -- and they get easy workflow and concentrate on what they do. I have come up with some ideas... tell them to save their work as a separate file every time they make some non-trivial change, and then use a diff on our side to just track changes. write a program (in Python) that implements the "milestones" in CSSEdit in some way. About the project: It is a natural language processing system (written in C + Python). We've hired some writers to prepare inputs for the system in different languages. And as we evolve the software, we'd need those writers to make changes to their inputs (articles). Sometimes the changes are very small (a word or two), and other times big. The reason we need to version control those changes is because every small/big change in the input has the potential to change the system's output dramatically.

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• Please recommend a patterns book for iOS development

  - by Brett Ryan

  I've read several books on iOS development and Objective-C, however what a lot of them teach is how to work with interfaces and all contain the model inside the view controller, i.e. a UITableViewController based view will simply have an NSArray as it's model. I'm interested in what the best practices are for designing the structure of an application. Specifically I'm interested in best practices for the following: How to separate a model from the view controller. I think I know how to do this by simply replacing the NSArray style example with a specific model object, however what I do not know how to do is alert the view when the model changes. For example in .NET I would solve this by conforming to INotifyPropertyChanged and databinding, and similarly with Java I would use PropertyChangeListener. How to create a service model for my domain objects. For example I want to learn the best way to create a service for a hypothetical Widget object to manage an internal DB and also services for communicating with remote endpoints. I need to learn the best ways to do this in a way that interface components can subscribe to events such as widgetUpdated. These services should be singleton classes and some how dependency injected into model/controller objects. Books I've read so far are: Programming in Objective-C (4th Edition) Beginning iOS 5 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK The iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook: Expanded Electronic Edition: Essentials and Advanced Recipes for iOS Programmers Learn Objective-C on the Mac: For OS X and iOS I've also purchased the following updated books but not yet read them. The Core iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook (4th edition Programming in Objective-C (5th Edition) I come from a Java and C# background with 15 years experience, I understand that many of the ways I would do things in these languages may not fit to the ObjC way of developing applications. Any guidance on the topic is very much appreciated.

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• Programming as a minor

  - by Tomas Cokis

  Hello Everyone! I've never asked a question here at programmers, and for reasons which will become obvious later I've never answered one here, but I do poke around in short bursts. Anyway, I'm 15 right now, and I've been programming in C++ for 4 years, just working on my own projects that are aim so high as to never be finished. I've been working on a single project for the last year, and every 3 months, I add a new system into it. It might be a value tabling directory enabled log system, or a render system, or a class to load up xml files, whatever it is, I don't mind too much that the overall project (a 3d engine) isn't ever going to get finished, I just get some satisfaction from getting what I have done building and running. I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, although I suspect I'll go into some form of engineering, but I was interested in knowing if I do choose to go into a career as a developer, what kind of material I could look at to push myself up and get myself experience that might help my career later. I'm not talking about books in particular, I'm more interested in subjects areas that will get me access to good job opportunities, or that will give me a hand-up if I do computer science and software related courses at uni. One of the things I was thinking of doing was designing some of the logic gate components of a small computer - which I started briefly over the holidays, working out integer addition, subtraction and multiplication. That kind of stuff interests me, but is it really useful - or more useful then just more programming? But anyway, Any advice? Should I continue on my perpetual 3d engine? Are there any other projects or particular accomplishments that would help my education? Perhaps I should mention that I live in Perth, Australia, so local software companies are likely to be more scarce then usual.

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• Can unit tests verify software requirements?

  - by Peter Smith

  I have often heard unit tests help programmers build confidence in their software. But is it enough for verifying that software requirements are met? I am losing confidence that software is working just because the unit tests pass. We have experienced some failures in production deployment due to an untested\unverified execution path. These failures are sometimes quite large, impact business operations and often requires an immediate fix. The failure is very rarely traced back to a failing unit test. We have large unit test bodies that have reasonable line coverage but almost all of these focus on individual classes and not on their interactions. Manual testing seems to be ineffective because the software being worked on is typically large with many execution paths and many integration points with other software. It is very painful to manually test all of the functionality and it never seems to flush out all the bugs. Are we doing unit testing wrong when it seems we still are failing to verify the software correctly before deployment? Or do most shops have another layer of automated testing in addition to unit tests?

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