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• Updates about Multidimensional vs Tabular #ssas #msbi

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  I recently read the blog post from James Serra Tabular model: Not ready for prime time? (read also the comments because there are discussions about a few points raised by James) and the following post from Christian Wade Multidimensional or Tabular. In the last 2 years I worked with many companies adopting Tabular in different scenarios and I agree with some of the points expressed by James in his post (especially about missing features in Tabular if compared to Multidimensional), but I strongly disagree in others. In general, Tabular is a good choice for a new project when: the development team does not have a good knowledge of Multidimensional and MDX (DAX is faster to learn, not so easy as it is sold by MS, but definitely easier than MDX) you don’t need calculations based on hierarchies (common in certain financial applications, but not so common as it could seem) there are important calculations based on distinct count measures there are complex calculations based on many-to-many relationships Until now, I never suggested to migrate an existing Multidimensional model to a Tabular one. There should be very important reasons for that, such as performance issues in distinct count and many-to-many relationships that cannot be easily solved by optimizing the Multidimensional model, but I still never encountered this scenario. I would say that in 80% of the new projects, you might use either Multidimensional or Tabular and the real difference is the time-to-market depending on the skills of the development team. So it’s not strange that who is used to Multidimensional is not moving to Tabular, not getting a particular benefit from the new model unless specific requirements exist. The recent DAXMD feature that allows using SharePoint Power View on Multidimensional is a really important one, even if I’d like having also Excel Power View enabled for this scenario (this should be just a question of time). Another scenario in which I’m seeing a growing adoption of Tabular is in companies that creates models for their product/service and do that by using XMLA or Tabular AMO 2012. I am used to call them ISVs, even if those providing services cannot be really defined in this way. These companies are facing the multitenancy challenge with Tabular and even if this is a niche market, I see some potential here, because adopting Tabular seems a much more natural choice than Multidimensional in those scenario where an analytical engine has to be embedded to deliver one of the features of a larger product/service delivered to customers. I’d like to see other feedbacks in the comments: tell your story of choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional in a BI project you started with SQL Server 2012, thanks!

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• Shelving &ndash; What is it &ndash; and more importantly, can it help me?

  - by Chris Skardon

  Since we shifted to TFS we’ve had the ability to perform what is known as ‘shelving’. Shelving (whilst not a wholly new topic in the world of SCC) is new to us, and didn’t exist in our previous SCC solution – SVN. Soo… what is it? What? Shelving is a way to check-in but not check-in your code. By shelving you submit a copy of your ‘pending changes’ to the SCC server, (which maintains a list of the shelvesets) and once that is done you can either continue working, or undo your changes, safe in the knowledge that a backup copy exists on the server. You can unshelve your code at any time and get back to the state you were when you shelved. Yer, that is great but why not just check it in?? Shelvesets don’t have to build. The shelveset you put in there could be entirely broken, or it might solve every bug in the system – shelves aren’t continuously integrated so you can shelve anything. Hmmmm… What else? Shelving allows us to do some pretty cool stuff that beforehand was quite frankly a pain. For instance – Gated Check-ins are implemented via the shelving mechanism, when code is checked-in, what you’re actually doing is shelving it, the Build Controller will build the shelveset with the original code and if it succeeds, the code will be committed, if it fails – well – it’s only you that has to fix the code :) Other nice features are things like the ability to share code you are working on… For example, if I was having trouble with a particular piece of code, I could shelve it, and then you (yes you) could then get that shelveset and check out the problem for yourself, and if you fix it?? Well – you could check-it in! Nice, but day-to-day shizzle? Let’s say you’ve been working on your project and your project manager comes over to you and says: “Hey, errr, bad times, there is an urgent bug we need you to fix, it needs to go out now!” (also for this to play out – we’ll need to assume you’re currently working in the 'release’ branch for another bug fix (maybe))… You could undo all your current changes (obviously you’ll probably backup your code using zip or something I imagine) fix the bug, then re-copy your backup over the top, or you could shelve and unshelve. Perhaps some other uses will awaken the shelver in you… :) Before each checkin – if you shelve, you no longer need to worry (if indeed you do) about resolving conflicts and mysteriously losing your code… Going home at night? Not checking in straight away? Why not shelve, this way – should the worst come to the worst and your local pc gives up, you can just get the shelveset onto another machine and be up and running in literally seconds minutes…

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• Test your internet connection - Emtel Mobile Internet

  After yesterday's report on Emtel Fixed Broadband (I'm still wondering where the 'fixed' part is), I did the same tests on Emtel Mobile Internet. For this I'm using the Huawei E169G HSDPA USB stick, connected to the same machine. Actually, this is my fail-safe internet connection and the system automatically switches between them if a problem, let's say timeout, etc. has been detected on the main line. For better comparison I used exactly the same servers on Speedtest.net. The results Following are the results of Rose Hill (hosted by Emtel) and respectively Frankfurt, Germany (hosted by Vodafone DE): Speedtest.net result of 31.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Mobile Internet) Speedtest.net result of 31.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Frankfurt, Germany (Emtel - Mobile Internet) As you might easily see, there is a big difference in speed between national and international connections. More interestingly are the results related to the download and upload ratio. I'm not sure whether connections over Emtel Mobile Internet are asymmetric or symmetric like the Fixed Broadband. Might be interesting to find out. The first test result actually might give us a clue that the connection could be asymmetric with a ratio of 3:1 but again I'm not sure. I'll find out and post an update on this. It depends on network coverage Later today I was on tour with my tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (model GT-P7500) running on Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and did some more tests using the Speedtest.net app. The results are actually as expected and in areas with better network coverage you will get better results after all. At least, as long as you stay inside the national networks. For anything abroad, it doesn't really matter. But see for yourselves: Speedtest.net result of 31.05.2013 between Cascavelle and servers in Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Mobile Internet), Port Louis, Mauritius and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia It's rather shocking and frustrating to see how the speed on international destinations goes down. And the full capability of the tablet's integrated modem (HSDPA: 21 Mbps; HSUPA: 5.76 Mbps) isn't used, too. I guess, this demands more tests in other areas of the island, like Ebene, Pailles or Port Louis. I'll keep you updated... The question remains: Alternatives? After the publication of the test results on Fixed Broadband I had some exchange with others on Facebook. Sadly, it seems that there are really no alternatives to what Emtel is offering at the moment. There are the various internet packages by Mauritius Telecom feat. Orange, like ADSL, MyT and Mobile Internet, and there is Bharat Telecom with their Bees offer which is currently limited to Ebene and parts of Quatre Bornes.

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• Count unique visitors by group of visited places

  - by Mathieu

  I'm facing the problem of counting the unique visitors of groups of places. Here is the situation: I have visitors that can visit places. For example, that can be internet users visiting web pages, or customers going to restaurants. A visitor can visit as much places as he wishes, and a place can be visited by several visitors. A visitor can come to the same place several times. The places belong to groups. A group can obviously contain several places, and places can belong to several groups. Given that, for each visitor, we can have a list of visited places, how can I have the number of unique visitors per group of places? Example: I have visitors A, B, C and D; and I have places x, y and z. I have these visiting lists: [ A -> [x,x,y,x], B -> [], C -> [z,z], D -> [y,x,x,z] ] Having these number of unique visitors per place is quite easy: [ x -> 2, // A and D visited x y -> 2, // A and D visited y z -> 2 // C and D visited z ] But if I have these groups: [ G1 -> [x,y,z], G2 -> [x,z], G3 -> [x,y] ] How can I have this information? [ G1 -> 3, // A, C and D visited x or y or z G2 -> 3, // A, C and D visited x or z G3 -> 2 // A and D visited x or y ] Additional notes : There are so many places that it is not possible to store information about every possible group; It's not a problem if approximation are made. I don't need 100% precision. Having a fast algorithm that tells me that there were 12345 visits in a group instead of 12543 is better than a slow algorithm telling the exact number. Let's say there can be ~5% deviation. Is there an algorithm or class of algorithms that addresses this type of problem?

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• Why CoffeeScript is tough to maintain

  - by Renso

  I recently started trying out CoffeeScript only to find out that it caused more headaches. The abstraction level of jQuery was perfect, it did not dictate to coders how to design their code, it just works. However, I recently posted a request to the CoffeeScript team to consider introducing curly braces to help with more complex code to control the flow of logic. For example a if-then-else with many nested levels can be near impossible to debug without tracing through it when using CoffeeScript. Also with IDEs like Visual Studio, regular JavaScript intellicense and auto-formatting make it easy to appropriate indent nested levels without any work on the part of the developer and reading it is not that hard, especially with some extensions that show vertical lines in the code editor to help see what is nested within what part of the code.However with CoffeeScript that is not the case. The samples given in the CoffeeScript web site are of course just simple examples to explain the features and one gets excited pretty quick over the powerful shortcuts. I tried to convert a piece of JavaScript over to CoffeeScript and gave up since you need to first of all remove ALL non CoffeeScript coding constructs for it to even compile. However js2coffee can help with that. However to keep track of nested levels became something that was simply not manageable using CoffeeScript.Furthermore, any coding language that controls the flow of logic by indentation is extremely dangerous for obvious reasons. I liked CoffeeScript a lot, but the fact that the logical flow of the code is controlled by how much you indent code, spaces or tabs, is not reliable as there is no way the programmer has an easy way of knowing what parts of the code will get hit when the code spans a page.When I suggested introducing curly braces in CoffeeScript the team, one contributor advised me that my code needs to be re-designed! Needless to say that is absurd. When I included a piece of the code he asked my if it was legacy code. It's like saying to a Java programmer, sorry you cannot use Java because we don't agree with how you write your code.jashkenas from the CoffeeScript blog gave some great suggestions and made the point that introducing curly braces would be very problematic for them as they use them to denote objects. Makes sense, but I would still love to see some way to replace code flow control with spaces and indentation to something more concrete and human readable.

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• The Numbers of Customer Experience

  - by Christie Flanagan

  This week, we’ll be continuing our conversations about Customer Experience (CX) on the Oracle WebCenter blog.  While we all know that customer experience is critically important for acquiring new customers and engendering long term brand loyalty, I thought we could kick this week off by taking a look at the numbers of customer experience.   I’m sure you’ll agree that nothing quite puts things into perspective like numbers and figures. A whopping 86% of consumers say that they are willing to pay more for a better customer experience.  But many companies are failing to step up to the challenge.  And when companies fail deliver on customer experience expectations, they leave money on the table. A huge percentage of customers, 89%, begin doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. Breaking up isn’t hard to do and today’s empowered customers have no qualms about taking their business elsewhere when their expectations for customer experience are not met. Over a quarter of consumers, 26%, posted a negative comment on a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter following a poor customer experience. Today, individual customer service failures have the ability to easily snowball.  An unsatisfied customer has the ability to easily share their rancor with their entire social network and chip away at your brand’s reputation. A large number of consumers, 79%,  who shared complaints about poor customer experience online had their complaints ignored.  Companies ignore customer complaints at their own peril.  And unsatisfied customers, when handled effectively, have the potential to become advocates for your brand.  Of the 21% of consumers who did get responses to complaints, more than half had positive reactions to the same company about which they were previously complaining. Half of consumers will give a brand only a week to respond to a question before they stop doing business with them.  The clock is ticking when customers have questions about your brand and a week is an eternity in the realm of customer experience.  The source for these stats is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report, which explores the relationship between consumers and brands.  The report is based on a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive. If you’re interested in seeing more facts and figures about customer experience, download the full report.

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• MSFT new trick to promote IE9 by kill IE6 first.

  - by anirudha

  Every developer know every issue on development for IE6 whenever they know things more. they are frustrated whenever they spent time in IE6 for making application cross browser compatible. not long time ago MSFT make a campaign save IE6 you can find the reference http://blogs.msdn.com/b/anna/archive/2009/04/01/save-internet-explorer-6.aspx and the webstite is here http://www.saveie6.com/ well they really make joke see what they write on the page. well why website maked in PHP whenever they can make them in asp.net or any other technology who reflect the Microsoft technology see here  http://www.saveie6.com/compare.php High security (many updates) :- you can find IE6 is how much secure you can also read Wikipedia for know. well i can say IE6 is very easily to hack. wikipedia tell you about that here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6 and for know about the security watch here http://www.google.co.in/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=webhp&q=ie6+security+issues Lightweight (no support for silly PNG transparency, etc) :- well they tell PNG silly but tell me about the best format on internet. their is no better option as png or SVG. More screen space thanks to no tabs:-  they tell this nonsense without think anything. if they really care about more screen space why they make tab  in 7,8,9. conclusion:- IE team make a research on how to promote IE9 better then they can beat chrome and Firefox. because IE9 not have anything good like customization , plug-in ,add-ons , personas , themes and many other thing like chrome and Firefox provided perhaps IE is outdated thing even everyone their can writing about these days that IE9 have this, have performance better then this… the main problem in IE is IE6. many developer hate them because many of their time goes for making site cross browser compatible. in 2009 they still have no blah like IE9 who they have today so they make a campaign for save IE6. the list they make is a joke. they show that everything in IE6 is perfect even everyone know the truth. they listed IE6 is high security. in 2011 their is a problem for IE9 promotion called IE6. because developer hate IE6 how they can promote IE9 very well. so destroy IE6 is only option for IE9 make promote better. so you can see they make two different different campaign and both are opposite of other. well  how we can believe in IE9. thanks for reading this post. what you thinking on it. have a idea or feedback reported them.

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• Appointment & Booking Calendar for 2,500 Members

  - by D. K. Mason

  For this job I need a booking or appointment calendar for the WP website, so that each of the 2500+ members can manage his/her own appointments calendar. Members will set their schedules and available hours. Buyers can select one member, and book when they want to visit the member and reserve time online. Lets say our WP membership site has thousands of members each offering one service. We have 25 categories. On their profile page is his appointment or booking calendar, along with his personally created and uploaded (into S3) profile video. Website visitors should be able to easily book hours & days as desired. For now all members have a free membership. WE earn $ by bringing customers to the registered members and collecting one dollar for our service. Therefore, we need an affordable script and one that handles our members needs. We already have a paid copy of Jrox. What are those needs? Well, please register for a test account in the ENTERTAINMENT category at http://asianhighway26.com/?page_id=140 Next, pretend you are a buyer and start on the index page and select your ENTERTAINMENT category. Click on image #3 and you will receive a list of others in your traveling area. When you click VIEW DETAILS, there is where a potential customer will see the calendar and if you are available on the dates and times you are interested in doing business. We know that YOU the member will want to list your not available dates and hours. There may be other features desired but this is the most important, we believe. Our WP administrator (me) can install the main script, but each member must have some login or dashboard to manage his/her own calendar and work hours. Can you create or modify any appointment calendar software to do this? Can the jam.jrox.com software we own do this? As you can see here, we offer to pay for ideas you present that we use: asianhighway26.com/?page_id=126 D.K. Mason Chief Development Officer, Asian Highway Network, Tourism Division, Asia-Pacific Region (http://www.forums.doctormason.us/b-ah/)

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• Database Security: The First Step in Pre-Emptive Data Leak Prevention

  - by roxana.bradescu

  With WikiLeaks raising awareness around information leaks and the harm they can cause, many organization are taking stock of their own information leak protection (ILP) strategies in 2011. A report by IDC on data leak prevention stated: Increasing database security is one of the most efficient and cost-effective measures an organization can take to prevent data leaks. By utilizing the data protection, access control, account management, encryption, log management, and other security controls inherent in the database management system, entities can institute first-level control over the widest range of protected information. As a central repository for unstructured data, which is growing at leaps and bounds, the database should be the first layer providing information leakage protection. Unfortunately, most organizations are not taking sufficient steps to protect their databases according to a survey of the Independent Oracle User Group. For example, any operating system administrator or database administrator can access the all the data stored in the database in most organizations. Without any kind of auditing or monitoring. And it's not just administrators, database users can typically access the database with ad-hoc query tools from their desktop and by-pass any application level controls. Despite numerous regulations calling for controls to limit the powers of insiders, most organizations still put too many privileges in the hands of their employees. Time and time again these excess privileges have backfired. Internal agents were implicated in almost half of data breaches according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report and the rate is rising. Hackers also took advantage of these excess privileges very successfully using stolen credentials and SQL injection attacks. But back to the insiders. Who are these insiders and why do they do it? In 2002, the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) behavioral psychologists and CERT information security experts formed the Insider Threat Study team to examine insider threat cases that occurred in US critical infrastructure sectors, and examined them from both a technical and a behavioral perspective. A series of fascinating reports has been published as a result of this work. You can learn more by watching the ISSA Insider Threat Web Conference. So as your organization starts to look at data leak prevention over the coming year, start off by protecting your data at the source - your databases. IDC went on to say: Any enterprise looking to improve its competitiveness, regulatory compliance, and overall data security should consider Oracle's offerings, not only because of their database management capabilities but also because they provide tools that are the first layer of information leak prevention. Learn more about Oracle Database Security solutions and get the whitepapers, demos, tutorials, and more that you need to protect data privacy from internal and external threats.

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• how to update child records when updating the Master table using Linq [closed]

  - by user20358

  I currently use a general repositry class that can update only a single table like so public abstract class MyRepository<T> : IRepository<T> where T : class { protected IObjectSet<T> _objectSet; protected ObjectContext _context; public MyRepository(ObjectContext Context) { _objectSet = Context.CreateObjectSet<T>(); _context = Context; } public IQueryable<T> GetAll() { return _objectSet.AsQueryable(); } public IQueryable<T> Find(Expression<Func<T, bool>> filter) { return _objectSet.Where(filter); } public void Add(T entity) { _objectSet.AddObject(entity); _context.ObjectStateManager.ChangeObjectState(entity, System.Data.EntityState.Added); _context.SaveChanges(); } public void Update(T entity) { _context.ObjectStateManager.ChangeObjectState(entity, System.Data.EntityState.Modified); _context.SaveChanges(); } public void Delete(T entity) { _objectSet.Attach(entity); _context.ObjectStateManager.ChangeObjectState(entity, System.Data.EntityState.Deleted); _objectSet.DeleteObject(entity); _context.SaveChanges(); } } For every table class generated by my EDMX designer I create another class like this public class CustomerRepo : MyRepository<Customer> { public CustomerRepo (ObjectContext context) : base(context) { } } for any updates that I need to make to a particular table I do this: Customer CustomerObj = new Customer(); CustomerObj.Prop1 = ... CustomerObj.Prop2 = ... CustomerObj.Prop3 = ... CustomerRepo.Update(CustomerObj); This works perfectly well when I am updating just to the specific table called Customer. Now if I need to also update each row of another table which is a child of Customer called Orders what changes do I need to make to the class MyRepository. Orders table will have multiple records for a Customer record and multiple fields too, say for example Field1, Field2, Field3. So my questions are: 1.) If I only need to update Field1 of the Orders table for some rows based on a condition and Field2 for some other rows based on a different condition then what changes I need to do? 2.) If there is no such condition and all child rows need to be updated with the same value for all rows then what changes do I need to do? Thanks for taking the time. Look forward to your inputs...

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• Using ASP.NET Membership Provider with an ACL

  - by geekrutherford

  Up until recently one of my applications has used the membership provider within ASP.NET exclusively. However, it has been proposed that while the currently defined roles are beneficial, security needs to be more granular to restrict both access to certain pages and functionality present within a given page.   Unfortunately, the role based security ASP.NET gives you out of the box falls down in this area. This is not due to a lack of foresight by Microsoft, but rather it was simply not designed for implementing both role based security and any inherent ACL you may define within these roles. Mind you some would say an ACL is independent of the role to which a user belongs and is assigned to the user directly.   The application mentioned here has it's own User object (which encapsulates the membership provider user object as a property) and SQL Server table to store extended information not present in the aspnet_users table. While I could have modified the aspnet membership schema to suit the applications needs, it seemed smarter to simply create a separate table with a foreign key back to the aspnet_users table.   Since I have a separate object to store extended user information, I simply created an ACL object and expose it as a property of my user object.   This is all well and good, but it does not help in regards to the SiteMapProvider and restricting access at the page level based on the users ACL.   The straightforward answer would be to develop some code within the databound event for the menu that checks the page title and has hardcoded logic that dictates a user must have certain permissions turned on. The problem with this approach is that it's HARDCODED!!! If you need to change access to a page you'd need to do a build and go through your normal deployment process....ugh!!!   An alternative method, albeit not perfect, is to utilize the resourceKey property on the SiteMapNodes in the SiteMap file with the name of the required permission to view the page. Within the databound event for your menu you iterate the SiteMapNodes in the menus SiteMapProvider looking for a match at the page level based on title. When a match is detected, you have a switch/case on the SiteMapNodes resourceKey (the name of the ACL permission required). The case for the resourceKey ensures the users ACL permission is turned on and viola!!!   This is noteably not perfect in that it is using the resourceKey in a manner other than intended.  Since the application is not localized, using it in the manner described it not an issue.   Below is a sample SiteMap file with the resourceKey used as the ACL permission identifier:     Below is the ItemDataBound event. This application uses the Telerik Menu control:

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• How do I get long command lines to wrap to the next line?

  - by BrianH

  Edit It was my .bashrc file. I've copied the same profile from machine to machine, and I used special characters in my $PS1 that are somehow throwing it off. I'm now sticking with the standard bash variables for my $PS1. Thanks to @ændrük for the tip on the .bashrc! ...End Edit... Something I have noticed in Ubuntu for a long time that has been frustrating to me is when I am typing a command at the command line that gets longer (wider) than the terminal width, instead of wrapping to a new line, it goes back to column 1 on the same line and starts over-writing the beginning of my command line. (It doesn't actually overwrite the actual command, but visually, it is overwriting the text that was displayed). It's hard to explain without seeing it, but let's say my terminal was 20 characters wide (Mine is more like 120 characters - but for the sake of an example), and I want to echo the English alphabet. What I type is this: echo abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz But what my terminal looks like before I hit the key is: pqrstuvwxyzghijklmno When I hit enter, it echos abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz so I know the command was received properly. It just wrapped my typing after the "o" and started over on the same line. What I would expect to happen, if I typed this command in on a terminal that was only 20 characters wide would be this: echo abcdefghijklmno pqrstuvwxyz Background: I am using bash as my shell, and I have this line in my ~/.bashrc: set -o vi to be able to navigate the command line with VI commands. I am currently using Ubuntu 10.10 server, and connecting to the server with Putty. In any other environment I have worked in, if I type a long command line, it will add a new line underneath the line I am working on when my command gets longer than the terminal width and when I keep typing I can see my command on 2 different lines. But for as long as I can remember using Ubuntu, my long commands only occupy 1 line. This also happens when I am going back to previous commands in the history (I hit Esc, then 'K' to go back to previous commands) - when I get to a previous command that was longer than the terminal width, the command line gets mangled and I cannot tell where I am at in the command. The only work-around I have found to see the entire long command is to hit "Esc-V", which opens up the current command in a VI editor. I don't think I have anything odd in my .bashrc file. I commented out the "set -o vi" line, and I still had the problem. I downloaded a fresh copy of Putty and didn't make any changes to the configuration - I just typed in my host name to connect, and I still have the problem, so I don't think it's anything with Putty (unless I need to make some config changes) Has anyone else had this problem, and can anyone think of how to fix it? Thanks in advance! Brian

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• How to keep balance / Unlock items / achievement rules

  - by Mark Knol

  I'm working on an engine for a game, too learn javascript and just because its fun. I'm a flashdeveloper, I know how to build websites. Now making games is a different challenge, javascript is a challenge, but I'd love to learn how to structure code and what patterns are common. I dont mind if the game ever finish, I'm mostly interested in the programming part of it. I dont have a particular endresult in mind, so I'll see where it takes me. I currently have a system where you can buy items. The items cost a specified amount of gold, silver, diamonds etc. When you have selected and bought the item, it takes time before getting rewarded. When time is over, you are getting rewarded with other properties (gold, energy, diamonds). For example, you can buy an apple for 50gold, It takes a minute, you get rewarded with 75energy. Or if you take a run, it cost 50energy, it takes 5minutes, reward is 25gold and 25silver. These definitions is what i call actions. Currently I already have a system where this already works and I can define as much actions with as much properties as I want. The definitions I have kinda looks like this: {id:101, category:544, onInit:{gold:-75}, onComplete:{energy:75}, time:2000, name:"Apple", locked: false} {id:102, category:544, onInit:{gold:-135}, onComplete:{energy:145}, time:2000, name:"Banana", locked: false} {id:106, category:302, onInit:{energy:-50, power: -25}, onComplete:{gold:100, diamonds:2}, time:10000, name:"Run", locked: false} {id:107, category:302, onInit:{energy:-70, silver: -55}, onComplete:{gold:100}, time:10000, name:"Dance", locked: false} {id:108, category:302, onInit:{energy:-230, power: -355}, onComplete:{gold:70, silver:70}, time:10000, name:"Fitness", locked: false} Now, I would love to add a system where I can lock/unlock the actions using achievement rules. Lets say, if you buy 10 apples, you unlock a new action, like bananas which cost more, and reward more. In the future I maybe want to restrict achievements and actions to levels. I am kinda stuck how to structure this. I have 2 questions: Which patterns are used to define achievements? How/where are they defined? Should it be part of the action, or should it be a separate controller? Is it a good idea to register all completed actions to it? I think I want multiple types of achievement rules, Id love to hear some ideas how to develop it. How do you create/find a good balance, so the user does not get stuck or can cheat by repeat a pattern of actions to get too much rewards. I know there is not a simple answer and i'm lacking of a good game-concept, but I wonder if anyone created such a game and how you dealed and played with it.

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• Northwind now available on SQL Azure

  - by jamiet

  Two weeks ago I made available a copy of [AdventureWorks2012] on SQL Azure and published credentials so that anyone from the SQL community could connect up and experience SQL Azure, probably for the first time. One of the (somewhat) popular requests thereafter was to make the venerable Northwind database available too so I am pleased to say that as of right now, Northwind is up there too. You will notice immediately that all of the Northwind tables (and the stored procedures and views too) have been moved into a schema called [Northwind] – this was so that they could be easily differentiated from the existing [AdventureWorks2012] objects. I used an SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) project to publish the schema and data up to this SQL Azure database; if you are at all interested in poking around that SSDT project then I have made it available on Codeplex for your convenience under the MS-PL license – go and get it from https://northwindssdt.codeplex.com/. Using SSDT proved particularly useful as it alerted me to some aspects of Northwind that were not compatible with SQL Azure, namely that five of the tables did not have clustered indexes: The beauty of using SSDT is that I am alerted to these issues before I even attempt a connection to SQL Azure. Pretty cool, no? Fixing this situation was of course very easy, I simply changed the following primary keys from being nonclustered to clustered: [PK_Region] [PK_CustomerDemographics] [PK_EmployeeTerritories] [PK_Territories] [PK_CustomerCustomerDemo]   If you want to connect up then here are the credentials that you will need: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly You will need SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2008R2 installed in order to connect or alternatively simply use this handy website: https://mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net which provides a web interface to a SQL Azure server. Do remember that hosting this database is not free so if you find that you are making use of it please help to keep it available by visiting Paypal and donating any amount at all to [email protected]. To make this easy you can simply hit this link and the details will be completed for you – all you have to do is login and hit the “Send” button. If you are already a PayPal member then it should take you all of about 20 seconds! I hope this is useful to some of you folks out there. Don’t forget that we also have more data up there than in the conventional [AdventureWorks2012], read more at Big AdventureWorks2012. @Jamiet  AdventureWorks on Azure - Provided by the SQL Server community, for the SQL Server community!

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• Geek Bike Ride JavaOne 2012

  - by Tori Wieldt

  "Geek Bike Ride?" the clerk at the bike rental shop asked. "Are you guys all from the same company?" "We aren't even from the same country!" we answered. "I'm from Russia." "We're from Germany."  "I'm from Belgium." "I'm from Palo Alto." "I'm from Japan."  "We're from Brazil." "We're from Brazil." "I'm from Sweden." "Coooool" was all she could say. She was right. The Geek Bike Ride was cooool. We had 39 bike riders and one skater show up Saturday for a great route from San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, across the Golden Gate bridge, to Saulsalito, and back to the city by ferry. Duke Bike jerseys, sponsored by OTN, were given out. To make sure Java developers got them, each person had to answer a Java question to get a jersey. The questions were really hard, like "Who is the Father of Java?" "What's the biggest Java conference in San Francisco?" The best was when the question was "Name one of Duke's Choice Award winner from this year," and Régina ten Bruggencate answered answered "Me!"  It was foggy throughout the day, with the sun poking out occasionally. The fog was thickest on the bridge, more that one rider commented that we were "in the cloud." It was a great day to meet new friends, and have a chat with old friends. We all had fun, though some of us may more a little more slowly during JavaOne. Ride on!  Photos by permission by Arun Gupta and Yoshio Terada. Thanks, guys!

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• Tell me a Story

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  I recently had a friend ask me to review his resume.  He is a very experienced DBA with excellent skills.  If I had an opening I would have hired him myself.  But not because of the resume.  I know his skill set and skill levels, but there is no way his standard resume can convey that.  A bare bones list of job titles and skills does not set you apart from your competition, nor does it convey whether you have junior or senior level skills and experience.  The solution is to not use the standard format. Tell me a story.  I want to know what you were responsible for.  Describe a tough project and how you saved time/money/personnel on that project.  Link your work activity to business value.  Drop some technical bits in there since we do work in a technical field, but show me what you can do to add value to my business well above what I would pay you.  That will get my attention. The resume exists for one primary and one secondary reason.  The primary reason is to get the interview.  A Resume won’t get you a job, so don’t expect it to.  The secondary reason is to give you and the interviewer a starting point for conversations.  If I can say “Tell me more about when….” and reference an item from your resume, then that is great for both of us.  Of course, you better be able to tell me more, both from the technical and the business side, at least if I am hiring a senior or higher level position.  As for the junior DBAs, go ahead and tell your story too.  Don’t worry about how simple or basic your projects or solutions seem.  It is how you solved the problem and what you learned that I am looking for.  If you learn rapidly and think like a DBA, I can work with that, regardless of you current skill level.

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• Stop trying to be perfect

  - by Kyle Burns

  Yes, Bob is my uncle too.  I also think the points in the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship (manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org) are all great.  What amazes me is that tend to confuse the term “well crafted” with “perfect”.  I'm about to say something that will make Quality Assurance managers and many development types as well until you think about it as a craftsman – “Stop trying to be perfect”. Now let me explain what I mean.  Building software, as with building almost anything, often involves a series of trade-offs where either one undesired characteristic is accepted as necessary to achieve another desired one (or maybe stave off one that is even less desirable) or a desirable characteristic is sacrificed for the same reasons.  This implies that perfection itself is unattainable.  What is attainable is “sufficient” and I think that this really goes to the heart both of what people are trying to do with Agile and with the craftsmanship movement.  Simply put, sufficient software drives the greatest business value.   I've been in many meetings where “how can we keep anything from ever going wrong” has become the thing that holds us in analysis paralysis.  I've also been the guy trying way too hard to perfect some function to make sure that every edge case is accounted for.  Somewhere in there, something a drill instructor said while I was in boot camp occurred to me.  In response to being asked a question by another recruit having to do with some edge case (I can barely remember the context), he said “What if grasshoppers had machine guns?  Would the birds still **** with them?”  It sounds funny, but there's a lot of wisdom in those words.   “Sufficient” is different for every situation and it’s important to understand what sufficient means in the context of the work you’re doing.  If I’m writing a timesheet application (and please shoot me if I am), I’m going to have a much higher tolerance for imperfection than if you’re writing software to control life support systems on spacecraft.  I’m also likely to have less need for high volume performance than if you’re writing software to control stock trading transactions.   I’d encourage anyone who has read this far to instead of trying to be perfect, try to create software that is sufficient in every way.  If you’re working to make a component that is sufficient “better”, ask yourself if there is any component left that is not yet sufficient.  If the answer is “yes” you’re working on the wrong thing and need to adjust.  If the answer is “no”, why aren’t you shipping and delivering business value?

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• Storing game objects with generic object information

  - by Mick

  In a simple game object class, you might have something like this: public abstract class GameObject { protected String name; // other properties protected double x, y; public GameObject(String name, double x, double y) { // etc } // setters, getters } I was thinking, since a lot of game objects (ex. generic monsters) will share the same name, movement speed, attack power, etc, it would be better to have all that information shared between all monsters of the same type. So I decided to have an abstract class "ObjectData" to hold all this shared information. So whenever I create a generic monster, I would use the same pre-created "ObjectData" for it. Now the above class becomes more like this: public abstract class GameObject { protected ObjectData data; protected double x, y; public GameObject(ObjectData data, double x, double y) { // etc } // setters, getters public String getName() { return data.getName(); } } So to tailor this specifically for a Monster (could be done in a very similar way for Npcs, etc), I would add 2 classes. Monster which extends GameObject, and MonsterData which extends ObjectData. Now I'll have something like this: public class Monster extends GameObject { public Monster(MonsterData data, double x, double y) { super(data, x, y); } } This is where my design question comes in. Since MonsterData would hold data specific to a generic monster (and would vary with what say NpcData holds), what would be the best way to access this extra information in a system like this? At the moment, since the data variable is of type ObjectData, I'll have to cast data to MonsterData whenever I use it inside the Monster class. One solution I thought of is this, but this might be bad practice: public class Monster extends GameObject { private MonsterData data; // <- this part here public Monster(MonsterData data, double x, double y) { super(data, x, y); this.data = data; // <- this part here } } I've read that for one I should generically avoid overwriting the underlying classes variables. What do you guys think of this solution? Is it bad practice? Do you have any better solutions? Is the design in general bad? How should I redesign this if it is? Thanks in advanced for any replies, and sorry about the long question. Hopefully it all makes sense!

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar’s Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a ‘perfect storm’ of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one’s work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven’t far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it’s a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it’s more important not to let such fears lead to writer’s block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn’t always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what’s involved in getting an application that is ‘done’ ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we’d love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to ‘throw your hat into the ring’, drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• On the art of self-promotion

  - by Tony Davis

  I attended Brent Ozar's Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a 'perfect storm' of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one's work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven't far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it's a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it's more important not to let such fears lead to writer's block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn't always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what's involved in getting an application that is 'done' ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we'd love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to 'throw your hat into the ring', drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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• Throwing exception from a property when my object state is invalid

  - by Rumi P.

  Microsoft guidelines say: "Avoid throwing exceptions from property getters", and I normally follow that. But my application uses Linq2SQL, and there is the case where my object can be in invalid state because somebody or something wrote nonsense into the database. Consider this toy example: [Table(Name="Rectangle")] public class Rectangle { [Column(Name="ID", IsPrimaryKey = true, IsDbGenerated = true)] public int ID {get; set;} [Column(Name="firstSide")] public double firstSide {get; set;} [Column(Name="secondSide")] public double secondSide {get; set;} public double sideRatio { get { return firstSide/secondSide; } } } Here, I could write code which ensures that my application never writes a Rectangle with a zero-length side into the database. But no matter how bulletproof I make my own code, somebody could open the database with a different application and create an invalid Rectangle, especially one with a 0 for secondSide. (For this example, please forget that it is possible to design the database in a way such that writing a side length of zero into the rectangle table is impossible; my domain model is very complex and there are constraints on model state which cannot be expressed in a relational database). So, the solution I am gravitating to is to change the getter to: get { if(firstSide > 0 && secondSide > 0) return firstSide/secondSide; else throw new System.InvalidOperationException("All rectangle sides should have a positive length"); } The reasoning behind not throwing exceptions from properties is that programmers should be able to use them without having to make precautions about catching and handling them them. But in this case, I think that it is OK to continue to use this property without such precautions: if the exception is thrown because my application wrote a non-zero rectangle side into the database, then this is a serious bug. It cannot and shouldn't be handled in the application, but there should be code which prevents it. It is good that the exception is visibly thrown, because that way the bug is caught. if the exception is thrown because a different application changed the data in the database, then handling it is outside of the scope of my application. So I can't do anything about it if I catch it. Is this a good enough reasoning to get over the "avoid" part of the guideline and throw the exception? Or should I turn it into a method after all? Note that in the real code, the properties which can have an invalid state feel less like the result of a calculation, so they are "natural" properties, not methods.

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• Using multiple diagrams per model in Entity Framework 5.0

  - by nikolaosk

  I have downloaded .Net framework 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012 since it was released to MSDN subscribers on the 15th of August.For people that do not know about that yet please have a look at Jason Zander's excellent blog post .Since then I have been investigating the many new features that have been introduced in this release.In this post I will be looking into theIn order to follow along this post you must have Visual Studio 2012 and .Net Framework 4.5 installed in your machine.Download and install VS 20120 using this link.My machine runs on Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 works just fine. I have also installed in my machine SQL Server 2012 developer edition. I have also downloaded and installed AdventureWorksLT2012 database.You can download this database from the codeplex website.   Before I start showcasing the demo I want to say that I strongly believe that Entity Framework is maturing really fast and now at version 5.0 can be used as your data access layer in all your .Net projects.I have posted extensively about Entity Framework in my blog.Please find all the EF related posts here. In this demo I will show you how to split an entity model into multiple diagrams using the new enhanced EF designer. We will not build an application in this demo.Sometimes our model can become too large to edit or view.In earlier versions we could only have one diagram per EDMX file.In EF 5.0 we can split the model into more diagrams.1) Launch VS 2012. Express edition will work fine.2) Create a New Project. From the available templates choose a Web Forms application  3) Add a new item in your project, an ADO.Net Entity Data Model. I have named it AdventureWorksLT.edmx.Then we will create the model from the database and click Next.Create a new connection by specifying the SQL Server instance and the database name and click OK.Then click Next in the wizard.In the next screen of the wizard select all the tables from the database and hit Finish.4) It will take a while for our .edmx diagram to be created. When I select an Entity (e.g Customer) from my diagram and right click on it,a new option appears "Move to new Diagram".Make sure you have the Model Browser window open.Have a look at the picture below 5) When we do that a new diagram is created and our new Entity is moved there.Have a look at the picture below  6) We can also right-click and include the related entities. Have a look at the picture below. 7) When we do that the related entities are copied to the new diagram.Have a look at the picture below  8) Now we can cut (CTRL+X) the entities from Diagram2 and paste them back to Diagram1.9) Finally another great enhancement of the EF 5.0 designer is that you can change colors in the various entities that make up the model.Select the entities you want to change color, then in the Properties window choose the color of your choice. Have a look at the picture below. To recap we have demonstrated how to split your entity model in multiple diagrams which comes handy in EF models that have a large number of entities in them Hope it helps!!!!

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• Need help fixing DPKG errors after update from 12.04 to 12.10

  - by James Wulfe

  So I was doing fine then i upgraded my system to 12.10 and now i cant get my system to update all of its packages properly. no matter what i do, what is happening here and how do i fix this. if i would have thought 12.10 would be this much of a hassle i would have never upgraded..... here is a sampling of the code that returns from "apt-get -f install" It should also be noted that it is just these 6 packages only. no other packages have given me this kind of trouble. well i should say as of now. It was just 5, but them i got an update for unity, and now unity-common is added to the trouble makers. which prevents me from further upgrading the actual unity package as this package is a dependancy. Preparing to replace usb-modeswitch-data 20120120-0ubuntu1 (using .../usb-modeswitch-data_20120815-1_all.deb) ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/usb-modeswitch-data.prerm: 4: /var/lib/dpkg/info/usb-modeswitch-data.prerm: dpkg-maintscript-helper: Input/output error dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 2 dpkg: trying script from the new package instead ... /var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/prerm: 4: /var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/prerm: dpkg-maintscript-helper: Input/output error dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/usb-modeswitch-data_20120815-1_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 2 /var/lib/dpkg/info/usb-modeswitch-data.postinst: 7: /var/lib/dpkg/info/usb-modeswitch-data.postinst: dpkg-maintscript-helper: Input/output error dpkg: error while cleaning up: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/network-manager_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu7_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/pcmciautils_018-8_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/unity-common_6.10.0-0ubuntu2_all.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/whoopsie_0.2.7_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/usb-modeswitch_1.2.3+repack0-1ubuntu3_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/usb-modeswitch-data_20120815-1_all.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) I would also like to note i have cleaned apt cashe both through the terminal and manualy, i have tried installing them manually through dpkg from both the /var/cache/apt/archives/ location and from my own manually downloaded .deb files. i have tried using dpkg-reconfigure and i have used bleachbit to clean my system. I have also tested both my HDD and memory and found no significant errors to lead to the input/output errors. Quite frankly i am just out of options and have grown tired of trying to google a solution to this mess but still do not wish to pursue backing up settings and reinstalling the system. Any help would be appreciated. I am only interested in answers, please leave your feeling towards grammar, punctuation, and bias towards how a "post should look" at the door. If you dont have something to contribute towards solving my problem then you are just doing nothing but contributing to it. Thank you.

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• Default values - are they good or evil?

  - by Andrew

  The question about default values in general - default return function values, default parameter values, default logic for when something is missing, default logic for handling exceptions, default logic for handling the edge conditions etc. For a long time I considered default values to be a "pure evil" thing, something that "cloaks the catastrophe" and results in a very hard do find bugs. But recently I started to think about default values as some sort of a technical debt ... which is not a straight bad thing but something that could provide some "short term financing" get us to survive the project (how many of us could afford to buy a house without taking out the mortgage?). When I say a "short term" - I don't mean - "do something quickly first and do refactor it out later before it hits the production". No - I am talking about relying on a hardcoded default values in a production software. Granted - it could cause some issues, but what if it only going to cause a single trouble in a whole year. Again - I am talking about the "average" mainstream software here (not a software for a nuclear power station) - the average web site or a UI application for the accounting software, meaning that people lives are not at stake, nor millions of dollars. Again, from my experience, business users would rather live with the software which "works somehow", rather then wait for a perfect one. And the use of default values helps a lot if you develop a software in a RAD style. But again - the longest debug sessions I have spent were because of the bugs introduced by a default value which either stopped being "a default" along the way or because a small subsystem has recently been upgraded and as a result of this upgrade it does not handle the default correctly (e.g. empty list vs null, or null string vs empty string). So my question is - are the default values good or evil. And if they are a technical debt - how do measure up how much you can borrow so you can afford the repayments? Would really appreciate any input. Cheers. EDIT: If I am using the default values as a way to cut the corners during the development - and if the corners cutting results in a bugs and issues - what is the methodology to recover from these issues?

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• How can a solo programmer 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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