Search Results

Search found 4725 results on 189 pages for 'coding horror'.

Page 76/189 | < Previous Page | 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83  | Next Page >

• Forbidding or controlling "Hidden IT..." Who should write and maintain ad-hoc software applications?

  - by matcauthon

  Bigger companies usually have the problem, that it is not possible to write all programs employees want (to save time and to optimize processes) due to a lack of staff and money. Then hidden programs will be created by some people having (at least some) coding experience (or by cheap students/interns...). Under some circumstances these applications will raise in importance and spread from one user to a whole department. Then there is the critical point: Who will maintain the application, add new features, ...? And this app is critical. It IS needed. But the intern has left the company. No one knows how it works. You only have a bunch of sources and some sort of documentation. Does it make sense to try and control or forbid application development done ad-hoc outside of the IT department (with the exception of minor stuff like Excel macros)?

  Read the article

• Know Your Audience, And/Or Your Customer

  - by steve.diamond

  Yesterday I gave an internal presentation to about 20 Oracle employees on "messaging," not messaging technology, but embarking on the process of building messages. One of the elements I covered was the importance of really knowing and understanding your audience. As a humorous reference I included two side-by-side photos of Oakland A's fans and Oakland Raiders fans. The Oakland A's fans looked like happy-go-lucky drunk types. The Oakland Raiders fans looked like angry extras from a low budget horror flick. I then asked my presentation attendees what these two groups had in common. Here's what I heard. --They're human (at least I THINK they're human). --They're from Oakland. --They're sports fans. After that, it was anyone's guess. A few days earlier we were putting the finishing touches on a sales presentation for one of our product lines. We had included an upfront "lead in" addressing how the economy is improving, yet that doesn't mean sales executives will have any more resources to add to their teams, invest in technology, etc. This "lead in" included miscellaneous news article headlines and statistics validating the slowly improving economy. When we subjected this presentation to internal review two days ago, this upfront section in particular was scrutinized. "Is the economy really getting better? I (exclamation point) don't think it's really getting better. Haven't you seen the headlines coming out of Greece and Europe?" Then the question TO ME became, "Who will actually be in the audience that sees and hears this presentation? Will s/he be someone like me? Or will s/he be someone like the critic who didn't like our lead-in?" We took the safe route and removed that lead in. After all, why start a "pitch" with a component that is arguably subjective? What if many of our audience members are individuals at organizations still facing a strong headwind? For reasons I won't go into here, it was the right decision to make. The moral of the story: Make sure you really know your audience. Harness the wisdom of the information your organization's CRM systems collect to get that fully informed "customer view." Conduct formal research. Conduct INFORMAL research. Ask lots of questions. Study industries and scenarios that have nothing to do with yours to see "how they do it." Stop strangers in coffee shops and on the street...seriously. Last week I caught up with an old friend from high school who recently retired from a 25 year career with the USMC. He said, "I can learn something from every single person I come into contact with." What a great way of approaching the world. Then, think about and write down what YOU like and dislike as a customer. But also remember that when it comes to your company's products, you are most likely NOT the customer, so don't go overboard in superimposing your own world view. Approaching the study of customers this way adds rhyme, reason and CONTEXT to lengthy blog posts like this one. Know your audience.

  Read the article

• When is your interview?

  - by Rob Farley

  Sometimes it’s tough to evaluate someone – to figure out if you think they’d be worth hiring. These days, since starting LobsterPot Solutions, I have my share of interviews, on both sides of the desk. Sometimes I’m checking out potential staff members; sometimes I’m persuading someone else to get us on board for a project. Regardless of who is on which side of the desk, we’re both checking each other out. The world is not how it was some years ago. I’m pretty sure that every time I walk into a room for an interview, I’ve searched for them online, and they’ve searched for me. I suspect they usually have the easier time finding me, although there are obviously other Rob Farleys in the world. They may have even checked out some of my presentations from conferences, read my blog posts, maybe even heard me tell jokes or sing. I know some people need me to explain who I am, but for the most part, I think they’ve done plenty of research long before I’ve walked in the room. I remember when this was different (as it could be for you still). I remember a time when I dealt with recruitment agents, looking for work. I remember sitting in rooms having been giving a test designed to find out if I knew my stuff or not, and then being pulled into interviews with managers who had to find out if I could communicate effectively. I’d need to explain who I was, what kind of person I was, what my value-system involved, and so on. I’m sure you understand what I’m getting at. (Oh, and in case you hadn’t realised, it’s a T-SQL Tuesday post, this month about interviews.) At TechEd Australia some years ago (either 2009 or 2010 – I forget which), I remember hearing a comment made during the ‘locknote’, the closing session. The presenter described a conversation he’d heard between two girls, discussing a guy that one of them had just started dating. The other girl expressed horror at the fact that her friend had met this guy in person, rather than through an online dating agency. The presenter pointed out that people realise that there’s a certain level of safety provided through the checks that those sites do. I’m not sure I completely trust this, but I’m sure it’s true for people’s technical profiles. If I interview someone, I hope they have a profile. I hope I can look at what they already know. I hope I can get samples of their work, and see how they communicate. I hope I can get a feel for their sense of humour. I hope I already know exactly what kind of person they are – their value system, their beliefs, their passions. Even their grammar. I can work out if the person is a good risk or not from who they are online. If they don’t have an online presence, then I don’t have this information, and the risk is higher. So if you’re interviewing with me, your interview started long before the conversation. I hope it started before I’d ever heard of you. I know the interview in which I’m being assessed started before I even knew there was a product called SQL Server. It’s reflected in what I write. It’s in the way I present. I have spent my life becoming me – so let’s talk! @rob_farley

  Read the article

• How do developer get rid of silly requirements?

  - by sugar

  Hmm ! First of all let me give you the note of the requirement. So that you can have idea what kind of problem I am facing. Words From Project Manager : Hey ! Sugar, I am assigning you a task for developing a framework. This framework is supposed to be developed for all iOS application. Please go through brief of the required framework. It should be able to detect the thickness of my Thumb. It should be able to detect whether User is using thumb or Fingers If user is using thumbs/Fingers, Framework should calculate the size of thumb/fingers. Once size is been calculated, all elements of user interface should arranged & resized automatically. ( not specified how & where as its framework - it should be smart enough to arrange automatically ) If thumb size is larger elements should get arranged near by center area of iPad/iPhone If thumb size is smaller elements should get arranged near by corners of iPad/iPhone If thumb size is larger, fonts of all elements should get smaller. ( assuming = aged person ) If thumb size is smaller, fonts of all elements should get larger. ( assuming smaller thumb = low aged person ) Summary : This framework is required for creating user-friendly user-interfaces programmatically. We need to develop a very developer-friendly framework. Framework should be developed in such a way that we can use in as many projects as needed. Well, I am a developer. What I want to have as an answer is as follows. How to describe them - the way of they thinking is bit ridiculous ? How do I explain them - we can better concentrate on developing actual projects ? How do I convince them - that this kind of things even if possible, is not recommended to develop such things ? How do I say politely, gently & respectfully NO to this ? What should I say, So that they can not point at my experience ? ( e.g. you are 3 years experienced guy & you must have abilities to develop such things ) Feeling horror. Please help. Thanks in advance, Sugar. Note : Please help me to tag this question properly. I am stuck & this is real situation. Frustrated & tensed. You guys might have faced such requirements from TopLevel. requesting you to help with your experience. Well ! I came to know that - those TOPLEVEL guys don't have any idea of iPad, iPhone, Apple etc. I would do one thing. Sir, before we go further for framework development. It is strongly recommended to read Apple Human Interface Guidlines.

  Read the article

• Insurers Pushed to Transform Their Business

  - by Calvin Glenn

  Everyone in the P&C industry has heard it “We can’t do it.” “Nobody wants to do it.” “We can’t afford to do it.”  Unfortunately, what they’re referencing are the reasons many insurers are still trying to maintain their business processing on legacy policy administration systems, attempting to bide time until there is no other recourse but to give in, bite the bullet, and take on the monumental task of replacing an entire policy administration system (PAS). Just the thought of that project sends IT, Business Users and Management reeling. However, is that fear real?  It is a bit daunting when one realizes that a complete policy administration system replacement will touch most every function an insurer manages, from quoting and rating, to underwriting, distribution, and even customer service. With that, everyone has heard at least one horror story around a transformation initiative that has far exceeded budget and the promised implementation / go-live timeline.    But, does it have to be that hard?  Surely, in the age where a person can voice-activate their DVR to record a TV program from a cell phone, there has to be someone somewhere who’s figured out how to simplify this process. To be able to help insurers, of all sizes, transform and grow their business while also delivering on their overall objectives of providing speed to market, straight-through-processing for applications, quoting, underwriting, and simplified product development. Maybe we’re looking too hard and the answer is simple and straight-forward. Why replace the entire machine when all it really needs is a new part…a single enterprise rating system? This core, modular piece of the policy administration system is the foundation of product development and rate management that enables insurers to provide the right product at the right price to the right customer through the best channels at any given moment in time. The real benefit of a single enterprise rating system is the ability to deliver enhanced business capabilities, such as improved product management, streamlined underwriting, and speed to market. With these benefits, carriers have accomplished a portion of their overall transformation goal. Furthermore, lessons learned from the rating project can be applied to the bigger, down-the-road PAS project to support the successful completion of the overall transformation endeavor. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld Conference in San Francisco, information was shared with attendees about a recent “go-live” project from an Oracle Insurance Tier 1 insurer who did what is proposed above…replaced just the rating portion of their legacy policy administration system with Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting.  This change provided the insurer greater flexibility to set rates that better reflect risk while enabling the company to support its market segment strategy. Using the Oracle Insurance Insbridge enterprise rating solution, the insurer was able to reduce processing time for agents and underwriters, gained the ability to support proprietary rating models and improved pricing accuracy.      There is mounting pressure on P&C insurers to produce growth and show net profitability in the midst of modest overall industry growth, large weather-related losses and intensifying competition for market share.  Insurers are also being asked to improve customer service, offer a differentiated value proposition and simplify insurance processes.  While the demands are many there is an easy answer…invest in and update the most mission critical application in your arsenal, the single enterprise rating system. Download the Podcast to listen to “Stand-Alone Rating Engine - Leading Force Behind Core Transformation Projects in the P&C Market,” a podcast originally recorded in October 2013. Related Resources: White Paper: Stand-Alone Rating Engine: Leading Force Behind Core Transformation Projects in the P&C Market Webcast On Demand: Stand-Alone Rating Engine and Core Transformation for P&C Insurers Don’t forget to keep up with us year-round: Facebook: www.facebook.com/oracleinsurance Twitter: www.twitter.com/oracleinsurance YouTube: www.youtube.com/oracleinsurance

  Read the article

• Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part three: Architecture

  - by marc dekeyser

  Having the basics (like discussed in the previous articles) is all good and well, but how do we get started on this?! It can be quite daunting after all!   From my own point of view I can absolutely confirm your worries and concerns, but also tell you that it is not as hard as it seems! Deciding on what kind of motherboard to buy, processor and how much memory is an activity you will spend quite some time doing research on. And that is not even mentioning storage! All in all it comes down to setting you expectations and your budget. Probably adjusting your expectations according to your budget :). Processors As a rule of thumb you want VT-D (virtualization) technology built in to the processor allowing you to have 64 bit machines running on your host. Memory The more the better! If you are building a home lab don’t bother with ECC unless you are going to run machines that absolutely should be on all the time and your comfort depends on it! Motherboard Depends on what you are going to do with storage: If you are going the NAS way then the number of SATA port/RAID capabilities do not really matter. If you decide to have a single server with lots of dedicated storage it obviously matters how much SATA ports you will have, alternatively you could use a RAID controller (but these set you back a pretty penny if you want one. DELL 6i’s are usually available for a good bargain if you can find one!). Easiest is to get one with a built-in graphics card (on-board) as you are just adding more heat, power usage and possible points of failure. Networking Just like your choice of motherboard the networking side tends to depend on how you want to go. A single virtualization  host with local storage can usually get away with having a single network card, a cluster or server which uses iSCSI storage tends to have more than one teamed up :). Storage The dreaded beast from the dark! The horror which lives in the forest! The most difficult decision you are going to make in the building of your lab. Why you might ask? Simple my friend, having the right choice of storage can make or break your virtualization solution. The performance of you storage choice will have an important impact on the responsiveness of your virtual machines and the deployment of new machines. It also makes a run with your budget! If you decide to go the NAS route you will be dropping a lot more money than if you would be having just a bunch of disks sitting in a server and manually distributing the virtual machines over the disks. Platform I’m a Microsoftee so Hyper-V is a dead giveaway for me. If you are interested in using VMware I won’t stop you but the rest of my posts will be oriented on Server 2012 Hyper-V (aka 3.0)! What did I use? Before someone asks me this in the comments I’ll give you a quick run down of what I am using. - Intel 2.4 quad core processors (i something something) - 24 GB DDR3 Memory - Single disk in each server (might look at this as I move the servers to 2012) - Synology DS1812+ NAS - 3 network interfaces where possible - HP1800 procurve managed switch I decided to spring for the NAS as I will also be using it for backups and media storage (which is working out quite nicely with my Xbox 360 I must say). At the time of building my 2 boxes (over a year and a half ago) these set me back about 900 euros each so I can image you can build the same or better for a lower price. Next article will be diagramming what I want to achieve and starting a build on the Hyper V 3.0 cluster!

  Read the article

• faster implementation of sum ( for Codility test )

  - by Oscar Reyes

  How can the following simple implementation of sum be faster? private long sum( int [] a, int begin, int end ) { if( a == null ) { return 0; } long r = 0; for( int i = begin ; i < end ; i++ ) { r+= a[i]; } return r; } EDIT Background is in order. Reading latest entry on coding horror, I came to this site: http://codility.com which has this interesting programming test. Anyway, I got 60 out of 100 in my submission, and basically ( I think ) is because this implementation of sum, because those parts where I failed are the performance parts. I'm getting TIME_OUT_ERROR's So, I was wondering if an optimization in the algorithm is possible. So, no built in functions or assembly would be allowed. This my be done in C, C++, C#, Java or pretty much in any other. EDIT As usual, mmyers was right. I did profile the code and I saw most of the time was spent on that function, but I didn't understand why. So what I did was to throw away my implementation and start with a new one. This time I've got an optimal solution [ according to San Jacinto O(n) -see comments to MSN below - ] This time I've got 81% on Codility which I think is good enough. The problem is that I didn't take the 30 mins. but around 2 hrs. but I guess that leaves me still as a good programmer, for I could work on the problem until I found an optimal solution: Here's my result. I never understood what is those "combinations of..." nor how to test "extreme_first"

  Read the article

• How do I create a named temporary file on windows in Python?

  - by Chris B.

  I've got a Python program that needs to create a named temporary file which will be opened and closed a couple times over the course of the program, and should be deleted when the program exits. Unfortunately, none of the options in tempfile seem to work: TemporaryFile doesn't have a visible name NamedTemporaryFile creates a file-like object. I just need a filename. I've tried closing the object it returns (after setting delete = False) but I get stream errors when I try to open the file later. SpooledTemporaryFile doesn't have a visible name mkstemp returns both the open file object and the name; it doesn't guarantee the file is deleted when the program exits mktemp returns the filename, but doesn't guarantee the file is deleted when the program exits I've tried using mktemp1 within a context manager, like so: def get_temp_file(suffix): class TempFile(object): def __init__(self): self.name = tempfile.mktemp(suffix = '.test') def __enter__(self): return self def __exit__(self, ex_type, ex_value, ex_tb): if os.path.exists(self.name): try: os.remove(self.name) except: print sys.exc_info() return TempFile() ... but that gives me a WindowsError(32, 'The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process'). The filename is used by a process my program spawns, and even though I ensure that process finishes before I exit, it seems to have a race condition out of my control. What's the best way of dealing with this? 1 I don't need to worry about security here; this is part of a testing module, so the most someone nefarious could do is cause our unit tests to spuriously fail. The horror!

  Read the article

• People not respecting good practices at workplace

  - by VexXtreme

  Hi There are some major issues in my company regarding practices, procedures and methodologies. First of all, we're a small firm and there are only 3-4 developers, one of which is our boss who isn't really a programmer, he just chimes in now and then and tries to do code some simple things. The biggest problems are: Major cowboy coding and lack of methodologies. I've tried explaining to everyone the benefits of TDD and unit testing, but I only got weird looks as if I'm talking nonsense. Even the boss gave me the reaction along the lines of "why do we need that? it's just unnecessary overhead and a waste of time". Nobody uses design patterns. I have to tell people not to write business logic in code behind, I have to remind them not to hardcode concrete implementations and dependencies into classes and cetera. I often feel like a nazi because of this and people think I'm enforcing unnecessary policies and use of design patterns. The biggest problem of all is that people don't even respect common sense security policies. I've noticed that college students who work on tech support use our continuous integration and source control server as a dump to store their music, videos, series they download from torrents and so on. You can imagine the horror when I realized that most of the partition reserved for source control backups was used by entire seasons of TV series and movies. Our development server isn't even connected to an UPS and surge protection. It's just plugged straight into the wall outlet. I asked the boss to buy surge protection, but he said it's unnecessary. All in all, I like working here because the atmosphere is very relaxed, money is good and we're all like a family (so don't advise me to quit), but I simply don't know how to explain to people that they need to stick to some standards and good practices in IT industry and that they can't behave so irresponsibly. Thanks for the advice

  Read the article

• Using a Visual Sourcesafe 2005 database with VB6 still launches VSS 6.0d

  - by John Galt

  I know all versions of VSS have many horror stories and I feel I will escape to a better source control mechanism someday but in the short term I am just trying to do a little cleanup and would like your advice on this issue: Objective - consolidate old VB6 source code in a "new" VSS 2005 database (currently all these old projects are checked in to an "old" VSS 6.0d database); eventually, eliminate the "old" VSS. Progress so far - The new VSS 2005 database now contains a mixture of projects. Some are using Visual Studio 2008, some use Vstudio 2005, and the more recently added ones are the above mentioned VB6 projects. Individually all these projects and "solutions" come up OK, I can check in - check out, launch SourceSafe, view differences, etc. But all the VB6 projects now in a VSS 2005 database launch VSS 6.0d when asked, rather than VSS 2005. Is this normal and just something to cope with until I get to some better nonVSS approach? Or can VB6 be re-configured someway to launch VSS 2005 when I click Tools-SourceSafe-Run SourceSafe? I seem to recall VSS 6.0d got "integrated" into VB6 by way of the "Add-In Manager". At this point, the development PC with VB6 installed has both VSS 2005 and VSS 6.0d clients installed.

  Read the article

• JScrollPane Scrolls Down with Long Text in JEditorPane

  - by Jim

  Hello, I want to have a JEditorPane inside a JScrollPane. When the user clicks a button, the click listener will create a textEditor, call jscrollpane.setViewPort(textEditor), call textEditor.setText(String) to fill it with editable text, and call jscrollpane.getVerticalScrollBar().setValue(0). In case you're wondering, yes, the setText() must come after the setViewPort() for reasons that aren't on topic. Here is the problem: After the user clicks the button, the JScrollPane's view scrolls all the way to the bottom. I want the scrollbar to be at the top, as per the last line in my click listener. I popped open a debugger, and to my horror, discovered that the jscrollpane's viewport is being forced down to the bottom after the conclusion of the click listener (when pumping filters). It appears that Swing is delaying the population of the editor/jscrollpane until after the conclusion of the clicklistener, but is calling the scrollbar command first. Thus, the undesired behavior. Anyway, I'm wondering if there is a clean solution. It seems that wanting a scrollpane to be scrolled to the top after modification would be a reasonably common requirement, so I'm assuming this is a well-solved problem. Thanks!

  Read the article

• How to cache L2E entity without attach/detach?

  - by Eran Betzalel

  The following code will select a key/value table in the DB and will save the result to the cache: using (var db = new TestEntities()) { if(Cache["locName_" + inventoryLocationName] != null) return Cache["locName_" + inventoryLocationName]; var location = db.InventoryLocationsSet.FirstOrDefault( i => i.InventoryLocationName.Equals( inventoryLocationName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)); db.Detach(location); // ???? Cache["locName_" + inventoryLocationName] = location; return location; } But it doesn't work well when I'm trying to use the cached object. Of course, the problem is the different ObjectContext, so I use Attach/Detach and then the problem solves but with a codding horror price: db.Attach(locationFromCache); // ???? try { // Use location as foreign key db.SaveChanges(); } finally { db.Detach(locationFromCache); // ???? } So, how can I use cached objects without using attach/detach methods? What happens if more than one user will have to use this cached object? Should I put the whole thing in a CriticalSection?!

  Read the article

• REST API error return good practices

  - by Remus Rusanu

  I'm looking for guidance on good practices when it comes to return errors from a REST API. I'm working on a new API so I can take it any direction right now. My content type is XML at the moment, but I plan to support JSON in future. I am now adding some error cases, like for instance a client attempts to add a new resource but has exceeded his storage quota. I am already handling certain error cases with HTTP status codes (401 for authentication, 403 for authorization and 404 for plain bad request URIs). I looked over the blessed HTTP error codes but none of the 400-417 range seems right to report application specific errors. So at first I was tempted to return my application error with 200 OK and a specific XML payload (ie. Pay us more and you'll get the storage you need!) but I stopped to think about it and it seems to soapy (/shrug in horror). Besides it feels like I'm splitting the error responses into distinct cases, as some are http status code driven and other are content driven. So what is the SO crowd recommendation? Good practices (please explain why!) and also, from a client pov, what kind of error handling in the REST API makes life easier for the client code?

  Read the article

• IIS6 compressing static files, but not JSON requests

  - by user500038

  I have IIS6 compression setup, and static content is being compressed correctly as per Coding Horror. Example of a static file: Response Headers Content-Length 55513 Content-Type application/x-javascript Content-Encoding gzip Last-Modified Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:31:58 GMT Accept-Ranges bytes Vary Accept-Encoding Server Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By ASP.NET Date Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:37:23 GMT Request Headers Accept */* Accept-Language en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive 115 Connection keep-alive As you can see, the response is correctly compressed. However with a JSON call you'll see the request with the gzip parameter correctly set: Accept application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01 Accept-Language en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive 115 Connection keep-alive X-Requested-With XMLHttpRequest Then for the response: Cache-Control private Content-Length 6811 Content-Type application/json; charset=utf-8 Server Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By ASP.NET X-AspNet-Version 2.0.50727 X-AspNetMvc-Version 2.0 No gzip! I found this article by Rick Stahl, which outlines how to compress in your code, but I'd like IIS to handle this. Is this possible with IIS6?

  Read the article

• Raising C# events with an extension method - is it bad?

  - by Kyralessa

  We're all familiar with the horror that is C# event declaration. To ensure thread-safety, the standard is to write something like this: public event EventHandler SomethingHappened; protected virtual void OnSomethingHappened(EventArgs e) { var handler = SomethingHappened; if (handler != null) handler(this, e); } Recently in some other question on this board (which I can't find now), someone pointed out that extension methods could be used nicely in this scenario. Here's one way to do it: static public class EventExtensions { static public void RaiseEvent(this EventHandler @event, object sender, EventArgs e) { var handler = @event; if (handler != null) handler(sender, e); } static public void RaiseEvent<T>(this EventHandler<T> @event, object sender, T e) where T : EventArgs { var handler = @event; if (handler != null) handler(sender, e); } } With these extension methods in place, all you need to declare and raise an event is something like this: public event EventHandler SomethingHappened; void SomeMethod() { this.SomethingHappened.RaiseEvent(this, EventArgs.Empty); } My question: Is this a good idea? Are we missing anything by not having the standard On method? (One thing I notice is that it doesn't work with events that have explicit add/remove code.)

  Read the article

• User preferences using SQL and JavaScript

  - by Shyam

  Hi, I am using Server Side JavaScript - yes, I am actually using Server Side JavaScript. To complexify things even more, I use Oracle as a backend database (10g). With some crazy XSLT and mutant-like HTML generation, I can build really fancy web forms - yes, I am aware of Rails and other likewise frameworks and I choose the path of horror instead. I have no JQuery or other fancy framework at my disposal, just plain ol' JavaScript that should be supported by the underlying engine called Mozilla Rhino. Yes, it is insane and I love it. So, I have a bunch of tables at my disposal and some of them are filled with associative keys that link to values. As I am a people pleaser, I want to add some nifty user-preference driven solutions. My users have all an unique user_id and this user_id is available during the entire session. My initial idea is to have a user preference table, where I have "three" columns: user_id, feature and pref_string. Using a delimiter, such as : or - (haven't thought about a suitable one yet), I could like store a bunch of preferences as a list and store its elements inside an array using the .split-method (similar like the PHP-explode function). The feature column could be like the table name or some identifier for the "feature" i want to link preferences too. I hate hardcoding objects, especially as I want to be able to back these up and reuse this functionality application-wide. Of course I would love better ideas, just keep in mind I cannot just add a library that easily. These preferences could be like "joined" to the table, so I can query it and use its values. I hope it doesn't sounds too complex, because well.. its basically something really simple I need. Thanks!

  Read the article

• Why doesn't C# do "simple" type inference on generics?

  - by Ken Birman

  Just curious: sure, we all know that the general case of type inference for generics is undecidable. And so C# won't do any kind of subtyping at all: if Foo<T> is a generic, Foo<int> isn't a subtype of Foo<T>, or Foo<Object> or of anything else you might cook up. And sure, we all hack around this with ugly interface or abstract class definitions. But... if you can't beat the general problem, why not just limit the solution to cases that are easy. For example, in my list above, it is OBVIOUS that Foo<int> is a subtype of Foo<T> and it would be trivial to check. Same for checking against Foo<Object>. So is there some other deep horror that would creep forth from the abyss if they were to just say, aw shucks, we'll do what we can? Or is this just some sort of religious purity on the part of the language guys at Microsoft?

  Read the article

• Approach for fixing NoClassDefFoundError?

  - by DJC

  I'm seeing this question is getting asked a lot in many different contexts. Perhaps we can set some strategies for locating and fixing it? I'm noobish myself so all I can contribute are horror stories and questions, sorry... It seems this is thrown when a class is visible at compile time but not at run time... how can this happen? In my case I am developing an app that uses the Google APIs, in Eclipse, for the Android platform. I've configured the Project Properties / Java Build Path / Libraries to include the gdata .jars and all is well. When I execute in the emulator I get a force close and the logcat shows a NoClassDefFoundError on a simple new ContactsService("myApp"); I've also tried a new CalendarService("myApp") with the same results. Is it possible or desirable to statically bind at compile time to avoid the problem? How could dynamic binding of an add-on library work in the mobile environment anyway? Either it has to be bound into my .apk or else I need to "install" it? ... hmmm. Advice much appreciated.

  Read the article

• How do I relocate assemblies from a deployment project without breaking application references?

  - by James

  Hi, I have recently refactored a lot of my applications existing code and I am now looking at tidying up the deployment side of things. The existing installer application installs everything in the application folder (with the exclusion of a couple of config files which are located in a sub folder). However, I have multiple applications which all use some common assemblies and my goal is to relocate a these particular assemblies to the "Common Files" folder in the program files directory. NB: I have read a lot about the GAC but I have no experience with it and also read a few horror stories, so trying to get a simple solution for the time being. I managed to get the assemblies installed into the Common Files folder, however, as a result (typical I.T.) I have broken my app! If I copy the assemblies back into the application folder it works fine so the problem is obviously to do with how my app is referencing the assemblies. To get the installer to install the assemblies into the Common Files folder I just updated the Folder property of each assembly in the Detected Dependencies list. My thoughts were when I did that the installer would somehow update my application to tell it to look in that folder for them but that doens't appear to be the case. What exactly am I doing wrong here?

  Read the article

• Which MySQL Fork/Version to Pick??

  - by Drew

  As most of you know, Sun acquired MySQL (and later Oracle acquired Sun), and during these acquisitions, there were a lot of FUD in MySQL community which resulted in creation of various forks. Today we have MySQL from MySQL, Percona (XtraDB) MySQL, OurDelta MySQL, MariaDB, Drizzle to name a few. Which brings us to the source of the problem. We are in the process of upgrading our databases (hardware/software) and I would like to know which one of the forks should I go with. Each has their own set of pros/cons. We are currently using MySQL 5.0.x from MySQL/Linux on an 8-core machine. Our new hardware is a monster with 32 cores and 32GB of memory connecting to a fast NetApp Storage via FC. I would like to stick with MySQL from MySQL but I have heard horror stories on how badly MySQL 5.1 performs on many cores. I have also heard that MySQL 5.4 performs better on multi-core machines but that's still not production ready. In addition, I have also heard a lot of good things about Percona builds. This is what I know so far: MySQL 5.1 from MySQL: Reliable choice, but doesn't scale well on a big machine Percona: Scales well, good backing company. I don't have much experience with it MariaDB: Don't know much about it besides that it was founded by Original MySQL developers (including Monty) OurDelta: Don't know much Drizzle: Mostly optimized for cloud computing I would like to know what's the general notion about this problem. Which build/version should I go with? How are you guys picking your builds/versions? Thanks!

  Read the article

• Incremental deploy from a shell script

  - by WishCow

  I have a project, where I'm forced to use ftp as a means of deploying the files to the live server. I'm developing on linux, so I hacked together a bash script that makes a backup of the ftp server's contents, deletes all the files on the ftp, and uploads all the fresh files from the mercurial repository. (and taking care of user uploaded files and folders, and making post-deploy changes, etc) It's working well, but the project is starting to get big enough to make the deployment process too long. I'd like to modify the script to look up which files have changed, and only deploy the modified files. (the backup is fine atm as it is) I'm using mercurial as a VCS, so my idea is to somehow request the changed files between two revisions from it, iterate over the changed files, and upload each modified file, and delete each removed file. I can use hg log -vr rev1:rev2, and from the output, I can carve out the changed files with grep/sed/etc. Two problems: I have heard the horror stories that parsing the output of ls leads to insanity, so my guess is that the same applies to here, if I try to parse the output of hg log, the variables will undergo word-splitting, and all kinds of transformations. hg log doesn't tell me a file is modified/added/deleted. Differentiating between modified and deleted files would be the least. So, what would be the correct way to do this? I'm using yafc as an ftp client, in case it's needed, but willing to switch.

  Read the article

• Being pressured to GOTO the dark-side

  - by Dan McG

  We have a situation at work where developers working on a legacy (core) system are being pressured into using GOTO statements when adding new features into existing code that is already infected with spagetti code. Now, I understand there may be arguments for using 'just one little GOTO' instead of spending the time on refactoring to a more maintainable solution. The issue is, this isolated 'just one little GOTO' isn't so isolated. At least once every week or so there is a new 'one little GOTO' to add. This codebase is already a horror to work with due to code dating back to or before 1984 being riddled with GOTOs that would make many Pastafarians believe it was inspired by the Flying Spagetti Monster itself. Unfortunately the language this is written in doesn't have any ready made refactoring tools, so it makes it harder to push the 'Refactor to increase productivity later' because short-term wins are the only wins paid attention to here... Has anyone else experienced this issue whereby everybody agrees that we cannot be adding new GOTOs to jump 2000 lines to a random section, but continually have Anaylsts insist on doing it just this one time and having management approve it? tldr; How can one go about addressing the issue of developers being pressured (forced) to continually add GOTO statements (by add, I mean add to jump to random sections many lines away) because it 'gets that feature in quicker'? I'm beginning to fear we may loses valuable developers to the raptors over this...

  Read the article

• Protecting my apps security from deassembling

  - by sandis

  So I recently tested deassembling one of my android apps, and to my horror I discovered that the code was quite readable. Even worse, all my variable names where intact! I thought that those would be compressed to something unreadable at compile time. The app is triggered to expire after a certain time. However, now it was trivial for me to find my function named checkIfExpired() and find the variable "expired". Is there any good way of making it harder for a potential hacker messing with my app? Before someone states the obvious: Yes, it is security through obscurity. But obviously this is my only option since the user always will have access to all my code. This is the same for all apps. The details of my deactivation-thingy is unimportant, the point is that I dont want deassembler to understand some of the things I do. side questions: Why are the variable names not compressed? Could it be the case that my program would run faster if I stopped using really long variable names, as are my habit?

  Read the article

• Visual Studio C++ Solution in Maven2

  - by graham.reeds

  A new project is coming up that will require interaction between Java and C++. It's been decided that the project will be built via Maven2. Unfortunately I don't know anything about Maven and the Java guys don't know anything about C++. They have their build chain all set up with various reports being emitted for each part related to CheckStyle, Findbugs, Corbortura(?) etc. and they want the same to be done with the C++ side. Currently we have 4 apps that need building: 2 services, a tray app and a simple dialog based application. I've been told I need to have a pom for each and configure each to output to a target directory, have the tool chain produce the reports - the most particular being the code coverage which the client wants 100%. I have sourced the tools - Bullseye and QA-C++ and requested eval copies - but I am dismayed to find there is very little information on C++ & Maven, and what little there is seems to be horror stories. Does anyone on SO have a good story about it (or have link to blog post)? Is there a simple explanation anywhere for configuring a Visual Studio solution (preferably C++) to be Mavenized? I am expecting pain but I am getting increasingly wary of this venture - but unfortunately the project manager is Java side and seems hell-bent on Mavenizing it.

  Read the article

• How can I add file locations to a database after they are uploaded using a Perl CGI script?

  - by Paul K

  I have a CGI program I have written using Perl. One of its functions is to upload pics to the server. All of it is working well, including adding all kinds of info to a MySQL db. My question is: How can I get the uploaded pic files location and names added to the db? I would rather that instead of changing the script to actually upload the pics to the db. I have heard horror stories of uploading binary files to databases. Since I am new to all of this, I am at a loss. Have tried doing some research and web searches for 3 weeks now with no luck. Any suggestions or answers would be greatly appreciated. I would really hate to have to manually add all the locations/names to the db. I am using: a Perl CGI script, MySQL db, Linux server and the files are being uploaded to the server. I AM NOT looking to add the actual files to the db. Just their location(s).

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83  | Next Page >