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• Does software architect/designer require more skills and intellectual than software engineer (implementation)?

  - by Amumu

  So I heard the positions for designing software and writing spec for developers to implement are higher and getting paid more. I think many companies are using the Software Engineering title to depict the person to implement software, which means using tools and technologies to write the actual code. I know that in order to be a software architecture, one needs to be good at implementation in order to have an architectural overview of a system using a set of specific technologies. This is different than I thought of a Software Engineer. My thinking is similar to the standard of IEEE: A software engineer is an engineer who is capable of going from requirement analysis until the software is deployed, based on the SWEBOK (IEEE). Just look at the table of content. The IEEE even has the certificate for Software Engineering, since ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) seems to not have an official qualification test for Software Engineer (although IEEE is a member of ABET). The two certificates are CSDA and CSDP. I intend to take on these two examination in the future to be qualified as a software engineer, although I am already working as one (Junior position). On a side note on the issues of Software Engineer, you can read the dicussion here: Just a Programmer and Just a Software Engineer. The information of ABET does not accredit Software Engineer is in "Just a Software Engineer". On the other hand, why is Programmer/Softwar Engineer who writes code considered a low level position? Suppose if two people have equal skills after the same years of experience, one becomes a software architect and one keeps focus on implementation aspect of Software Engineering (of course he also has design skill to compose a system, since he's a software engineer as well, but maybe less than the specialized software architect), how comes work from Software Engineer is less complicated than the Software Architect? In order to write great code with turn design into reality, it requires far greater skill than just understanding a particular language and a framework. I don't think the ones who wrote and contributing Linux OS are lower level job and easier than conceptual design and writing spec. Can someone enlighten me?

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• Does it matter to you that a software is "available source" but not "open source"

  - by ccpod

  You probably know the list of open source licenses officially approved by the OSI. Most notably I guess would be the GPL, MIT, [insert your favorite license here]. I recently ran into a project which although was open source (the creator made all source code available), was not officially open source under one of those official licenses. It released the source, but made no promise to release the source in the future. It allowed modification suggestions, but made no promises to accept patches and disallowed external distribution of externally-patched versions. It allowed the use of the software in commercial or paid projects, but disallowed the sale of the software itself. I suppose it could be called "available source" not open source as we like to think of it. I can see why the management team of a company wouldn't want to do business with this software. They can't fork it, they can't sell it, they can't create their own version of the software and distribute it or sell it. But would it matter to you as part of a software engineering team who's just using this software? I can still get my work done with it, I can use it in a project for which I'm paid (but I can't sell the software itself, which I'm not in the business of doing anyway), and I can make changes to the code to make it behave differently for my needs (but I can't make those modifications public), and if I do want those modifications officially made available to others, the approval is up to the project itself and they choose whether to incorporate them in an official release or not. So we know that a company that wants to base its business on this "available source" software can't do that, but as someone from the software engineering team, would those differences matter to you or do they seem less relevant? Curious what others think of this.

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• Does it matter to you that a software is "available source" but not "open source"

  - by ccpod

  You probably know the list of open source licenses officially approved by the OSI. Most notably I guess would be the GPL, MIT, [insert your favorite license here]. I recently ran into a project which although was open source (the creator made all source code available), was not officially open source under one of those official licenses. It released the source, but made no promise to release the source in the future. It allowed modification suggestions, but made no promises to accept patches and disallowed external distribution of externally-patched versions. It allowed the use of the software in commercial or paid projects, but disallowed the sale of the software itself. I suppose it could be called "available source" not open source as we like to think of it. I can see why the management team of a company wouldn't want to do business with this software. They can't fork it, they can't sell it, they can't create their own version of the software and distribute it or sell it. But would it matter to you as part of a software engineering team who's just using this software? I can still get my work done with it, I can use it in a project for which I'm paid (but I can't sell the software itself, which I'm not in the business of doing anyway), and I can make changes to the code to make it behave differently for my needs (but I can't make those modifications public), and if I do want those modifications officially made available to others, the approval is up to the project itself and they choose whether to incorporate them in an official release or not. So we know that a company that wants to base its business on this "available source" software can't do that, but as someone from the software engineering team, would those differences matter to you or do they seem less relevant? Curious what others think of this.

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• Role of Sharepoint experience in career growth

  - by Syed Ibrahim

  I am from India. I was a Mainframe developer for first 2 years of my IT career and then shifted to Microsoft .Net and completed 3 years as of now. In these 3 years as a .Net developer i have worked only in core .Net skills like Asp .Net, Sql Server with C# .Net. I never worked in advance skills like Web Services or WCF or silverlight etc. In current world market scenario, I feel Sharepoint experience weighs more than the WCF, Web Services work experience for a .Net Developer.(Please correct if wrong). So i am planning to study Sharepoint through some training centre and complete a Sharepoint certification. The main reason for me to go for Sharepoint is that i feel it is a niche skill and it will help me to get a job in abroad location in future. Please let me know whether sharepoint can help me to get a job in foreign location. I would also like to know whether, Is it possible to master Sharepoint without any experience in skills like WCF, Web Services etc? Is it possible to get a sharepoint job just with knowledge and certification in it? Incase if sharepoint will not offer me career growth, then can you please suggest me the skills which will offer great career growth (like foreign jobs) for me as a .Net developer?

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• Unable to decide weather to continue or quit and start a new carrier

  - by latif mohammad khan

  I am working in a small company. I have joined here for java developer ,but they told as i am fresher so work as Android developer . Then i asked one of my lecturer about Android developement.then he replied why going for mobile developement which is not standard(as nokia's symbain lost , mobile os changes quickly ) its better to get job as Java Developer. By listening his words i was bit not satisfied with my job and thought of leaving Job and search as java developer. But i dont have much confidence to search a job at that time(because i got job after 1 and half years after i passed out), i have decided to work as android developer(as learning new technology and practice java at home). On the first day they introduced me to team leads and they assigned under him. After few days i came to know that my team lead is having only 1 year experience. He(my team lead) joined here as a fresher and done r&d now is my Team lead. If i ask any doubt to him , he just search in internet and reply's my question (some times he explains wrongly) i correct it by myself by searching in net.In my company they don't use latest technologies,they dont follow any design patterns because they dont know them. They provide me very less pay and more work, i dont bother about pay because i am fresher but i bother about work which is not use(I feel like that because they dont use latest technologies,no design patterns,no proper team lead) What i thought was to learn from the company, Team leads how the project done. But there I feel like, i am wasting my time.If i go for another interview in future they ask latest technologies. Now i dont know what to do weather to quit the job and learn another language which have good demand like sap abap or to continue here. please provide me advice Thanks.

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• As a solo programmer, of what use can Gerrit be?

  - by s.d

  Disclaimer: I'm aware of the questions How do I review my own code? and What advantages do continuous integration tools offer on a solo project?. I do feel that this question aims at a different set of answers though, as it is about a specific software, and not about general musings about the use of this or that practice or tech stack. I'm a solo programmer for an Eclipse RCP-based project. To be able to control myself and the quality of my software, I'm in the process of setting up a CSI stack. In this, I follow the Eclipse Common Build Infrastructure guidelines, with the exception that I will use Jenkins rather than Hudson. Sticking to these guidelines will hopefully help me in getting used to the Eclipse way of doing things, and I hope to be able to contribute some code to Eclipse in the future. However, CBI includes Gerrit, a code review software. While I think it's really helpful for teams, and I will employ it as soon as the team grows to at least two developers, I'm wondering how I could use it while I'm still solo. Question: Is there a use case for Gerrit that takes into account solo developers? Notes: I can imagine reviewing code myself after a certain amount of time to gain a little distance to it. This does complicate the workflow though, as code will only be built once it's been passed through code review. This might prove to be a "trap" as I might be tempted to quickly push bad code through Gerrit just to get it built. I'm very interested in hearing how other solo devs have made use of Gerrit.

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• High-Level Application Architecture Question

  - by Jesse Bunch

  So I'm really wanting to improve how I architect the software I code. I want to focus on maintainability and clean code. As you might guess, I've been reading a lot of resources on this topic and all it's doing is making it harder for me to settle on an architecture because I can never tell if my design is the one that the more experienced programmer would've chosen. So I have these requirements: I should connect to one vendor and download form submissions from their API. We'll call them the CompanyA. I should then map those submissions to a schema fit for submitting to another vendor for integration with the email service provider. We'll call them the CompanyB. I should then submit those responses to the ESP (CompanyB) and then instruct the ESP to send that submitter an email. So basically, I'm copying data from one web service to another and then performing an action at the latter web service. I've identified a couple high-level services: The service that downloads data from CompanyA. I called this the CompanyAIntegrator. The service that submits the data to CompanyB. I called this CompanyBIntegrator. So my questions are these: Is this a good design? I've tried to separate the concerns and am planning to use the facade pattern to make the integrators interchangeable if the vendors change in the future. Are my naming conventions accurate and meaningful to you (who knows nothing specific of the project)? Now that I have these services, where should I do the work of taking output from the CompanyAIntegrator and getting it in the format for input to the CompanyBIntegrator? Is this OK to be done in main()? Do you have any general pointers on how you'd code something like this? I imagine this scenario is common to us engineers---especially those working in agencies. Thanks for any help you can give. Learning how to architect well is really mind-cluttering.

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• One page using querystring or many folders and pages?

  - by ClarkeyBoy

  I have an application where I have the 'core' code in one folder for which there is a virtual directory in the root, such that I can include any core files using /myApp/core/bla.asp. I then have two folders outside of this with a default.asp which currently use the querystring to define what page should be displayed. One page is for general users, the other will only be accessible to users who have permission to manage users / usergroups / permissions. The core code checks the querystring and then checks the permissions for that user. An example of this as it is now is default.asp?action=view&viewtype=list&objectid=server. I am not worried about SEO as this is an internal app and uses Windows Auth. My question is, is it better the way it is now or would it be better to have something like the following: /server/view/list/ /server/view/?id=123 /server/create/ /server/edit/?id=123 /server/remove/?id=123 In the above folders I would have a home page which defines all the variables which are currently determined by the querystring - in /server/create/ for example, I would define the action as 'create', object name as 'server' and so on. In terms of future development, I really have no idea which method would be best. I think the 2nd method would be best in terms of following what page does what but this is such a huge change to make at this stage that I would really like some opinions, preferably based on experience. PS Sorry if the tags are wrong - I am new to this forum and thought this was a bit too much of a discussion for StackOverflow as that is very much right / wrong answer based. I got the idea SE is more discussion based.

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• Exploring various SharePoint blogs

  Quick summary on the activities I did yesterday - aka Day 4. Actually, it wasn't too much but I went through a number of articles on various blogs and online forums. Just for general purpose and to see whether my collection is going to have more entries. Well, so far I have to admit that the resources are good. Unfortunately, the blog of Doerfler is a little bit scarce. I went through it completely and there wasn't too much interesting information (yet) but this particular entry is worth mentioning: Wiederherstellen einer gelöschten Websitesammlung (How to restore a deleted site collection) Taking into consideration that there haven't been any new entries since November 2012 I would say that the blog is dormant. It would be great to have new entries in the future... My first (baby) steps in the following SharePoint communities are only scratching the surface, and I'm really looking forward to dig deeper. There seems to be a lot of valuable information available: SharePoint Community SharePointCommunity I think that I already found a true gem over there which is going to give me some extra time: How to begin learning SharePoint (for beginners) - Great overview and link collection Mark Jones. Interestingly, I already discovered a couple of his entries, like the video tutorials by Andrew Connell.

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• Session serialization in JavaEE environment

  - by Ionut

  Please consider the following scenario: We are working on a JavaEE project for which the scalability starts to become an issue. Up until now, we were able to scale up but this is no longer an option. Therefore we need to consider scaling out and preparing the App for a clustered environment. Our main concern right now is serializing the user sessions. Sadly, we did not consider from the beginning the issue and we are encountering the following excetion: java.io.WriteAbortedException: writing aborted; java.io.NotSerializableException: org.apache.catalina.session.StandardSessionFacade I did some research and this exception is thrown because there are objects stored on the session which does not implement the Serializable interface. Considering that all over the app there are quite a few custom objects which are stored on the session without implementing this interface, it would require a lot of tedious work and dedication to fix all these classes declaration. We will fix all this declarations but the main concern is that, in the future, there may be a developer which will add a non Serializable object on the session and break the session serialization & replication over multiple nodes. As a quick overview of the project, we are developing using a home grown framework based on Struts 1 with the Servlet 3.0 API. This means that at this point, we are using the standard session.getAttribute() and session.setAttribute() to work with the session and the session handling is scattered all over the code base. Besides updating the classes of the objects stored on session and making sure that they implement the Serializable interface, what other measures of precaution should we take in order to ensure a reliable Session replication capability on the Application layer? I know it is a little bit late to consider this but what would be the best practice in this case? Furthermore, are there any other issues we should consider regarding this transition? Thank you in advance!

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• Should a project start with the client or the server?

  - by MadBurn

  Pretty simple question with a complex answer. Should a project start with the client or the server, and why? Where should a single programmer start a client/server project? What are the best practices and what are the reasons behind them? If you can't think of any, what reasons do you use to justify why you would choose to start one before the other? Personally, I'm asking this question because I'm finishing up specs for a project I will be doing for myself on the side for fun. But now that I'm finishing this phase, I'm wondering "ok, now where do I begin?" Since I've never done a project like this by myself, I'm not sure where I should start. In this project, my server will be doing all the heavy lifting and the client will just be sending updates, getting information from the server, and displaying it. But, I don't want that to sway the answer as I'm looking for more of an in depth and less specific answer that would apply to any project I begin in the future.

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• As a developer, how do I learn sales? [closed]

  - by Dan Abramov

  I quit the company I was working for to pursuit an opportunity as a startup, and I believe in our product. I'm sure it's going to be great if we attract some customers first to keep going. (I don't want funding.) Our product is targeted at private schools and courses, and helps organize the mess other LMSs introduce. The problem is, our team is basically just me and I have very little idea about sales and marketing. I can do reasonably good copywriting but I'm sure I can do better—and being nervous or too techy in a real world conversation with the client doesn't help. I want to get better, in fact, a lot better at negotiating with clients and pitching my product. I did look for some “sales articles” on the web, and a lot of what I found is plain bullshit on SEO-engineered websites promoting books or $5000 courses. What I need instead is a developer's perspective on how to sale a product you think is great. What are typical programmer's mistakes and misconceptions about sales, and how to avoid them? How do you evolve into a reasonably great salesman? I can't believe it's in the mindset and unlearnable. Your own experience, combined with great articles available on the web is most welcome. To Future Readers The question got closed because it is not a good fit for this site. I found some helpful tips in a similar question asked on a sister StackExchange site about startups: I'm a terrible salesperson. What can I do about it?

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• New website - best practice for requirements specs? [closed]

  - by Alex K.

  Possible Duplicate: Extracting user requirements from a person who does not know how to express himself As a hobby freelancer I'm new to this. I've never had a non-technical client before explain to me what his future website is supposed to do. A person wants me to make a website for him and he basically explained to me what's it about. However, he's not a technical person and he just doesn't understand what I need to know and how to properly describe/explain it to me. When I ask him how a user is supposed to submit an entry to the website he told me "He fills out a form.", which is not really helping me. This was just an example, it goes on for other sections of the website as well which are a lot harder to explain. The website will be aimed at a specific professional user demographic and I have no clue about their profession and how their industry works. I tried to find some good Product Requirements Document templates on Google but none of them really seemed like they could help him understand how to write it so I can understand what he wants/needs. Can somebody please give me a hint on how to deal with such non-technical clients?

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• The battle between Java vs. C#

  The battle between Java vs. C# has been a big debate amongst the development community over the last few years. Both languages have specific pros and cons based on the needs of a particular project. In general both languages utilize a similar coding syntax that is based on C++, and offer developers similar functionality. This being said, the communities supporting each of these languages are very different. The divide amongst the communities is much like the political divide in America, where the Java community would represent the Democrats and the .Net community would represent the Republicans. The Democratic Party is a proponent of the working class and the general population. Currently, Java is deeply entrenched in the open source community that is distributed freely to anyone who has an interest in using it. Open source communities rely on developers to keep it alive by constantly contributing code to make applications better; essentially they develop code by the community. This is in stark contrast to the C# community that is typically a pay to play community meaning that you must pay for code that you want to use because it is developed as products to be marketed and sold for a profit. This ties back into my reference to the Republicans because they typically represent the needs of business and personal responsibility. This is emphasized by the belief that code is a commodity and that it can be sold for a profit which is in direct conflict to the laissez-faire beliefs of the open source community. Beyond the general differences between Java and C#, they also target two different environments. Java is developed to be environment independent and only requires that users have a Java virtual machine running in order for the java code to execute. C# on the other hand typically targets any system running a windows operating system and has the appropriate version of the .Net Framework installed. However, recently there has been push by a segment of the Open source community based around the Mono project that lets C# code run on other non-windows operating systems. In addition, another feature of C# is that it compiles into an intermediate language, and this is what is executed when the program runs. Because C# is reduced down to an intermediate language called Common Language Runtime (CLR) it can be combined with other languages that are also compiled in to the CLR like Visual Basic (VB) .Net, and F#. The allowance and interaction between multiple languages in the .Net Framework enables projects to utilize existing code bases regardless of the actual syntax because they can be compiled in to CLR and executed as one codebase. As a software engineer I personally feel that it is really important to learn as many languages as you can or at least be open to learn as many languages as you can because no one language will work in every situation.  In some cases Java may be a better choice for a project and others may be C#. It really depends on the requirements of a project and the time constraints. In addition, I feel that is really important to concentrate on understanding the logic of programming and be able to translate business requirements into technical requirements. If you can understand both programming logic and business requirements then deciding which language to use is just basically choosing what syntax to write for a given business problem or need. In regards to code refactoring and dynamic languages it really does not matter. Eventually all projects will be refactored or decommissioned to allow for progress. This is the way of life in the software development industry. The language of a project should not be chosen based on the fact that a project will eventually be refactored because they all will get refactored.

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• I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?

  - by kmote

  I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice. I am newly employed as the sole "SW Engineer" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 years cobbling together a vast code base. (It was written in a virtually obsolete language: G2 -- think Pascal with graphics). The program itself is a physical model of a complex chemical processing plant; the team that wrote it have incredibly deep domain knowledge but little or no formal training in programming fundamentals. They've recently learned some hard lessons about the consequences of non-existant configuration management. Their maintenance efforts are also greatly hampered by the vast accumulation of undocumented "sludge" in the code itself. I will spare you the "politics" of the situation (there's always politics!), but suffice to say, there is not a consensus of opinion about what is needed for the path ahead. They have asked me to begin presenting to the team some of the principles of modern software development. They want me to introduce some of the industry-standard practices and strategies regarding coding conventions, lifecycle management, high-level design patterns, and source control. Frankly, it's a fairly daunting task and I'm not sure where to begin. Initially, I'm inclined to tutor them in some of the central concepts of The Pragmatic Programmer, or Fowler's Refactoring ("Code Smells", etc). I also hope to introduce a number of Agile methodologies. But ultimately, to be effective, I think I'm going to need to hone in on 5-7 core fundamentals; in other words, what are the most important principles or practices that they can realistically start implementing that will give them the most "bang for the buck". So that's my question: What would you include in your list of the most effective strategies to help straighten out the spaghetti (and prevent it in the future)?

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• Is it worth moving from Microsoft tech to Linux, NodeJS & other open source frameworks to save money for a start-up?

  - by dormisher

  I am currently getting involved in a startup, I am the only developer involved at the moment, and the other guys are leaving all the tech decisions up to me at the moment. For my day job I work at a software house that uses Microsoft tech on a day to day basis, we utilise .NET, SqlServer, Windows Server etc. However, I realise that as a startup we need to keep costs down, and after having a brief look at the cost of hosting for Windows I was shocked to see some of the prices for a dedicated server. The cheapest I found was £100 a month. Also if the business needs to scale in the future and we end up needing multiple servers, we could end up shelling out £10's of £000's a year in SQL Server / Windows Server licenses etc. I then had a quick look at the price of Linux hosting for a dedicated server and saw the price was waaaaaay lower than windows hosting. One place was offering a machine with 2 cores for less than £20 a month. This got me thinking maybe the way to go is open source on Linux. As I write a lot of Javascript at work (I'm working on a single page backbone app at the moment), I thought maybe NodeJS and a web framework like Express would be cool to use. I then thought that instead of using SQL why not use an open source NoSQL database like MongoDB, which has great support on NodeJS? My only concern is that some of the work the application is going to do is going to be dynamically building images and various other image related stuff, i.e. stuff that is quite CPU heavy - so I'm thinking of maybe writing anything CPU heavy in C++ and consuming it as a module in Node. That's the background - but basically is Linux a good match for: Hosting a NodeJS/Express site? Compiling C++ node modules? Using a NoSQL DB like MongoDB? And is it a good idea to move to these unfamiliar technologies to save money?

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• How to implement Restricted access to application features

  - by DroidUser

  I'm currently developing a web application, that provides some 'service' to the user. The user will have to select a 'plan' according to which she/he will be allowed to perform application specific actions but up to a limit defined by the plan. A Plan will also limit access to certain features, which will not be available at all for some plans. As an example : say there are 3 plans, 2 actions throughout the application users in plan-1 can perform action-1 3 times, and they can't perform action-2 at all users in plan-2 can perform action-1 10 times, action-2 5 times users in plan-3 can perform action-1 20 times, action-2 10 times So i'm looking for the best way to get this done, and my main concerns besides implementing it, are the following(in no particular order) maintainability/changeability : the number of plans, and type of features/actions will change in the final product industry standard/best practice : for future readiness!! efficiency : ofcourse, i want fast code!! I have never done anything like this before, so i have no clue about how do i go about implementing these functionalities. Any tips/guides/patterns/resources/examples? I did read a little about ACL, RBAC, are they the patterns that i need to follow? Really any sort of feedback will help.

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• How to fundamentally approach creating a 'financial planner' application?

  - by Anonymous -

  I want to create a financial planning application (for personal use), for which the overall functionality will be this: User (me..) can create different 'scenarios'. Each scenario is configured with different incomings/outgoings. Scenarios can be 'explored' in a calendar format with projections taking into account tax, interest (on both debt and savings) and so on and so forth. My problem lies in how to fundamentally approach the project. I've considered: When creating incomings/outgoings for a script to apply them to each day in a 'days' table of a database, acting as a method of caching. This means that if I wanted to look at January 14th, 2074 there aren't thousands of cycles of calculations to run through and the result can just be pulled. Do each calculation dynamically, but again, I'm finding it hard to visuallize how I would handle different tax allowances (I'm based in the UK by the way), payrises and 'changes' to my incomings/outgoings. I've sat on this for a couple of days and am struggling to come up with an elegant approach to my problem. There may well be software out there that does what I'm looking to do (in fact I'm sure it is) but I would like to develop this myself for learning purposes, to be able to add it to my personal life 'toolset' and to allow me to expand on it in the future. Many thanks to all who have any input on my dilemna.

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• I want to make "stuff" on the web, is a BsC. in Computers necessary/overkill? [on hold]

  - by notypist

  I'm 24 and have a lead role in a major news outlet in my country, with a good pay and public image in the horizon. I hold a job that was previously held by people with 15-20 years of experience and considered one of the top 5 news anchors in my country. My passion though, is computers. The web, to be precise. I was a problogger at a very young age. I hacked my way through CSS and some basic HTML and PHP. But I want to move forward - I want to CREATE not just STRUCTURE things. Giving up the present (and especially the seemingly promising future) in my current industry is hard, my friends raise their eyebrows... I'm considering a BsC. in computer Engineering - but my stats are short of getting into a good university for this discipline. Plus, I'm not the best with math - although I do exceptionally well in statistics and other numbers that are more applicable to real life. I tried learning PHP through online websites, but that just "doesn't cut it" for me. Nope. So what are my options here? if I don't want to build hardware or and deal with overly-complex algorithmic but would like, for example - to build a well functioning iPhone and iPad app, or a SaaS, a startup...do I have to go the BsC. route? I don't see any option to get an "official" education in strictly "web" concepts and languages.. Note: I'm well off financially, so I'm doing this more to be able to create stuff, rather than get a job in a corporations. Although if I land somewhere high, that might be an option. But my main concern is getting the tools.

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• A programmer who doesn't get to program - where to turn? [closed]

  - by Just an Anon

  I'm in my mid 20's, and have been working as a full time programmer / developer for the last ~6 years, with several years of part-time freelancing before this, and three straight years of freelancing in the middle of this short career. I work mostly with PHP and the Drupal framework. By and large, I focus on programming custom pieces of functionality; these, of course, vary greatly from project to project. I've got years of solid experience with OOP (have done some Java & C# years ago, too) including intensive experience with front-end development, and even some design work. I've lead small teams (2-4 people) of developers. And of course, given the large amount of freelancing, I've got decent project- & client-management skills. My problem is staying motivated at any place of employment. In the time mentioned I've worked (full-time) at six local companies. The longest I've stayed at any company was just over a year. I find that I'll get hired and be very excited and motivated for the first few months, but the work quickly gets "stale." By that I mean that the interesting components (ie. the programming) get done, and the rest of the work turns into boring cleanup (move a button, add text, change colours, add a field). I don't get challenged, and I don't feel like I'm learning anything new. This happens repeatedly time and time again, and I always end up leaving for either a new opportunity, or to freelance. I'm wondering if perhaps I've painted myself into a corner with the rather niche work market (although with very high demand and good compensation) and need to explore other career choices. Another possibility is that I may be choosing the wrong places of employment, mostly small agencies, and need to look into working for a larger, more established firm. I find programming, writing code, and architecting solutions very rewarding. When I'm working on an interesting problem I lose all sense of time and 14-16 hours can fly by like minutes. I get the same exciting feeling when I'm doing high-level planning of a complex system, breaking up the work and figuring out how everything will tie-in together. I absolutely hate doing small, "stupid" changes that pose no challenge, yet seem to make up more and more of my work. I want to find a workplace where I will get to work on such tasks, be challenged, and improve in all areas of product development. This maybe a programming job, management, architecture of desktop apps, or may be managing a taco stand on a beach in Mexico - I don't know, and I need some advice and real-world feedback. What are some job areas worth exploring? The requirements are fairly simple: working with computers interacting with others challenging decent pay (I'm making just short of 90k / year with a month of vacation & some benefits, and would like to stay in this range, but am willing to take a temporary cut in pay for a more interesting position) Any advice would be much appreciated!

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• What is the start point in game development? Where to start?

  - by Dragon

  I understand, I'm not unique with such a question, there are a lot of questions like this one. But I hope you'll take a minute and maybe can give me a piece of advice. I have an idea to develop games, but I don't know where is the start point in game development. The learning curve isn't as straight as in learning of a programming language, but I want to give it a try. I have some experience with OOP and programming in general. I know (not too deep) C#, Java programming languages. I searched info on where to start, read a lot of blogs, forums and so on. Once I decided "stop wandering around, just start develop a game" and I started. At the moment I have a console version of very simple game (RPS - rock-paper-scissors) developed with C#. It has different modes: "player vs cpu" and "player vs player". Some time later I looked at the code and decided that it should be refactored or even redeveloped from the scratch. And I thought that time "GUI is what I need. I can add logic later." And now I'm here. I've already decided to make RPS with GUI, then make multiplayer and so on. I'm not thinking about 3D now, 2D is enough. It doesn't matter what language to use: C# or Java, I found frameworks for both - XNA (C#) and Slick (Java). Both are good for 2D game development. But I know nothing about sprites, how to bind objects on the screen and so on. You can say "you don't need it for such simple game like RPS", but RPS is the beginning, I have some ideas like "Tower Defense" game... you know, everybody has ideas, wishes.... and this knowledge is useful and in some way obligatory. So what is the start point to achieve my plans, ideas, wishes? Where to start? Is it possible to make game development learning curve a little bit straight? Or there're ways that amateur and game development beginners use for years? Thank you for you answers and advise in advance. P.S Sorry for that this post turned out an essay, but I tried to express my wish to start acting. Hope I managed to do it.

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• What should I wear to a job interview with a game development company?

  - by Bill

  Many game development companies are less formal in terms of workplace attire than other types of software development houses. For example, I know that one place at which I will be interviewing soon has a predominant workplace culture of jeans and polos or t-shirts. Should I wear a suit? Shirt and tie? Shirt and sport jacket, with or without tie? I want to show that I'm serious about the job, but that I understand the culture, too.

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• How to separate production and test assets during development?

  - by bcsanches

  Hi Folks, this is like a complement for Assets Management, database or versioning system?. I am wondering about how to separate development, specially programmers assets from production assets? For example, if we keep all the assets on the same repository, how do you keep with programmers assets and final game assets? Do you keep a separate directory for each of those, allowing duplicates? Or do you use some fancy scheme for striping out the "development" and "test" assets from final build?

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• Information about Release Management in a Virtual Studio development environment

  - by Bordersquirrel

  Our software development team is growing very quickly. We have around 250 developers working on about 20 different projects. The majority of development is focused around Visual Studio. The release management procedure is getting a little strained now, with users competing for time and resources on various "official" build and signing servers. What I'm looking for is information on how to setup a proper, managed release process in a Microsoft environment. Ideally, I'd like some kind of continuous integration or nightly builds, integration of version control into Visual Studio and the ability to sign binaries after QA is complete. I guess what I'm looking for is any documentation or white papers on Release Management in a Visual Studio environment. Can anyone help?

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• Win 2008 single server development environment (architecture)

  - by Tommy Jakobsen

  I have a few questions about a test development environment that I’m setting up on this server: Intel Core i7-920 Quadcode incl. Hyper Threading 8 GB DDR3 RAM 2x 750 GB SATA-II (probably software RAID 1) The server is going to support max 5 users, maybe 10 when stressed. I was hoping that I could run all the following products on the same server: Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 w/ IIS SQL Server 2008 x64 (R2 when released) Team Foundation Server 2010 Sharepoint Foundation 2010 I know this sounds overkill, but remember that this is for development purpose and testing. This is not a production environment. My question if this will be possible at all? Should I run it all on one Windows 2008 installation, or should I run it in multiple virtual environments using Hyper-V? What do you think?

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