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• How to teach your users/customers to send better error descriptions

  - by ckeller

  I often have to deal with customers or users which are reporting errors in applications. Most of the time their content is something useless as ERROR!!! x does not work without much more information. For resolving the issue I have to request every single detail of them, which often is more time consuming than fixing the issue itself. Other send information in formats which are not ideal, like screenshots (of data records, not of errors) although they could send a link (we have access to the systems) and so on. How do you tell your users/customers to describe the problems with more details so that the whole process could be easier for both sides? edit This question is more about the social skills, than how to achieve programmatic collection of logs and error information. I'm aware of the fact that this should be part of good software design.

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• Working environment

  - by Yottatron

  I realise that this might not be the right place to ask questions about employment and that the question my raise debate etc. The company I work for recently decided that rather than having one web developer working on sites from a branch it would be better to make that person come into head office and work in the middle of a busy call centre. Also they're expecting the developer to answer the phone if it rings and take messages. Does anyone find that strange? Is it really the right place for a programmer to work? Thanks for the advice

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• Avoiding new operator in JavaScript -- the better way

  - by greengit

  Warning: This is a long post. Let's keep it simple. I want to avoid having to prefix the new operator every time I call a constructor in JavaScript. This is because I tend to forget it, and my code screws up badly. The simple way around this is this... function Make(x) { if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) return new arguments.callee(x); // do your stuff... } But, I need this to accept variable no. of arguments, like this... m1 = Make(); m2 = Make(1,2,3); m3 = Make('apple', 'banana'); The first immediate solution seems to be the 'apply' method like this... function Make() { if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) return new arguments.callee.apply(null, arguments); // do your stuff } This is WRONG however -- the new object is passed to the apply method and NOT to our constructor arguments.callee. Now, I've come up with three solutions. My simple question is: which one seems best. Or, if you have a better method, tell it. First – use eval() to dynamically create JavaScript code that calls the constructor. function Make(/* ... */) { if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) { // collect all the arguments var arr = []; for ( var i = 0; arguments[i]; i++ ) arr.push( 'arguments[' + i + ']' ); // create code var code = 'new arguments.callee(' + arr.join(',') + ');'; // call it return eval( code ); } // do your stuff with variable arguments... } Second – Every object has __proto__ property which is a 'secret' link to its prototype object. Fortunately this property is writable. function Make(/* ... */) { var obj = {}; // do your stuff on 'obj' just like you'd do on 'this' // use the variable arguments here // now do the __proto__ magic // by 'mutating' obj to make it a different object obj.__proto__ = arguments.callee.prototype; // must return obj return obj; } Third – This is something similar to second solution. function Make(/* ... */) { // we'll set '_construct' outside var obj = new arguments.callee._construct(); // now do your stuff on 'obj' just like you'd do on 'this' // use the variable arguments here // you have to return obj return obj; } // now first set the _construct property to an empty function Make._construct = function() {}; // and then mutate the prototype of _construct Make._construct.prototype = Make.prototype; eval solution seems clumsy and comes with all the problems of "evil eval". __proto__ solution is non-standard and the "Great Browser of mIsERY" doesn't honor it. The third solution seems overly complicated. But with all the above three solutions, we can do something like this, that we can't otherwise... m1 = Make(); m2 = Make(1,2,3); m3 = Make('apple', 'banana'); m1 instanceof Make; // true m2 instanceof Make; // true m3 instanceof Make; // true Make.prototype.fire = function() { // ... }; m1.fire(); m2.fire(); m3.fire(); So effectively the above solutions give us "true" constructors that accept variable no. of arguments and don't require new. What's your take on this. -- UPDATE -- Some have said "just throw an error". My response is: we are doing a heavy app with 10+ constructors and I think it'd be far more wieldy if every constructor could "smartly" handle that mistake without throwing error messages on the console.

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• Oracle OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  For almost 30 years, Oracle OpenWorld has been the world's premier learning event for Oracle customers, developers, and partners. With more than 2,000 sessions providing best practices; demos; tips and tricks; and product insight from Oracle, customers, partners, and industry experts, Oracle OpenWorld provides more educational and networking opportunities than any other event in the world. 2011 Facts Attendees from 117 Countries Used Filtered Tap Water to Eliminate 22 Tons of Plastic Bottles Diverted Enough Trash to Fill 37 Dump Trucks 45,000+ Total Registered Attendees Oracle OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better What's New? What's Different?  This year Oracle OpenWorld will include the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle), the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld, JavaOne, MySQL Connect, and the expanded Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld. More than 50,000 customers and partners will attend OpenWorld to see Oracle's newest hardware and software products at work, and learn more about our server and storage, database, middleware, industry, and applications solutions.  New This Year: The Executive Edge @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 1 - 2) New at Oracle OpenWorld this year, the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle) will bring together customer, partner and Oracle executives for two days of keynote presentations, summits targeted to customer industries and organizational roles, roundtable discussions, and great new networking opportunities. The Customer Experience Revolution Is Here!Customer Experience Summit @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 3 - 5) This dynamic new program offers more than 60 keynotes, roundtables and networking sessions exploring trends, innovations and best practices to help companies succeed with a customer experience-driven business strategy.  All Things Java -- JavaOne (Sep 30 - Oct 4) JavaOne is the world's most important event for the Java developer community. Technical sessions cover topics that span the breadth of the Java universe, with keynotes from the foremost Java visionaries and expert-led hands-on learning opportunities.  Are you innovating with Oracle Fusion Middleware?  If you are, then you need to know that the Call for Nominations for the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards is open now through July 17, 2012. Jointly sponsored by Oracle, AUSOUG, IOUG, OAUG, ODTUG, QUEST, and UKOUG, the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards honor organizations creatively using Oracle Fusion Middleware to deliver unique value to their enterprise.  Winning customers and partners will be hosted at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, where they can connect with Oracle executives, network with peers, and be featured in an upcoming edition of Oracle Magazine. Be sure to submit your WebCenter use case today! Oracle Music Festival his year, the first-ever Oracle Music Festival will debut, running from September 30 to October 4. In the tradition of great live music events like Coachella and SXSW, the streets of San Francisco—from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. for five nights-into-days—will vibrate with the music of some of today’s hottest name acts, emerging and local bands, and scratching DJs. Outdoor venues and clubs near Moscone Center and the Zone (including 111 Minna, DNA, Mezzanine, Roe, Ruby Skye, Slim’s, the Taylor Street Café, Temple, Union Square, and Yerba Buena Gardens) will showcase acts that range from reggae to rock, punk to ska, R&B to country, indie to honky-tonk. After a full day of sessions and networking, you'll be primed for some late-night relaxation and rocking out at one or more of these sets.  Please note that with awesome acts, thousands of music devotees, and a limited number of venues each night, access to Festival events is on a first-come, first-served basis. Join us at the Oracle Music Festival--it's going to be epic! Save $500 on Registration with Early Bird Pricing Early Bird pricing ends July 13! Save up to $500 on registration fees by registering by Friday. Will you be attending Oracle OpenWorld 2012? We hope to see you there! Be sure to follow @oraclewebcenter on Twitter for more information and use hashtags #webcenter and #oow!

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• MERGE gives better OUTPUT options

  - by Rob Farley

  MERGE is very cool. There are a ton of useful things about it – mostly around the fact that you can implement a ton of change against a table all at once. This is great for data warehousing, handling changes made to relational databases by applications, all kinds of things. One of the more subtle things about MERGE is the power of the OUTPUT clause. Useful for logging.   If you’re not familiar with the OUTPUT clause, you really should be – it basically makes your DML (INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE/MERGE) statement return data back to you. This is a great way of returning identity values from INSERT commands (so much better than SCOPE_IDENTITY() or the older (and worse) @@IDENTITY, because you can get lots of rows back). You can even use it to grab default values that are set using non-deterministic functions like NEWID() – things you couldn’t normally get back without running another query (or with a trigger, I guess, but that’s not pretty). That inserted table I referenced – that’s part of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work that goes on with all DML changes. When you insert data, this internal table called inserted gets populated with rows, and then used to inflict the appropriate inserts on the various structures that store data (HoBTs – the Heaps or B-Trees used to store data as tables and indexes). When deleting, the deleted table gets populated. Updates get a matching row in both tables (although this doesn’t mean that an update is a delete followed by an inserted, it’s just the way it’s handled with these tables). These tables can be referenced by the OUTPUT clause, which can show you the before and after for any DML statement. Useful stuff. MERGE is slightly different though. With MERGE, you get a mix of entries. Your MERGE statement might be doing some INSERTs, some UPDATEs and some DELETEs. One of the most common examples of MERGE is to perform an UPSERT command, where data is updated if it already exists, or inserted if it’s new. And in a single operation too. Here, you can see the usefulness of the deleted and inserted tables, which clearly reflect the type of operation (but then again, MERGE lets you use an extra column called $action to show this). (Don’t worry about the fact that I turned on IDENTITY_INSERT, that’s just so that I could insert the values) One of the things I love about MERGE is that it feels almost cursor-like – the UPDATE bit feels like “WHERE CURRENT OF …”, and the INSERT bit feels like a single-row insert. And it is – but into the inserted and deleted tables. The operations to maintain the HoBTs are still done using the whole set of changes, which is very cool. And $action – very convenient. But as cool as $action is, that’s not the point of my post. If it were, I hope you’d all be disappointed, as you can’t really go near the MERGE statement without learning about it. The subtle thing that I love about MERGE with OUTPUT is that you can hook into more than just inserted and deleted. Did you notice in my earlier query that my source table had a ‘src’ field, that wasn’t used in the insert? Normally, this would be somewhat pointless to include in my source query. But with MERGE, I can put that in the OUTPUT clause. This is useful stuff, particularly when you’re needing to audit the changes. Suppose your query involved consolidating data from a number of sources, but you didn’t need to insert that into the actual table, just into a table for audit. This is now very doable, either using the INTO clause of OUTPUT, or surrounding the whole MERGE statement in brackets (parentheses if you’re American) and using a regular INSERT statement. This is also doable if you’re using MERGE to just do INSERTs. In case you hadn’t realised, you can use MERGE in place of an INSERT statement. It’s just like the UPSERT-style statement we’ve just seen, except that we want nothing to match. That’s easy to do, we just use ON 1=2. This is obviously more convoluted than a straight INSERT. And it’s slightly more effort for the database engine too. But, if you want the extra audit capabilities, the ability to hook into the other source columns is definitely useful. Oh, and before people ask if you can also hook into the target table’s columns... Yes, of course. That’s what deleted and inserted give you.

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• Ignoring Robots - Or Better Yet, Counting Them Separately

  - by [email protected]

  It is quite common to have web sessions that are undesirable from the point of view of analytics. For example, when there are either internal or external robots that check the site's health, index it or just extract information from it. These robotic session do not behave like humans and if their volume is high enough they can sway the statistics and models.One easy way to deal with these sessions is to define a partitioning variable for all the models that is a flag indicating whether the session is "Normal" or "Robot". Then all the reports and the predictions can use the "Normal" partition, while the counts and statistics for Robots are still available.In order for this to work, though, it is necessary to have two conditions:1. It is possible to identify the Robotic sessions.2. No learning happens before the identification of the session as a robot.The first point is obvious, but the second may require some explanation. While the default in RTD is to learn at the end of the session, it is possible to learn in any entry point. This is a setting for each model. There are various reasons to learn in a specific entry point, for example if there is a desire to capture exactly and precisely the data in the session at the time the event happened as opposed to including changes to the end of the session.In any case, if RTD has already learned on the session before the identification of a robot was done there is no way to retract this learning.Identifying the robotic sessions can be done through the use of rules and heuristics. For example we may use some of the following:Maintain a list of known robotic IPs or domainsDetect very long sessions, lasting more than a few hours or visiting more than 500 pagesDetect "robotic" behaviors like a methodic click on all the link of every pageDetect a session with 10 pages clicked at exactly 20 second intervalsDetect extensive non-linear navigationNow, an interesting experiment would be to use the flag above as an output of a model to see if there are more subtle characteristics of robots such that a model can be used to detect robots, even if they fall through the cracks of rules and heuristics.In any case, the basic and simple technique of partitioning the models by the type of session is simple to implement and provides a lot of advantages.

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• A better way to encourage contributions to OSS

  - by Daniel Cazzulino

  Currently in the .NET world, most OSS projects are available via a NuGet package. Users have a very easy path towards *using* the project right away. But let’s say they encounter some isssue (maybe a bug, maybe a potential improvement) with the library. At this point, going from user to contributor (of a fix, or a good bug repro or even a spike for a new feature) is a very steep and non trivial multi-step process of registering with some open source hosting site (codeplex, github, bitbucket, etc.), learning how to grab the latest sources, build the project, formulate a patch (or fork the code), learn the source control software they use (mercurial, git, svn, tfs), install whatever tools are needed for it, read about the contributors workflow for the project (do you fork &amp; send pull requests? do you just send a patch file? do you just send a snippet? a unit test? etc.), and on, and on, and on. Granted, you may be lucky and already know the source control system the project uses, but in really, I’d say the chances are pretty low. I believe most developers *using* OSS are far from familiar with them, much less with contributing back to various projects. We OSS devs like to be on the cutting edge all the time, ya’ know, always jumping on the new SCC system, the new hosting site, the new agile way of managing work items, bug tracking, code reviews, etc. etc. etc.. But most of our OSS users are largely the “... Read full article

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• Are Intel compilers really better than Microsoft ones?

  - by Rocket Surgeon

  Years ago I was surprised when discovered that Intel sells Studio compatible compilers. I tried it in particular for C/C++ as well as fantastic diagnostic tools. But the code was simply not that computationally intensive to notice the difference. The only impression was: did Intel really did it for me just now, Wow, amazing tools with nanoseconds resolution, unbeleivable. But the trial ended and team never seriously considered a purchase. From your experience, if license cost does not matter, which vendor is a winner ? It is not broad or vague question or attemt to spark a holy war. This sort of question about 2 very visible tools. Nobody likes when tools have any mysteries or surprises. And choices between best and best are always the pain. I also understand the "grass greener" argument. I want to hear all "what ifs" stories. What if Intel just locally optimizes it for the chip stepping of the month, and not every hardware target will actually work as well as Microsoft compiled ? What if AMD hardware is the target and everything will slow down for no reason ? Or on other hand, what if Intel's hardware has so many unnoticable opportunities, that Microsoft compiler writers are too slow to adopt and never implement in the compiler ? What if both are the same exactly, actually a single codebase just wrapped into 2 different boxes and licensed to both vendors by some 3rd party shop? And so on. But someone knows some answers.

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• The better way to ask for input?

  - by Skippy

  I am wondering which is the best way to go with java code. I need to create a class with simple prompts for input.. I have tried using both classes and cannot work out the particular benefits for each. Is this because I am still in the early stages of programming or are there situations that will occur as it becomes more complex?? import java.util.Scanner; public class myClass { Scanner stdin = new Scanner(System.in); public String getInput(String prompt) { System.out.print(prompt); return stdin.nextLine(); } ... or import java.io.*; public class myClass { public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException { BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader (System.in)); System.out.print("Input something: "); String name = stdin.readLine(); I know these examples are showing different methods within these classes, but thought this might serve well for the discussion. I'm really not sure which site is the best to ask this on.

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• Is Work Stealing always the most appropriate user-level thread scheduling algorithm?

  - by Il-Bhima

  I've been investigating different scheduling algorithms for a thread pool I am implementing. Due to the nature of the problem I am solving I can assume that the tasks being run in parallel are independent and do not spawn any new tasks. The tasks can be of varying sizes. I went immediately for the most popular scheduling algorithm "work stealing" using lock-free deques for the local job queues, and I am relatively happy with this approach. However I'm wondering whether there are any common cases where work-stealing is not the best approach. For this particular problem I have a good estimate of the size of each individual task. Work-stealing does not make use of this information and I'm wondering if there is any scheduler which will give better load-balancing than work-stealing with this information (obviously with the same efficiency). NB. This question ties up with a previous question.

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• ASP.NET MVC localization DisplayNameAttribute alternatives: a better way

  - by Brian Schroer

  In my last post, I talked bout creating a custom class inheriting from System.ComponentModel.DisplayNameAttribute to retrieve display names from resource files: [LocalizedDisplayName("RememberMe")] public bool RememberMe { get; set; } That’s a lot of work to put an attribute on all of my model properties though. It would be nice if I could intercept the ASP.NET MVC code that analyzes the model metadata to retrieve display names to make it automatically get localized text from my resource files. That way, I could just set up resource file entries where the keys are the property names, and not have to put attributes on all of my properties. That’s done by creating a custom class inheriting from System.Web.Mvc.DataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider: 1: public class LocalizedDataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider : 2: DataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider 3: { 4: protected override ModelMetadata CreateMetadata( 5: IEnumerable<Attribute> attributes, 6: Type containerType, 7: Func<object> modelAccessor, 8: Type modelType, 9: string propertyName) 10: { 11: var meta = base.CreateMetadata 12: (attributes, containerType, modelAccessor, modelType, propertyName); 13:   14: if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(propertyName)) 15: return meta; 16:   17: if (meta.DisplayName == null) 18: GetLocalizedDisplayName(meta, propertyName); 19:   20: if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(meta.DisplayName)) 21: meta.DisplayName = string.Format("[[{0}]]", propertyName); 22:   23: return meta; 24: } 25:   26: private static void GetLocalizedDisplayName(ModelMetadata meta, string propertyName) 27: { 28: ResourceManager resourceManager = MyResource.ResourceManager; 29: CultureInfo culture = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture; 30:   31: meta.DisplayName = resourceManager.GetString(propertyName, culture); 32: } 33: } Line 11 calls the base CreateMetadata method. Line 17 checks whether the metadata DisplayName property has already been populated by a DisplayNameAttribute (or my LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute). If so, it respects that and doesn’t use my custom localized text lookup. The GetLocalizedDisplayName method checks for the property name as a resource file key. If found, it uses the localized text from the resource files. If the key is not found in the resource file, as with my LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute, I return a formatted string containing the property name (e.g. “[[RememberMe]]”) so I can tell by looking at my web pages which resource keys I haven’t defined yet. It’s hooked up with this code in the Application_Start method of Global.asax: ModelMetadataProviders.Current = new LocalizedDataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider();

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• TFS work items tips

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  We started to use TFS to track requests using Work items. 1. Telerik's  TFS Work Item Manager (beta version for TFS 2010 is available) that could be interesting to use instead of standard VS2010, especially for someone who doesn’t want to have VS installed on their machine.(thanks to dimarzionist who pointed to the tool).See also TFS Project Dashboa 2.Visual Studio TFS work item attachments Tab I've found that Outlook emails can be dropped to TFS work item attachments. Just open TFS work item attachment tab and drag and drop Outlook email to it. Also you can copy any selected text and paste it to TFS work item attachments tab. The text will be saved as an attachment file.

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• Azure Diagnostics: The Bad, The Ugly, and a Better Way

  - by jasont

  If you’re a .Net web developer today, no doubt you’ve enjoyed watching Windows Azure grow up over the past couple of years. The platform has scaled, stabilized (mostly), and added on a slew of great (and sometimes overdue) features. What was once just an endpoint to host a solution, developers today have tremendous flexibility and options in the platform. Organizations are building new solutions and offerings on the platform, and others have, or are in the process of, migrating existing applications out of their own data centers into the Azure cloud. Whether new application development or migrating legacy, every development shop and IT organization needs to monitor their applications in the cloud, the same as they do on premises. Azure Diagnostics has some capabilities, but what I constantly hear from users is that it’s either (a) not enough, or (b) too cumbersome to set up. Today, Stackify is happy to announce that we fully support Azure deployments, just the same as your on-premises deployments. Let’s take a look below and compare and contrast the options. Azure Diagnostics Let’s crack open the Windows Azure documentation on Azure Diagnostics and see just how easy it is to use. The high level steps are:   Step 1: Import the Diagnostics Oh, I’ve already deployed my app without the diagnostics module. Guess I can’t do anything until I do this and re-deploy. Step 2: Configure the Diagnostics (and multiple sub-steps) Do I want it all? Or just pieces of it? Whoops, forgot to include a specific performance counter, I guess I’ll have to deploy again. Wait a minute… I have to specifically code these performance counters into my role’s OnStart() method, compile and deploy again? And query and consume it myself? Step 3: (Optional) Permanently store diagnostic data Lucky for me, Azure storage has gotten pretty cheap. But how often should I move the data into storage? I want to see real-time data, so I guess that’s out now as well. Step 4: (Optional) View stored diagnostic data Optional? Of course I want to see it. Conveniently, Microsoft recommends 3 tools to do this with. Un-conveniently, none of these are web based and they all just give you access to raw data, and very little charting or real-time intelligence. Just….. data. Nevermind that one product seems to have gotten stale since a recent acquisition, and doesn’t even have screenshots!   So, let’s summarize: lots of diagnostics data is available, but think realistically. Think Dev Ops. What happens when you are in the middle of a major production performance issue and you don’t have the diagnostics you need? You are redeploying an application (and thankfully you have a great branching strategy, so you feel perfectly safe just willy-nilly launching code into prod, don’t you?) to get data, then shipping it to storage, and then digging through that data to find a needle in a haystack. Would you like to be able to troubleshoot a performance issue in the middle of the night, or on a weekend, from your iPad or home computer’s web browser? Forget it: the best you get is this spark line in the Azure portal. If it’s real pointy, you probably have an issue; but since there is no alert based on a threshold your customers have likely already let you know. And high CPU, Memory, I/O, or Network doesn’t tell you anything about where the problem is. The Better Way – Stackify Stackify supports application and server monitoring in real time, all through a great web interface. All of the things that Azure Diagnostics provides, Stackify provides for your on-premises deployments, and you don’t need to know ahead of time that you’ll need it. It’s always there, it’s always on. Azure deployments are essentially no different than on-premises. It’s a Windows Server (or Linux) in the cloud. It’s behind a different firewall than your corporate servers. That’s it. Stackify can provide the same powerful tools to your Azure deployments in two simple steps. Step 1 Add a startup task to your web or worker role and deploy. If you can’t deploy and need it right now, no worries! Remote Desktop to the Azure instance and you can execute a Powershell script to download / install Stackify.   Step 2 Log in to your account at www.stackify.com and begin monitoring as much as you want, as often as you want and see the results instantly. WMI? It’s there Event Viewer? You’ve got it. File System Access? Yes, please! Would love to make sure my web.config is correct.   IIS / App Pool Info? Yep. You can even restart it. Running Services? All of them. Start and Stop them to your heart’s content. SQL Database access? You bet’cha. Alerts and Notification? Of course! You should know before your customers let you know. … and so much more.   Conclusion Microsoft has shown, consistently, that they love developers, developers, developers. What every developer needs to realize from this is that they’ve given you a canvas, which is exactly what Azure is. It’s great infrastructure that is readily available, easy to manage, and fairly cost effective. However, the tooling is your responsibility. What you get, at best, is bare bones. App and server diagnostics should be available when you need them. While we, as developers, try to plan for and think of everything ahead of time, there will come times where we need to get data that just isn’t available. And having to go through a lot of cumbersome steps to get that data, and then have to find a friendlier way to consume it…. well, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’d rather spend my time writing and developing features and completing bug fixes for my applications, than to be writing code to monitor and diagnose.

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• How can I convince my boss to invest into the developer environment?

  - by user95291

  Our boss said that developers should have fewer mistakes so the company would have money for displays, servers etc. An always mentioned example is a late firing of an underperforming colleague whose salary would have covered some of these expenses. On the other hand it happened a few times that it took a few days to free up some disk space on our servers since we can't get any more disk. The cost of mandays was definitely higher than the cost of a new HDD. Another example is that we use 14-15" notebooks for development and most of the developers get external displays after they spent one year at the company. The price of a 22-24" display is just a small fraction of a developers annual salary. Devs say that they like the company because of other reasons (high quality code, interesting projects etc.) but this kind of issues not just simply time-consuming but also demotivate them. In the point of view of the developers it seems that the boss always can find an issue in the past which they could have been done better so it's pointless to work better to get for a second display/HDD/whatever. How can I convince my boss to invest more into development environment? Is it possible to break this endless loop?

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• What is 'work' in the Pomodoro Technique?

  - by Sachin Kainth

  I have just started to use Pomodoro today and I am trying to work out what I should and should not do during my 25 minute work time. For my 25 minute work stint I started to write some code and realised that I had done something similar in a related project so I opened that solution to copy and paste that existing code. Question is, is this allowed? Also, if during my 25 minutes I realise that there is an important work-related email that I need to send can I do that or should that wait for the next 25 minutes or the break. I am writing this question during my, now extended, 5 minute break. Is this work or is it a break? I really would appreciate some guidance as I really want to use Pomodoro to focus better on my work. Another thing that happened to me was that a Adobe AIR update alert came up on my desktop during the 25 minutes. Should I ignore such things until the break? Sachin

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• How do you tell if advice from a senior developer is bad?

  - by learnjourney

  Recently, I started my first job as a junior developer and I have a more senior developer in charge of mentoring me in this small company. However, there are several times when he would give me advice on things that I just couldn't agree with (it goes against what I learned in several good books on the topic written by the experts, questions I asked on some Q&A sites also agree with me) and given our busy schedule, we probably have no time for long debates. So far, I have been trying to avoid the issue by listening to him, raising a counterpoint based on what I've learned as current good practices. He raises his original point again (most of the time he will say best practice, more maintainable but just didn't go further), I take a note (since he didn't raise a new point to counter my counterpoint), think about it and research at home, but don't make any changes (I'm still not convinced). But recently, he approached me yet again, saw my code and asked me why haven't I changed it to his suggestion. This is the 3rd time in 2--3 weeks. As a junior developer, I know that I should respect him, but at the same time I just can't agree with some of his advice. Yet I'm being pressured to make changes that I think will make the project worse. Of course as an inexperienced developer, I could be wrong and his way might be better, it may be 1 of those exception cases. My question is: what can I do to better judge if a senior developer's advice is good, bad or maybe it's (good but outdated in today context)? And if it is bad/outdated, what tactics can I use to not implement it his way despite his 'pressures' while maintaining the fact that I respect him as a senior?

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• Would you make use of "Google 20%" time if your employer encouraged and funded it?

  - by ChrisB

  We know about Google's 20% projects, whereby a developer can spend up to 20% of their time on a personal project which interests them. If your employer let you spend 20% of your time on a project that wasn't part of your day-to-day work, would you make use of it? I can think of a couple of reasons why not: It would make your normal work take 20% longer (extended deadline) You might want to keep your personal idea "personal."

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• Current SPARC Architectures

  - by Darryl Gove

  Different generations of SPARC processors implement different architectures. The architecture that the compiler targets is controlled implicitly by the -xtarget flag and explicitly by the -arch flag. If an application targets a recent architecture, then the compiler gets to play with all the instructions that the new architecture provides. The downside is that the application won't work on older processors that don't have the new instructions. So for developer's there is a trade-off between performance and portability. The way we have solved this in the compiler is to assume a "generic" architecture, and we've made this the default behaviour of the compiler. The only flag that doesn't make this assumption is -fast which tells the compiler to assume that the build machine is also the deployment machine - so the compiler can use all the instructions that the build machine provides. The -xtarget=generic flag tells the compiler explicitly to use this generic model. We work hard on making generic code work well across all processors. So in most cases this is a very good choice. It is also of interest to know what processors support the various architectures. The following Venn diagram attempts to show this: A textual description is as follows: The T1 and T2 processors, in addition to most other SPARC processors that were shipped in the last 10+ years supported V9b, or sparcvis2. The SPARC64 processors from Fujitsu, used in the M-series machines, added support for the floating point multiply accumulate instruction in the sparcfmaf architecture. Support for this instruction also appeared in the T3 - this is called sparcvis3 Later SPARC64 processors added the integer multiply accumulate instruction, this architecture is sparcima. Finally the T4 includes support for both the integer and floating point multiply accumulate instructions in the sparc4 architecture. So the conclusion should be: Floating point multiply accumulate is supported in both the T-series and M-series machines, so it should be a relatively safe bet to start using it. The T4 is a very good machine to deploy to because it supports all the current instruction sets.

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• Where to look for challenging jobs with a relaxed atmosphere?

  - by RBTree

  I'm a dev at one of the big-name tech companies. I like the job for many reasons: I do interesting work on a cool product I solve challenging problems and use a lot of high-level skills (quantitative, creative, writing, presenting) It pays well The problem is that I feel I need a more relaxed atmosphere (shorter hours, less performance pressure, and more flexibility), in order to free up time for other pursuits and reduce stress. The ideal would be a job that's around 30-35 hours a week, where there is flexibility to work more or less in a given week. Can anyone suggest where to look for a job like this, where I wouldn't have to sacrifice too much on the above points? (Obviously I would have to sacrifice pay.) My employer does not generally offer part-time employment. The closest thing I can think of is when I did summer internships at my university's CS department. The work was very intellectually challenging, but if I needed to go home a couple hours early or get flexibility on a due date, nobody batted an eyelash. However, I'd like to find out if there are alternatives to academia since from what I've seen the pay there is a gigantic drop from what I'm currently making. I've done freelance development before, but I do like that as an employee of a large company I have a lot of things taken care of for me (e.g. benefits and guaranteed stable employment).

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• Am I an idealist?

  - by ereOn

  This is not only a question, this is also a call for help. Since I started my career as a programmer, I always tried to learn from my mistakes. I worked hard to learn best-practices and while I don't consider myself a C++ expert, I still believe I'm not a beginner either. I was recently hired into a company for C++ development. There I was told that my way to work was "against the rules" and that I would have to change my mind. Here are the topics I disagree with my hierarchy (their words): "You should not use separate header files for your different classes. One big header file is both easier to read and faster to compile." "Trying to use different headers is counter-productive : use the same super-set of headers everywhere, and enforce the use #pragma hdrstop to hasten compilation" "You may not use Boost or any other library that uses nested directories to organize its files. Our build-machine doesn't work with nested directories. Moreover, you don't need Boost to create great software." One might think I'm somehow exaggerated things, but the sad truth is that I didn't. That's their actual words. I believe that having separate files enhance maintainability and code-correctness and can fasten compilation time by the use of the proper includes. Have you been in a similar situation? What should I do? I feel like it's actually impossible for me to work that way and day after day, my frustration grows.

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• More productive alone than in a team?

  - by Furry

  If I work alone, I used to be superproductive, if I want to be. Running prototypes within a day, something that you can deploy and use within a few days. Not perfect, but good enough. I also had this experience a few times when working directly with someone else. Everybody could do the whole thing, but it was more fun not to do it alone and also quicker. The right two people can take an admittedly not too large project onto new levels. Now at work we have a seven person team and I do not feel nearly as productive. Not even nearly. Certain stuff needs to be checked against something else, which then needs to also take care of some new requirement, which just came in three days ago. All sorts of stuff, mostly important, but often just a technical debt from long ago or misconception or different vocabulary for the same thing or sometimes just a not too technically thought out great idea from someone who wants to have their say, and so on. Digging down the rabbit hole, I think to myself, I could do larger portions of this work faster alone (and somewhat better, too), but it's not my responsibility (someone else gets paid for that), so by design I should not care. But I do, because certain things go hand in hand (as you may experience it, when you done sideprojects on your own). I know this is something Fred Brooks has written about, but still, what's your strategy for staying as productive as you know you could be in the cubicle? Or did you quit for some related reason; and if so where did you go?

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• Dealing with under performing co-worker

  - by PSU_Kardi

  I'm going to try to keep this topic as generic as I can so the question isn't closed as too specific or whatever. Anyway, let's get to it. I currently work on a somewhat small project with 15-20 developers. We recently hired a few new people because we had the hours and it synched up well with the schedule. It was refreshing to see hiring done this way and not just throwing hours & employees at a problem. Alas, I could argue the hiring process still isn't perfect but that's another story for another day. Anyway, one of these developers is really under performing. The developer is green and has a lot of bad habits. Comes in later than I do and leaving earlier than I am. This in and of itself isn't an issue, but the lack of quality work makes it become a bit frustrating. When giving out tasking the question is no longer, what can realistically be given but now becomes - How much of the work will we have to redo? So as the project goes on, I'm afraid this might cause issues with the schedule. The schedule could have been defined as a bit aggressive; however, given that this person is under performing it now in my mind goes from aggressive to potentially chaotic. Yes, one person shouldn't make or break a schedule and that in and of itself is an issue too but please let's ignore that for right now. What's the best way to deal with this? I'm not the boss, I'm not the project lead but I've been around for a while now and am not sure how to proceed. Complaining to management comes across as childish and doing nothing seems wrong. I'll ask the community for insight/advice/suggestions.

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• What do you consider standard job perks? [closed]

  - by reseter

  What does a company need to offer you (apart from a fat pay cheque) for you to work for them? I am aware of this question, which is from an employer's perspective. I am interested in your views as employees. To get the discussion started, here is a list off the top of my head (not in any particular order): High-end computer with a huge screen or two. The best software tool money can buy as per Joel's test). That isn't too much to ask given many of the best tools are free (think git). Flexibility is a bonus- if a particular platform/ piece of software is not absolutely required, I would like to pick my OS and IDE. A quality chair Quiet workspace. Open plan is fine as long as there are meeting rooms so that there is no constant chatter going on around me. Spacious workspace. I would rather have more than three inches between my mouse and the person next to me's keyboard. Food and drink at work. Many companies these days have fruit baskets, biscuits, etc available to their employees, some even offer free lunch. Education. If my employer wants my skills to stay up-to-date, they should at the very least understand I need time to learn. If they want to pay for my books and conference registration fees, I am more than happy to accept. Other options include organizing internal knowledge exchange days or inviting speakers from outside. Flexible hours/ option to work from home is a bonus

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• Tips To Manage An Effectively Come Back To Work After A Long Vacation

  - by Gopinath

  Vacations are very relaxing – no need to reply to endless mails, no marathon meeting or conference calls. It’s all about fun during the vacation. The troubles begin as you near the end of vacation and plans to think about getting back to work. Once we are back to work after a long vacation there will be many things to worry – a pile of snail mails, hundreds of unread emails,  a flood of phone calls to answer and a stream of scheduled meetings. How to handle all the backlog and catch up quickly with the inflow of work? Here is a management tip from Harvard Business Review blog to get back to work the right way after a long vacation Block off your morning. Make sure you don’t have any meetings scheduled or big projects due. Then before you open your inbox, pause and think about your work priorities. As you make your way through emails and voicemails, focus on returning the messages that are connected to what matters most. Defer or delegate things that aren’t top priority. And remember it will probably take more than one day to get caught up, so be easy on yourself. Hope these tips lets you plan a right comeback to work after your vacation. cc Image credit: flickr/dfwcre8tive This article titled,Tips To Manage An Effectively Come Back To Work After A Long Vacation, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• What is your favourite/ideal development environment?

  - by Nico Huysamen

  If you could describe your ideal development environment, what would it be? There are numerous things to take into consideration, including but not limited to: Hardware Software (Operating System of Choice, Paid vs. Free Software, ...) Physical Environment (lighting, open-plan, location, ...) An endless supply of coffee... ... In other words, if you could tell your company what they could do to make your development experience there better, what would it be?

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