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• I don't know C. And why should I learn it?

  - by Stephen

  My first programming language was PHP (gasp). After that I started working with JavaScript. I've recently done work in C#. I've never once looked at low or mid level languages like C. The general consensus in the programming-community-at-large is that "a programmer who hasn't learned something like C, frankly, just can't handle programming concepts like pointers, data types, passing values by reference, etc." I do not agree. I argue that: Because high level languages are easily accessible, more "non-programmers" dive in and make a mess In order to really get anything done in a high level language, one needs to understand the same similar concepts that most proponents of "learn-low-level-first" evangelize about. Some people need to know C; those people have jobs that require them to write low to mid-level code. I'm sure C is awesome, and I'm sure there are a few bad programmers who know C. Why the bias? As a good, honest, hungry programmer, if I had to learn C (for some unforeseen reason), I would learn C. Considering the multitude of languages out there, shouldn't good programmers focus on learning what advances us? Shouldn't we learn what interests us? Should we not utilize our finite time moving forward? Why do some programmers disagree with this? I believe that striving for excellence in what you do is the fundamental deterministic trait between good programmers and bad ones. Does anyone have any real world examples of how something written in a high level language—say Java, Pascal, PHP, or Javascript—truely benefitted from a prior knowledge of C? Examples would be most appreciated.

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• PASS Location fixed for the next 2 years - Are they listening?

  - by simonsabin

  I've just received the PASS connector newsletter with details of the decision of where to locate the next summits. To me it shows you how you can spin statistics they way you want to. I am very suprised by the numbers 81% said that they would like an east coast event. The spin is that "When we look at responses from only 2008 and 2009 Summit attendees (our most successful ones by far), the number who want a future Summit outside of Seattle drops to 69%." Wow the number drops thats bad. We must stay in Seattle then. My take however is that 69% of those willing to travel to Seattle want an event NOT in Seattle. Doesn't that suggest that people would like an event not in Seattle. I appreciate the comment about the launch years however 2012 isn't going to be a launch year because they need to get SQL out of the door before then to meet the 3 year software assurance cycle. So sticking 2012 in Seattle is IMHO a bad decision. It might keep the cost down for the PASS org, Microsoft and the attendees that live near Seattle but does it keep the cost down for the rest of the SQL Community? They do mention a possibility of an event on the East Coast and I do hope that its not just lip service. Flights for me to the East coast look ~30% cheaper than to Seattle and I've never been to the East Coast. Come on PASS show you are listening to the community.

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• My father is a doctor. He is insisting on writing a database to store non-critical patient information, with no programming background

  - by Dominic Bou-Samra

  So, my father is currently in the process of "hacking" together a database using FileMaker Pro, a GUI based databasing tool for his small (4 doctor) practice. The database will be used to help ease the burden on reporting from medical machines, streamlining quite a clumsy process. He's got no programming background, and seems to be doing everything in his power to not learn things correctly. He's got duplicate data types, no database-enforced relationships (foreign/primary key constraints) and a dozen other issues. He's doing it all by hand via GUI tool using Youtube videos. My issue is, that whilst I want him to succeed 100%, I don't think it's appropriate for him to be handling these types of decisions. How do I convince him that without some sort of education in these topics, a hacked together solution is a bad idea? He's can be quite stubborn and I think he sees these types of jobs as "childs play" How should I approach this? Is it even that bad an idea - or am I correct in thinking he should hire a proper DBA/developer to handle this so that it doesn't become a maintenance nightmare? NB: I am a developer consultant of 4 years and I've seen my share of painful customer implementations.

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• Would it be a good idea to work on letting people add arrays of numbers in javascript?

  - by OneThreeSeven

  I am a very mathematically oriented programmer, and I happen to be doing a lot of java script these days. I am really disappointed in the math aspects of javascript: the Math object is almost a joke because it has so few methods you can't use ^ for exponentiation the + operator is very limited, you cant add array's of numbers or do scalar multiplication on arrays Now I have written some pretty basic extensions to the Math object and have considered writing a library of advanced Math features, amazingly there doesn't seem to be any sort of standard library already out even for calculus, although there is one for vectors and matricies I was able find. The notation for working with vectors and matricies is really bad when you can't use the + operator on arrays, and you cant do scalar multiplication. For example, here is a hideous expression for subtracting two vectors, A - B: Math.vectorAddition(A,Math.scalarMultiplication(-1,B)); I have been looking for some kind of open-source project to contribute to for awhile, and even though my C++ is a bit rusty I would very much like to get into the code for V8 engine and extend the + operator to work on arrays, to get scalar multiplication to work, and possibly to get the ^ operator to work for exponentiation. These things would greatly enhance the utility of any mathematical javascript framework. I really don't know how to get involved in something like the V8 engine other than download the code and start working on it. Of course I'm afraid that since V8 is chrome specific, that without browser cross-compatibility a fundamental change of this type is likely to be rejected for V8. I was hoping someone could either tell me why this is a bad idea, or else give me some pointers about how to proceed at this point to get some kind of approval to add these features. Thanks!

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• Who is code wanderer?

  - by DigiMortal

  In every area of life there are people with some bad habits or misbehaviors that affect the work process. Software development is also not free of this kind of people. Today I will introduce you code wanderer. Who is code wanderer? Code wandering is more like bad habit than serious diagnose. Code wanderers tend to review and “fix” source code in files written by others. When code wanderer has some free moments he starts to open the code files he or she has never seen before and starts making little fixes to these files. Why is code wanderer dangerous? These fixes seem correct and are usually first choice to do when considering nice code. But as changes are made by coder who has no idea about the code he or she “fixes” then “fixing” usually ends up with messing up working code written by others. Often these “fixes” are not found immediately because they doesn’t introduce errors detected by compilers. So these “fixes” find easily way to production environments because there is also very good chance that “fixed” code goes through all tests without any problems. How to stop code wanderer? The first thing is to talk with person and explain him or her why those changes are dangerous. It is also good to establish rules that state clearly why, when and how can somebody change the code written by other people. If this does not work it is possible to isolate this person so he or she can post his or her changes to code repository as patches and somebody reviews those changes before applying them.

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• XNA Skinned Animated Mesh Rendering Exported from Maya

  - by Devin Garner

  I am working on translating an old RTS game engine I wrote from DirectX9 to XNA. My old models didn't have animation & are an old format, so I'm trying with an FBX file. I temporarily "borrowed" a model from League of Legends just to test if my rendering is working correctly. I imported the mesh/bones/skin/animation into Maya 2012 using an "unnamed" 3rd-party import tool. (obviously I'll have to get legit models later, but I just want to test if my programming is correct). Everything looks correct in maya and it renders the animations flawlessly. I exported everything into a single FBX file (with only a single animation). I then tried to load this model using the example at the following site: http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/skinned_model With my exported FBX, the animation looks correct for most of the frames, however at random times it screws up for a split second. Basically, the body/arms/head will look right, but the leg/foot will shoot out to a random point in space for a second & then go back to the normal position. The original FBX from the sample looks correct in my program. It seems odd that my model was imported into maya wrong, since it displays fine in Maya. So, I'm thinking either I'm exporting it wrong, or the sample code is bad & the model from the sample caters to the samples bad code. I'm new to 3D programming & maya, so chances are I'm doing something wrong in the export. I'm using mostly the defaults, but I've tried all 3 interpolation modes (quaternion, euler, resample). Thanks

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• Working with fubar/refuctored code

  - by Keyo

  I'm working with some code which was written by a contractor who left a year ago leaving a number of projects with buggy, disgustingly bad code. This is what I call cowboy PHP, say no more. Ideally I'd like to leave the project as is and never touch it again. Things break, requirements change and it needs to be maintained. Part A needs to be changed. There is a bug I cannot reproduce. Part A is connect to parts B D and E. This kind of work gives me a headache and makes me die a little inside. It kills my motivation and productivity. To be honest I'd say it's affecting my mental health. Perhaps being at the start of my career I'm being naive to think production code should be reasonably clean. I would like to hear from anyone else who has been in this situation before. What did you do to get out of it? I'm thinking long term I might have to find another job. Edit I've moved on from this company now, to a place where idiots are not employed. The code isn't perfect but it's at least manageable and peer reviewed. There are a lot of people in the comments below telling me that software is messy like this. Sure I don't agree with the way some programmers do things but this code was seriously mangled. The guy who wrote it tried to reinvent every wheel he could, and badly. He stopped getting work from us because of his bad code that nobody on the team could stand. If it were easy to refactor I would have. Eventually after many 'just do this small 10minute change' situations had ballooned into hours of lost time (regardless of who on the team was doing the work) my boss finally caved in it was rewritten.

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• AJAX driven "page complete" function? Am I doing it right?

  - by Julian H. Lam

  This one might get me slaughtered, since I'm pretty sure it's bad coding practice, so here goes: I have an AJAX driven site which loads both content and javascript in one go using Mootools' Request.HTML. Since I have initialization scripts that need to be run to finish "setting up" the template, I include those in a function called pageComplete(), on every page Visiting one page to another causes the previous pageComplete() function to no longer apply, since a new one is defined. The javascript function that loads pages dynamically calls pageComplete() blindly when the AJAX call is completed and is loaded onto the page: function loadPage(page, params) { // page is a string, params is a javascript object if (pageRequest && pageRequest.isRunning) pageRequest.cancel(); pageRequest = new Request.HTML({ url: '<?=APPLICATION_LINK?>' + page, evalScripts: true, onSuccess: function(tree, elements, html) { // Empty previous content and insert new content $('content').empty(); $('content').innerHTML = html; pageComplete(); pageRequest = null; } }).send('params='+JSON.encode(params)); } So yes, if pageComplete() is not defined in one the pages, the old pageComplete() is called, which could potentially be disastrous, but as of now, every single page has pageComplete() defined, even if it is empty. Good idea, bad idea?

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• Trigger IP ban based on request of given file?

  - by Mike Atlas

  I run a website where "x.php" was known to have vulnerabilities. The vulnerability has been fixed and I don't have "x.php" on my site anymore. As such with major public vulnerabilities, it seems script kiddies around are running tools that hitting my site looking for "x.php" in the entire structure of the site - constantly, 24/7. This is wasted bandwidth, traffic and load that I don't really need. Is there a way to trigger a time-based (or permanent) ban to an IP address that tries to access "x.php" anywhere on my site? Perhaps I need a custom 404 PHP page that captures the fact that the request was for "x.php" and then that triggers the ban? How can I do that? Thanks! EDIT: I should add that part of hardening my site, I've started using ZBBlock: This php security script is designed to detect certain behaviors detrimental to websites, or known bad addresses attempting to access your site. It then will send the bad robot (usually) or hacker an authentic 403 FORBIDDEN page with a description of what the problem was. If the attacker persists, then they will be served up a permanently reccurring 503 OVERLOAD message with a 24 hour timeout. But ZBBlock doesn't do quite exactly what I want to do, it does help with other spam/script/hack blocking.

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• An Interview with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  An interview with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg, by yours truly, titled “Challenging the Diabolical Developer: A Conversation with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg,” is now up on otn/java. Verburg, one of the leading movers and shakers in the Java community, is well known for his ‘diabolical developer” talks at JavaOne where he uncovers some of the worst practices that Java developers are prone to. He mentions a few in the interview: * “A lack of communication: Software development is far more a social activity than a technical one; most projects fail because of communication issues and social dynamics, not because of a bad technical decision. Sadly, many developers never learn this lesson.* No source control: Some developers simply store code in local file systems and e-mail the code in order to integrate their changes; yes, this still happens.* Design-driven design: Some developers are inclined to cram every design pattern from the Gang of Four (GoF) book into their projects. Of course, by that stage, they've actually forgotten why they're building the software in the first place.” He points to a couple of core assumptions and confusions that lead to trouble: “One is that developers think that the JVM is a magic box that will clean up their memory and make their code run fast, as well as make them cups of coffee. The JVM does help in a lot of cases, but bad code can and will still lead to terrible results! The other trend is to try to force Java (the language) to do something it's not very good at, such as rapid Web development. So you get a proliferation of overly complex frameworks, libraries, and techniques trying to get around the fact that Java is a monolithic, statically typed, compiled, OO environment. It's not a Golden Hammer!” Verburg has many insightful things to say about how to keep a Java User Group (JUG) going, about the “Adopt a JSR” program, bugathons, and much more. Check out the article here.

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• Ubuntu 13.04 client cannot connect to Raspbian samba share

  - by envoyweb

  I have a client Ubuntu 13.04 machine trying to connect to a server running Raspbian with samba and samba-common-bin installed on the server I can see my share and when I try to login I get this error: Unable to access location: Failed to write windows share Cannot allocate memory. I have installed ntfs-3g for the usb hard drive that already auto mounts on the server so I never had to create a directory or edit fstab. Testparm on the server states the following: [global] workgroup = ENVOYWEB server string = %h server map to guest = Bad User obey pam restrictions = Yes pam password change = Yes passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . unix password sync = Yes syslog = 0 log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m max log size = 1000 dns proxy = No usershare allow guests = Yes panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d idmap config * : backend = tdb [homes] comment = Home Directories valid users = %S create mask = 0700 directory mask = 0700 browseable = No [printers] comment = All Printers path = /var/spool/samba create mask = 0700 printable = Yes print ok = Yes browseable = No [print$] comment = Printer Drivers path = /var/lib/samba/printers [BigDude] comment = Sharing BigDude's Files path = /media/BigDude/ valid users = @users read only = No create mask = 0755 testparm on the client which is running ubuntu is as follows [global] workgroup = ENVOYWEB server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu) map to guest = Bad User obey pam restrictions = Yes pam password change = Yes passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . unix password sync = Yes syslog = 0 log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m max log size = 1000 dns proxy = No usershare allow guests = Yes panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d idmap config * : backend = tdb [printers] comment = All Printers path = /var/spool/samba create mask = 0700 printable = Yes print ok = Yes browseable = No [print$] comment = Printer Drivers path = /var/lib/samba/printers

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• About shared (static) Members and its behavior

  - by Allende

  I just realized that I can access shared members from instances of classes (probably this is not correct, but compile and run), and also learn/discover that, I can modify shared members, then create a new instance and access the new value of the shared member. My question is, what happens to the shared members, when it comes back to the "default" value (class declaration), how dangerous is it do this ? is it totally bad ? is it valid in some cases ?. If you want to test my point here is the code (console project vb.net) that I used to test shared members, as you can see/compile/run, the shared member "x" of the class "Hello" has default value string "Default", but at runtime it changes it, and after creating a new object of that class, this object has the new value of the shared member. Module Module1 Public Class hello Public Shared x As String = "Default" Public Sub New() End Sub End Class Sub Main() Console.WriteLine("hello.x=" & hello.x) Dim obj As New hello() Console.WriteLine("obj.x=" & obj.x) obj.x = "Default shared memeber, modified in object" Console.WriteLine("obj.x=" & obj.x) hello.x = "Defaul shared member, modified in class" Console.WriteLine("hello.x=" & hello.x) Dim obj2 As New hello() Console.WriteLine("obj2.x=" & obj2.x) Console.ReadLine() End Sub End Module UPDATE: First at all, thanks to everyone, each answer give feedback, I suppose, by respect I should choose one as "the answer", I don't want to be offensive to anyone, so please don't take it so bad if I didn't choose you answer.

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• How can rotating release managers improve a project's velocity and stability?

  - by Yannis Rizos

  The Wikipedia article on Parrot VM includes this unreferenced claim: Core committers take turns producing releases in a revolving schedule, where no single committer is responsible for multiple releases in a row. This practice has improved the project's velocity and stability. Parrot's Release Manager role documentation doesn't offer any further insight into the process, and I couldn't find any reference for the claim. My first thoughts were that rotating release managers seems like a good idea, sharing the responsibility between as many people as possible, and having a certain degree of polyphony in releases. Is it, though? Rotating release managers has been proposed for Launchpad, and there were some interesting counterarguments: Release management is something that requires a good understanding of all parts of the code and the authority to make calls under pressure if issues come up during the release itself The less change we can have to the release process the better from an operational perspective Don't really want an engineer to have to learn all this stuff on the job as well as have other things to take care of (regular development responsibilities) Any change of timezones of the releases would need to be approved with the SAs and: I think this would be a great idea (mainly because of my lust for power), but I also think that there should be some way making sure that a release manager doesn't get overwhelmed if something disastrous happens during release week, maybe by have a deputy release manager at the same time (maybe just falling back to Francis or Kiko would be sufficient). The practice doesn't appear to be very common, and the counterarguments seem reasonalbe and convincing. I'm quite confused on how it would improve a project's velocity and stability, is there something I'm missing, or is this just a bad edit on the Wikipedia article? Worth noting that the top voted answer in the related "Is rotating the lead developer a good or bad idea?" question boldly notes: Don't rotate.

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• Why do programmers write closed source applications and then make them free? [closed]

  - by Ken

  As an entrepreneur/programmer who makes a good living from writing and selling software, I'm dumbfounded as to why developers write applications and then put them up on the Internet for free. You've found yourself in one of the most lucrative fields in the world. A business with 99% profit margin, where you have no physical product but can name your price; a business where you can ship a buggy product and the customer will still buy it. Occasionally some of our software will get a free competitor, and I think, this guy is crazy. He could be making a good living off of this but instead chose to make it free. Do you not like giant piles of money? Are you not confident that people would pay for it? Are you afraid of having to support it? It's bad for the business of programming because now customers expect to be able to find a free solution to every problem. (I see tweets like "is there any good FREE software for XYZ? or do I need to pay $20 for that".) It's also bad for customers because the free solutions eventually break (because of a new OS or what have you) and since it's free, the developer has no reason to fix it. Customers end up with free but stale software that no longer works and never gets updated. Customer cries. Developer still working day job cries in their cubicle. What gives? PS: I'm not looking to start an open-source/software should be free kind of debate. I'm talking about when developers make a closed source application and make it free.

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• SEO - different data with same title and keywords

  - by Junaid Saeed

  here is my scenario i have a website where i redirect my users basing upon the device they were using, lets say a user is visiting from an iPad, i take him directly to the page of iPad wallpapers, the user selects iPad version & i take the user to the gallery of wallpapers where the user can select & download any wallpaper. Every wallpaper is the required resolution, i have my reasons for doing this, now the thing is there are diff. resolution. versions of an image appearing one 5 diff. sections of my website, each having their own view page Now there is only one record in db.table for the image, and basing on the my consistent naming convention of the images, i pick the required image. this means when 5 different pages are generated in 5 categorized sections of the website, due to a shared DB record, the keywords, the titles and every single detail of the 5 pages is same besides the resolution of the image, and the section specific details that the page has and yeah the pages also have different paths like wallpapers.com\ipad-1\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-2\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-3\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-4\cars\Ferrari-dino.html wallpapers.com\ipad-5\cars\Ferrari-dino.html now this is my scenario, How do Search Engines see it and how do they rank it? Is it a Good or Normal or Bad SEO practice? If bad how dangerous it is for my sites SEO? i need your comments on my scenario.

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• How do you make people accept code review?

  - by user7197

  All programmers have their style of programming. But some of the styles are let’s say... let’s not say. So you have code review to try to impose certain rules for good design and good programming techniques. But most of the programmers don’t like code review. They don’t like other people criticizing their work. Who do they think they are to consider themselves better than me and tell me that this is bad design, this could be done in another way. It works right? What is the problem? This is something they might say (or think but not say which is just as bad if not worse). So how do you make people accept code review without starting a war? How can you convince them this is a good thing; that will only improve their programming skills and avoid a lot of work later to fix and patch a zillion times a thing that hey... "it works"? People will tell you how to make code review (peer-programming, formal inspections etc) what to look for in a code review, studies have been made to show the number of defects that can be discovered before the software hits production etc. But how do you convince programmers to accept a code review?

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• what languages are good selling points on resume? [closed]

  - by Thomas Galvin

  I have a good amount of experience with C# and Java at the moment but after education and whatnot I wish to be able in more than just 2 high-level, comparatively limited languages, and from what I've seen languages like C(++) or PHP are in demand at the moment. I've thought about learning the following: C. Very standard, lightweight and available on everything. However very old and mostly procedural. C++. Standard like C but I've read in some places that it encourages bad programming design and use of dodgy libraries - but similar things have been said about C too so I'll take that with a grain of salt. D. Quite new but looks promising, but will it be relevant or applicable in the future though? PHP. With the internet becoming ever more important I think this might be the one to go with, but the code itself isn't very intuitive. CoffeeScript (or plain JavaScript). With Microsoft's new idea of HTML5+JS for everything under the sun this doesn't look like a bad choice. However things do change and I wish to be primarily a software dev, not web dev. So out of the above list, or any others that you could suggest, what would you say I should begin to focus on? What is your opinion on staying with C#?

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• Review of TechEd 2012 - so far

  - by Stefan Barrett

  Disclaimer: probably going to next years TechEd.  (but not 100% sure) As with most TechEd's, this is not one of the best - but it's not bad.  Some impressions so far: The food is not bad, through perhaps not as much choice as in previous years.  The snacks, while a bit limited, are at least available.  The alumni lounge is ok, through perhaps not as good as last years.  Wifi is a bit worse than previous years - not really working in the big room, and a bit sporadic in the rest of the building. The device seems to make a big difference - the iPad seems to connect the easiest, while the iPhone & Lumia 800 are really struggling.  The real problem is the content - not as developer focused as in previous years.  This shows up in a number of different ways, for example while there is a visual studio booth, there is not much sign of anybody from the language teams.  This is one of few TechEd's where I don't feel very surprised about anything - seen most of the developer stuff in previews. One example where I was surprised was the pre-conf on c++ - its been years since I did any c++, but based on that session perhaps I should start again. While there are sessions, I'm not finding my schedule very challenged. For each time-slot there only seems to 1, or rarely 2, interesting sessions.  The focus seems to be on windows 8, Azure and the phone, which while interesting (might give win8 a go), are not enough.

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• Valid reason for employer to breach freelance contract

  - by Costas

  Please don't close this as offtopic. According to the FAQ I can post programming related questions. I was working on a project and when it was half way completed (1 weeks work), the employer backs out and refuses to pay me. Shortly before this he was being very rude. He was having problems configuring the server and he told me it was my fault and that I had to fix it. After I spent several hours trying to figure out the problem, it turned out to be his fault. After this when I put the code on the server. He found 1 bug that I had missed. He freaked out, accused me of being a bad programmer and told me that the code was shit and that he couldn't use it. He said that if there is a bug in the code, that means the code is bad and he can't use it. He would have to throw the code away and hire someone else. His kept reiterating his argument: "why should I pay for code that I can't use". And I kept telling him the code was fine and urged him to have another programmer give him a second opinion. But he would have none of that. He said he would compensate me for my troubles by paying me 250$. Then he changes his mind and lowers that to 200$. Then a third time he changes his mind and says he doesn't want to compensate me at all. I'm left frustrated because besides being rude, he did not at any time tell me he was unhappy with the work that I was doing. So my question is; Is the above a valid reason to back out of a verbal contract in your opinion?

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• Companies and Ships

  - by TechnicalWriting

  I have worked for small, medium, large, and extra large companies and they have something in common with ships. These metaphors have been used before, I know, but I will have a go at them.The small company is like a speed boat, exciting and fast, and can turn on a dime, literally. Captain and crew share a lot of the work. A speed boat has a short range and needs to refuel a lot. It has difficulty getting through bad weather. (Small companies often live quarter to quarter. By the way, if a larger company is living quarter to quarter, it is taking on water.)The medium company is is like a battleship. It can maneuver, has a longer range, and the crew is focused on its mission. Its main concern are the other battleships trying to blow it out of the water, but it can respond quickly. Bad weather can jostle it, but it can get through most storms.The large company is like an aircraft carrier; a floating city. It is well-provisioned and can carry a specialized load for a very long range. Because of its size and complexity, it has to be well-organized to be effective and most of its functions are specialized (with little to no functional cross-over). There are many divisions and layers between Captain and crew. It is not very maneuverable; it has to set its course well in advance and have a plan of action.The extra large company is like a cruise liner. It also has to be well-organized and changes in direction are often slow. Some of the people are hard at work behind the scenes to run the ship; others can be along for the ride. They sail the same routes over and over again (often happily) with the occasional cosmetic face-lift to the ship and entertainment. It should stay in warm, friendly waters and avoid risky speed through fields of ice bergs.I have enjoyed my career on the various Ships of Technical Writing, but I get the most of my juice from the battleship where I am closer to the campaign and my contributions have the greater impact on success.Mark Metcalfewww.linkedin.com/in/MarkMetcalfe

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• People != Resources

  - by eddraper

  Ken Tabor’s blog post “They Are not Resources – We Are People” struck a chord with me.  I distinctly remember hearing the term “resources” within the context of “people” for the first time back in the late 90’s.  I was in a meeting at Compaq and a manager had been faced with some new scope for an IT project he was managing.  His response was that he needed more “resources” in order to get the job done.  As I knew the timeline for the project was fixed and the process for acquiring additional funding would almost certainly extend beyond his expected delivery date, I wondered what he meant.  After the meeting, I asked him what he meant… his response was that he needed some more “bodies” to get the job done.  For a minute, my mind whirred… why is it so difficult to simply say “people?”  This particular manager was neither a bad person nor a bad manager… quite the contrary.  I respected him quite a bit and still do.  Over time, I began to notice that he was what could be termed an “early adopter” of many “Business speak” terms – such as “sooner rather than later,” “thrown a curve,” “boil the ocean” etcetera.  Over time, I’ve discovered that much of this lexicon can actually be useful, though cliché and overused.  For example, “Boil the ocean” does serve a useful purpose in distilling a lot of verbiage and meaning into three simple words that paint a clear mental picture.  The term “resources” would serve a similar purpose if it were applied to the concept of time, funding, or people.  The problem is that this never happened.  “Resources”, “bodies”, “ICs” (individual contributors)… this is what “people” have become in the IT business world.  Why?  We’re talking about simple word choices here.  Why have human beings been deliberately dehumanized and abstracted in this manner? What useful purpose does it serve other than to demean and denigrate?

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• Which things instantly ring alarm bells when looking at code? [closed]

  - by FinnNk

  I attended a software craftsmanship event a couple of weeks ago and one of the comments made was "I'm sure we all recognize bad code when we see it" and everyone nodded sagely without further discussion. This sort of thing always worries me as there's that truism that everyone thinks they're an above average driver. Although I think I can recognize bad code I'd love to learn more about what other people consider to be code smells as it's rarely discussed in detail on people's blogs and only in a handful of books. In particular I think it'd be interesting to hear about anything that's a code smell in one language but not another. I'll start off with an easy one: Code in source control that has a high proportion of commented out code - why is it there? was it meant to be deleted? is it a half finished piece of work? maybe it shouldn't have been commented out and was only done when someone was testing something out? Personally I find this sort of thing really annoying even if it's just the odd line here and there, but when you see large blocks interspersed with the rest of the code it's totally unacceptable. It's also usually an indication that the rest of the code is likely to be of dubious quality as well.

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• What's wrong with circular references?

  - by dash-tom-bang

  I was involved in a programming discussion today where I made some statements that basically assumed axiomatically that circular references (between modules, classes, whatever) are generally bad. Once I got through with my pitch, my coworker asked, "what's wrong with circular references?" I've got strong feelings on this, but it's hard for me to verbalize concisely and concretely. Any explanation that I may come up with tends to rely on other items that I too consider axioms ("can't use in isolation, so can't test", "unknown/undefined behavior as state mutates in the participating objects", etc.), but I'd love to hear a concise reason for why circular references are bad that don't take the kinds of leaps of faith that my own brain does, having spent many hours over the years untangling them to understand, fix, and extend various bits of code. Edit: I am not asking about homogenous circular references, like those in a doubly-linked list or pointer-to-parent. This question is really asking about "larger scope" circular references, like libA calling libB which calls back to libA. Substitute 'module' for 'lib' if you like. Thanks for all of the answers so far!

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• In MVC, why can't a model create a view?

  - by MUY Belgium

  I have a web application written in Perl with a controller, some "views" and some "Models". Each "Model" is corresponding to one "View". The controller (one file) creates an Model object corresponding to each view (view is a CGI argument) then retrieve the view from the module it has just created. Indeed, this should be bad thing but can you argue a bit more about it. My first idea was that since the object "Model" depends upon the "view", then the "model" is actually a view. But also the fact that ALL the cgi parameters are passed to the Model causes the "Model" to become not truelly a view but to loose all interest, since it is only related to the current implementation of the web apps. On other words, that the "Model" keep model but loose its "comprehensiveness" ("Model" is not easily understandable). I'm am quite new in project analysis, so please do not be too harsh. Why is this bad? I have made a prototype with the main structures I have understood of this web application, made as short as possible. #Model.pm package Model; import { # this requires an attribute called "view" # and this require an argument which is the cgi params } ... #View1.pm package View1; ... #Model1.pm package ModelView1 ; base Model; use View1; sub new { my $class = shift; my $arg = shift; Model::DoSomething($arg); $self->view = new View1($arg); ... } #controller.cgi my $model = 0; ... $model = new Model1( cgi_param => params() ); #there is severall models here ... print $model->get_view()->get_html();

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• Is version history really sacred or is it better to rebase?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I've always agreed with Mercurial's mantra, however, now that Mercurial comes bundled with the rebase extension and it is a popular practice in git, I'm wondering if it could really be regarded as a "bad practice", or at least bad enough to avoid using. In any case, I'm aware of rebasing being dangerous after pushing. OTOH, I see the point of trying to package 5 commits in a single one to make it look niftier (specially at in a production branch), however, personally I think would be better to be able to see partial commits to a feature where some experimentation is done, even if it is not as nifty, but seeing something like "Tried to do it way X but it is not as optimal as Y after all, doing it Z taking Y as base" would IMHO have good value to those studying the codebase and follow the developers train of thought. My very opinionated (as in dumb, visceral, biased) point of view is that programmers like rebase to hide mistakes... and I don't think this is good for the project at all. So my question is: have you really found valuable to have such "organic commits" (i.e. untampered history) in practice?, or conversely, do you prefer to run into nifty well-packed commits and disregard the programmers' experimentation process?; whichever one you chose, why does that work for you? (having other team members to keep history, or alternatively, rebasing it).

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