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  • Best Method of function parameter validation

    - by Aglystas
    I've been dabbling with the idea of creating my own CMS for the experience and because it would be fun to run my website off my own code base. One of the decisions I keep coming back to is how best to validate incoming parameters for functions. This is mostly in reference to simple data types since object validation would be quite a bit more complex. At first I debated creating a naming convention that would contain information about what the parameters should be, (int, string, bool, etc) then I also figured I could create options to validate against. But then in every function I still need to run some sort of parameter validation that parses the parameter name to determine what the value can be then validate against it, granted this would be handled by passing the list of parameters to function but that still needs to happen and one of my goals is to remove the parameter validation from the function itself so that you can only have the actual function code that accomplishes the intended task without the additional code for validation. Is there any good way of handling this, or is it so low level that typically parameter validation is just done at the start of the function call anyway, so I should stick with doing that.

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  • Oracle is Child&rsquo;s Play&hellip;in NSW

    - by divya.malik
    A few weeks ago, my colleague Michael Seback posted a blog entry on Oracle’s acquisition of Haley.  We recently read  an interesting report from Down Under, and here was our press release on the  implementation of Oracle’s Policy automation software in New South Wales, which I thought I would share. We always love hearing about our software “at work”, and especially in the Public Sector- social services area, where it makes a big difference to people’s lives. Here were some of the reasons, why NSW chose Oracle software: “One of the things Oracle’s Policy Automation system is good at is allowing you take decision  trees and rules that are obviously written in English and code them up using very much a natural language approach,” said Holling (CIO for Human Services). “So it was quite a short process to translate the final set of rules that were written on paper into business rules that were actually embedded in the system.” “Another reason why we chose Oracle’s Automation tool is because with future versions of Siebel it comes very tightly integrated with that. It allows us to then to basically take the results of the Policy Automation survey and actually populate our client management system database with that information,” said Holling. As per Surend Dayal, North America VP, Oracle’s Policy automation has applications across a wide range of industries, including public sector—especially health and human services—also financial services, insurance, and even airline rewards programs. In other words, any business process that requires consistent, accurate decision-making where complex legislation and/or internal policies are involved. Click here to read more about Oracle and Haley.

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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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  • 100% Product Coverage in EBS CRM Communities

    - by Oracle_EBS
    Starting June 1st we are now providing 100% coverage for the entire Oracle CRM product line! To facilitate this growth we have made the following changes: Quoting, Telesales, Mobile Field Service and Lease and Finance Management have all been decommissioned and their content moved to their respective communities. Quoting and Telesales are now covered in the newly renamed Sales, Marketing & Common Apps community. Mobile Field Service is now covered in the Field Service Product Family community which used to be called Depot Repair. Lease and Finance Management is now under Contracts. The CRM Communities are an excellent channel for collaborating on issues that are not highly time sensitive or complex. Check with Oracle experts and Industry Peers as they can provide a clue or a nudge toward an answer or a confirmation on a workaround. Some of the best and brightest will be there to assist you. Check the News & Announcement regions for an updated list of covered products. Here are links to the current CRM communities. Service Install Base Contracts CRMO Field Service Product Family Sales, Marketing & Common Apps Trade Management Sales Compensation

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  • How to do a 3-tier using PHP [closed]

    - by Ric
    I have a requirement from a client for my PHP Web application to be 3-tier. For example, I would have a web server on Apache in the DMZ, but it should NOT contain any DB connections. It should connect to a Middle server that would host the business objects but be behind the firewall. Then those objects connect to my SQL cluster on another server. I have actually done this using .NET, but I am not sure how to setup my stack using PHP. I suppose I could have my UI front tier call the middle tier using REST based web services if I create my middle tier as a second web server, but this seems overly complex. The main reason for this is advanced security: we can not have any passwords on the DMZ first tier web server. The second reason is scalability - to have multiple server on different tiers that can handle the requests. The Last reason is for deployment - it is easier if I can take one set of servers offline for testing before putting them back in production. Is there a open source project that shows how to do this? The only example I can find is the web server hosting files from a shared drive on another machine (kind of how DotNetNuke pretends to be 3-tier), but that is NOT secure.

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  • Is there a typical career path to learn game development "on the job"?

    - by mac
    The extended version of the question is: what is the typical career paths that a developer without specific experience in game development should take if he/she wishes to work in the game development industry? In other words, what are the positions such a programmer might aspire to get hired for, in the game industry? I am asking because it seems to me that - even without direct experience with 3D modelling, physics engines, shaders, etc... - for as much complex as these topics might be - they are still "just" top layers one can learn "on the job" if he/she has already good programming skills and experience in software design (for example during peer-programming sessions). I have no knowledge whatsoever of the game industry, so maybe I am being naïve here, but for all the other programming jobs I previously took, I learnt most of the specificities while working on concrete projects... so I wonder if there is a chance to do the same with game development. Thanks for your time and advice! :) PS: I don't know if this is important or not for answering the question, but scripting languages are the languages I am more proficient in. /mac

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  • Microsoft Changes Developer Account Registration Requirements

    - by Tim Murphy
    Over the last couple of weeks I have noticed that Microsoft seems to have changed the requirements for Corporate accounts.  These requirements were not in effect when I originally setup the account for the company that I work for.  We also recently had our corporate account canceled without explanation and are in the process of working to get it reinstated.  This all seems to revolve around rules to increase confidence that in the producers of content.  They are now having Symantec validate a company based on legal documents. In the past there have been problems with getting credit cards accepted.  We have had to setup new Live IDs to satisfy whatever glitch the system had or unexplainable requirement.  I am hoping that in the time that has elapsed these problems have been resolved. In truth I can’t say that these new requirements weren’t always in place, but it is getting frustrating to help clients setup accounts.  I am encourage that they have taken steps to safeguard the consumer from Joe-fly-by-night, but they also need to make sure that the process doesn’t become so complex that it drives away companies from participating in the store.  We will have to keep an eye on this as things evolve. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone Development,Windows 8 Development,Windows Phone,Windows 8,Registration,Corporate Accounts

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  • 2D Image Creator for a video game

    - by user1276078
    I need to make a few images for an arcade video game I'm making in Java. As of right now, I have drawings that animate, but there are two problems. The drawings are horrible, and as a result, the game won't get enough attention. It's a pain to have to change each coordinate for the drawing, as the drawings are fairly complex. I'd like to use images. I feel they could solve my problem. They would look better than the drawings, and it would only have an x and a y coordinate, rather than the many coordinates I need for each drawing. So, in a sense, I have two questions. Would images actually help? Would they solve my 2 problems? I just want to clarify. How would I make these images. I don't think I can copy them off of the internet because I plan on publishing this game. So, is there any software where you can make your own images? (It has to be in an image type that Java can support. I'm working with java). It also, as stated by the header, needs to be a 2D image; not 3D

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  • Server-side Architecture for Online Game

    - by Draiken
    basically I have a game client that has communicate with a server for almost every action it takes, the game is in Java (using LWJGL) and right now I will start making the server. The base of the game is normally one client communicating with the server alone, but I will require later on for several clients to work together for some functionalities. I've already read how authentication server should be sepparated and I intend on doing it. The problem is I am completely inexperienced in this kind of server-side programming, all I've ever programmed were JSF web applications. I imagine I'll do socket connections for pretty much every game communication since HTML is very slow, but I still don't really know where to start on my server. I would appreciate reading material or guidelines on where to start, what architecture should the game server have and maybe some suggestions on frameworks that could help me getting the client-server communication. I've looked into JNAG but I have no experience with this kind of thing, so I can't really tell if it is a solid and good messaging layer. Any help is appreciated... Thanks ! EDIT: Just a little more information about the game. It is intended to be a very complex game with several functionalities, making some functionalities a "program" inside the program. It is not an usual game, like FPS or RPG but I intend on having a lot of users using these many different "programs" inside the game. If I wasn't clear enough, I'd really appreciate people that have already developed games with java client/server architecture, how they communicated, any frameworks, apis, messaging systems, etc. It is not a question of lack of knowledge of language, more a question for advice, so I don't end up creating something that works, but in the later stages will have to be rewriten for any kind of limiting reason. PS: sorry if my english is not perfect...

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  • How does datomic handle "corrections"?

    - by blueberryfields
    tl;dr Rich Hickey describes datomic as a system which implicitly deals with timestamps associated with data storage from my experience, data is often imperfectly stored in systems, and on many occasions needs to retroactively be corrected (ie, often the question of "was a True on Tuesday at 12:00pm?" will have an incorrect answer stored in the database) This seems like a spot where the abstractions behind datomic might break - do they? If they don't, how does the system handle such corrections? Rich Hickey, in several of his talks, justifies the creation of datomic, and explains its benefits. His work, if I understand correctly, is motivated by core the insight that humans, when speaking about data and facts, implicitly associate some of the related context into their work(a date-time). By pushing the work required to manage the implicit date-time component of context into the database, he's created a system which is both much easier to understand, and much easier to program. This turns out to be relevant to most database programmers in practice - his work saves everyone a lot of time managing complex, hard to produce/debug/fix, time queries. However, especially in large databases, data is often damaged/incorrect (maybe it was not input correctly, maybe it eroded over time, etc...). While most database updates are insertions of new facts, and should indeed be treated that way, a non-trivial subset of the work required to manage time-queries has to do with retroactive updates. I have yet to see any documentation which explains how such corrections, or retroactive updates, are handled by datomic; from my experience, they are a non-trivial (and incredibly difficult to deal with) subset of time-related data manipulation that database programmers are faced with. Does datomic gracefully handle such updates? If so, how?

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  • What are some efficient ways to set up my environment when working on a remote site?

    - by Prefix
    Hello fellow Programmers, I am still a relatively new programmer and have recently gotten my first on-campus programming position. I am the sole dev responsible for 8 domains as well as 3 small sized PHP web apps. The campus has its web environment divided into staging and live servers -- we develop on the staging via SFTP and then push the updates to the live server through a web GUI. I use Sublime Text 2 and the Sublime SFTP plugin currently for all my dev work (its my preferred editor). If I am just making an edit to a page I'll open that individual file via the ftp browser. If I am working on the PHP web app projects, I have the app directory mapped to a local folder so that when I save locally the file is auto-uploaded through Sublime SFTP. I feel like this workflow is slow and sub-optimal. How can I improve my workflow for working with remote content? I'd love to set up a local environment on my machine as that would eliminate the constant SFTP upload/download, but as I said there are many sites and the space required for a local copy of the entire domain would be quite large and complex; not to mention keeping it updated with whatever the latest on the staging server is would be a nightmare. Anyone know how I can improve my general web dev workflow from what I've described? I'd really like to cut out constantly editing over FTP but I'm not sure where to start other than ripping the entire directory and dumping it into XAMP.

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  • Is there a shell-independent HUD-like menu search tool for Gnome?

    - by Redsandro
    The Ubuntu HUD - you love it or you hate it. Personally I rather like a classic desktop, so I use Xfce and Cinnamon, and I don't want to lose my menu in applications. But the HUD is pretty awesome when your menus are complex and you forgot where an option sits. This makes that search trick very interesting. I know the HUD is Unity specific. I am looking for a HUD-like tool to complement the menu in shells other than Unity. There is Appmenu Runner for KDE that does this. There is also appmenu-qt for KDE. Problem with the above is that it uses KDE libs, and it only works for KDE apps. This is Linux, there aught to be something like this for GNOME/GTK apps, right? Looking for any tool that can search the menus. I already use(d) Kupfer and Gnome-do, something like that would suffice if only it includes searching the menus for the currently focussed application.

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  • Employers and intellectual property 2

    - by Rick
    I have a question about intellectual property, I am currently a manager in a small manufacturing firm. The owners are driven by greed and don't appreciate the development process of complex machinery and are happy just to send things out half done. I on the other hand think that it should be done properly as breakdown in the field can be costly, embarrassing. They seem to have all of us running around doing most of the work out of hours using the attitude of "Be grateful to have a job" yet no one has a contract or any security or any agreement in place. For a couple of the projects i am using PLC's and doing the code in my own time and the testing during company time, and i am aware that they cannot support their own machines if i left, but as i created the code in my own time who owns it? The have asked my to put in a shutdown code for a maintenance request after a given length of time, could this be classed as criminal damage or anything illegal apart from immoral? (we sell the machines with 12 month warrantee, shut down after) But as time goes on I'm getting rather fed up of the companies attitude toward the client. I am considering keeping the clients as my own and get them to contact me directly In the shutdown code. By doing something like this is a trial version contact me for a full license? I wouldn't feel bad for my current employer as he is not afraid to S***t on people as he has been evolved in numerous law suits and has over 30 failed companies leaving people and customers high and dry, we have took the company this far on the reputation of the workers and and i can see things heading like all the other companies he has owned and taking our reputations with him. So i suppose now i have set the scene, if i code into it to contact me directly in the shutdown could there be any legal impact on me, as i rightly or wrongly think i own the code and designs? Cheers R

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  • The balance between client and server functionality

    - by Eugen Martynov
    I want to bring the discussion that started in our teams and get your opinion about it. Assume we have an user account which could have different credentials for authentication and associated email to recover. An user has possibility to do signup with an email or use his social profile to complete signup process. As an Rest API from the backend to client looks like: Create account Authorise Update user data Link social account Register email Verify email In addition our BE is distributed and divided between several services/servers/clusters. So different calls are related to different end points. In case of the social sign up some of steps should be skipped or simplified. For example, with Facebook signup we could already skip email registration and verification step (we ask email permission form user), linking the social account and pre-fill user displayed name. So we proposed to have another end point which will hide/combine different calls on BE and return whole process result to the clients. The pros for this approach: No more duplication of functionality between clients Speed up the networking and user experience The cons for this approach: Additional work for backend Probably most complex scenarios in future updates I would like to get your opinion or experience with this situation. Especially if you already experienced point #2 from against reasons.

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  • ASP.NET MVVM Handling multiple Data Transfer Objects on a single page

    - by meffect
    I have an asp.net mvc "edit" page which allows the user to make edits to the parent entity, and then also "create" child entities on the same page. Note: I'm making these data transfer objects up. public class CustomerViewModel { public int Id { get; set; } public Byte[] Timestamp { get; set; } public string CustomerName { get; set; } public etc.. public CustomerOrderCreateViewModel CustomerOrderCreateViewModel { get; set; } } In my view I have two html form's. One for Customer "edit" Http Posts, and the other for CustomerOrder "create" Http Posts. In the view page, I load the CustomerOrder "create" form in using: <div id="CustomerOrderCreate"> @Html.Partial("Vendor/_CustomerOrderCreatePartial", Model.CustomerOrderCreateViewModel) </div> The CustomerOrder html form action posts to a different controller HttpPost ActionResult than the Customer "edit" Action Result. My concern is this, on the CustomerOrder controller, in the HttpPost ActionResult [HttpPost] public ActionResult Create(CustomerOrderCreateViewModel vm) { if (!ModelState.IsValid) { return [What Do I Return Here] } ...[Persist to database code]... } I don't know what to return if the model state isn't valid. Right now it's not a problem, because jquery unobtrusive validation handles validation on the client. But what if I need more complex validation (ie: the server needs to handle the validation).

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  • Can't configure 5.1 audio with 12.04

    - by xster
    I have an Intel ALC892 and a Nvidia GT 520m connected to speakers via HDMI. On lspci, I see 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: ZOTAC International (MCO) Ltd. Device a218 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 47 Memory at db400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel 02:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation HDMI Audio stub (rev a1) Subsystem: ZOTAC International (MCO) Ltd. Device 2180 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18 Memory at db080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel My alsamixer looks like I enabled pulseaudio configuration file to have 6 channels. My sound setting looks like When I use the test dialog, only front left and right have sounds. If I use alsa in XBMC on a 5.1 video, there's no sound. If I use pulseaudio, only front right and left have sound. I can barely hear any speech since I'm guessing it's mapped to front center. Any clues?

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  • About C# objects and the possibilties it has

    - by user527825
    As a novice programmer and I always wonder about c# capabilities. I know it is still early to judge that but all i want to know is can c# do complex stuffs or something outside windows OS. I think C# is a proprietary language (I don't know if I said that right) meaning you can't do it outside Visual Studio or Windows. Also you can't create your own controller (called object right?) like you are forced to use these available in toolbox and their properties and methods. Can C# be used with OpenGL API or DirectX API Finally it always bothers me when I think I start doing things in Visual Studio, I know it sounds arrogant to say but sometimes I feel that I don't like to be forced to use something even if its helpful, like I feel (do I have the right to feel?) that I want to do all things by myself? Don't laugh I just feel that this will give me a better understanding. Is Visual C# like using MaxScript inside 3ds max in that C# is exclusive to do Windows and Forms and Components that are Windows related and maxscript is only for 3d editing and manipulation for various things in the software. If it is too difficult for a beginner I hope you don't answer the fourth question as I don't have enough motivation and I want to keep the little I have. Note: Sorry for my English, I am self taught and never used the language with native speakers so expect so errors. I have a lot of questions regarding many things, what is the daily ratio you think for asking (number of questions) that would not bother the admins of the site and the members here. Thank you for your time.

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  • How can I deal with a difficult developer that is holding back the project? [migrated]

    - by ILovePaperTowels
    Our entire project is being held up because of one piece which is being handled by a single developer. When we did finally got the latest version of his code and started reviewing it, we found the code was horrendous! Its a relatively simply workflow, however the code is so complex that it's very difficult to step through and review/debug. The developer responsible has a hard time accepting any kind of criticism, and feels he is more knowledgeable than others members of the team. It's difficult to even talk to him about his development work because it turns into "I know what I'm talking about and you're just wrong!" type of conversation. A request has already been put in to replace this developer but management is not doing anything. This is probably because devs are in short supply where we are, and this is a corporation has a lot of office drama. I'm just one of the developers, not the project manager, however I really want to see this project succeed. What can I do in this sort of situation to try and keep the project on track?

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  • Beginners guide to developing optimization software

    - by Florenc
    I am novice in "serious" programming i.e. applications that deal with real-life applications and software projects that go beyond school assignments. My interests include optimization, operations research, algorithms and lately i discovered how much I do like software design/development/engineering. I have already developed some simple desktop applications for some "famous" problems like TSP using heuristc approaches, a VRP solver (in progress) and so on. While developing this kind of software I actually used basic concepts taught at school such as object-orientation analysis and design. But, I found these courses rather elementary and quite boring (for my expectations). So I decided to go a little further and start developing "real" software (and this is where I realized how important and interesting software engineering/design is.) Now, here's my issue: I can not find a "study guide" for developing software of this kind. Currently, there are numerous resources out there (books, websites, tutorials) in designing and developing complex IS, web applications, smartphone apps but I can't find a book for example entitled "optimization software development". Definetly, someone could claim that "design patterns apply to software in general" but that's not my point. My point is that I could simply use my imagination for "simple" implementations, but what happens, when my imagination can not go further? In other words I'm looking for a guide/path to bridge the gap between: Mathematics-Algorithm Design-Software Engineering-Optimization-Software development

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  • How did we get saddled with the (hierarchical) filesystem as the basic data structure?

    - by user1936
    I'm self-taught and I don't have a CS degree. The more I've been learning about data structure, the more I wonder, in this day and age, how are we still saddled with the filesystem, with directories and files, as the basic data storage structure on the OS? I understand the simplicity of it, but it seems nowadays that there could be more options available natively. As far as I'm aware, the only project to improve the basic functionality of the filesystem was ReiserFS, where you could tell what line of a file was changed by whom, and when. For instance, if I could have native tagging for files, where I could tag images, diagrams, word-processing documents, an entire code repository, all as belonging to a single project, that would really be helpful to me. Since I'm stuck in the filesystem paradigm, I know that I could put all those into a single folder/directory, but what if they already exist in disparate directories, and they need to stay there? I know there are programs out there that can do this, but why aren't they on the filesystem? Something that would be nice to have is some kind of relational feature in the filesystem, like you get with RDBMSes. I understand that that was supposed to be part of Vista/7, but that fell off the feature list too. Sure, any program can store a binary file and have any data structure it wants in it, by why couldn't the OS offer more complex ways of storing data, beyond the simple heirarchy of the filesystem?

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  • LINQ to Twitter Maintenance Feedback

    - by Joe Mayo
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/WinAZ/archive/2013/06/16/linq-to-twitter-maintenance-feedback.aspxIt’s always fun to receive positive feedback on your work. If you receive a sufficient amount of positive feedback, you know you’re doing something right. Sometimes, people provide negative feedback too. There are a couple ways to handle it: come back fighting or engage for clarification. The way you handle the negative feedback depends on what your goals are. Feedback Approaches If you know the feedback is incorrect and you need to promote your idea or product, you might want to come back fighting. The feedback might just be comments by a troll or competitor wanting to spread FUD. However, this could be the totally wrong approach if you misjudge the source and intentions of the feedback. In a lot of cases, feedback is a golden opportunity. Sometimes, a problem exists that you either don’t know about or don’t realize the true impact of the problem. If you decide to come back fighting, you might loose the opportunity to learn something new. However, if you engage the person providing the feedback, looking for clarification, you might learn something very important. Negative feedback and it’s clarification can lead to the collection of useful and actionable data. In my case, something that prompted this blog post, I noticed someone who tweeted a negative comment about LINQ to Twitter. Normally, any less than stellar comments are usually from folks that need help – so I help if I can. This was different. I was like “Don’t use LINQ to Twitter”. This is an open source project, the comment didn’t come from a competing project, and  sounded more like an expression of frustration. So I engaged. Not only did the person respond, but I got some decent quality feedback. What’s also interesting is a couple other side conversations sprouted on the subject, which gave me more useful data. LINQ to Twitter Thread Actions Essentially, this particular issue centered around maintenance. There are actually several sub-issues at play here: dependencies, error handling, debugging, and visibility. I’ll describe each one and my interpretation. Dependencies Dependencies are where a library has references to other libraries. This means that when you build your application, you need DLLs for the entire dependency graph for your application. There are several potential problems with this that include more libraries for configuration management, potential versioning mismatches, and lack of cross-platform support. In the early days of LINQ to Twitter, I allowed developers to contribute and add dependencies, but it became very problematic (for reasons stated). It was like a ball and chain that kept me from moving forward. So, I refactored and pulled other open-source into my project to eliminate external dependencies. This lets me fix the code in my project without relying on someone else to upgrade or fix their DLL. The motivation for this was from early negative feedback that translated as important data and acted on it. Today, LINQ to Twitter has zero dependencies. Note: Rejecting good code from community members who worked hard to make your project better is a painful experience in itself. I have to point out that any contribution was not in vain because they had a positive influence on my subsequent refactoring that resulted in a better developer experience. Error Handling Error handling has been a problem in the past. I have this combination of supporting both synchronous and asynchronous (APM) processing that can be complex at times. Within the last 6 months, I did a fair amount of refactoring to detect errors and process them properly. I also refactored TwitterQueryException so it includes important data from Twitter. During this refactoring, I’ve made breaking changes that I felt would improve the development experience (small things like renaming a callback property to Exception, rather than Error). I think the async error handling is much better than it was a year ago. For all the work I’ve done, there is more to do. I think that a combination of more error handling support, e.g. improving semantics, and education through documentation and samples will improve the error handling story. Because of what I’ve done so far, it isn’t bad, but I see opportunities for improvement. Debugging Debugging can be painful. Here’s why: you have multiple layers of technology to navigate and figure out where the real problem is – Twitter API, Security, HTTP, LINQ to Twitter, and application. You can probably add your own nuances to that list, but the point is that debugging in this environment can be complex. I think that my plans for error handling will contribute to making the debugging process easier. However, there’s more I can do in the way of documentation and guidance. Some of the questions to be answered revolve around when something goes wrong, how does the developer figure out that there is a problem, what the problem is, and what to do about it. One example that has gone a long way to helping LINQ to Twitter developers is the 401 FAQ. A 401 Unauthorized is the error that the Twitter API returns when a use isn’t able to authenticate and is one of the most difficult problems faced by LINQ to Twitter developers. What I did was read guidance from Twitter and collect techniques from my own development and actions helping other developers to compile an extensive list of reasons for the 401 and ways to fix the problem. At one time, over half of the questions I answered in the forums were to help solve 401 issues. After publishing the 401 FAQ, I rarely get a 401 question and it’s because the person didn’t know about the FAQ. If the person is too lazy to read the FAQ, that’s not my issue, but the results in support issues have been dramatic. I think debugging can benefit from the education and documentation approach, but I’m always open to suggestions on whatever else I can do. Visibility Visibility is a nuance of the error handling/debugging discussion but is deeply rooted in comfort and control. The questions to ask in this area are what is happening as my code runs and how testable is the code. In support of these areas, LINQ to Twitter does have logging and TwitterContext properties that help see what’s happening on requests. The logging functionality allows any developer to connect a TextWriter to the Log property of TwitterContext to see what’s happening. Further, TwitterContext has a Headers property to see the headers Twitter returns and a RawResults property to show the Json string Twitter returns. From a testing perspective, I’ve been able to write hundreds of unit tests, over 600 when this post is published, and growing. If you write your own library, you have full control over all of these aspects. The tradeoff here is that while you have access to the LINQ to Twitter source code and modify it for all the visibility, LINQ to Twitter *will* change (which is good) and you will have to figure out how to merge that with your changes (which is hard). The fact is that this is a limitation of any 3rd party library, not just LINQ to Twitter. So, it’s a design decision where the tradeoff is between control and productivity. That said, there are things I can do with LINQ to Twitter to make the visibility story more compelling. I think there are opportunities to improve diagnostics. This would be a ton of work because it would need to provide multi-level logging that can be tuned for production and support any logging provider you want to attach. I’ve considered approaches such as how the new Semantic Logging application block connects to Windows Error Reporting as a potential target. Whatever I do would need to be extensible without creating native external dependencies. e.g. how many 3rd party libraries force a dependency on a logging framework that you don’t use. So, this won’t be an easy feat, but I believe it can be part of the roadmap. I think that a lot of developers are unaware of existing visibility features, so the first step would be to provide more documentation and guidance. My thought are that this would lead to more feedback that will help improve this area. Summary Recent feedback highlights some of items that are important to LINQ to Twitter developers, such as dependencies, error handling, debugging, and visibility. I know that there are maintenance issues that have been problems for LINQ to Twitter developers in the past. I’ve done a lot of work in this area, such as improving error handling, adding visibility features, and providing extensive API documentation. That said, there is more to be done to make LINQ to Twitter the best Twitter API experience available for .NET developers and I welcome anyone’s thoughts on what I’ve written here or new improvements. @JoeMayo

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  • Silverlight Developer needs ASP.NET MVC Training [on hold]

    - by Peet Brits
    With Silverlight on the way out, our company wants to embrace HTML5 and related technologies. Background: Our Silverlight project did everything from generating its own models (or data contracts), sending it over WCF, tracking changes, with a whole deal of back-end code to make the ride smoother, but often also cluttered and more complex. Most of the original developers for this project are gone, and we want to embrace something new for future projects. Having done this very useful MVC Jump Start course at Microsoft Virtual Academy, we are all fired up for the next project. The problem is that we have very little in-depth knowledge of all the many different components. The most important hereof is probably Entity Framework, and (for later) Web API. I suppose the best place to start is at the Microsoft ASP.NET websites. Are there any other suggestions for learning from more experienced developers? I am a senior developer, but my knowledge of ASP.NET MVC (and related) is very limited. PS: We have a project deadline at the end of this month.

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  • Pair Programming, for or against? [on hold]

    - by user1037729
    I believe it has many advantages over individual programming: Pros By pairing senior with relatively junior staff, the more junior can get up to speed with both project and computing experience, and the senior will re-think the problem in order to communicate with the junior, thus re-checking his own thinking (rubber duck principle!). At least 2 people will know about any single piece of work, if one person is away the other can cover, or if some one leaves a project knowledge transfer is easier. Two brains on a complex task is more effective, communication keeps the work free flowing and provides redundancy in decision making. Code is effectively reviewed as its being written, no need for a separate reviewing phase which requires a context switch as someone who has not been working on the piece in question would be required to understand and review the related code. Reviewing code on your own which you haven't written or architected is not fun, hence counter productive. Cons Less bandwith for performing tasks, lets say we have 4 devs, pair programming requires 2 devs per task, so we would be doing 2 tasks concurrently as a posed to 4. I believe this "Con" does not stand up as the pair programmed task would complete sooner and comes with a review built in for free! Ie the pair programming task would be more efficient and thus free up resources earlier. Less flexibility to chop and change tasks as two developers are tied into a task, when flexibility is required this could be a problem.

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  • We really only have ONE rule...

    - by Chris G. Williams
    Had to show someone the door today... bummer.     At Big Robot Games we really only have one rule and it's not all that complex:   If you're going to hang out here all day, you should satisfy AT LEAST one of the following criteria: 1) You buy some food and/or drinks. 2) You occasionally buy product. 3) You play as part of a sanctioned tournaent or gaming group. 4) You act like you have some sense (i.e. have manners.)   We would love it if you manage to do all of the above, of course, but we're really perfectly content to settle for only getting a 1-2 of them at a time.    We don't have a problem with people bringing food in, and we understand that you aren't going to buy a game every time you come here. And yes, we know that people enjoy hanging out here with their friends. We can even overlook your odd quirks and personality issues, provided you're spending a little money once in a while (this IS a BUSINESS, after all.)   However... if you can't manage to do ANY of the things I listed above, and then you get lippy with me about it, well... it's time to say goodbye.

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  • Can it be a good idea to lease a house rather than a standard office-space for a software development shop? [closed]

    - by hamlin11
    Our lease is up on our US-based office-space in July, so it's back on my radar to evaluate our office-space situation. Two of our partners rather like the idea of leasing a house rather than standard office-space. We have 4 partners and one employee. I'm against the idea at this moment in time. Pros, as I see them Easier to get a good location (minimize commutes) All partners/employees have dogs. Easier to work longer hours without dog-duties pulling people back home More comfortable bathroom situation Residential Internet Rate Control of the thermostat Clients don't come to our office, so this would not change our image The additional comfort-level should facilitate a significantly higher-percentage of time "in the zone" for programmers and artists. Cons, as I see them Additional bills to pay (house-cleaning, yard, util, gas, electric) Additional time-overhead in dealing with bills (house-cleaning, yard, util, gas, electric) Additional overhead required to deal with issues that maintenance would have dealt with in a standard office-space Residential neighbors to contend with The equation starts to look a little nasty when factoring in potential time-overhead, especially on issues that a maintenance crew would deal with at a standard office complex. Can this be a good thing for a software development shop?

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