renesis - Developer IT

What development terms come from the construction industry?

- by Renesis

When talking with colleagues about software design and development principles, I've noticed one of the most common sources for analogies is the construction industry. It would be quite useful to have a list of what programming/development terms and concepts are borrowed from construction industry? (And please provide a description or experiences regarding that topic.) [Credit to Programming concepts taken from the arts and humanities for the idea]

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Is rotating the lead developer a good or bad idea?

- by Renesis

I work on a team that has been flat organizationally since it's creation several months ago. My manager is non-technical and this means that our whole team is responsible for decision-making. My manager is beginning to realize that there are several benefits to having a lead developer, both for his sake (a single point of contact and single responsible party for tasks) and ours (dispute resolution, organized technical guidance, etc.). Because the team has been flat, one concern is that picking one lead developer may discourage the others. A non-developer suggested to my manager that rotating the lead developer is a possible way to avoid this issue. One developer would be lead one month, another the next, and so on. Is this a good idea? Why or why not? Keep in mind that this means all developers — All developers are good, but not necessarily equally suited to leadership. And if it is not, suppose I am likely the best candidate for lead developer — how do I recommend that we avoid this approach without looking like it's merely for selfish reasons? (In other words, the team is small enough that anyone recommending a single leader is likely to appear to be recommending themselves — especially those who have been part of the team longer.)

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Is there any reason lazy initialization couldn't be built into Java?

- by Renesis

Since I'm working on a server with absolutely no non-persisted state for users, every User-related object we have is rolled out on every request. Consequently I often find myself doing lazy initialization of properties of objects that may go unused. protected EventDispatcher dispatcher = new EventDispatcher(); Becomes... protected EventDispatcher<EventMessage> dispatcher; public EventDispatcher<EventMessage> getEventDispatcher() { if (dispatcher == null) { dispatcher = new EventDispatcher<EventMessage>(); } return dispatcher; } Is there any reason this couldn't be built into Java? protected lazy EventDispatcher dispatcher = new EventDispatcher();

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How should I pronounce the :: and -> in PHP?

- by Renesis

When I read these lines aloud to someone: $controller->process(); UserManager::getInstance(); How should the -> and :: be pronounced? Reading the characters themselves in cumbersome and I don't know of any nicknames for them. Being a developer who is used to C-style syntax, I'd like to say "dot", but I'd like something that is easy to say and people can easily understand. It would also be good to know if there are any pronunciations that have become de-facto standards among teams of developers.

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What can programmers learn from the construction industry?

- by Renesis

When talking with colleagues about software design and development principles, I've noticed one of the most common sources for analogies is the construction industry. We build software and we consider the design and structure to be the architecture. One of the best ways to learn (or teach) are through analyzing analogies - what other analogies can be drawn from construction? (whether already in common use in software or not). Please provide a description, or your personal experience, regarding how the programming concept is similar to the construction concept. [Credit to Programming concepts taken from the arts and humanities for the idea]

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Intentional misspellings to avoid reserved words

- by Renesis

I often see code that include intentional misspellings of common words that for better or worse have become reserved words: klass or clazz for class: Class clazz = ThisClass.class kount for count in SQL: count(*) AS kount Personally I find this decreases readability. In my own practice I haven't found too many cases where a better name couldn't have been used — itemClass or recordTotal. However, it's so common that I can't help but wonder if I'm the only one? Anyone have any advice or even better, quoted recommendations from well-respected programmers on this practice?

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Is using Javascript/JQuery for layout and style bad practice?

- by Renesis

Many, but not all, HTML layout problems can be solved with CSS alone. For those that can't, JQuery (on document load) has become very popular.* As a result of its ease, many developers are quick to use JQuery or Javascript for layout and style — even without understanding whether or not the problem can be solved with CSS alone. This is illustrated by responses to questions like this one. Is this bad practice? What are the arguments for/against? Should someone who sees this in practice attempt to persuade those developers otherwise? If so, what are the best responses to arguments in favor of JQuery saying it's "so easy"? * Example: Layouts that wish to use vertical layout flow of some kind often run into dead ends with CSS alone — this would include layouts similar to Pinterest, though I'm not sure that's actually impossible with CSS.

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Disaster recovery backup of files/photos for personal use

- by Renesis

I'm looking for the best method to store a backup of important files and 5+ years of digital photos that is safe from some type of fire/flood disaster in my home. I'm looking for: Affordable: Less than $100/yr or first-time cost. Reliable: At least a smaller chance of failing than there is of fire or flood Easy for initial backup and to add to, and at least semi-easy to recover. I recently purchased a small home safe for physical vitals. It was inexpensive, solid, and is fire/water safe. If I had a physical copy of the digital files, the safe would work fine for this, but I don't know what to store in it that adequately meets the requirements above. Hard drive - I read that the danger of it not spinning up makes a hard drive a bad choice for this type of storage, although it was my first thought and would definitely be the simplest choice - very easy to take out once a month and add files to. DVDs - Way too much of a hassle for both backup and restore. Tape - No idea on the affordability of this option Online - Given that I have at least 300GB already and ever-increasing megapixels means ever-bigger files, and my ISP upload is about 2Mb at the best, this just doesn't sound like a good option for me, but I could be convinced. Other - Have I missed something? Also, I'm already covered both for sync between computers (Dropbox) and a nightly backup of these files (External HDD). The problem with the nightly backup is obviously that it's always with the computer and in a disaster would be destroyed along with it. Is anyone else doing something similar? Is the HDD as poor of a choice as I read, or is it a feasible option? Maybe two to reduce the likelihood of failure?

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Is XMLReader a SAX parser, a DOM parser, or neither?

- by Renesis

I am testing various methods to read (possibly large, and very often) XML configuration files in PHP. No writing is ever needed. I have two successful implementations, one using SimpleXML (which I know is a DOM parser) and one using XMLReader. I know that a DOM reader must read the whole tree and therefore uses more memory. My tests reflect that. I also know that A SAX parser is an "event-based" parser that uses less memory because it reads each node from the stream without checking what is next. XMLReader also reads from a stream with the cursor providing data about the node it is currently at. So, it definitely sounds like XMLReader (http://us2.php.net/xmlreader) is not a DOM parser, but my question is, is it a SAX parser, or something else? It seems like XMLReader behaves the way a SAX parser does but does not throw the events themselves (in other words, can you construct a SAX parser with XMLReader?) If it is something else, does the classification it's in have a name?

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PHP, MySQL - can you distinguish between rows matched and rows affected?

- by Renesis

I am trying to write a PHP-MySQL database processor that is somewhat intelligent. When this processor decides it needs to make an update, I want to report if it was really successful or not. I thought I could use mysql_affected_rows... // Example: // After running query "UPDATE mytable SET name='Test' WHERE ID=1" $result = mysql_affected_rows(); if ($result >= 1) { /* Success */ } If, for example, there was no row with ID=1, then $result would be 0. However, it turns out that PHP's mysql_affected_rows is the actual affected rows, and may be still be 0 if the row exists but name was already "Test". (The PHP docs even say this is the case). If I run this in the command line, I get the following meta information about the query: Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec) Rows matched: 1 Changed: 0 Warnings: 0 Is there any way for me to get that "Rows matched" value in PHP instead of the affected rows?

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