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  • Which order would you teach programming languages in, when teaching a newbie?

    - by blueberryfields
    If you had to design a study program, with a breadth-of-programming-languages requirement, which stated that the student should be exposed to all major concepts and methodologies that can be taught through (at the minimum) 6 programming languages, which programming languages would you choose to teach, and in which order? Breadth-of-programming-languages is based on programming language and theoretical concepts.

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  • Is code maintenance typically a special project, or is it considered part of daily work?

    - by blueberryfields
    Earlier, I asked to find out which tools are commonly used to monitor methods and code bases, to find out whether the methods have been getting too long. Most of the responses there suggested that, beyond maintenance on the method currently being edited, programmers don't, in general, keep an eye on the rest of the code base. So I thought I'd ask the question in general: Is code maintenance, in general, considered part of your daily work? Do you find that you're spending at least some of your time cleaning up, refactoring, rewriting code in the code base, to improve it, as part of your other assigned work? Is it expected of you/do you expect it of your teammates? Or is it more common to find that cleanup, refactoring, and general maintenance on the codebase as a whole, occurs in bursts (for example, mostly as part of code reviews, or as part of refactoring/cleaning up projects)?

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  • What tools do you use to let you know that methods in your codebase are getting too long?

    - by blueberryfields
    Most people seem to agree that long methods are a code smell - a sign something may not be quite right with the code contained in them. Which tools do you use to detect this smell? clarified title based on responses. also, remember: Your code will live over time, and be edited by multiple programmers Emergency fixes and changes will come in, late at night, when the writer is too tired to pay attention to smells Different programmers use different tools. A contractor with 4 screens set at maximum resolution will have a different idea of acceptable method size In this context, I'm looking for tools and methods which go beyond looking at the size of a method when it's written, or when it's being edited.

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  • Which framework would you recommend to use to add "social networking" components to a website?

    - by blueberryfields
    Given which already enables users to create and publish content, is there a service or tool which can add the standard social networking suite of components? Specifically, I'm looking quickly add functionality which allows users to friend each other, vote on/like/rank content on the site, send each other links to parts they find interesting, chat and send offline message each other. There's no specific limitation on the technology used for these components - as long as its been proven to work, and scales without issue. I'd slightly prefer a solution which is offered as a service rather than one that I have to install. Edit Some additional commenter requested clarifications - there are no restrictions that the site imposes on user identification or authentication. Feel free to assume that portion of the work is not relevant to the answers.

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  • How can I most efficiently communicate my personal code of ethics, and its implications?

    - by blueberryfields
    There is a lot to the definition of a professional. There are many questions here asking how to identify components of what is essentially a professional programmer - how do you identify or communicate expertise, specialization, high quality work, excellent skills in relation to the profession. I am specifically looking for methods to communicate a specific component, and I quote from wikipedia: A high standard of professional ethics, behavior and work activities while carrying out one's profession (as an employee, self-employed person, career, enterprise, business, company, or partnership/associate/colleague, etc.). The professional owes a higher duty to a client, often a privilege of confidentiality, as well as a duty not to abandon the client just because he or she may not be able to pay or remunerate the professional. Often the professional is required to put the interest of the client ahead of his own interests. How can I most efficiently communicate my professionalism, in the spirit of the quote above, to current and potential clients and employers?

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  • How long of a trial period do you use with programmers - how quickly can you tell if they are talented and a good fit?

    - by blueberryfields
    It seems most jobs that I've been exposed to come with a 3 month trial period, during which the employer decides whether the employee is doing good enough work, and is a good fit. 3 months seem like overkill to me, for most cases we've known much sooner whether someone wasn't a good fit. How long does it take you, on average, to evaluate whether a newly hired programmer is both talented and a good fit for your team?

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  • I'm looking to learn how to apply traditional animation techniques to my graphics engine - are there any tutorials or online-resources that can help?

    - by blueberryfields
    There are many traditional animation techniques - such as blurring of motion, motion along an elliptical curve rather than a straight line, counter-motion before beginning of movement - which help with creating the appearance of a realistic 3D animated character. I'm looking to incorporate tools and short cuts for some of these into my graphics engine, to make it easier for my end users to use these techniques in their animations. Is there a good resource listing the techniques and the principles behind them, especially how they might apply to a graphics engine or 3D animation?

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  • Is anyone teaching the application of ethics to programming?

    - by blueberryfields
    Ethical questions come up more and more in the news, and can be core to a software developers' life. On several occasions this year I was asked for advice that amounts to answering ethical questions, in a computer programming context, and I was surprised to see how much fretting and trouble questions which I consider trivial can lead to. Are there any courses or programs specializing in teaching what is expected of an ethical programmer? Has anyone put together a formal curriculum anywhere?

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  • Is it common practice to hire third parties to do code reviews for contractors?

    - by blueberryfields
    I recently observed some contract offers which included a "code review by third party" clause - the contract would not pay out fully until the code review was completed and it received a pass. I was surprised, especially considering that these were fairly simple, and small-scale contracts (churning out vanity apps for the iPhone). Is this kind of third-party code review a common thing to run into when contracting out as a programmer?

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  • What do you do to make sure you take proper/enough breaks, while avoiding unwanted side-effects of break taking?

    - by blueberryfields
    preamble It seems to me that computer programmers are one of a select few groups of people who actually take pleasure from sitting in front of computers for long periods of time. Most people in other professions actively dislike their time at computers, and do their best to avoid it (so, I assume, they don't have problems taking breaks). At least for me, having external cues for taking breaks, and clear instructions on what to do with each break (stretch, go for a walk, close my eyes, look into a distance of preferably a few km and focus on faraway objects, etc...), is a must. So far, I've just been making up the breaks and tools to get them as I go along, based on what looks to be low-specificity information found on the net (generic stuff ala ergonomics advice for office staff). This has led to all sorts of side effects - loss of attention as I get distracted if I walk around, breaks in flow with alarm clocks interrupting my thoughts, and people around me assuming I'm low on work due to the frequency of my walking around compared to everyone else. /preamble tl;dr Taking breaks is important My internal break taking system doesn't work, and ad-hoc ones have unwanted side effects What do you do to make sure you take proper breaks? How do you avoid unwanted side-effects, such as getting distracted or interrupting flow or giving your co-workers the impression you're spending a lot of time goofing off?

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  • Is learning how to use C (or C++) a requirement in order to be a good (excellent) programmer?

    - by blueberryfields
    When I first started to learn how to program, real programmers could write assembly in their sleep. Any serious schooling in computer science would include a hefty bit of training and practice in programming using assembly. That has since changed, to the point where I see Computer Science degrees with assembly, if included at all, is relegated to one assignment, and one chapter, for a total of two weeks' work out of 4 years' schooling. C/C++ programming seems to have followed a similar path. I'm no longer surprised to interview university graduates who have not spent more than two weeks programming in C++, and have only read of C in a book somewhere. While the most serious CS degrees still seem to include significant time learning and using one or both of the languages, the trend is clearly towards less enforced C/C++ in school. It's clearly possible to make a career producing good work without ever reading or writing a single line of C or C++ code. Given all of that, is learning the two languages worth the effort? Are they at all required to excel? (beyond the obvious, non-language specific advice, such as "a good selection of languages is probably important for a comprehensive education", and "it's probably a good idea to keep trying out and learning new languages throughout a programmers' career, just to stretch the gray cells")

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  • How similar are programming and architecture?

    - by blueberryfields
    A friend of mine has completed an undergraduate program in architecture. Disillusioned with the industry and available work options, she is now looking to change careers, and become a professional software developer. What can she expect will be similar to her existing education, and will therefore be easy for her to pick up? What will be difficult? Does any of her experience so far transfer? Any other advice or information that she should know, before making the jump?

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  • How do I (quickly) let people know that software I am providing for free is not abandon-ware?

    - by blueberryfields
    As an independent, individual programmer: How do I let people very quickly know that I have not abandoned the software I've written and given away for free? That I am putting in the effort required to maintain and support my software to a professional level? When software written by one or two developers is available for free, or marked as open-source, usually the default assumption is that it's abandon-ware. This is usually a safe assumption - check out the answers to this question if you doubt it: Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?. There are lots of programmers who provide free and/or open-source tools which are not abandon-ware, though. If we're talking about large companies, ie Google, there's no real problem telling the difference between supported, live tools and software, and those which are abandoned or discontinued. A lively git repository isn't quick - users will have to be savvy enough to understand the repository and know where to look for it. Consistent marketing and community management take more time and effort than I can put in on my own. Also, if my software becomes popular/successful, I assume those will grow on their own, and be supported by power users in the community.

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  • What are the most common stumbling blocks when it comes to learning programming, in order of difficulty?

    - by blueberryfields
    I seem to remember that linked lists, recursion, pointers, and memory management are all good examples of stumbling blocks - places where the aspiring programmer typically ends up spending significant time trying to understand a concept before moving on and improving, and many end up giving up and not improving. I'm looking for a complete/comprehensive list of these types of stumbling blocks, in rough estimated order of difficulty to learn, with the goal of making sure that an educational program for programmers is structured to properly guide students through them Is this information available somewhere? Ideally, the difficulty to learn will be measured in some sort of objective manner (ie, % of students which consistently fail to learn the concept) What sources are most appropriate for obtaining this information?

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  • I'm tempted to include easter eggs in my code - will this get me fired?

    - by blueberryfields
    While working on a portion of the code for our application, I've noticed an opportunity to include one of my side projects as an easter egg. I can do this in a way which I am certain will in no way harm anyone, and I've met with a significant and representative sample of our client base - I'm certain that those who have the knowledge and skills required to find the egg, will also find it humorous. How likely is it that I will get fired for including an easter egg in our application? For more context, the application is aimed at enterprise clients, and, while the users of it tend to be technical, geeky and will enjoy the egg, those in charge of purchasing are on the sales/marketing side of things. I can't even begin to guess how they would react. Edit: Yes, I've asked my manager. As you might expect in a corporate environment, the answer was: "I cannot condone this. You're on your own"

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  • How would you represent an object that can be of multiple types, when storing it as a document in MongoDB?

    - by blueberryfields
    Somewhat related to this question, say that I have an object category which, depending on which type of object I have, has different restrictions on what it contains. (if you can reword the previous sentence to make more sense I'd appreciate it) For example var SomeSchema = new Schema({ _id: ObjectID, [... large number of common fields ...] type: //Restricted somehow to members of a fixed array data: //depending on type, this might be restricted - sometimes an integer, sometimes array, etc... }); What's the idiosyncratic method for defining this type of schema? Is it appropriate to define a single schema, and handle the types inside of it's members, or am I better off with separate schema for each type?

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  • Which online/hosted bug tracking tool do you use for your own work and projects?

    - by blueberryfields
    I've accumulated a lot of side projects over the years, which I slowly improve on over time. Whenever I return to one, I take some time reading over text files that include design, recent bugs, next features, etc... that I should be working on - it's not pretty. I'm looking to switch to something more formal. Ideally, this would be a full featured, online, bug tracking system, which allows for free or nearly free bug tracking for my own projects. Also, ideally this would be doable in a private manner - I don't really want everyone to see my side projects and what a mess I've made of some of them.

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  • Which specific programming activities do women, on average, perform better than men? [closed]

    - by blueberryfields
    Following a recent discussion with female associates in hiring positions for software development/engineering positions, I found out that this kind of information would be incredibly useful to helping make sure that the workforce shows a gender balance. So I went looking. I've found various literature speaking about risk-taking behaviour and patterns, and other statistical differences between men and women when it comes to work performance. See for example this article related to hedge fund management. I have yet to see any such comparison in the computing field. To restate the question: Which specific programming activities do women, on average, perform better than men? Please back up your answers with specific details, preferably by linking to relevant research or, failing that, explaining what you're basing the information on.

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  • I'm looking to learn how to apply traditional animation techniques to my graphics engine - are there any tutorials or online-resources that can help?

    - by blueberryfields
    There are many traditional animation techniques - such as blurring of motion, motion along an elliptical curve rather than a straight line, counter-motion before beginning of movement - which help with creating the appearance of a realistic 3D animated character. I'm looking to incorporate tools and short cuts for some of these into my graphics engine, to make it easier for my end users to use these techniques in their animations. Is there a good resource listing the techniques and the principles behind them, especially how they might apply to a graphics engine or 3D animation?

    Read the article

  • Would you hire a computer scientist which refuses to use computers? [closed]

    - by blueberryfields
    Imagine that you're interviewing a brilliant CS grad. He's just finished school, has very high grades, and has been performing very well on the interview so far. You reach a point near the end, where you're starting to speak about terms of employment, salary, etc.., and you're trying to show off the environment he'll be working in. When you mention that programmers at your company have systems with two monitors, the interviewee stops you and informs you that he won't need a computer. He only ever writes code by hand, in a note-book, and relies on his phone for sending/receiving email. This is not something he's willing to budge on. Would you still hire him? How good would he have to be for you to hire him? What would you hire him to do, if you do hire him? (the student is modelling himself on E.W. Djikstra)

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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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  • Under which circumstances (if any) does it make sense to work for a startup, for free?

    - by blueberryfields
    I've been bumping around the startup world for a while, and most startups I've seen seem to have (amongst other things) two things in common: A lack of money An inability to, reliably, hire good quality developers This means that, for startups, the ideal hire is someone who is free - where they can wait until they've both raised money and found out that the hire is worth his price tag. When (if ever) is this a win win situation? For you, as a programmer or software developer, when would this make sense?

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  • Can Resource Governor for SQL Server 2008 be scripted?

    - by blueberryfields
    I'm looking for a method to, in real-time, automatically, adjust Resource Governor settings. Here's an example: Imagine that I have 10 applications, each hitting a different database on the same database machine. For normal operations, they do not hit the database very hard, so I might want each one to have 10% CPU power reserved. Occasionally, though, one or two of them might spike, and run an operation which could really use the extra power to run faster. I'd like to be able to adjust to compensate (say, reducing the non-spiking apps to 3%, and splitting the difference between the spiking apps). This is a kind of poor man's method of trying to dynamically adjust resource allocation and priorities. Scripts (or something script-like) is preferred, since the requirement is for meta-level adjustments to be possible in real-time, also.

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  • What is a quick way to report login/logout times on Windows 2003?

    - by blueberryfields
    I have about a dozen servers, and I am looking to quickly find out all of the login/logout times, for a subset of users, for all servers, during January. Is there a quick, easy way to get this information (faster and easier than manually combing through the security logs)? I would rather not replicate any work - are there any publicly posted tools or scripts that already implement a solution to this problem?

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