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• Can notes/to-dos in code comments sent to code-reviews result in an effective refactoring process?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I want to start/improve a culture of collective code ownership at my company but at a geographically distributed level... I'd say there is some current collective code-ownership mentality, but only at single geographical sites. This is a follow-up to this question: What is the politically correct way of refactoring other's code? I'm just wondering if submitting *just code comments* for code reviews (we have ReviewBoard, possibly upgrading to Crucible) could actually be an effective mechanism to get the conversation started on improving code, without having others feel territorial about their code. For example, if I add: //ToDo: Refactor this code and that code because of reasons X and Y Then, submit it for code review, and it gets accepted... it could be considered as an agreement (which I think is sometimes harder to get with new code up front). At the same time, the author (and others) might have an easier time digesting and accepting the proposal; rejecting a proposal because it might break things will not longer be a valid reason and therefore the fear of making a change is lost... and at the same time, do not invest 10 hours optimizing something that no one thinks it is worth it and opposes to it just out of fear. This is all conjecture, but I'm feeling something like this (submitting refactoring notes in code comments at the code-review process) would work. Has anyone done something like this in practice?, if so, what have been the results?

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• Why should I consider using the Source Engine?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I've always been a Valve fan, but now that I have the opportuninty to choose a game engine for a project I'm not sure I want to choose the Source Engine after watching this wikipedia entry. My options essentially boiled down to an open source stack (Horde3D + Zoidcom + Spark + SFML + CEGUI, and well, not OSS but PhysX too), UDK and the Source Engine. My question is (because I really have no experience with it) why should any developer choose the Source Engine over any other open source or commercial option?, is the Source Engine really worth it as a game development tool or has it time already passed and it is obsolete against other solutions?. Thanks

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• Why should I consider using the Source Engine?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I've always been a Valve fan, but now that I have the opportuninty to choose a game engine for a project I'm not sure I want to choose the Source Engine after watching this wikipedia entry. My options essentially boiled down to an open source stack (Horde3D + Zoidcom + Spark + SFML + CEGUI, and well, not OSS but PhysX too), UDK and the Source Engine. My question is (because I really have no experience with it) what would be the technical reasons (not license or other) for any developer to choose the Source Engine over any other open source or commercial option ?, is the Source Engine really worth it as a game development tool or has it time already passed and it is obsolete against other solutions?. Thanks Edit: Precised my question a little more , I'm looking for technical reasons to choose the Source Engine.

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• Is SugarCRM really adequate for custom development?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I used SugarCRM for a project about two years ago, I ran into errors from the very installation, having to hack the actual installation file to deploy the software in the server... and other erros that I can't recall now. Two years after, I'm picking it up for a project once again... oh dear, I'm feeling like I should have developed the whole thing from scratch myself. Some examples: I couldn't install it in the server (again)... I had to install it locally, then copy the files and database over to the server and manually edit the config file. Constantly getting deployment errors from the module builder... one reason is SugarCRM keeps creating a record in the upgrade_history table for a file that does not exist, I keep deleting such record and it keeps coming back corrupt. I get other deployment errors, but have not figured them out... then I have to rollback all files and database to try again. I deleted a custom module with relationships, the relationships stayed in the other modules and cannot be deleted anymore, PHP warnings all over the place. Quick create for custom modules does not appear, hack needed. Its whole cache directory is a joke, permanent data/files are stored there. The module builder interface disappears required fields. Edit the wrong thing, module builder won't deploy again... then pray Quick Repair and/or Rebuild Relationships do the trick. My impression of SugarCRM now is that, regardless of its pretty exterior and apparent functionality, it is a very low quality piece of software. This even scared me more: http://amplicate.com/hate/sugarcrm; a quote: I wis this info had been available when I tried to implement it 2 years ago... I searched high and low and the only info I found was positive. Yes, it's a piece of crap. The community edition was full of bugs... nothing worked. Essentially I got fired for implementing it. I'm glad though, because now I work for myself, am much happier and make more money... so, I should really thank SugarCRM for sucking so much I guess! I figured that perhaps some of you have had similar experiences, and have either sticked with SugarCRM or moved on to another solution. I'm very interested in knowing what your resolutions were -or your current situations are- to make up my own mind, since the project I'm working on is long term and I'm feeling SugarCRM will be more an obstacle than an aid. Thanks in advance.

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• Is hiring a "chief intern" a good idea?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I'm starting an internship program for our software department and I was wondering about creating a position ("chief intern", intern supervisor, or whatever one should call it) with the following responsibilities: Train interns Coach interns Manage projects and tasks for interns Supervise intern's work in terms of rhythm and quality Act as a liaison between the main team's needs and interns performance/aspirations Evaluate and facilitate intern's progress when they want to grab a higher-level domain-specific task (at this point, a main dev team member can do mentoring) Get freely involved in the main team's software development tasks so that he himself can grow, and have full mentorship from the main dev team. I'm thinking that an apprentice-level engineer (below Jr., or Jr.; but being a graduate and working full-time) can handle this for a while (he will be trained by the main dev team first), until one of two things happen: He/she decides to move on to the main dev team by recommending an appropriate replacement (or me finding another one as a new hire) Keep leading the interns while still being able to grow to Jr. Eng., Eng., Sr. Eng I know the notion of a "chief intern" is common within the medical world, but I don't really know about that in the software world (I was a freelancer for most of my university years). A side-intention to this is also that, if this ends up being a higher rotation position (organically) because the intern supervisor wants to join the main dev team, this could help interns that aspire this position emerge as leaders. My main intention for this, though, is removing distractions from the main team but without making the interns suffer the lack of attention, which could lead to boredom and little intern retention. Is this "chief intern" idea common (or good at least)?, are there any obvious risks to it that I might not be seeing? Edit: I have a draft plan for the kind of work the interns would be doing: Are R&D mini-projects a good activity for interns? Edit #2: My intention is not keeping them isolated, but having someone focus on giving attention to them when we cannot. Edit #3: I'm now convince it is a good idea, but I will take the organic approach to hiring someone in such position: do it myself until I cannot. This way I'll know better what to expect from a person I hire for this role in the future, as well as what works and what doesn't with interns.

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• Is SugarCRM really adequate for custom development (or adequate at all)? [closed]

  - by dukeofgaming

  Have you used SugarCRM for custom development successfully?, if so, have you done it programmatically or through the Module Builder? Were you successful? If not, why? I used SugarCRM for a project about two years ago, I ran into errors from the very installation, having to hack the actual installation file to deploy the software in the server and other erros that I can't recall now. Two years after, I'm picking it up for a project once again. I'm feeling like I should have developed the whole thing from scratch myself. Some examples: I couldn't install it in the server (again). I had to install it locally, then copy the files and database over to the server and manually edit the config file. Constantly getting deployment errors from the module builder. One reason is SugarCRM keeps creating a record in the upgrade_history table for a file that does not exist, I keep deleting such record and it keeps coming back corrupt. I get other deployment errors, but have not figured them out. then I have to rollback all files and database to try again. I deleted a custom module with relationships, the relationships stayed in the other modules and cannot be deleted anymore, PHP warnings all over the place. Quick create for custom modules does not appear, hack needed. Its whole cache directory is a joke, permanent data/files are stored there. The module builder interface disappears required fields. Edit the wrong thing, module builder won't deploy again, then pray Quick Repair and/or Rebuild Relationships do the trick. My impression of SugarCRM now is that, regardless of its pretty exterior and apparent functionality, it is a very low quality piece of software. This even scared me more: http://amplicate.com/hate/sugarcrm; a quote: I wis this info had been available when I tried to implement it 2 years ago... I searched high and low and the only info I found was positive. Yes, it's a piece of crap. The community edition was full of bugs... nothing worked. Essentially I got fired for implementing it. I'm glad though, because now I work for myself, am much happier and make more money... so, I should really thank SugarCRM for sucking so much I guess! I figured that perhaps some of you have had similar experiences, and have either sticked with SugarCRM or moved on to another solution. I'm very interested in knowing what your resolutions were -or your current situations are- to make up my own mind, since the project I'm working on is long term and I'm feeling SugarCRM will be more an obstacle than an aid. After further failed attempts to continue using this software I continued to stumble upon dead-ends when using the module editor, I could only recover from this errors by using version control. We are now moving on to a custom implementation using Symfony; perhaps if we were using it with its out-of-the-box modules we would have sticked with it.

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• PHP and Ruby: how to leverage both? and, is it worth it?

  - by dukeofgaming

  As you might have noticed from the title, this is not a "PHP or Ruby", or a "PHP vs. Ruby" question. This is a question on how to leverage PHP + Ruby in the same business. I myself am a PHP developer, I love the language because of its convenience and I specially love the ecosystem of resources that surround it: Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, Symfony2, Doctrine2, etc. However, the language itself can be a little disappointing sometimes. OTOH, Ruby looks like a very beautiful language and —from studying it superficially in several aspects— I could say it is leaner than Python as a language per se. However, from what I've seen there is pretty much only RoR making noise, and I don't like RoR so much (mainly because its model layer). As Co-CEO and CTO at my company I'm trying to think outside of the box since I want to start to focus on the human side of technology and see if its sane to use both PHP and Ruby. Here are some random thoughts: Ruby folk seem to be generally better suited programmers than PHP folk (in terms of averages), I know the previous statement is somewhat baloney because very good and well architected PHP can be written, but I'd say the Ruby programmer culture is better than PHP's. The thing about Ruby is that it seems better suited for rapid development, I don't really know if this is only the case for RoR, but I do know that there are certain practices (perhaps not so good) like monkey patching that let business needs be satified quicker. From a marketing point of view (yep, sometimes you need to leverage the marketing BS for the sake of your company) Ruby seems better while PHP carries some stigmas. PHP 5.4 is bringing traits, and that is better/cleaner than mixins. That could really make PHP as lean as Ruby —or more— for certain stuff. Now, concretely, my questions: Would a PHP programmer want to learn Ruby?, I know I do, but conversely, would a Ruby programmer want to learn PHP?. What kinds of projects or situations would be better suited for Ruby that are not suited for PHP?. What is the actual ecosystem of Ruby?, aside from RoR, I have not seen other hyped technologies/frameworks (I've seen RSpec, but I confess being a total noob on what BDD really consists of and its implications). Supposing there are a certain type of projects ideal for Ruby, would there be a moment that its better to move it to PHP?. I know PHP can handle lots of stuff, but I've read that Ruby has its limitations when scaling (or is that RoR?, or is that baloney for both?). Finally and most importantly, would it be sane to maintain projects in two languages?, or is that just stupid. As I said, it looks like Ruby is leaner on the short term and that can make a project happen and succeed, but I'm not so sure about that on the long run. I'm looking for insights mainly from people that know well the strengths and weaknesses of the languages —preferably both of them— and Ruby's ecosystem in real practice, meaning: frameworks and applications like the ones I quoted from PHP's ecosystem. Best regards and thanks for your time.

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• Integrating different branches from external sources into a single Mercurial repository

  - by dukeofgaming

  I'm currently working in a company using Perforce and am making way for distributed version control with Mercurial. I've had success importing Perforce history using the perfarce (quite a suitable name, I laugh every time I see/say it) however, this only works with a single branch at a time. Here's how my P4 integration setup works: In perforce, create a "client", which is kind of a description of what you will be constantly updating/checking-out. This can only address one branch at a time (trunk or other). Once you do this, run hg clone p4://<server>/<client_name> Go to .hg/hgrc and put the perforce path line: perforce = p4://<server>/<client_name> Work normally with the code under mercurial, do hg pull perforce to sync up, hg push to export a changelist What I'd like to be able to do is have a perforce path per branch and have everything work in the same repository. Now, pushing is not a problem, however, if I pull the history from another branch it would end up at the default branch. I'd like to be able to do something like hg pull perforce-R5 and have it land in mercurial's R5 branch. Even if I have no merging history, it would be sweet enough to be able to preserve it. There are also other plugins for CVCSs that let you integrate mercurial, but AFAIK the subversion one has the same problem. I don't think there is a straight-through way of doing this, but as long as I could automate the process with some hooks and scripts in a single Mercurial machine, that would be good enough.

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• Appropriate response when client empowered with CMS destroys content to his own will

  - by dukeofgaming

  So, I just recently closed a website project that pretty much was The Oatmeals' Design Hell, but with content. The client loved the site at the beginning but started getting other people involved and mercilessly bombarding us with their opinions. We served a carefully thought content strategy (which the client approved) and extremely curated copywriting that took us four months after at least 5 requirement changes (new content, new objectives for the business, changed offerings, new mindfaps, etc.) that required us to rewrite the content about 3 times. The client never gave timely feedback even though we kept the process open for him and his people to see (content being developed transparently in Google Docs). Near the end of the project he still wanted to make changes but wanted us to finish already (there are not enough words in the world to even try to make sense of this). So I explained to him the obvious implications of the never-ending requirement changes and advised him to take the time to gather his thoughts with his own team and see the new content introduced as a new content maintenance project. He happily accepted, but on the day of training/delivery things went very wrong and we have no idea why. The client didn't even allow the site to be out for a week with the content we developed for him and quickly replaced us with a Joomla savvy intern so that he completely destroy the content with shallow, unstructured, tasteless and plain wordsmithing (and I'm not even being visceral). Worst insult of all, he revoked our access from his server and the deployed CMS not even having passed 10 minutes of being given his administrator account (we realized the day after that he did it in our own office, the nerve!). Everybody involved in the team is enraged and insulted. I never want to see this happen again. So, to try to make sense of this situation and avoid it in the future with new clients I have two concrete questions: Is there even an appropriate course of action with a client like this?, or is he just not worth the trouble of analyzing (blindly hoping this never repeats again). In the exercise to try and blame ourselves instead of the client and take this as a lesson of... something, how should we set expectations for new clients about the working terms, process and final product so that they are discouraged from mauling the content to their own contempt once they get the codes to the nukes (access to the CMS)?

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• Is Perforce as good as merging as DVCSs?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I've heard that Perforce is very good at merging, I'm guessing this has to do with that it tracks changes in the form of changelists where you can add differences across several files in a single blow. I think this implies Perforce gathers more metadata and therefore has more information to do smarter merging (at least smarter than Subversion, being Perforce centralized). Since this is similar to how Mercurial and Git handle changes (I know DVCSs track content rather than files), I was wondering if somebody knew what were the subtle differences that makes Perforce better or worse than a DVCS like Mercurial or Git.

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• Where could Distributed Version Control Systems currently be in Gartner's hype cycle?

  - by dukeofgaming

  Edit: Given the recent downvoting (+8/-6 at this point) it was made clear to me that Gartner's lifecycle is a biased metric from a programmer's perspective. This is something that is part of a paper I'm going to present to management, and management types are part of Gartner's audience. Giving DVCS exposure & enthusiasm (that "could" be deemed as hype, or at least attacked as such), think about the following question when reading this one: "how could I use Gartner's hype cycle to convince management that DVCSs are ready (or ready-enough) for us, and that it is not just hype" Just asking if DVCSs is hype wouldn't be constructive, Gartner's hype cycle is a more objective instrument than just asking that (even if this instrument is regarded as biased). If you know any other instrument please, by all means, mention it. Edit #2: I agree that Gartner's Life Cycle is not for every technology, but I consider it may have generated enough buzz to be considered hype by some, so it maybe deserves to be at least evaluated/pondered as such by using this instrument in order to prove/disprove it to whatever degree. I'm an advocate of DVCS, BTW. I'm doing research for a whitepaper I'm writing in favor of DVCS adoption at company and I stumbled upon the concept of social proof. I want to prove that the social proof of DVCS adoption is not necessarily cargo cult and doing further research I now stumbled upon Gartner's hype cycle which describes technology maturity in 5 phases. My question is: what could be an indicator of the current location of Distributed Version Control Systems (I mean git, mercurial, bazaar, etc. in general) at a particular phase in the hype cycle?... in other (less convoluted) words, would you say that currently expectations of DVCSs are a) starting, b)inflated, c)decreasing (disillusionment), d)increasing (enlightenment) or e)stabilizing (mature) and (more importantly) why? I know it is a hard question and there is subjectivity involved, but I'll grant the answer (and the traditional cookie) to the clearest argument/evidence for a particular phase.

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• Should generated documentation go in version control history?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I'm against compiled stuff going into version control, specially when it comes to compiled binaries, however, my principles are now in question after adding doxygen support for a project. Should the hundreds of files generated by doxygen go into version control?, what is the recommended practice here?, I think the ideal would be automating the process in a server that publishes that documentation at the same time, however, there is no such server now nor there will be for some time.

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• On-the-fly graphical representation of code

  - by dukeofgaming

  I know about Omondo's plugin for live code-UML synchronization in Eclipse, but I was wondering if there was any other tool/IDE/IDE-extension that has some form of live graphical code representaiton (structural, flow, call-stacks, dependencies, etc.). I'm essentially looking for richer visual feedback on code while programming, not really looking for purely graphical code editors, though round-trips would be nice (edit graphically, code gets modified; edit code, representation gets modified). If you don't know about any graphical live documentation tool for code, maybe someone that can coexist with code, such as MySQL Workbench or Enterprise Architect.

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• Preferred way to render text in OpenGL

  - by dukeofgaming

  Hi, I'm about tu pick up computer graphics once again for an university project. For a previous project I used a library called ftgl that didn't leave me quite satisfied as it felt kind of heavy (I tried all rendering techniques, text rendering didn't scale very well). My question is, is there a good and efficient library for this?, if not, what would be the way to implement fast but nice looking text?. Some intended uses are: Floating object/character labels Dialogues Menus HUD Regards and thanks in advance. EDIT: Preferrably that it can load fonts

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• How to break the "php is a bad language" paradigm? [closed]

  - by dukeofgaming

  PHP is not a bad language (or at least not as bad as some may suggest). I had teachers that didn't even know PHP was object oriented until I told them. I've had clients that immediately distrust us when we say we are PHP developers and question us for not using chic languages and frameworks such as Django or RoR, or "enterprise and solid" languages such as Java and ASP.NET. Facebook is built on PHP. There are plenty of solid projects that power the web like Joomla and Drupal that are used in the enterprise and governments. There are frameworks and libraries that have some of the best architectures I've seen across all languages (Symfony 2, Doctrine). PHP has the best documentation I've seen and a big community of professionals. PHP has advanced OO features such as reflection, interfaces, let alone that PHP now supports horizontal reuse natively and cleanly through traits. There are bad programmers and script kiddies that give PHP a bad reputation, but power the PHP community at the same time, and because it is so easy to get stuff done PHP you can often do things the wrong way, granted, but why blame the language?. Now, to boil this down to an actual answerable question: what would be a good and solid and short and sweet argument to avoid being frowned upon and stop prejudice in one fell swoop and defend your honor when you say you are a PHP developer?. (free cookie with teh whipped cream to those with empirical evidence of convincing someone —client or other— on the spot) P.S.: We use Symfony, and the code ends being beautiful and maintainable

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• Are flag variables an absolute evil?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I remember doing a couple of projects where I totally neglected using flags and ended up with better architecture/code; however, it is a common practice in other projects I work at, and when code grows and flags are added, IMHO code-spaghetti also grows. Would you say there are any cases where using flags is a good practice or even necessary?, or would you agree that using flags in code are... red flags and should be avoided/refactored; me, I just get by with doing functions/methods that check for states in real time instead. Edit: Not talking about compiler flags

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• What is the politically correct way of refactoring other's code?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I'm currently working in a geographically distributed team in a big company. Everybody is just focused on today's tasks and getting things done, however this means sometimes things have to be done the quick way, and that causes problems... you know, same old, same old. I'm bumping into code with several smells such as: big functions pointless utility functions/methods (essentially just to save writing a word), overcomplicated algorithms, extremely big files that should be broken down into different files/classes (1,500+ lines), etc. What would be the best way of improving code without making other developers feel bad/wrong about any proposed improvements?

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• Are R&D mini-projects a good activity for interns?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I'm going to be in charge of hiring some interns for our software department soon (automotive infotainment systems) and I'm designing an internship program. The main productive activity "menu" I'm planning for them consists of: Verification testing Writing Unit Tests (automated, with an xUnit-compliant framework [several languages in our projects]) Documenting Code Updating wiki Updating diagrams & design docs Helping with low priority tickets (supervised/mentored) Hunting down & cleaning compiler/run-time warnings Refactoring/cleaning code against our coding standards But I also have this idea that having them do small R&D projects would be good to test their talent and get them to have fun. These mini-projects would be: Experimental implementations & optimizations Proof of concept implementations for new technologies Small papers (~2-5 pages) doing formal research on the previous two points Apps (from a mini-project pool) These kinds of projects would be pre-defined and very concrete, although new ideas from the interns themselves would be very welcome. Even if a project is too big or is abandoned, the idea would also be to lay the ground work so they can be retaken by another intern or intern team. While I think this is good in concept, I don't know if it could be good in practice, as obviously this would diminish their productivity on "real work" (work with immediate value to the company), but I think it could help bring aboard very bright people and get them to want to stay in the future (which, I think, is the end goal for any internship program). My question here is if these activities are too open ended or difficult for the average intern to accomplish and if R&D is an efficient use of an interns time or if it makes more sense for to assign project work to interns instead.

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• Is a "model" branch a common practice?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I just thought it could be a good thing to have a dedicated version control branch for all database schema changes and I wanted to know if anyone else is doing the same and what have the results been. Say that you are working with: Schema model/documentation (some file where you model the database visually to generate the schema source, say MySQL Workbench, with a .mwb file, which is binary) Schema source (a .sql file) Schema-based code generation The normal way we were working was with feature branches, so we would do changes to the model files (the database specific ones), and then have to regenerate points 2 and 3, dealing with the possible conflicts (or even code rewriting). Now say that your workflow goes the same way as the previous item numbering. With a model branch you wouldn't have to reconcile the schema model with binaries in other feature branches, or have to regenerate schema source and regenerate code (which might have human code on top of it). It makes so much sense to me it feels weird not having seen this earlier as a common practice. Edit: I'm counting on branch merges to be the assertions for the model matching the code. I use a DVCS, so I don't fear long-lived branches or scary-looking merges. I'm also doing feature branching.

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• What level/format of access should be given to a client to the issue tracking system?

  - by dukeofgaming

  So, I used to think that it would be a good idea to give the customer access to the issue tracking system, but now I've seen that it creates less than ideal situations, like: Customer judging progress solely on ticket count Developers denied to add issues to avoid customer thinking that there is less progress Customer appointing people on their side to add issues who don't always do a good job (lots of duplicate issues, insufficient information to reproduce, and other things that distract people from doing their real job) However, I think customers should have access to some indicators or proof that there is progress being done, as well as a right to report bugs. So, what would be the ideal solution to this situation?, specially, getting out of or improving the first situation described?

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• Can DVCSs enforce a specific workflow?

  - by dukeofgaming

  So, I have this little debate at work where some of my colleagues (which are actually in charge of administrating our Perforce instance) say that workflows are strictly a process thing, and that the tools that we use (in this case, the version control system) have no take on it. In otherwords, the point that they make is that workflows (and their execution) are tool-agnostic. My take on this is that DVCSs are better at encouraging people in more flexible and well-defined ways, because of the inherent branching occurring in the background (anonymous branches), and that you can enforce workflows through the deployment model you establish (e.g. pull requests through repository management, dictator/liutenant roles with their machines setup as servers, etc.) I think in CVCSs you have to enforce workflows through policies and policing, because there is only one way to share the code, while in DVCSs you just go with the flow based on the infrastructure/permissions that were setup for you. Even when I have provided the earlier arguments, I'm still unable to fully convince them. Am I saying something the wrong way?, if not, what other arguments or examples do you think would be useful to convince them? Edit: The main workflow we have been focusing on, because it makes sense to both sides is the Dictator/Lieutenants workflow: My argument for this particular workflow is that there is no pipeline in a CVCS (because there is just sharing work in a centralized way), whereas there is an actual pipeline in DVCSs depending on how you deploy read/write permissions. Their argument is that this workflow can be done through branching, and while they do this in some projects (due to policy/policing) in other projects they forbid developers from creating branches.

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• Why can Perforce be a better version control system? [closed]

  - by dukeofgaming

  I've seen some people love and some loathe Perforce. As users or administrators with experience with other version control systems (free cookie to the ones with DVCS experience [git, Mercurial]), what is the main reason/feature that makes you love Perforce over other version control systems? Edit: No, I don't sell Perforce... this is just part of my ongoing research to pitch DVCS at my company (see my question history)

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• Is Perforce as good at merging as DVCSs?

  - by dukeofgaming

  I've heard that Perforce is very good at merging, I'm guessing this has to do with that it tracks changes in the form of changelists where you can add differences across several files in a single blow. I think this implies Perforce gathers more metadata and therefore has more information to do smarter merging (at least smarter than Subversion, being Perforce centralized). Since this is similar to how Mercurial and Git handle changes (I know DVCSs track content rather than files), I was wondering if somebody knew what were the subtle differences that makes Perforce better or worse than a DVCS like Mercurial or Git.

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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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• Is there such thing like a "refactoring/maintainability group" role in software companies?

  - by dukeofgaming

  So, I work in a company that does embedded software development, other groups focus in the core development of different products' software and my department (which is in another geographical location) which is located at the factory has to deal with software development as well, but across all products, so that we can also fix things quicker when the lines go down due to software problems with the product. In other words, we are generalists while other groups specialize on each product. Thing is, it is kind of hard to get involved in core development when you are distributed geographically (well, I know it really isn't that hard, but there might be unintended cultural/political barriers when it comes to the discipline of collaborating remotely). So I figured that, since we are currently just putting fires out and somewhat being idle/sub-utilized (even though we are a new department, or maybe that is the reason), I thought that a good role for us could be detecting areas of opportunity of refactoring and rearchitecting code and all other implementations that might have to do with stewarding maintainability and modularity. Other groups aren't focused on this because they don't have the time and they have aggressive deadlines, which damage the quality of the code (eternal story of software projects) The thing is that I want my group/department to be recognized by management and other groups with this role officially, and I'm having trouble to come up with a good definition/identity of our group for this matter. So my question is: is this role something that already exists?, or am I the first one to make something like this up?

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