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  • Design for XML mapping scenarios between two different systems [on hold]

    - by deepak_prn
    Mapping XML fields between two systems is a mundane routine in integration scenarios. I am trying to make the design documents look better and provide clear understanding to the developers especially when we do not use XSLT or any other IDE such as jDeveloper or eclipse plugins. I want it to be a high level design but at the same time talk in developer's language. So that there is no requirements that slip under the crack. For example, one of the scenarios goes: the store cashier sells an item, the transaction data is sent to Data management system. Now, I am writing a functional design for the scenario which deals with mapping XML fields between our system and the data management system. Question : I was wondering if some one had to deal with mapping XML fields between two systems? (without XSLT being involved) and if you used a table to represent the fields mapping (example is below) or any other visualization tool which does not break the bank ? I am trying to find out if there is a better way to represent XML mapping in your design documents. The widely accepted and used method seems to be using a simple table such as in the picture to illustrate the mapping. I am wondering if there are alternate ways/ tools to represent such as in Altova:

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  • Do you ever worry that you're more concerned with how something is built rather than what you are actually building?

    - by Rob Stevenson-Leggett
    As a programmer I have an inherent nagging annoyance at my tools, other peoples code, my code, the world in general. I always want to improve it. So I refactor, I stay on top of the latest techniques. I try and learn patterns, I try to use frameworks so as not to reinvent the wheel. I can write a tech spec that will blow your socks off with the amount of patterns I can squeeze in. However, lately I feel I actually know more about the tools I use than how to actually implement successful software. I feel like I'm lacking in the human factors skill set and I believe that to be a successful software engineer takes more than knowing the coolest framework. I think it needs some of the following skillsets too. Interaction design User experience Marketing I've got a bit of this that I've learned from people I've worked with and great projects I've worked on but I don't feel like I "own" these skills. Am I right? Should I be trying to develop these skills further, or should these be left to the people who do these for a career? How do you make sure you don't get too tied up in how you're doing something and make sure you "make your users awesome"? Does anyone know of good resources for learning these skills from a programming point of view?

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  • What is the best practice for when to check if something needs to be done?

    - by changokun
    Let's say I have a function that does x. I pass it a variable, and if the variable is not null, it does some action. And I have an array of variables and I'm going to run this function on each one. Inside the function, it seems like a good practice is to check if the argument is null before proceeding. A null argument is not an error, it just causes an early return. I could loop through the array and pass each value to the function, and the function will work great. Is there any value to checking if the var is null and only calling the function if it is not null during the loop? This doubles up on the checking for null, but: Is there any gained value? Is there any gain on not calling a function? Any readability gain on the loop in the parent code? For the sake of my question, let's assume that checking for null will always be the case. I can see how checking for some object property might change over time, which makes the first check a bad idea. Pseudo code example: for(thing in array) { x(thing) } Versus: for(thing in array) { if(thing not null) x(thing) } If there are language-specific concerns, I'm a web developer working in PHP and JavaScript.

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  • What are the pros and cons about developing under MAC OS? [closed]

    - by user827992
    Sometimes i get the chance to program under MAC OS, i knew about this OS since Apple shipped its computers with a PowerPC by Motorola ( since Panther, more or less ), these days they are all X86 and i see no particular advantages about adopting this platform, also i see only downsides for the main part, i do not want to cause flames, please reply if you have a good answer or you can contribute in some constructive way. I'm trying to write a list of the natively supported languages, or the languages that comes only under MAC OS with some particular technology, my list is this: Objective C with Cocoa/Carbon I'm not considering personal preferences here, if a person X likes to code under Xcode it's probably ok to have a MAC, if a person Y likes to code under Visual Studio it's probably ok to not having a MAC, my purpose is to clarify what MAC OS is good for. I also do not get why people glorify the MAC for historical reasons, I mean a language like Java just comes for MAC only in the 7th edition of its JDK, things like GCC are just a porting and many technologies are out of the question like C# ( I'm sorry, i do not consider MonoDevelop like a serious alternative ) , .Net, ASP, DirectX, and many others are just, again, porting or free software, like PHP, MySQL, Javascript, XML, CSS, OpenGL, etc etc. My question is: what is so special about being a programmer under MAC OS? There is something that I have not seen? I also noticed that a significant portion of MAC users end up using their MAC like a normal Windows PC with Parallels or something like that. I can afford to buy a MAC, show me why this machine is so unique.

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  • Google Programmers

    - by seth
    As a soon-to-be software engineer, I have studied some languages during my time in college. I can name C, C++, Java, Scheme, Ruby, PHP, for example. However, one of the main principles in my college (recognized by many as the best in my country) is to teach us how to learn for ourselves and how to search the web when we have a doubt. This leads to a proactive attitude, when I need something, I go get it and this has worked so far for me. Recently, I started wondering though, how much development would I be able to do without internet access. The answer bugged me quite a bit. I know the concept of the languages, mostly I know what to do, but I was amazed by how "slow" things were without having the google to help in the development. The problem was mostly related to specific syntax but it was not without some effort that i solved some of the SPOJ problems in C++. Is this normal? Should I be worried and try to change something in my programming behaviour? UPDATE: I'll give a concrete example. Reading and writing to a file in java. I have done this about a dozen times in my life, yet every time I need to do it, I end up googling "read file java" and refreshing my memory. I completely understand the code, i fully understand what it does. But I am sure, that without google, it would take me a few tries to read and write correctly (if I had to sit in front of the screen with a blank page and write this without consulting any source whatsoever).

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  • Is there a process-oriented IDE ?

    - by Raveline
    My problem is simple : when I'm programming in an OO paradigm, I'm often having part of a main business process divided in many classes. Which means, if I want to examine the whole functional chain that leads to the output, for debugging or for optimization research, it can be a bit painful. So I was wondering : is there an IDE that let you put a "process tag" on functions coming from different objects, and give you a view of all those functions having the same tag ? edit : To give an example (that I'm making up completely, sorry if it doesn't sound very realistic). Let's say we have the following business process for a HR application : receive a holiday-request by an employee, check the validity of the request, then give an alert to his boss ("one of those lazy programmer wants another day off"); at the same time, let's say the boss will want to have a table of all employee's timetable during the time the employee wants his vacations; then handle the answer of the boss, send a nice little mail to the employee ("No way, lazy bones"). Even if we get rid of everything not purely business-related (mail sending process, db handling to get the useful info, GUI functionalities, and so on), we still have something that doesn't really fit in "one class". I'd like to have an IDE that would give me the opportunity to embrace quickly, at the very least : The function handling the validation of the request by the employee; The function preparing the "timetable" for the boss; The function handling the validation of the request by the boss; I wouldn't put all those functions in the same class (but perhaps that's my mistake ?). This is where my dreamed IDE could be helpful.

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  • Is these company terms good for a programmer or should I move?

    - by o_O
    Here are some of the terms and conditions set forward by my employer. Does these make sense for a job like programming? No freelancing in any way even in your free time outside company work hours (may be okay. May be they wanted their employees to be fully concentrating on their full time job. Also they don't want their employees to do similar work for a competing client. Completely rational in that sense). - So sort of agreed. Any thing you develop like ideas, design, code etc while I'm employed there, makes them the owner of that. Seriously? Don't you think that its bad (for me)? If I'm to develop something in my free time (by cutting down sleep and hard working), outside the company time and resource, is that claim rational? I heard that Steve Wozniak had such a contract while he was working at HP. But that sort of hardware design and also those companies pay well, when compared to the peanuts I get. No other kind of works allowed. Means no open source stuffs. Fully dedicated to being a puppet for the employer, though the working environment is sort of okay. According to my assessment this place would score a 10/12 in Joel's test. So are these terms okay especially considering the fact that I'm underpaid with peanuts?

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  • First Experience with Web Services

    When I first started programming with Microsoft .Net (1.0 Framework) I had a strong desire to learn how search engines indexed web sites. At that time I was a working as a search engine spammer creating web pages to generate traffic for specific themes for various clients. One way I attempted to better understand .Net was to build a web spider that analyzed web pages on demand. An example of the spider is hosted at AddLinkz.com. After my spider was built I had no real idea what I could/should do with it until I found the MSN Search API. I used this web service to compare its results with my spider. Additionally, I used the API to feed my .Net web spider new URLs from the API based on specific search terms. MSN’s search API was very easy to use, I just had to request information by calling a web URL with parameters via a Get request and the results were returned in XML. At that time all requests were limited to XML responses and a maximum of 1,000 results per query.   Since then the entire API has gone through several reconstructions, rebranding and new search services.  Microsoft’s new Bing API replaced the older MSN search API and added several new search capabilities. These new features allow search data to be returned for web searches, image searches, new searches, and related search terms to name a few. Bing API Version 2.0 SourceTypes Web Searches for web content Sushi Image Searches for images on the web Sushi News Searches news stories Sushi InstantAnswer Searches Encarta online what is sushi, convert 5 feet to meters, x*5=7, and 2 plus 2 Spell Searches Encarta dictionary for spelling suggestions Phonebook Searches phonebook entries sushi in Los Angeles RelatedSearch Returns the query strings most similar to yours Ad Returns advertisements to incorporate with results I currently plan to start using the web search feature from the new Bing 2.0 API in an open source project related to exception management. Currently, it is still in the conception phase.

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  • How programmers can afford to NOT learn new things.

    - by newbie
    Good day! I am wondering how programmers learn many things because as a career shifter (from engineering to IT), I find it really hard to absorb everything. Three months ago, I learned HTML/CSS/Javascript. Two months ago, I learned mySQL and CCNA1. One month ago I learned C and Java. Now I am trying to learn J2EE. But it seems that I must combine everything I learned then add more into my brain (especially because J2EE is HUGE! -- XML, servlets, JSP, JSTL, EJB, frameworks(Hibernate, Structs, Spring), JDBC... and so on!!!) So I am wondering, how can programmers learn everything, then add something new without being confused of everything! Because Right now, I feel like my brain is going to explode because of information overload! And these knowledge I am trying to acquire are just the BASICS of programming (icing on the cake)! I still need to learn MORE to become a good programmer! And new technology emerges now and then that requires programmers to learn more again.. Learn.. learn.. learn... Any suggestions on how you as a programmer fit all you've learned into your brain? And how do you know which is the right thing for you to learn? Aren't you afraid that what you've learned may be obsolete next year then start learning again...?

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  • Stuff you learned in school, that you have never used again?

    - by Mercfh
    Obviously we learn plenty of things in our University/College/Whatever that probably don't apply to everyday use, but is there anything that stands out particularly? Maybe something that was concentrated ALOT on? For me it was def. 2 things: OO Concepts and Pointers I still use OO, but not nearly to the amount people made it out to be, i can see where it'd be useful but in my line of work we don't have huge amounts of classes, maybe a couple at most. And there certainly isn't much OO reuse (i finally figured out what that means lol) Pointers are another thing, again I can see where they'd be useful...however I barely barely ever touch them, nor do the others I work with. I guess language choice has alot to do with that but still. What about you guys? edit: For those who are asking I work for a Large Printer company, and most of the Applications we work on are Java+XML and Actionscript for "Printer Apps". But we are moving towards other languages (think like webkits and stuff). So the Code amounts per parts are quite small. I never say OO wasn't useful I just said I personally havent seen it used in my workplace much.

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  • Are these company terms good for a programmer or should I move?

    - by o_O
    Here are some of the terms and conditions set forward by my employer. Does these make sense for a job like programming? No freelancing in any way even in your free time outside company work hours (may be okay. May be they wanted their employees to be fully concentrating on their full time job. Also they don't want their employees to do similar work for a competing client. Completely rational in that sense). - So sort of agreed. Any thing you develop like ideas, design, code etc while I'm employed there, makes them the owner of that. Seriously? Don't you think that its bad (for me)? If I'm to develop something in my free time (by cutting down sleep and hard working), outside the company time and resource, is that claim rational? I heard that Steve Wozniak had such a contract while he was working at HP. But that sort of hardware design and also those companies pay well, when compared to the peanuts I get. No other kind of works allowed. Means no open source stuffs. Fully dedicated to being a puppet for the employer, though the working environment is sort of okay. According to my assessment this place would score a 10/12 in Joel's test. So are these terms okay especially considering the fact that I'm underpaid with peanuts?

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

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

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  • Languages like Tcl that have configurable syntax?

    - by boost
    I'm looking for a language that will let me do what I could do with Clipper years ago, and which I can do with Tcl, namely add functionality in a way other than just adding functions. For example in Clipper/(x)Harbour there are commands #command, #translate, #xcommand and #xtranslate that allow things like this: #xcommand REPEAT; => DO WHILE .T. #xcommand UNTIL <cond>; => IF (<cond>); ;EXIT; ;ENDIF; ;ENDDO LOCAL n := 1 REPEAT n := n + 1 UNTIL n > 100 Similarly, in Tcl I'm doing proc process_range {_for_ project _from_ dat1 _to_ dat2 _by_ slice} { set fromDate [clock scan $dat1] set toDate [clock scan $dat2] if {$slice eq "day"} then {set incrementor [expr 24 * 60]} if {$slice eq "hour"} then {set incrementor 60} set method DateRange puts "Scanning from [clock format $fromDate -format "%c"] to [clock format $toDate -format "%c"] by $slice" for {set dateCursor $fromDate} {$dateCursor <= $toDate} {set dateCursor [clock add $dateCursor $incrementor minutes]} { # ... } } process_range for "client" from "2013-10-18 00:00" to "2013-10-20 23:59" by day Are there any other languages that permit this kind of, almost COBOL-esque, syntax modification? If you're wondering why I'm asking, it's for setting up stuff so that others with a not-as-geeky-as-I-am skillset can declare processing tasks.

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  • Learning good OOP design & unlearning some bad habits

    - by Nick
    I have been mostly a C programmer so far in my career with knowledge of C++. I rely on C++ mostly for the convenience STL provides and I hardly ever focus on good design practices. As I have started to look for a new job position, this bad habit of mine has come back to haunt me. During the interviews, I have been asked to design a problem (like chess, or some other scenario) using OOP and I doing really badly at that (I came to know this through feedback from one interview). I tried to google stuff and came up with so many opinions and related books that I don't know where to begin. I need a good through introduction to OOP design with which I can learn practical design, not just theory. Can you point me to any book which meets my requirements ? I prefer C++, but any other language is fine as long as I can pick-up good practices. Also, I know that books can only go so far. I would also appreciate any good practice project ideas that helped you learn and improve your OOP concepts. Thanks.

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  • How do references work in R?

    - by djechlin
    I'm finding R confusing because it has such a different notion of reference than I am used to in languages like C, Java, Javascript... Ruby, Python, C++, well, pretty much any language I have ever programmed in ever. So one thing I've noticed is variable names are not irrelevant when passing them to something else. The reference can be part of the data. e.g. per this tutorial a <- factor(c("A","A","B","A","B","B","C","A","C")) results <- table(a) Leads to $a showing up as an attribute as $dimnames$a. We've also witnessed that calling a function like a <- foo(alpha=1, beta=2) can create attributes in a of names alpha and beta, or it can assign or otherwise compute on 1 and 2 to properties already existing. (Not that there's a computer science distinction here - it just doesn't really happen in something like Javascript, unless you want to emulate it by passing in the object and use key=value there.) Functions like names(...) return lvalues that will affect the input of them. And the one that most got me is this. x <- c(3, 5, 1, 10, 12, 6) y = x[x <= 5] x[y] <- 0 is different from x <- c(3, 5, 1, 10, 12, 6) x[x <= 5] <- 0 Color me confused. Is there a consistent theory for what's going on here?

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  • What determines which Javascript functions are blocking vs non-blocking?

    - by Sean
    I have been doing web-based Javascript (vanilla JS, jQuery, Backbone, etc.) for a few years now, and recently I've been doing some work with Node.js. It took me a while to get the hang of "non-blocking" programming, but I've now gotten used to using callbacks for IO operations and whatnot. I understand that Javascript is single-threaded by nature. I understand the concept of the Node "event queue". What I DON'T understand is what determines whether an individual javascript operation is "blocking" vs. "non-blocking". How do I know which operations I can depend on to produce an output synchronously for me to use in later code, and which ones I'll need to pass callbacks to so I can process the output after the initial operation has completed? Is there a list of Javascript functions somewhere that are asynchronous/non-blocking, and a list of ones that are synchronous/blocking? What is preventing my Javascript app from being one giant race condition? I know that operations that take a long time, like IO operations in Node and AJAX operations on the web, require them to be asynchronous and therefore use callbacks - but who is determining what qualifies as "a long time"? Is there some sort of trigger within these operations that removes them from the normal "event queue"? If not, what makes them different from simple operations like assigning values to variables or looping through arrays, which it seems we can depend on to finish in a synchronous manner? Perhaps I'm not even thinking of this correctly - hoping someone can set me straight. Thanks!

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  • Languages with a clear distinction between subroutines that are purely functional, mutating, state-changing, etc?

    - by CPX
    Lately I've become more and more frustrated that in most modern programming languages I've worked with (C/C++, C#, F#, Ruby, Python, JS and more) there is very little, if any, language support for determining what a subroutine will actually do. Consider the following simple pseudo-code: var x = DoSomethingWith(y); How do I determine what the call to DoSomethingWith(y) will actually do? Will it mutate y, or will it return a copy of y? Does it depend on global or local state, or is it only dependent on y? Will it change the global or local state? How does closure affect the outcome of the call? In all languages I've encountered, almost none of these questions can be answered by merely looking at the signature of the subroutine, and there is almost never any compile-time or run-time support either. Usually, the only way is to put your trust in the author of the API, and hope that the documentation and/or naming conventions reveal what the subroutine will actually do. My question is this: Does there exist any languages today that make symbolic distinctions between these types of scenarios, and places compile-time constraints on what code you can actually write? (There is of course some support for this in most modern languages, such as different levels of scope and closure, the separation between static and instance code, lambda functions, et cetera. But too often these seem to come into conflict with each other. For instance, a lambda function will usually either be purely functional, and simply return a value based on input parameters, or mutate the input parameters in some way. But it is usually possible to access static variables from a lambda function, which in turn can give you access to instance variables, and then it all breaks apart.)

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  • Sucking Less Every Year ?

    - by AdityaGameProgrammer
    Sucking Less Every Year A trail of thought that had been on my mind for a while Quoting directly from the post I've often thought that sucking less every year is how humble programmers improve. You should be unhappy with code you wrote a year ago. If you aren't, that means either A) you haven't learned anything in a year, B) your code can't be improved, or C) you never revisit old code. All of these are the kiss of death for software developers. How often does this happen or not happen to you? How long before you see an actual improvement in your coding ? month, year? Do you ever revisit Your old code? How often does your old code plague you? or how often do you have to deal with your technical debt. It is definitely very painful to fix old bugs n dirty code that we may have done to quickly meet a deadline and those quick fixes ,some cases we may have to rewrite most of the application/code. No arguments about that. Some of the developers i had come across argued that they were already at the evolved stage where their coding doesn't need improvement or cant get improved anymore. Does this happen? If so how many years into coding on a particular language does one expect this to happen?

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  • What are some good resources for creating a game engine in XNA?

    - by Glasser
    I'm currently a student game programmer working on an indie project. We have a team of eleven people (five programmers, four artists, and two audio designers) aboard, all working hard to help design this game. We've been meeting for months now and so far we have a pretty buffed out Game Design Document as well as much audio/visual concept art. Our programmers are itching to progress on our own end. Each person in our programming team is well versed in C++, but is very familiar with C#. We have enough experience and skill that we're confident that we will be successful with our game, and we're looking to build our own game engine in XNA as it seems like it would be worth our time and effort in the end. The game itself will be a 2D beat 'em up style game to be released over xbox live and the PC. It's play style will be similar to that of Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim vs The World. We want to design the game engine to allow us to better implement our assets into the game as well as to simplify the creation of design elements/mechanics. Currently between our programmers, we have books such as "XNA 4.0" and "Game Coding Complete, Third Edition," but we'd still like more information on both XNA and (especially) building a game engine from scratch. What are any other good books, websites, or resources we could use to further map out and program our game engine?

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  • Can too much abstraction be bad?

    - by m3th0dman
    As programmers I feel that our goal is to provide good abstractions on the given domain model and business logic. But where should this abstraction stop? How to make the trade-off between abstraction and all it's benefits (flexibility, ease of changing etc.) and ease of understanding the code and all it's benefits. I believe I tend to write code overly abstracted and I don't know how good is it; I often tend to write it like it is some kind of a micro-framework, which consists of two parts: Micro-Modules which are hooked up in the micro-framework: these modules are easy to be understood, developed and maintained as single units. This code basically represents the code that actually does the functional stuff, described in requirements. Connecting code; now here I believe stands the problem. This code tends to be complicated because it is sometimes very abstracted and is hard to be understood at the beginning; this arises due to the fact that it is only pure abstraction, the base in reality and business logic being performed in the code presented 1; from this reason this code is not expected to be changed once tested. Is this a good approach at programming? That it, having changing code very fragmented in many modules and very easy to be understood and non-changing code very complex from the abstraction POV? Should all the code be uniformly complex (that is code 1 more complex and interlinked and code 2 more simple) so that anybody looking through it can understand it in a reasonable amount of time but change is expensive or the solution presented above is good, where "changing code" is very easy to be understood, debugged, changed and "linking code" is kind of difficult. Note: this is not about code readability! Both code at 1 and 2 is readable, but code at 2 comes with more complex abstractions while code 1 comes with simple abstractions.

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  • Breaking up classes and methods into smaller units

    - by micahhoover
    During code reviews a couple devs have recommended I break up my methods into smaller methods. Their justification was (1) increased readability and (2) the back trace that comes back from production showing the method name is more specific to the line of code that failed. There may have also been some colorful words about functional programming. Additionally I think I may have failed an interview a while back because I didn't give an acceptable answer about when to break things up. My inclination is that when I see a bunch of methods in a class or across a bunch of files, it isn't clear to me how they flow together, and how many times each one gets called. I don't really have a good feel for the linearity of it as quickly just by eye-balling it. The other thing is a lot of people seem to place a premium of organization over content (e.g. 'Look at how organized my sock drawer is!' Me: 'Overall, I think I can get to my socks faster if you count the time it took to organize them'). Our business requirements are not very stable. I'm afraid that if the classes/methods are very granular it will take longer to refactor to requirement changes. I'm not sure how much of a factor this should be. Anyway, computer science is part art / part science, but I'm not sure how much this applies to this issue.

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  • Putting Together a Game Design Team?

    - by Kaia
    I'm attempting to put together a game design team that is willing to help me design/program, test, and somewhat produce the game we make to the public. I need anyone who knows anything about programming/coding, designing, etc. Once we get it up and running and out into the world (over dramatic maybe? haha) I have ideas of generating a profit from it so there is a possibility of payment. My thinking on it (so far) is this: 2D (possibly. I haven't decided if I want it 2D or 3D. It really depends on what is easier) 3rd person. Adventure (I want there to be a point to it, but like a point with no real end) I want there to be a story to it. If you've ever played Dofus, think like that. There is a story to the game, but no real end. I want (if possible) to include mini-games. These could end up becoming a possible way for a player to aquire in-game money, quest items, etc. If anyone is interested in helping me create the story line/script (which we will finsih first, before creating the game) please contact me. I want to get this completed as soon as possible.

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  • Entry level engineer question regarding memory mangement

    - by Ealianis
    It has been a few months since I started my position as an entry level software developer. Now that I am past some learning curves (e.g. the language, jargon, syntax of VB and C#) I'm starting to focus on more esoteric topics, as to write better software. A simple question I presented to a fellow coworker was responded with "I'm focusing on the wrong things." While I respect this coworker I do disagree that this is a "wrong thing" to focus upon. Here was the code (in VB) and followed by the question. Note: The Function GenerateAlert() returns an integer. Dim alertID as Integer = GenerateAlert() _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, NewErrorInfo(Now(), alertID)) vs... _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, New ErrorInfo(Now(), GenerateAlert())) I originally wrote the ladder and rewrote it with the "Dim alertID" so that someone else might find it easier to read. But here was my concern and question. "Should one write this with the Dim AlertID, it would in fact take up more memory; finite but more, and should this method be called many times could it lead to an issue? How will .NET handle this object AlertID. Outside of .NET should one manually dispose of the object after use (near the end of the sub)." I want to ensure I become a knowledgeable programmer that does not just rely upon garbage collection. Am I over thinking this? Am I focusing on the wrong things?

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  • How to visualize code?

    - by gablin
    I've mostly only had to read my own code. As such, I've had no need to visualize the code as I already know how each and every class and module communicate with one another. But the few times I've had to read someone else's code - let us now assume we are talking about at least one larger module which contains several internal classes - I've almost always found myself wishing "This would have been so much easier to understand if I could just visualize it!" So what are the common methods or tools for enabling this? Which do you use, and why do you prefer them over the others? I've heard stuff like UML, module and class diagrams, but I imagine there are more. Furthermore, any of these is most likely better than anything I can devise on my own. EDIT: For those who answer with "Use pen and paper and just draw it": This isn't very helpful unless you explain this further. What exactly am I supposed to draw? A box for each class? Should I include the public methods? What about its fields? How should I draw connections that explain how one class uses another? What about modules? What if the language isn't object-oriented but functional or logical, or even just imperative (C, for instance)? What about global variables and functions? Is there an already-standardized way of drawing this, or do I need to think up of a method of my own? You get the drift.

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  • The advantages & disadvantages to be had from using a Web Framework?

    - by JHarley1
    Hello, This question is focused on extracting the advantages and disadvantages of using Web based Frameworks: such as Cake PHP, Zend, jQuery, ASP.NET). This question is completely language agnostic. Let me start with the notion of "Standing on the shoulders of Giants". Advantages: Empowers Developers - by taking features that would have previously have taken 100's of lines of code and compressing them into one simple function call empowers developers to integrate more complex features into their Web Sites. Allow for Quicker development of applications - this is very relevant for people that need websites created in a very small window (has anyone any examples of this?) Lower Costs - allows programmers to pass cost savings onto the customer, a whole new range of customers generated that wanted a website but previously could not afford the higher development costs. Disadvantages: Lost Understanding - by relying on the features of a framework a developer is in danger of loosing understanding on how things work (underneath the hood). The configuration cliff - once you go further than the configuration of your framework your productivity drops right off, it can be difficult to implement features outside of a frameworks configuration. Developer tramlines - you (the developer) has to do things the way that the developer want you to do things. Security issues - giving people these tools to develop professional looking websites fast is a potential risk, people can quickly create professional looking websites for fraudulent companies. I wonder what people make of my points, and whether any body disagrees with them? Also if people have additional points I would be grateful. Many Thanks, J

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