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• Purpose oriented user accounts on a single desktop?

  - by dd_dent

  Starting point: I currently do development for Dynamics Ax, Android and an occasional dabble with Wordpress and Python. Soon, I'll start a project involving setting up WP on Google Apps Engine. Everything is, and should continue to, run from the same PC (running Linux Mint). Issue: I'm afraid of botching/bogging down my setup due to tinkering/installing multiple runtimes/IDE's/SDK's/Services, so I was thinking of using multiple users, each purposed to handle the task at hand (web, Android etc) and making each user as inert as possible to one another. What I need to know is the following: Is this a good/feasible practice? The second closest thing to this using remote desktops connections, either to computers or to VM's, which I'd rather avoid. What about switching users? Can it be made seamless? Anything else I should know? Update and clarification regarding VM's and whatnot: The reason I wish to avoid resorting to VM's is that I dislike the performance impact and sluggishness associated with it. I also suspect it might add a layer of complexity I wish to avoid. This answer by Wyatt is interesting but I think it's only partly suited for requirements (web development for example). Also, in reference to the point made about system wide installs, there is a level compromise I should accept as experessed by this for example. This option suggested by 9000 is also enticing (more than VM's actually) and by no means do I intend to "Juggle" JVMs and whatnot, partly due to the reason mentioned before. Regarding complexity, I agree and would consider what was said, only from my experience I tend to pollute my work environment with SDKs and runtimes I tried and discarded, which would occasionally leave leftovers which cause issues throught the session. What I really want is a set of well defined, non virtualized sessions from which I can choose at my leisure and be mostly (to a reasonable extent) safe from affecting each session from the other. And what I'm really asking is if and how can this be done using user accounts.

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• Alternatives to time tracking methodologies [closed]

  - by Brandon Wamboldt

  Question first: What are some feasible alternatives to time tracking for employees in a web/software development company, and why are they better options Explanation: I work at a company where we work like this. Everybody is paid salary. We have 3 types of work, Contract, Adhoc and Internal (Non billable). Adhoc is just small changes that take a few hours and we just bill the client at the end of the month. Contracts are signed and we have this big long process, the usual. We figure out how much to charge by getting an estimation of the time involved (From the design and the developers), multiplying it by our hourly rate and that's it. So say we estimate 50 hours for a website. We have time tracking software and have to record the time in 15 we spend on it (7:00 to 7:15 for example), the project name, and give it some comments. Now if we go over the 50 hours, we are both losing money and are inefficient. Now that I've explained how the system works, my question is how else can it be done if a better method exists (Which I'm sure one must). Nobody here likes the current system, we just can't find an alternative. I'd be more than willing to work after hours longer hours on a project to get it done in time, but I'm much inclined to do so with the current system. I'd love to be able to sum up (Or link) to this post for my manager to show them why we should use abc system instead of this system.

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• How to go about designing an intermediate routing filter program to accept input and forward accordingly?

  - by phileaton

  My predicament: I designed an app, written in Python, to read my mail and check for messages that contain a certain digital signature. It opens these and looks for keywords. If the message contains these keywords, certain related functions area executed on the computer. It is a way I can control my computer from my cell phone without being there. I am still in the beginning stages and it can only currently remotely open and close applications/processes. The obvious issue is security risks. I hoped to spearhead that by requiring and checking for that digital signature. However, my issue comes when I'd like to make this program usable by multiple users. The idea is that the user will send keywords: username and password, for instance, to log into their personal email account and send messages to it to be parsed. Please ignore the security implications of sending non-encoded passwords through email. (Though if you could help me on that part I'd much appreciate it as well, but currently, that is not the scope of my question.) My issue is designing an intermediary process that will take an email/password to read an email and scan for those keywords. The issue is, that the program has to be accessing an email to read the email for the username/password! I have got myself into a loop and cannot figure out how to have this required intermediary program. I could just create an arbitrary email account and have that check for login-creds, but is there a better way of doing this than that? Also, is there a better way of communicating with a computer remotely than this? Especially if the computer is not a server and is behind a router with only a subnet ip? If I am asking this question in the wrong place, I deeply apologize. Any help would be much appreciated!

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• When creating a GUI wizard, should all pages/tabs be of the same size? [closed]

  - by Job

  I understand that some libraries would force me to, but my question is general. If I have a set of buttons at the bottom: Back, Next, Cancel?, (other?), then should their location ever change? If the answer is no, then what do I do about pages with little content? Do I stretch things? Place them in the lone upper left corner? According to Steve Krug, it does not make sense to add anything to GUI that does not need to be there. I understand that there are different approaches to wizards - some have tabs, others do not. Some tabs are lined horizontally at the top; others - vertically on the left. Some do not show pages/tabs, and are simply sequences of dialogs. This is probably a must when the wizard is "non-linear", e.g. some earlier choices can result in branching. Either way the problem is the same - sacrifice on the consistency of the "big picture" (outline of the page/tab + location of buttons), or the consistency of details (some tabs might be somewhat packed; others having very little content). A third choice, I suppose is putting extra effort in the content in order to make sure that organizing the content such that it is more or less evenly distributed from page to page. However, this can be difficult to do (say, when the very first tab contains only a choice of three things, and then branches off from there; there are probably other examples), and hard to maintain this balance if any of the content changes later. Can you recommend a good approach? A link to a relevant good blog post or a chapter of a book is also welcome. Let me know if you have questions.

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• Applying for job: how to showcase work done for (private) past clients?

  - by user33445566

  I want to apply for my first "real" (read: non-freelance) Ruby on Rails job. I've built several apps already. My best work (also the most logically complicated app) was for a freelance client, and I'd like to show it to potential employers. Only problem is: it isn't online anymore. And I've lost touch with the client. How can I include this work in my portfolio? About the app: It's a Facebook game. The client's business idea for this app was not the best. It was never going to make any money. I think it was kind of a vanity side project for him. The logo and graphics are nice-looking, though, and were designed by the client. I've actually spent a lot of time recently recoding most of the app, and adding a full test suite. I want to showcase the BDD / TDD skills I've acquired. I'm not very familiar with the etiquette (/law?) concerning this situation. Can I just put my new version of the app up at a free Heroku URL (perhaps with a "credits" section, where I credit the ideas and graphic designs to my former client)? NOTE: Again, this is just to show potential employers. I am not trying to market the app as my idea, or attract any users. Can I put some or all of the code on GitHub? What if I don't put the code up publicly, but merely send a tarball to potential employers? Do I need to ask permission from my former client (and what if he says no)? The last thing I want to do is get in any legal trouble, or offend people I'm trying get a job from. But I believe that my work and experience on this app are my highest recommendation for getting a job.

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• Agressive Auto-Updating?

  - by MattiasK

  What do you guys think is best practice regarding auto-updating? Google Chrome for instance seems to auto-update itself as soon as it get's a chance without asking and I'm fine with it. I think most "normal" users benefits from updates being a transparent process. Then again, some more technical users might be miffed if you update their app without permission, as I see it there's 3 options: 1) Have a checkbox when installing that says "allow automatic updates" 2) Just have a preference somewhere that allows you to "disable automatic updates" so that you have to "check for updates manually" I'm leaning towards 2) because 1) feels like it might alienate non-technical users and I'd rather avoid installation queries if possible. Also I'm thinking about making it easy to downgrade if an upgrade (heaven forbid) causes trouble, what are your thoughts? Another question, even if auto-updates are automatically, perhaps they should be announced. If there's new features for example otherwise you might not realize and use them One thing that kinda scares me though is the security implications, someone could theorically hack my server and push out spyware/zombieware to all my customers. It seems that using digital signatures to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks is the least you could do otherwise you might be hooked up to a network that spoofs the address of of update server.

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• Aggressive Auto-Updating?

  - by MattiasK

  What do you guys think is best practice regarding auto-updating? Google Chrome for instance seems to auto-update itself as soon as it get's a chance without asking and I'm fine with it. I think most "normal" users benefits from updates being a transparent process. Then again, some more technical users might be miffed if you update their app without permission, as I see it there's 3 options: 1) Have a checkbox when installing that says "allow automatic updates" 2) Just have a preference somewhere that allows you to "disable automatic updates" so that you have to "check for updates manually" I'm leaning towards 2) because 1) feels like it might alienate non-technical users and I'd rather avoid installation queries if possible. Also I'm thinking about making it easy to downgrade if an upgrade (heaven forbid) causes trouble, what are your thoughts? Another question, even if auto-updates are automatically, perhaps they should be announced. If there's new features for example otherwise you might not realize and use them One thing that kinda scares me though is the security implications, someone could theorically hack my server and push out spyware/zombieware to all my customers. It seems that using digital signatures to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks is the least you could do otherwise you might be hooked up to a network that spoofs the address of of update server.

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• Bad previous code. To fix or not to fix?

  - by Viniyo Shouta

  As a freelancer programmer I am often asked to edit part of an application source code in order to add functionalities, fix bugs etc. While I'm on my adventure journey to study the source to do what I'm asked correctly I run into code like: World::User* GetWorld() { map<DWORD,World*>::iterator it = mapWld.find( m_userWorldId ) if( it != mapWld.end() ) return &it->second; return NULL; } if( pUser->GetWorld()->GetId() == 250 ) If I investigate further I end up finding that the DWORD class member of User, userWorldId can be a value non-found in the map mapWld, which will lead to a casuality as also known as crash! The obviously valid way to do it is: World* pWorld = pUser->GetWorld(); if( pWorld && pWorld->GetId() == 250 )//... Sometimes when it's something just 'small' I end up sort of 'fixing' it. But sometimes when I'm on a 500 thousand line source code and this kind of code is everywhere there is no much can do. The question is if it's politically correct to fix some of these things. Think of it; You are not paid to fix it. Perhaps you think it's right, but it was necessarily done that way for some reason and you should not be messing with it. You do not have authorization, you do not own the source and none of the copyrights belong to you. You have authorization to edit issues accordingly to the owners but you're in a hurry, you have many other projects to do, it's the end of the month, you must pay the bills. Sincerely, I think of it as seeing an animal die from a disease in front of you, you have the cure in your hands but you do nothing. What is the best to do in this scenario?

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• One sentence descriptions of the various common software licenses?

  - by Rich

  Instead of having to read entire documentation and sift through all the legalese, can someone outline the more common licenses in language that is short and sweet and gets right to the point? Specifically, I'm using a 3rd party control that uses the Apache 2.0 license. My intention is to use this in a proprietary application that I am building for a corporation's use (not resold, but I'm being paid for my work). Does this mean I can or cannot use this control? Does it mean that I must maintain copyright/license information in my code? Does it mean that I must mention copyright/license information in a clearly visible location in the app? EDIT In response to an answer below with a link to an article by Jeff Atwood, the Apache license is described as follows: Apache License Open Permissive 9 Requires derivative works to provide notification of any licensed or proprietary code in a common location. Does this notification need to be in a "common location" in my source code or a common location visible within the app? What if this were a non GUI app (I'm assuming that could very well be my answer)? Thanks for the responses!!!

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• Cookie Settings Storage Method

  - by Paul

  I've got an web app that needs to store some non-sensitive preferences for the user. Right now I'm storing their language preference and what mode they want a window opened in by default in two cookies: "lang" can be "en" or "de" "mode" can be "design" or "view" I might add a few more in the future. I'm not sure how many, but probably never more than a dozen. Language is parsed on every request, whereas the mode cookie is only used occasionally. I saw a recommendation that made sense I shouldn't try to do what I was originally planning to do and strongly type a user settings class deserialized on each request because of the overhead involved. I see three options here and I'm not sure which is the best overall. Keep things as they are, add a new cookie for each new setting Combine the cookies into a single settings cookie and add future values to it Change the mode cookie to settings (leaving language alone), add new user settings values to the settings cookie All would work obviously. I'm leaning toward option three, but I'm not sure if there's a best practice for this?

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• What constitutes "commercial purposes"?

  - by RoboShop

  I'm looking at this license. It says that I can use it for "non-commercial purposes". What does that mean? I see in Stack Exchange, under Network Profile there is that graph that tracks your points across your Stack Exchange accounts. It uses a control called HighCharts which have a paid and Creative Commons licensed version. So would Stack Overflow constitute a commercial site? We don't pay to use this site, but obviously the site makes money from ads, etc. Then again, there's a lot of sites that have ads who won't necessarily make a profit, it may only be subsiding their costs. But even then, you could argue that even if it is only subsiding their costs, a lot of IT companies run at a loss in order to build a big enough customer base. So where is the line here? Is it any website on the internet? Is it any website that has ads? Is it any website that turns over a profit?

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• Problem with understanding how to start

  - by Coolface

  Okay, this might be a little off-topic but i try anyway. Sorry to bother. So i'm working as sysadmin for at least 5 years now and i quite enjoy IT field in general. Somehow i was never interested in programming much but always want to learn something at least easy and for personal usage. As sysadmin i need scripting skills so learn shell scripting without much problems, i also try to learn pascal, delphi, basic over time and must recent was python. Well, my problem is when i try to learn programming i just can't apply what i learn from the books to the real word. What i mean is i understand there are data structures, algorithms, variables, lib's, if-then logic, etc. but i just can't understand how to apply this things when i want to do real things. Like i want to get a something simple as parse web page, i draw a quick algorithm like get a web page, find a word on it and write a to file, on the paper everything look simple but when i get to the coding i just stuck pretty much from the start. I try read code of the real programs that just totally confusing especially big parts with many classes so i'm just quickly lost a trail what this code do. I think i just lack some fundamentals to see a big picture but don't really know what this might be? Or maybe i just don't have a passion to programming at all... My best bet was a shell scripting so i have really no problems to write complex scripts but this just not enough. Recently i was read around 5 or 6 python books because everyone say it's so easy even kid can code something but still no much luck, python is good and easy but i can't make something harder then a prodecurial style code like in bash for easy things but when i want harder things i'm still stuck. In college i was also not a math and tech guy and like to study non-tech stuff mostly like economy, psychology maybe that my problem? Anyway any advice would be greatly appriciated.

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• How would you manage development between many Staging branches?

  - by Trip

  We have a Staging Branch. then we came out with a Beta branch for users to move whenever they wanted to from old Production branch to the new features. Our plan seemed simple, we test on Staging, when items get QA'd, they get cherry-picked and deploy to Beta. Here's the problem! A bug will discreetly make its way on to Beta, and since Beta is a production environment, it needs fixes fast and accurate. But not all the QA's got done. Enter Git hell.. So I find a problem on Beta. No sweat, its already been fixed on Staging, but when I go to cherry-pick the item over, Beta barely has any of the other pre-requisites of code to implement this small change. Now Beta has a little here and a little there, and I can't imagine it as a code base being as stable as Staging. What's more, is I'm dealing with some insane Git conflicts, and having to monkey patch a bunch of things to make up for what Beta hasn't caught up with Staging. Can someone polite or non-polite terms, tell me what we're doing wrong here as far as assembling this project? Any awesome recommendations or workarounds or alternatives to the system we came up with?

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• Google Code C++ [closed]

  - by JacKeown

  I was on this website: http://code.google.com/edu/languages/cpp/basics/getting-started.html#learn-by-example and I saw this code: // Description: Illustrate the use of cin to get input // and how to recover from errors. #include <iostream> using namespace std; int main() { int input_var = 0; // Enter the do while loop and stay there until either // a non-numeric is entered, or -1 is entered. Note that // cin will accept any integer, 4, 40, 400, etc. do { cout << "Enter a number (-1 = quit): "; // The following line accepts input from the keyboard into // variable input_var. // cin returns false if an input operation fails, that is, if // something other than an int (the type of input_var) is entered. if (!(cin >> input_var)) { cout << "Please enter numbers only." << endl; cin.clear(); cin.ignore(10000,'\n'); } if (input_var != -1) { cout << "You entered " << input_var << endl; } } while (input_var != -1); cout << "All done." << endl; return 0; } I was wondering... what is the significance of cin.clear() and cin.ignore() ...and also why the 10000 and /n parameters are necessary...?...

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• How to swap or move 2 string in Array? [on hold]

  - by Wisnu Khazefa

  I have a need to convert .csv file to .dat file. In my problem, there are value pairs, with a name attribute (called Fund) and corresponding numeric value. If the input file has a pair whose value is 0, then that pair (Fund and value) is dropped. The output file should have only those pairs (Fund and value) where the value is non-zero. Here is the prototype of my code. public static void Check_Fund(){ String header = "Text1,Text2,Text3,FUND_UALFND_1,FUND_UALPRC_1,FUND_UALFND_2," +"FUND_UALPRC_2,FUND_UALFND_3,FUND_UALPRC_3,FUND_UALFND_4,FUND_UALPRC_4,FUND_UALFND_5,FUND_UALPRC_5,Text4,Text5,Text6,Text7"; String text = "ABC;CDE;EFG;PRMF;0;PRFF;50;PREF;0;PRCF;0;PRMP;50;TAHU;;BAKWAN;SINGKONG"; String[] head; String[] value; String showText = ""; head = header.split(","); value = text.split(";"); String regex = "\\d+"; String[] fund = {"PREF","PRMF","PRFF","PRCF","PRMP","PDFF","PSEF","PSCB","PSMF","PRGC","PREP"}; for(int i = 0; i < value.length; i++){ for(int j=0;j < fund.length; j++){ if(value[i].equals(fund[j]) && value[i+1].matches(regex)){ if(value[i+1].equals("0")){ value[i] = ""; value[i+1] = ""; } } } showText = showText + head[i] +":" + value[i] + System.lineSeparator(); } System.out.println(showText ); } Expected Result Input: FUND_UALFND_1:PRMF FUND_UALPRC_1:0 FUND_UALFND_2:PRFF FUND_UALPRC_2:50 FUND_UALFND_3:PREF FUND_UALPRC_3:0 FUND_UALFND_4:PRCF FUND_UALPRC_4:0 FUND_UALFND_5:PRMP FUND_UALPRC_5:50 Output: FUND_UALFND_1:PRFF FUND_UALPRC_1:50 FUND_UALFND_2:PRMP FUND_UALPRC_2:50 FUND_UALFND_0: FUND_UALPRC_0: FUND_UALFND_0: FUND_UALPRC_0: FUND_UALFND_0: FUND_UALPRC_0:

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• If the bug is 5+ years old, then is it a feature?

  - by Job

  Allow me to add details: I work at an institutional place with many coders, testers, QA analysts, product owners, etc. and here is something that bugs me: We have been able to sell crappy (albeit pretty functional) software for over a decade. It has many features and the product is competitive, but there are a some serious bugs out there, as well as thousands of "paper cuts" - little annoyances that clients need to get used to. It pains me to look at some of the things because I firmly believe that if computers do not help to make our lives easier, then we should not use them. I have confidence in my colleagues - they are smart, able, and can improve things when the focus is on doing that. But, it can be difficult to file bugs against some old functionality without seeing them closed or forgotten. "It worked like that for ions" is a typical answer. Also, when QA does regression, they tend to look for anything that is different as much as anything that does not seem right. So, a fix to an old problem can be written up as a bug, because "it has been like that before even my time". The young coder in me thinks: rewrite this freaking thing! As someone who had the opportunity to be close to sales, clients, I want to give a benefit of a doubt to this approach. I am interested in your opinion/experience as well. Please try to consider risk, cost-to-benefit, and other non-technical factors.

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• unnecessary vertical scrollbar in ie6

  - by tirso

  hi to all does any could help me how to remove unnecessary scroll bar in ie6. I have already put overflow-y: hidden; but still the same output. thanks in advance here is my url http://webberzsoft.com/clients/csslayouttest/template_new.php here is my css * {margin:0;padding:0;}/*for demo purposes only, use a proper reset in your final layout*/ html,body { overflow: auto; height:100%; } body { font-size:100%; background:#777; } #wrapper{ min-height:99%; width: 1240px; margin:0 auto; background: #FFFFFF; border-left:1px solid #000; border-right:1px solid #000; } #header { background:#77F; border-bottom:1px solid #000; height: 70px; } #content{/*just to create top padding without tampering with min-height:100% on #inner*/ padding:10px 0; overflow:hidden;/*contain floats*/ } #left-index { float:left; width:220px; } #right-index { float:right; width:180px; } #middle-index { float:left; width:840px; overflow:hidden;/*contain floats*/ } #left-home { float:left; width:300px; } #right-home { float:right; width:940px; } here is my html <div id="wrapper"> <div id="header"> <h1 align="right">Fixed Header</h1> <h3>IE6 gets an expression</h3> </div> <div id="content"> <div id="left-index"> <h3>Left</h3> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer quis tempus tristique facilisi Vestibulum. Gravida rhoncus orci leo neque mattis felis Sed et tincidunt tellus. Massa ac condimentum elit ridiculus eget urna wisi id Suspendisse ullamcorper.</p> <p>Hendrerit eros ridiculus urna ipsum leo a ac sed tortor nisl. Tincidunt Morbi justo dis odio sit non sapien enim a augue. Sapien odio dui est Sed nisl id id malesuada sagittis et.</p> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer quis tempus tristique facilisi Vestibulum. Gravida rhoncus orci leo neque mattis felis Sed et tincidunt tellus. Massa ac condimentum elit ridiculus eget urna wisi id Suspendisse ullamcorper.</p> <p>Hendrerit eros ridiculus urna ipsum leo a ac sed tortor nisl. Tincidunt Morbi justo dis odio sit non sapien enim a augue. Sapien odio dui est Sed nisl id id malesuada sagittis et.</p> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer quis tempus tristique facilisi Vestibulum. Gravida rhoncus orci leo neque mattis felis Sed et tincidunt tellus. Massa ac condimentum elit ridiculus eget urna wisi id Suspendisse ullamcorper.</p> <p>Hendrerit eros ridiculus urna ipsum leo a ac sed tortor nisl. Tincidunt Morbi justo dis odio sit non sapien enim a augue. Sapien odio dui est Sed nisl id id malesuada sagittis et.</p> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer quis tempus tristique facilisi Vestibulum. Gravida rhoncus orci leo neque mattis felis Sed et tincidunt tellus. Massa ac condimentum elit ridiculus eget urna wisi id Suspendisse ullamcorper.</p> <p>Hendrerit eros ridiculus urna ipsum leo a ac sed tortor nisl. Tincidunt Morbi justo dis odio sit non sapien enim a augue. Sapien odio dui est Sed nisl id id malesuada sagittis et.</p> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer quis tempus tristique facilisi Vestibulum. Gravida rhoncus orci leo neque mattis felis Sed et tincidunt tellus. Massa ac condimentum elit ridiculus eget urna wisi id Suspendisse ullamcorper.</p> <p>Hendrerit eros ridiculus urna ipsum leo a ac sed tortor nisl. Tincidunt Morbi justo dis odio sit non sapien enim a augue. Sapien odio dui est Sed nisl id id malesuada sagittis et.</p> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer quis tempus tristique facilisi Vestibulum. Gravida rhoncus orci leo neque mattis felis Sed et tincidunt tellus. Massa ac condimentum elit ridiculus eget urna wisi id Suspendisse ullamcorper.</p> </div> <div id="middle-index"> <h3>Middle</h3> <p>Lorem ipsum sed pede non adipiscing nulla lacinia ipsum quis ac Integer. Ut consectetuer Cras fringilla Ut non gravida morbi Maecenas semper vel. Vestibulum quis In Nulla Vivamus Sed feugiat Quisque et ipsum tincidunt. Semper vitae cursus metus risus enim gravida tellus id dignissim nec. Justo laoreet dui commodo Integer malesuada vel quis vel consequat metus. Nec id dolor Aliquam Nullam gravida libero montes nunc ante Nulla. Tortor id.</p> <p>Lorem ipsum sed pede non adipiscing nulla lacinia ipsum quis ac Integer. Ut consectetuer Cras fringilla Ut non gravida morbi Maecenas semper vel. Vestibulum quis In Nulla Vivamus Sed feugiat Quisque et ipsum tincidunt. Semper vitae cursus metus risus enim gravida tellus id dignissim nec. Justo laoreet dui commodo Integer malesuada vel quis vel consequat metus. Nec id dolor Aliquam Nullam gravida libero montes nunc ante Nulla. Tortor id.</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> <p class="lgmarg">testing text for scrolling</p> </div> <div id="right-index"> <h3>Right</h3> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer quis tempus tristique facilisi Vestibulum. Gravida rhoncus orci leo neque mattis felis Sed et tincidunt tellus. Massa ac condimentum elit ridiculus eget urna wisi id Suspendisse ullamcorper.</p> <p>Hendrerit eros ridiculus urna ipsum leo a ac sed tortor nisl. Tincidunt Morbi justo dis odio sit non sapien enim a augue. Sapien odio dui est Sed nisl id id malesuada sagittis et.</p> </div> </div><!--end content--> </div>

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• PHP PSR-0 + several namespaces in one file and autoload

  - by Nemoden

  I've been thinking for a while about defining several namespaces in one php file and so, having several classes inside this file. Suppose, I want to implement something like Doctrine\ORM\Query\Expr: Expr.php Expr |-- Andx.php |-- Base.php |-- Comparison.php |-- Composite.php |-- From.php |-- Func.php |-- GroupBy.php |-- Join.php |-- Literal.php |-- Math.php |-- OrderBy.php |-- Orx.php `-- Select.php It would be nice if I had all of this in one file - Expr.php: namespace Doctrine\ORM\Query; class Expr { // code } namespace Doctrine\ORM\Query\Expr; class Func { // code } // etc... What I'm thinking of is directories naming convention and, unlike PSR-0 having several classes and namespaces in one file. It's best explained by the code: ls Doctrine/orm/query Expr.php that's it - only Expr.php Since Expr.php is somewhat I call a "meta-namespace" for Expr\Func, it make sense to place all the classes inside Expr.php (as shown above). So, the vendor name is still starts with an uppercased letter (Doctrine) and the other parts of namespace start with lowercased letter. We can write an autoload so it would respect this notion: function load_class($class) { if (class_exists($class)) { return true; } $tokenized_path = explode(array("_", "\\"), DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $class); // array('Doctrine', 'orm', 'query', 'Expr', 'Func'); // ^^^^ // first, we are looking for first uppercased namespace part // and if it's not last (not the class name), we use it as a filename // and wiping away the rest to compose a path to a file we need to include if (FALSE !== ($meta_class_index = find_meta_class($tokenized_path))) { $new_tokenized_path = array_slice($tokenized_path, 0, $meta_class_index); $path_to_class = implode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $new_tokenized_path); } else { // no meta class found $path_to_class = implode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $tokenized_path); } if (file_exists($path_to_class.'.php')) { require_once $path_to_class.'.php'; } return false; } Another reason to do so is to reduce a number of php files scattered among directories. Usually you check file existence before you require a file to fail gracefully: file_exists($path_to_class.'.php'); If you take a look at actual Doctrine\ORM\Query\Expr code, you'll see they use all of the "inner-classes", so you actually do: file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/AndX.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Base.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Comparison.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Composite.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/From.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Func.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/GroupBy.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Join.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Literal.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Math.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/OrderBy.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Orx.php"); file_exists("/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Select.php"); in your autoload which causes quite a few I/O reads. Isn't it too much to check on each user's hit? I'm just putting this on a discussion. I want to hear from another PHP programmers what do they think of it. And, of course, if you have a silver bullet addressing this problems I've designated here, please share. I also have been thinking if my vogue question fits here and according to the FAQ it seems like this question addresses "software architecture" problem slash proposal. I'm sorry if my scribble may seem a bit clunky :) Thanks.

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• Algorithm to Find the Aggregate Mass of "Granola Bar"-Like Structures?

  - by Stuart Robbins

  I'm a planetary science researcher and one project I'm working on is N-body simulations of Saturn's rings. The goal of this particular study is to watch as particles clump together under their own self-gravity and measure the aggregate mass of the clumps versus the mean velocity of all particles in the cell. We're trying to figure out if this can explain some observations made by the Cassini spacecraft during the Saturnian summer solstice when large structures were seen casting shadows on the nearly edge-on rings. Below is a screenshot of what any given timestep looks like. (Each particle is 2 m in diameter and the simulation cell itself is around 700 m across.) The code I'm using already spits out the mean velocity at every timestep. What I need to do is figure out a way to determine the mass of particles in the clumps and NOT the stray particles between them. I know every particle's position, mass, size, etc., but I don't know easily that, say, particles 30,000-40,000 along with 102,000-105,000 make up one strand that to the human eye is obvious. So, the algorithm I need to write would need to be a code with as few user-entered parameters as possible (for replicability and objectivity) that would go through all the particle positions, figure out what particles belong to clumps, and then calculate the mass. It would be great if it could do it for "each" clump/strand as opposed to everything over the cell, but I don't think I actually need it to separate them out. The only thing I was thinking of was doing some sort of N2 distance calculation where I'd calculate the distance between every particle and if, say, the closest 100 particles were within a certain distance, then that particle would be considered part of a cluster. But that seems pretty sloppy and I was hoping that you CS folks and programmers might know of a more elegant solution? Edited with My Solution: What I did was to take a sort of nearest-neighbor / cluster approach and do the quick-n-dirty N2 implementation first. So, take every particle, calculate distance to all other particles, and the threshold for in a cluster or not was whether there were N particles within d distance (two parameters that have to be set a priori, unfortunately, but as was said by some responses/comments, I wasn't going to get away with not having some of those). I then sped it up by not sorting distances but simply doing an order N search and increment a counter for the particles within d, and that sped stuff up by a factor of 6. Then I added a "stupid programmer's tree" (because I know next to nothing about tree codes). I divide up the simulation cell into a set number of grids (best results when grid size ˜7 d) where the main grid lines up with the cell, one grid is offset by half in x and y, and the other two are offset by 1/4 in ±x and ±y. The code then divides particles into the grids, then each particle N only has to have distances calculated to the other particles in that cell. Theoretically, if this were a real tree, I should get order N*log(N) as opposed to N2 speeds. I got somewhere between the two, where for a 50,000-particle sub-set I got a 17x increase in speed, and for a 150,000-particle cell, I got a 38x increase in speed. 12 seconds for the first, 53 seconds for the second, 460 seconds for a 500,000-particle cell. Those are comparable speeds to how long the code takes to run the simulation 1 timestep forward, so that's reasonable at this point. Oh -- and it's fully threaded, so it'll take as many processors as I can throw at it.

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• How can we improve overall Programmer Education & Training?

  - by crosenblum

  Last week, I was just viewing this amazing interview by Kevin Rose of Phillip Rosedale, of Second Life. And they had an amazing discussion about how to find, hire and identify good programmer's, and how hard it is to find good ones. Which has lead me to really think about the way we programmer's learn, are taught. For a majority of us, myself included, we are self-taught. Which is great about being a programmer, anyone can learn and develop skills. But this also means, that there is no real standards of what a good programmer is/are, and what kind of environment's encourage the growth of programming skills. This isn't so much a question, but just a desire in me, to see how we can change the culture of programming, and the manager's of programming, so that education and self-improvement is encouraged. There are a lot of avenue's for continued education, youtube videos, books, conferences, but because of the experiental nature of what we do, it isn't always clear what's important to learn and to master. Let's look at the The Joel 12 Steps. The Joel Test Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you make daily builds? Do you have a bug database? Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Do you use the best tools money can buy? Do you have testers? Do new candidates write code during their interview? Do you do hallway usability testing? I think all of these have important value, but because of something I call the Experiential Gap, if a programmer or manager has never experienced any of the negative consequences for not having done items on the list, they will never see the need to do any of them. The Experiental Gap, is my basic theory, that each of us has different jobs and different experiences. So for some of us, that have always worked with dozens of programmer's, source control is a must have. But for people who have always been the only programmer, they can not imagine the need for source control. And it's because of this major flaw in how we learn, that we evaluate people by what best practices they do or not do, and the reason for either can start a flame war. We always evaluate people in our field by what they do, and think "Oh if this guy/gal isn't doing xyz best practice, he/she can't be a good programmer, so let's not waste time or energy talking to them." This is exactly why we have so many programming flame wars, that it becomes, because of the Experiental Gap, we can't imagine people not having made the decisions that we have had to made. So this has lead me to think, that we totally need to rethink how we train, educate and manage programmer's. For example, what percentage of you have had encouragement by your manager's to go to conferences, and even have them pay for it? For me, and a lot of people, this is extremely rare, a lot of us would love to go to conferences, to learn more, but the money ain't there to do that. So the point of this question is really to spark a lot of how can we train, learn and manage better? How can we create a new culture of learning that doesn't insult people for not having the same job experiences. Yes we all have jobs and work to do, but our ability to do our jobs well, depends on our desire, interest and support in improving our mastery of our skills. Right now, I see our culture being rather disorganized, we support the elite, but those tons of us that want to get better, just don't have enough support to learn and improve ourselves. I mean, do we as an industry, want to be perceived as just replaceable cogs? Thank you...

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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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• Do we still have a case against the goto statement? [closed]

  - by FredOverflow

  Possible Duplicate: Is it ever worthwhile using goto? In a recent article, Andrew Koenig writes: When asked why goto statements are harmful, most programmers will say something like "because they make programs hard to understand." Press harder, and you may well hear something like "I don't really know, but that's what I was taught." For that reason, I'd like to summarize Dijkstra's arguments. He then shows two program fragments, one without a goto and and one with a goto: if (n < 0) n = 0; Assuming that n is a variable of a built-in numeric type, we know that after this code, n is nonnegative. Suppose we rewrite this fragment: if (n >= 0) goto nonneg; n = 0; nonneg: ; In theory, this rewrite should have the same effect as the original. However, rewriting has changed something important: It has opened the possibility of transferring control to nonneg from anywhere else in the program. I emphasized the part that I don't agree with. Modern languages like C++ do not allow goto to transfer control arbitrarily. Here are two examples: You cannot jump to a label that is defined in a different function. You cannot jump over a variable initialization. Now consider composing your code of tiny functions that adhere to the single responsibility principle: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n >= 0) goto n_is_not_negative: n = 0; n_is_not_negative: return n; } The classic argument against the goto statement is that control could have transferred from anywhere inside your program to the label n_is_not_negative, but this simply is not (and was never) true in C++. If you try it, you will get a compiler error, because labels are scoped. The rest of the program doesn't even see the name n_is_not_negative, so it's just not possible to jump there. This is a static guarantee! Now, I'm not saying that this version is better then the one without the goto, but to make the latter as expressive as the first one, we would at least have to insert a comment, or even better yet, an assertion: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n < 0) n = 0; // n is not negative at this point assert(n >= 0); return n; } Note that you basically get the assertion for free in the goto version, because the condition n >= 0 is already written in line 1, and n = 0; satisfies the condition trivially. But that's just a random observation. It seems to me that "don't use gotos!" is one of those dogmas like "don't use multiple returns!" that stem from a time where the real problem were functions of hundreds or even thousand of lines of code. So, do we still have a case against the goto statement, other than that it is not particularly useful? I haven't written a goto in at least a decade, but it's not like I was running away in terror whenever I encountered one. 1 Ideally, I would like to see a strong and valid argument against gotos that still holds when you adhere to established programming principles for clean code like the SRP. "You can jump anywhere" is not (and has never been) a valid argument in C++, and somehow I don't like teaching stuff that is not true. 1: Also, I have never been able to resurrect even a single velociraptor, no matter how many gotos I tried :(

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• ResourceSerializable: an alternate to ORM and ActiveRecord

  - by Levi Morrison

  A few opinionated reasons I don't like the traditional ORM and ActiveRecord patterns: They work only with a database. Sometimes I'm dealing with objects from an API and other objects from a database. All the implementations I have seen don't allow for that. Feel free to clue me in if I'm wrong on this. They are brittle. Changes in the database will likely break your implemenation. Some implementations can help reduce this, but a few of the ones I've seen don't. Their very design is influenced by the database. If I want to switch to using an API, I'll have to redesign the object to get it to work (likely). It seems to violate the single-responsibility pattern. They know what they are and how they act, but they also know how they are created, destroyed and saved? Seems a bit much. What about an approach that is somewhat more familiar in PHP: implementing an interface? In php 5.4, we'll have the JsonSerializable interface that defines the data to be json_encoded, so users will become accustomed to this type of thing. What if there was a ResourceSerializable interface? This is still an ORM by name, but certainly not by tradition. interface ResourceSerializable { /** * Returns the id that identifies the resource. */ function resourceId(); /** * Returns the 'type' of the resource. */ function resourceType(); /** * Returns the data to be serialized. */ function resourceSerialize(); } Things might be poorly named, I'll take suggestions. Notes: ResourceId will work for API's and databases. As long as your primary key in the database is the same as the resource ID in the API, there is no conflict. All of the API's I've worked with have a unique ID for the resource, so I don't see any issues there. ResourceType is the group or type associated with the resource. You can use this to map the resource to an API call or a database table. If the ResourceType was person, it could map to /api/1/person/{resourceId} and the table persons (or people, if it's smart enough). resourceSerialize() returns the data to be stored. Keys would identify API parameters and database table columns. This also seems easier to test than ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations. I haven't done much automated testing on traditional ActiveRecord/ORM implemenations, so this is merely a guess. But it seems that I being able to create objects independently of the library helps me. I don't have to use load() to get an existing resource, I can simply create one and set all the right properties. This is not so easy in the ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations I've dealt with. Downsides: You need another object to serialize it. This also means you have more code in general as you have to use more objects. You have to map resource types to API calls and database tables. This is even more work, but some ORMs and ActiveRecord implementations require you to map objects to table names anyway. Are there other downsides that you see? Does this seem feasible to you? How would you improve it? Note: I almost asked this on StackOverflow because it might be too vague for their standards, but I'm still not really familiar with programmers.stackexchange.com, so please help me improve my question if it doesn't shape up to standards here.

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• Planning development when academic research is involved

  - by Another Anonymous User

  Dear fellow programmers, how do you do "software planning" when academic research is involved? And, on a side note, how do you convince your boss that writing software is not like building a house and it's more like writing a novel? The gory details are below. I am in charge of a small dev team working in a research lab. We started developing a software with the purpose of going public one day (i.e. sell and make money off that). Such software depends on, amongst other things, at least two independent research lines: that is, there are at least two Ph.D. candidates that will, hopefully, one day come out with a working implementation of what we need. The main software depends also on other, more concrete resources that we as developers can take care of: graphics rendering, soft bodies deformation, etc. My boss asked me to write the specifications, requirements AND a bloody GANTT chart of the entire project. Faced with the fact that I don't have a clue about the research part, and that such research is fundamental for the software, he said "make assumptions." For the clarity of the argument, he is a professor whose Ph.D. students should come up with the research we need. And he comes from a strictly engineering background: plan everything first, write down specifications and only then write down code that "it's the last part". What I am doing now: I broke down the product in features; each 'feature' is, de facto, a separate product; Each feature is built on top of the previous one; Once a feature (A) has a working prototype the team can start working on the next feature (B), while QA for is being done for A (if money allows, more people can be brought in, etc.); Features that depend on research will come last: by then, hopefully, the research part will be completed (when is still a big question) ; Also, I set the team to use SCRUM for the development of 'version 1.0', due in a few months. This deadline could be set based on reasonable assumptions: we listed all required features, we counted our availability, and we gave a reasonable estimate. So my questions, again, are: How do I make my boss happy while at the same time get something out the door? How do I write specifications for something we -the developers- have no clue whether it's possible to do or not? (We still haven't decided which libraries to use for some tasks; we'll do so when we'll need to) How do I get the requirements for that, given that there are yet no clients nor investors, just lots of interests and promises? How do I get peace in the world? I am sure at least one of my questions will be answered :) ps: I am writing this anonymously since a potential investor might backfire if this is discovered. Hope you'll understand. However I must say I do not like this mentality of 'hiding the truth': this program will likely benefit many, and not being able to talk openly about this (with my name and my reputation attached) feels like censorship. But alas, I care more about your suggestions now.

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• What are some good questions (and good/bad answers) to ask at an interview to gauge the competency of the company/team?

  - by Wayne M

  I'm already familiar with the Joel Test, but it's been my experience that some of the questions there have the answers "massaged" to make the company seem better than it is. I've had several jobs in the past that, for instance, claimed they had a QA process and did unit testing, and what they really meant is "The programmers test the app, and test with the debugger and via trial-and-error."; they said they used SVN but they just lumped everything into one giant repository and had no concept of branching/merging or anything more complicated than updating and committing; said they can build in one step and what they really mean is it's "one step" to copy dozens of files by hand from the programmer's PC to the live server. How do you go about properly gauging a company's environment to make sure that it's a well-evolved company and not stuck on doing things a certain way because they've done it for years and they're ignorant of change? You can almost never ask to see their source code, so you're stuck trying to figure out if the interviewer's answer is accurate or BS to make the company seem good. Besides the Joel Test what are some other good questions to get the proper feel for a company, and more importantly what are some good and bad answers that could indicate a good or bad company? I mean something like (take at face value, please, it's all I could think of at short notice): Question: How does the software team apply the SOLID principles and Inversion of Control to their code? Good Answer: We adhere to SOLID wherever possible; we use TDD so it kind of forces us to write abstract, testable code. We use Ninject for our IoC container because it's fairly easy to configure - it was that or StructureMap but I find Ninject a bit more intuitive, and who doesn't like ninjas? You're not a pirate, are you? Bad Answer: Our code is pretty secure, yeah. And what's this Inversion of Control thing? I've never heard of it before. You see what I did there. The "good" answer uses facts to back it up and has a bit of "in crowd" humor; the bad answer shows complete ignorance of the question - not necessarily a bad thing if you are interviewing for a manger/director position, but a terrible answer and a huge red flag if you're interviewing as a developer and talking to a senior developer or manager! My biggest problem at the moment is being able to take a generic response and gauge whether it's the good or bad answer; more often than not it's the bad kind and I find myself frustrated almost from day one at the new job. I suppose I could name drop if I ask about specific things (e.g. "Do you write unit tests?" and if the answer is yes, ask if they use NUnit, MbUnit or something else; if they mention data access ask if they use a clean ORM like NHibernate or something more coupled like EF or Linq) but is there another way short of being resolute to actually call the interview on things (which will almost certainly result in not getting the job, but if they are skirting the question it's probably not a job I want).

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