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• How do I maintain a really poorly written code base?

  - by onlineapplab.com

  Recently I got hired to work on existing web application because of NDA I'm not at liberty to disclose any details but this application is working online in sort of a beta testing stage before official launch. We have a few hundred users right now but this number is supposed to significantly increase after official launch. The application is written in PHP (but it is irrelevant to my question) and is running on a dual xeon processor standalone server with severe performance problems. I have seen a lot of bad PHP code but this really sets new standards, especially knowing how much time and money was invested in developing it. it is as badly coded as possible there is PHP, HTML, SQL mixed together and code is repeated whenever it is necessary (especially SQL queries). there are not any functions used, not mentioning any OOP there are four versions of the app (desktop, iPhone, Android + other mobile) each version has pretty much the same functionality but was created by copying the whole code base, so now there are some differences between each version and it is really hard to maintain the database is really badly designed, which is causing severe performance problems also for fixing some errors in PHP code there is a lot of database triggers used which are updating data on SELECT and on INSERT so any testing is a nightmare Basically, any sin of a bad programming you can imagine is there for example it is not only possible to use SQL injections in literally every place but you can log into app if you use a login which doesn't exist and an empty password. The team which created this app is not working on it any more and there is an outsourced team which suggested that there are some problems but was never willing to deal with the elephant in the room partially because they've got a very comfortable contract and partially due to lack of skills (just my opinion). My job was supposed to be fixing some performance problems and extending existing functionality but first thing I was asked to do was a review of the existing code base. I've made my review and it was quite a shock for the management but my conclusions were after some time finally confirmed by other programmers. Management made it clear that it is not possible to start rewriting this app from scratch (which in my opinion should be done). We have to maintain its operable state and at the same time fix performance errors and extend the functionality. My question is, as I don't want just to patch the existing code, how to transform this into properly written app while keeping the existing code working at the same time? My plan is: Unify four existing versions into common code base (fixing only most obvious errors). Redesign db and use triggers to populate it with data (so data will be maintained in two formats at the same time) All new functionality will be written as separate project. Step by step transfer existing functionality into the new project After some time everything will be in the new project Some explanation about #2, right now it is practically impossible to make any updates in existing db any change requires reviewing whole code and making changes in many places. Is such plan feasible at all? Another solution is to walk away and leave the headache to someone else.

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• Basis for claim that the number of bugs per line of code is constant regardless of the language used

  - by Matt R

  I've heard people say (although I can't recall who in particular) that the number of bugs per line of code is roughly constant regardless of what language is used. What is the research that backs this up? Edited to add: I don't have access to it, but apparently the authors of this paper "asked the question whether the number of bugs per lines of code (LOC) is the same for programs written in different programming languages or not."

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• QR Codes for Files on Google Code

  - by Synetech inc.

  Hi, When you download files from Google Code now (example), in addition to the text version of the SHA1 hash, it includes a QR code of it. The device that the file was downloaded to is the one that has to hash the file. But, if it can download the file (ie, has access to the webpage), it also has access to the text version of the hash, so the QR code seems completely useless—and more work to decode when the raw text is available. How would reading the hash into a mobile phone allow you to verify the file you download to the computer? Or if you download the file to the phone, how would you use the phone to take a picture of the QR code displayed on the webpage on its own screen? Does anyone know what the point to the QR code is or how you would use it to verify the downloaded file (I don’t mean QR codes in general, but specifically in this context).

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• What to watch out for when writing code at an Interview?

  - by Philip

  Hi, I have read that at a lot of companies you have to write code at an interview. On the one hand I see that it makes sense to ask for a work sample. On the other hand: What kind of code do you expect to be written in 5 minutes? And what if they tell me "Write an algorithm that does this and that" but I cannot think of a smart solution or even write code that doesn't semantically work? I am particularly interested in that question because I do not have that much commercial programming experience, 2 years part-time, one year full-time. (But I am interested in programming languages since nearly 15 years though usually I was more concentrated in playing with the language rather than writing large applications...) And actually I consider my debugging and problem solving skills much better than my coding skills. I sometimes see myself not writing the most beautiful code when looking back, but on the other hand I often come up with solutions for hard problems. And I think I am very good at optimizing, fixing, restructuring existing code, but I have problems with writing new applications from scratch. The software design sucks... ;-) Therefore I don't feel comfortable when thinking about this code writing situation at an interview... So what do the interviewers expect? What kind of information about my code writing are they interested in? Philip

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• Rawr Code Clone Analysis&ndash;Part 0

  - by Dylan Smith

  Code Clone Analysis is a cool new feature in Visual Studio 11 (vNext).  It analyzes all the code in your solution and attempts to identify blocks of code that are similar, and thus candidates for refactoring to eliminate the duplication.  The power lies in the fact that the blocks of code don't need to be identical for Code Clone to identify them, it will report Exact, Strong, Medium and Weak matches indicating how similar the blocks of code in question are.   People that know me know that I'm anal enthusiastic about both writing clean code, and taking old crappy code and making it suck less. So the possibilities for this feature have me pretty excited if it works well - and thats a big if that I'm hoping to explore over the next few blog posts. I'm going to grab the Rawr source code from CodePlex (a World Of Warcraft gear calculator engine program), run Code Clone Analysis against it, then go through the results one-by-one and refactor where appropriate blogging along the way.  My goals with this blog series are twofold: Evaluate and demonstrate Code Clone Analysis Provide some concrete examples of refactoring code to eliminate duplication and improve the code-base Here are the initial results:   Code Clone Analysis has found: 129 Exact Matches 201 Strong Matches 300 Medium Matches 193 Weak Matches Also indicated is that there was a total of 45,181 potentially duplicated lines of code that could be eliminated through refactoring.  Considering the entire solution only has 109,763 lines of code, if true, the duplicates lines of code number is pretty significant. In the next post we’ll start examining some of the individual results and determine if they really do indicate a potential refactoring.

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• How do you stay productive when dealing with extremely badly written code?

  - by gaearon

  I don't have much experience in working in software industry, being self-taught and having participated in open source before deciding to take a job. Now that I work for money, I also have to deal with some unpleasant stuff, which is normal of course. Recently I was assigned to add logging to a large SharePoint project which is written by some programmer who obviously was learning to code on the job. After 2 years of collaboration, the client switched to our company, but the damage was done, and now somehow I need to maintain this code. Not that the code was too hard to read. Despite problems - each project has one class with several copy-pasted methods, enormous if nestings, Systems Hungarian, undisposed connections — it's still readable. However, I found myself absolutely unproductive despite working on something as simple as adding logging. Basically, I just need to go through the code step by step and add some trace calls. However, the idiocy of the code is so annoying that I get tired within 10 minutes of starting. In the beginning, I used to add using constructs, reduce nesting by reversing if's, rename the variables to readable names—but the project is large, and eventually I gave up. I know this is not the task I should be doing, but at least reducing the mess gave me some kind of psychological reward so I could keep going. Now the trick stopped working, and I still have 60% of my work to do. I started having headaches after work, and I no longer get the feeling of satisfaction I used to get - which would usually allow me to code for 10 hours straight and still feel fresh. This is not just one big rant, for I really do have an actual question: Is there a way to stay productive and not to fight the windmills? Is there some kind of psychological trick to stay focused on the task, instead of thinking “How stupid is that?” each time I see another clever trick by the previous programmer? The problem with adding logging is that I actually have to understand what the code does, and doing so hurts my brain in an unpleasant fashion.

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• Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code?

  - by Donnied

  This question is phrased in a very specific way - it asks for references. There was a similar question posted which was closed because it was considered a duplicate to a good code question. The Programmers FAQ points out that answers should have references - or its just an unproductive sharing of (seemingly) baseless opinions. There is a difference between shortest code and most elegant code. This becomes clear in several seminal texts: Dijkstra, E. W. (1972). The humble programmer. Communications of the ACM, 15(10), 859–866. Kernighan, B. W., & Plauger, P. J. (1974). Programming style: Examples and counterexamples. ACM Comput. Surv., 6(4), 303–319. Knuth, D. E. (1984). Literate programming. The Computer Journal, 27(2), 97–111. doi:10.1093/comjnl/27.2.97 They all note the importance of clarity over brevity. Kernighan & Plauger (1974) provide descriptions of "good" code, but "good code" is certainly not synonymous with "elegant". Knuth (1984) describes the impo rtance of exposition and "excellence of style" to elegant programs. He cites Hoare - who describes that code should be self documenting. Dijkstra (1972) indicates that beautiful programs optimize efficiency but are not opaque. This sort of conversation is qulaitatively different than a random sharing of opinions. Therefore, the question - Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code? "Which *reference*" is not subjective - anything else will most likely shut the thread down, so please supply *references* not opinions.

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• How would you react if someone told you your code is a mess?

  - by newbie

  I am a good programmer, or so I thought before. I always love to program. And I want to learn many things about programming to make me a better programmer. I studied programming for 1 year and now I am working as a programmer for almost 2 years. So in short, I have almost 3 years programming experience. Our team is composed of 5 programmers, and 4 of us are new, 1 has more than 3 year experience. We've been working for a program for almost a year now and nobody ever review my code and I was given a page to work with. We never had a code review and we are all new so we don't know what is a clean code looks like. I think programmers learn by themselves? We deployed our program to the program without thorough testing. Now it is tight and we need an approval and code review first before we make changes with the code. For the first time, someone reviews my code and he says it is a mess. I feel so sad and hurt. I really love programming and making them say something like that really hurts me. I really want to improve myself. But it seems like I'm not a genius programmer like in the movies. Can you give me advise on how to be better? Have you ever experience something criticizing your code and you feel really hurt? What do you do on those events.. Thank you

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• Copy-and-Pasted Test Code: How Bad is This?

  - by joshin4colours

  My current job is mostly writing GUI test code for various applications that we work on. However, I find that I tend to copy and paste a lot of code within tests. The reason for this is that the areas I'm testing tend to be similar enough to need repetition but not quite similar enough to encapsulate code into methods or objects. I find that when I try to use classes or methods more extensively, tests become more cumbersome to maintain and sometimes outright difficult to write in the first place. Instead, I usually copy a big chunk of test code from one section and paste it to another, and make any minor changes I need. I don't use more structured ways of coding, such as using more OO-principles or functions. Do other coders feel this way when writing test code? Obviously I want to follow DRY and YAGNI principles, but I find that test code (automated test code for GUI testing anyway) can make these principles tough to follow. Or do I just need more coding practice and a better overall system of doing things? EDIT: The tool I'm using is SilkTest, which is in a proprietary language called 4Test. As well, these tests are mostly for Windows desktop applications, but I also have tested web apps using this setup as well.

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• How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?

  - by KyelJmD

  How would one know if the code he has created is easily maintainable and readable? Of course in your point of view (the one who actually wrote the code) your code is readable and maintainable, but we should be true to ourselves here. How would we know if we've written pretty messy and unmaintainable code? Are there any constructs or guidelines to know if we have developed a messy piece of software?

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• What is the oldest living piece of unaltered production code? [closed]

  - by user1598390

  It's come to my mind that parts of the code in, say, Unix, has maybe passed unaltered from one version or flavor into another. Maybe some pieces of the source code of the ls command is the same, unaltered, than was written years ago. Have any of you read or learn about this ? What would be the oldest living piece of unaltered production code still running, passing from version through version of a program or system ? Will the code we write outlive us for decades ?

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• How do I take responsibility for my code when colleague makes unnecessary improvements without notice?

  - by Jesslyn

  One of my teammates is a jack of all trades in our IT shop and I respect his insight. However, sometimes he reviews my code (he's second in command to our team leader, so that's expected) without a heads up. So sometimes he reviews my changes before they complete the end goal and makes changes right away... and has even broken my work once. Other times, he has made unnecessary improvements to some of my code that is 3+ months old. This annoys me for a few reasons: I am not always given a chance to fix my mistakes He has not taken the time to ask me what I was trying to accomplish when he is confused, which could affect his testing or changes I don't always think his code is readable Deadlines are not an issue and his current workload doesn't require any work in my projects other than reviewing my code changes. Anyways, I have told him in the past to please keep me posted if he sees something in my work that he wants to change so that I could take ownership of my code (maybe I should have said "shortcomings") and he's not been responsive. I fear that I may come off as aggressive when I ask him to explain his changes to me. He's just a quiet person who keeps to himself, but his actions continue. I don't want to banish him from making code changes (not like I could), because we are a team--but I want to do my part to help our team. Added clarifications: We share 1 development branch. I do not wait until all my changes complete a single task because I risk losing some significant work--so I make sure my changes build and do not break anything. My concern is that my teammate doesn't explain the reason or purpose behind his changes. I don't think he should need my blessing, but if we disagree on an approach I thought it would be best to discuss the pros and cons and make a decision once we both understand what is going on. I have not discussed this with our team lead yet as I would prefer to resolve personal disagreements without getting management involved unless it is necessary. Since my concern seemed more of personal issue than a threat to our work, I chose to not bother the team lead. I am working on code review process ideas--to help promote the benefits of more organized code reviews without making it all about my pet peeves.

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• Writing a code example

  - by Stefano Borini

  I would like to have your feedback regarding code examples. One of the most frustrating experiences I sometimes have when learning a new technology is finding useless examples. I think an example as the most precious thing that comes with a new library, language, or technology. It must be a starting point, a wise and unadulterated explanation on how to achieve a given result. A perfect example must have the following characteristics: Self contained: it should be small enough to be compiled or executed as a single program, without dependencies or complex makefiles. An example is also a strong functional test if you correctly installed the new technology. The more issues could arise, the more likely is that something goes wrong, and the more difficult is to debug and solve the situation. Pertinent: it should demonstrate one, and only one, specific feature of your software/library, involving the minimal additional behavior from external libraries. Helpful: the code should bring you forward, step by step, using comments or self-documenting code. Extensible: the example code should be a small “framework” or blueprint for additional tinkering. A learner can start by adding features to this blueprint. Recyclable: it should be possible to extract parts of the example to use in your own code Easy: An example code is not the place to show your code-fu skillz. Keep it easy. helpful acronym: SPHERE. Prototypical examples of violations of those rules are the following: Violation of self-containedness: an example spanning multiple files without any real need for it. If your example is a python program, keep everything into a single module file. Don’t sub-modularize it. In Java, try to keep everything into a single class, unless you really must partition some entity into a meaningful object you need to pass around (and java mandates one class per file, if I remember correctly). Violation of Pertinency: When showing how many different shapes you can draw, adding radio buttons and complex controls with all the possible choices for point shapes is a bad idea. You de-focalize your example code, introducing code for event handling, controls initialization etc., and this is not part the feature you want to demonstrate, they are unnecessary noise in the understanding of the crucial mechanisms providing the feature. Violation of Helpfulness: code containing dubious naming, wrong comments, hacks, and functions longer than one page of code. Violation of Extensibility: badly factored code that have everything into a single function, with potentially swappable entities embedded within the code. Example: if an example reads data from a file and displays it, create a method getData() returning a useful entity, instead of opening the file raw and plotting the stuff. This way, if the user of the library needs to read data from a HTTP server instead, he just has to modify the getData() module and use the example almost as-is. Another violation of Extensibility comes if the example code is not under a fully liberal (e.g. MIT or BSD) license. Violation of Recyclability: when the code layout is so intermingled that is difficult to easily copy and paste parts of it and recycle them into another program. Again, licensing is also a factor. Violation of Easiness: Yes, you are a functional-programming nerd and want to show how cool you are by doing everything on a single line of map, filter and so on, but that could not be helpful to someone else, who is already under pressure to understand your library, and now has to understand your code as well. And in general, the final rule: if it takes more than 10 minutes to do the following: compile the code, run it, read the source, and understand it fully, it means that the example is not a good one. Please let me know your opinion, either positive or negative, or experience on this regard.

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• code review: Is it subjective or objective(quantifiable) ?

  - by Ram

  I am putting together some guidelines for code reviews. We do not have one formal process yet, and trying to formalize it. And our team is geographically distributed We are using TFS for source control (used it for tasks/bug tracking/project management as well, but migrated that to JIRA) with VS2008 for development. What are the things you look for when doing a code review ? These are the things I came up with Enforce FXCop rules (we are a Microsoft shop) Check for performance (any tools ?) and security (thinking about using OWASP- code crawler) and thread safety Adhere to naming conventions The code should cover edge cases and boundaries conditions Should handle exceptions correctly (do not swallow exceptions) Check if the functionality is duplicated elsewhere method body should be small(20-30 lines) , and methods should do one thing and one thing only (no side effects/ avoid temporal coupling -) Do not pass/return nulls in methods Avoid dead code Document public and protected methods/properties/variables What other things do you generally look for ? I am trying to see if we can quantify the review process (it would produce identical output when reviewed by different persons) Example: Saying "the method body should be no longer than 20-30 lines of code" as opposed to saying "the method body should be small" Or is code review very subjective ( and would differ from one reviewer to another ) ? The objective is to have a marking system (say -1 point for each FXCop rule violation,-2 points for not following naming conventions,2 point for refactoring etc) so that developers would be more careful when they check in their code.This way, we can identify developers who are consistently writing good/bad code.The goal is to have the reviewer spend about 30 minutes max, to do a review (I know this is subjective, considering the fact that the changeset/revision might include multiple files/huge changes to the existing architecture etc , but you get the general idea, the reviewer should not spend days reviewing someone's code) What other objective/quantifiable system do you follow to identify good/bad code written by developers? Book reference: Clean Code: A handbook of agile software craftmanship by Robert Martin

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• Simulate Golf Game Strategy

  - by Mitchel Sellers

  I am working on what at best could be considered a "primitive" golf game, where after a certain bit of randomness is introduced I need to play out a hole of golf. The hole is static and I am not concerned about the UI aspect as I just have to draw a line on a graphic of the hole after the ball has been hit showing where it traveled. I'm looking for input on thoughts of how to manage the "logic" side of the puzzle, below are some of my thoughts on the matter, input, suggestions, or references are greatly appreciated. Map out the hole into an array with a specific amount of precision, noting the type of surface: out of bounds, fairway, rough, green, sand, water, and most important the hole. Map out "regions" and if the ball is contained inside one of these regions setup parameters for "maximum" angle of departure. (For example the first part of the hole the shot must be between certain angles Using the current placement of the ball, and the region contained in #2, define a routine to randomly select the shooting angle, and power then move the ball, adjust the trajectory and move again. I know this isn't the "most elegant" solution, but in reality, we are looking for a quick and dirty solution, as I just have to do this a few times, set it and forget it afterward. From a languages perspective I'll be using ASP.NET and C# to get this done.

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• Does software rot refer primarily to performance, or to messy code?

  - by Kazark

  Wikipedia's definition of software rot focuses on the performance of the software. This is a different usage than I am used to; I had thought of it much more in terms of the cleanliness and design of the code—in terms of the code's having all the standard quality characteristics: readability, maintainability, etc. Now, performance is likely to go down when the code becomes unreadable, because no one knows what is going on. But does the term software rot have special reference to performance? or am I right in thinking it refers to the cleanliness of the code? or is this perhaps a case of multiple senses of the term being in common usage—from the user's perspective, it has do with performance; but for the software craftsman, it has to do more specifically with how the code reads?

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• Are there any books dedicated to writing test code? [on hold]

  - by joshin4colours

  There are many programming books dedicated to useful programming and engineering topics, like working with legacy code or particular languages. The best of these books become "standard" or "canonical" references for professional programmers. Are there any books like this (or that could be like this) for writing test code? I don't mean books about Test-Driven Development, nor do I mean books about writing good (clean) code in general. I'm looking for books that discuss test code specifically (unit-level, integration-level, UI-level, design patterns, code structures and organization, etc.)

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• What is missing and should be added to Code Complete 3rd Edition? [closed]

  - by Peter Turner

  It's been quite a few years since Code Complete was published. I really love the book, I keep it in the bathroom at the office and read a little out of it once or twice a day. What developments in computer software... development need to be added to Code Complete 3e, and for the sake of reductionism, what should be removed to make room for them? Is it necessary even possible to call Code Complete Code Complete if it doesn't have language features that even Delphi has like anonymous methods and generics? Also, what languages would be more appropriate than C++ to use for a majority of code examples?

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• After how much line of code a function should be break down?

  - by Sumeet

  While working on existing code base, I usually come across procedures that contain Abusive use of IF and Switch statements. The procedures consist of overwhelming code, which I think require re-factoring badly. The situation gets worse when I identify that some of these are recursive as well. But this is always a matter of debate as the code is working fine and no one wants to wake up the dragon. But, everyone accepts it is very expensive code to manage. I am wondering if are any recommendations to determine if a particular Method is a culprit and needs a revisit/rewrite , so that it can broken down or polymophized in an effective manner. Are there any Metrics (like no. of lines in procedure) that can be used to identify such segment of code. The checklist or advice to convince everyone, will be great!

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• Do you use to third party companies to review your company's code?

  - by CodeToGlory

  I am looking to get the following - Basic code review to make sure they follow the guidelines imposed. Security code analysis to make sure there are no loopholes. No performance bottlenecks by doing a load test etc. We have lot of code coming in from third parties and is becoming laborious to manage code reviews and hence looking to see if others employ such practices. I understand that it may be a concern for some and would raise the question "Well, who is going to make sure the agency is doing their job right?" But basically I am just looking for a third party who can hold all vendor code to the same standards.

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• What is the right level of granularity for code commenting?

  - by Nick

  Commenting in code I believe is very important but recently I've been reviewing code that has left me wondering particular this one. //due to lack of confidence with web programming leaving this note in for now What is the right level of granularity for code commenting? EDIT: Obviously the above comment is shocking hence why I'm asking the question. I've recently noticed the inline comments in the code at my work place annoying. Instead of getting angry I want discovery the acceptable level of granularity for code commenting in the community.

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• Is imposing the same code format for all developers a good idea?

  - by Stijn Geukens

  We are considering to impose a single standard code format in our project (auto format with save actions in Eclipse). The reason is that currently there is a big difference in the code formats used by several (10) developers which makes it harder for one developer to work on the code of another developer. The same Java file sometimes uses 3 different formats. So I believe the advantage is clear (readability = productivity) but would it be a good idea to impose this? And if not, why? UPDATE We all use Eclipse and everyone is aware of the plan. There already is a code format used by most but it is not enforced since some prefer to stick to their own code format. Because of the above reasons some would prefer to enforce it.

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• which Project hosting service (Like google code, github) you will prefer to use? And Why?

  - by MobileDev123

  I am using to study (and at some point of time copy the desired module of) the code from these two sites (Google Code and Github). There is sourceforge too, I have some code, say some library that I want to share with the community, and I am to decide the hosting site. And before I decide I want to have opinions from this community. Which is your favorite Project hosting site or service? And why? There is one point where github can win over google code (may be I am wrong here), Github can let you forge whole project with a zip or tar file, but to do the same in google code we have to upload the zip file explicitly and put it in downloads.... Thanks

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• How many lines of code is in StackOverflow? Your guess?

  - by Andy

  What is your guess, how many lines of code did it take to implement StackOverflow? Collecting all answers, I will publish the final estimate.

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• How do I gather TeamCity code coverage reports from multiple projects into one report?

  - by Loofer

  We use the build in coverage application in TeamCity 6 (about to upgrade to 7.1) If we wish to see the code coverage (or other metrics) of a particular build it is fine as we can navigate to that build, but it would be great if we could pluck out a few interesting metrics from all/some of the current projects/build configurations and display them all together. For convenience I would expect the new display to be accessible from within TeamCity itself, however if there are solutions that require a separate solution we could look at them. Thanks

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