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  • To what extent should code try to explain fatal exceptions?

    - by Andrzej Doyle
    I suspect that all non-trivial software is likely to experience situations where it hits an external problem it cannot work around and thus needs to fail. This might be due to bad configuration, an external server being down, disk full, etc. In these situations, especially if the software is running in non-interactive mode, I expect that all one can really do is log an error and wait for the admin to read the logs and fix the problem. If someone happens to interact with the software in the meantime, e.g. a request comes in to a server that failed to initialize properly, then perhaps an appropriate hint can be given to check the logs and maybe even the error can be echoed (depending on whether you can tell if they're a technical guy as opposed to a business user). For the moment though let's not think too hard about this part. My question is, to what extent should the software be responsible for trying to explain the meaning of the fatal error? In general, how much competence/knowledge are you allowed to presume on administrators of the software, and how much should you include troubleshooting information and potential resolution steps when logging fatal errors? Of course if there's something that's unique to the runtime context this should definitely be logged; but lets assume your software needs to talk to Active Directory via LDAP and gets back an error "[LDAP: error code 49 - 80090308: LdapErr: DSID-0C090334, comment: AcceptSecurityContext error, data 525, vece]". Is it reasonable to assume that the maintainers will be able to Google the error code and work out what it means, or should the software try to parse the error code and log that this is caused by an incorrect user DN in the LDAP config? I don't know if there is a definitive best-practices answer for this, so I'm keen to hear a variety of views.

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  • Throwing cats out of windows

    - by AndrewF
    Imagine you're in a tall building with a cat. The cat can survive a fall out of a low story window, but will die if thrown from a high floor. How can you figure out the longest drop that the cat can survive, using the least number of attempts? Obviously, if you only have one cat, then you can only search linearly. First throw the cat from the first floor. If it survives, throw it from the second. Eventually, after being thrown from floor f, the cat will die. You then know that floor f-1 was the maximal safe floor. But what if you have more than one cat? You can now try some sort of logarithmic search. Let's say that the build has 100 floors and you have two identical cats. If you throw the first cat out of the 50th floor and it dies, then you only have to search 50 floors linearly. You can do even better if you choose a lower floor for your first attempt. Let's say that you choose to tackle the problem 20 floors at a time and that the first fatal floor is #50. In that case, your first cat will survive flights from floors 20 and 40 before dying from floor 60. You just have to check floors 41 through 49 individually. That's a total of 12 attempts, which is much better than the 50 you would need had you attempted to use binary elimination. In general, what's the best strategy and it's worst-case complexity for an n-storied building with 2 cats? What about for n floors and m cats? Assume that all cats are equivalent: they will all survive or die from a fall from a given window. Also, every attempt is independent: if a cat survives a fall, it is completely unharmed. This isn't homework, although I may have solved it for school assignment once. It's just a whimsical problem that popped into my head today and I don't remember the solution. Bonus points if anyone knows the name of this problem or of the solution algorithm.

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  • How could it happen that version control software emerged so lately?

    - by sharptooth
    According to Wikipedia (the table at the page bottom), the earliest known version control systems were CVS and TeamWare both known from year 1990. How can it be? Software development has been here from at most 1960's and I honestly can't imagine working with codebase without version control. How could it happen that version control software emerged so lately compared to software development?

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  • Beginner's resources/introductions to classification algorithms.

    - by Dirk
    Hi, everybody. I am entirely new to the topic of classification algorithms, and need a few good pointers about where to start some "serious reading". I am right now in the process of finding out, whether machine learning and automated classification algorithms could be a worthwhile thing to add to some application of mine. I already scanned through "How to Solve It: Modern heuristics" by Z. Michalewicz and D. Fogel (in particular, the chapters about linear classifiers using neuronal networks), and on the practical side, I am currently looking through the WEKA toolkit source code. My next (planned) step would be to dive into the realm of Bayesian classification algorithms. Unfortunately, I am lacking a serious theoretical foundation in this area (let alone, having used it in any way as of yet), so any hints at where to look next would be appreciated; in particular, a good introduction of available classification algorithms would be helpful. Being more a craftsman and less a theoretician, the more practical, the better... Hints, anyone?

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  • Compiler Construction course

    - by donpal
    I'm looking for a course (preferably video, much preferably) like MIT's video courses on Compiler Construction. Can someone point me to some decent resources or help material (preferably video)?

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  • Do you use ASCII art to decorate your code?

    - by CiNN
    Do you use ASCII art to decorate your code? .-"""-. ' \ |,. ,-. | |()L( ()| | license goes here |,' `".| | |.___.',| ` .j `--"' ` `. / ' ' \ / / ` `. / / ` . / / l | . , | | ,"`. .| | _.' ``. o | `..-'l | `.`, | `. | `. __.j ) |__ |--""___| ,-' `"--...,+"""" `._,.-' mh www /n n\ /\ |/^\| / \ warning notes | , | ^||^ \_/ || _U_ || /` `''-----'P3 / |. .|''-----"|| \'| | || \| | || E | || /#####\ || /#####\ || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| gem || molom Ll /~~~\/~~\/~~~\/~~~\/~~\/~~~\ /~~~\/~~\/~~~\/~~~\/~~\/~~~\ | /\/ /\/ /\ || /\/ /\/ /\ | | /\ \/\ \/\ || /\ \/\ \/\ | \ \/ /\/ /\/ /\ \/ /\/ /\/ / function name \ \/\ \/\ \/ /\ \/\ \/\ \/ / \ \/\ \/\ \/ \ \/\ \/\ \/ \/ /\/ /\/ / \/ /\/ /\/ / ,_/\ \/\ \/\ \__/\ \/\ \/\ \______________________/ /\/ /\/ /\__/ /\/ /\/ /\_, (__/\__/\__/\____/\__/\__/\________________________/\__/\__/\____/\__/\__/\__)

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  • Dummy SMTP Server for testing apps that send email

    - by Patrick McElhaney
    I have a lot of apps that send email. Sometimes it's one or two messages at a time. Sometimes it's thousands of messages. In development, I usually test by substituting my own address for any recipient addresses. I'm sure that's what everybody else does, until they get fed up with it and find a better solution. I was thinking about creating a dummy SMTP server that just catches the messages and dumps them in a SQLLite database, or an mbox file, or whatever. But surely such a tool already exists? How do you test sending email?

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  • Is there any self-improving compiler around?

    - by JohnIdol
    I am not aware of any self-improving compiler, but then again I am not much of a compiler-guy. Is there ANY self-improving compiler out there? Please note that I am talking about a compiler that improves itself - not a compiler that improves the code it compiles. Any pointers appreciated! Side-note: in case you're wondering why I am asking have a look at this post. Even if I agree with most of the arguments I am not too sure about the following: We have programs that can improve their code without human input now — they’re called compilers. ... hence my question.

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  • Common Programming Jargon

    - by jdk
    What programming terms have you coined (or heard) that have taken off in your own circles (i.e. have heard others repeat it)? It might be within your own team, workplace or garnered greater popularity on the Internet. Write your programming term, word or phrase in bold text followed by an explanation, citation and/or usage example so we can use it in appropriate context. Please no repeats of common jargon already ingrained in the programming culture like: "kludge", "automagically", "cruft", etc. (unless you coined it). Stealing from the comments: "A shared vocabulary is the basis of communication, not just among programmers [...]"

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  • In what situations is octal base used?

    - by Bob
    I've seen binary and hex used quite often but never octal. Yet octal has it's own convention for being used in some languages (ie, a leading 0 indicating octal base). When is octal used? What are some typical situations when one would use octal or octal would be easier to reason about? Or is it merely a matter of taste?

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  • Microsoft sublanguage string to locale identifier

    - by Jacob
    I can't seem to find a way to convert, or find, a local identifier from a sublanguage string. This site shows the mappings: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd318693(v=VS.85).aspx I want the user to enter a sublanguage string, such as "France (FR)" and to get the local identifier from this, which in this case would be 0x0484. Or the other way around, if a user enters 0x0480 then to return French (FR). Has anyone encountered this problem before and can point me in the right direction? Otherwise I'm going to be writing a few mapping statements to hard code it and maintain future releases if anything changes. BTW, I'm coding in C++ for Windows platform. Cheers

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  • Passing an array for setting variable

    - by mathk
    Hi, I often see this idiom when reading php code: public function __construct($config) { if (array_key_exists('options', $config)) { ... } if (array_key_exists('driver_options', $config)) { ... } } Here I am concern with the way the parameter is used. If I were in lisp I would do: (defun ct (&key options driver_options) (do-something-with-option-and-driver_option)) But since I am in PHP I would rather have a constructor that take a list of parameter and let them be null if there a not require. So what do you guys think about having an array as parameter in other to do some initialization-or-whatever? In other to answer you have to take in account the point of view of the user of the function and the designer of the API. Also have you ever heard this has a code-smell? thanks

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  • What is recursion? -- In plain english.

    - by Christopher Altman
    I hear this word everyday, but cannot give a meaningful, concise, or plain-english answer to what it is. Recursion is defined by the bastian of knowledge as: Recursion in computer science is a method where the solution to a problem depends on solutions to smaller instances of the same problem.1 The approach can be applied to many types of problems, and is one of the central ideas of computer science.[2] Source Is recursion simply something that repeats itself to get a solution? I am looking for a "Recursion for Dummies" definition, and maybe simple examples. My goal is to be able to understand and explain recursion in my own words. I do not like simply thinking I know the meaning of something because I hear it referenced daily, but have not paused to form my own understanding.

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  • What turns away users/prospective users?

    - by Zach Johnson
    In your experience, what kinds of things have turned away users and prospective users from using your programs? Also, what kinds of things turn you away from using someone else's programs? For example, one thing that really bugs me is when someone provides free software, but requires you to enter your name and email address before you download it. Why do they need my name and email address? I just want to use the program! I understand that the developer(s) may want to get a feel for how many users they have, etc, but the extra work I have to do really makes me think twice about downloading their software, even if it does really great things.

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  • book with good examples for each implementation?

    - by ajsie
    i've read about design patterns and it seems that there are a lot of different design patterns to use. i wonder if there are some books that acts like a reference. "you want to build a framework, then consider this, this and this pattern". also giving some examples. then jumps to another implementation eg. search engine and gives some patterns and concrete examples to use. in this way you learn about the weakness and strength about each pattern and where they will fit, instead of just reading about every design pattern decoupled from each other. are there good "reference sheets" or other tutorials good for a beginner at this? thanks

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  • How do game companies handle programming for multiple platforms?

    - by stormist
    You often see that a new game will be released on Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows PC. How do gaming companies do this? Is it a common source code compiled using different compilers? Are actual different source codes required? example news article announcing this: http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/502/article/dungeon-siege-3-announced-to-be-developed-by-obsidian/

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  • Code Golf: Print the entire "12 Days of Christmas" song in the fewest lines of code.

    - by fizzer
    Print all 12 verses of the popular holiday song. By 12 verses I mean the repetition of each line as is sung in the song, ie Verse One: On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree. Verse Two On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. ... Verse N: On the nth day of Christmas my true love gave to me (Verse N-1 without the first line) (line added in verse N)

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  • Why are compilers so stupid?

    - by martinus
    I always wonder why compilers can't figure out simple things that are obvious to the human eye. They do lots of simple optimizations, but never something even a little bit complex. For example, this code takes about 6 seconds on my computer to print the value zero (using java 1.6): int x = 0; for (int i = 0; i < 100 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000; ++i) { x += x + x + x + x + x; } System.out.println(x); It is totally obvious that x is never changed so no matter how often you add 0 to itself it stays zero. So the compiler could in theory replace this with System.out.println(0). Or even better, this takes 23 seconds: public int slow() { String s = "x"; for (int i = 0; i < 100000; ++i) { s += "x"; } return 10; } First the compiler could notice that I am actually creating a string s of 100000 "x" so it could automatically use s StringBuilder instead, or even better directly replace it with the resulting string as it is always the same. Second, It does not recognize that I do not actually use the string at all, so the whole loop could be discarded! Why, after so much manpower is going into fast compilers, are they still so relatively dumb? EDIT: Of course these are stupid examples that should never be used anywhere. But whenever I have to rewrite a beautiful and very readable code into something unreadable so that the compiler is happy and produces fast code, I wonder why compilers or some other automated tool can't do this work for me.

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