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Callback Contract in WCF

Callback contracts are a very powerful concept that is easily implemented in WCF. Using this, it is very easy to achieve event-like behavior between a service and client (duplex operations).

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Designing javascript chart library

- by coolscitist

I started coding a chart library on top of d3js: My chart library. I read Javascript API reusability and Towards reusable charts. However, I am NOT really following the suggestions because I am not really convinced about them. This is how my library can be used to create a bubble chart: var chart = new XYBubbleChart(); chart.data = [{"xValue":200,"yValue":300},{"xValue":400,"yValue":200},{"xValue":100,"yValue":310}]; //set data chart.dataKey.x = "xValue"; chart.dataKey.y = "yValue"; chart.elementId = "#chart"; chart.createChart(); Here are my questions: It does not use chaining. Is it a big issue? Every property and function is exposed publicly. (Example: width, height are exposed in Chart.js). OOP is all about abstraction and hiding, but I don't really see the point right now. I think exposing everything gives flexibility to change property and functionality inside subclasses and objects without writing a lot of code. What could be pitfalls of such exposure? I have implemented functions like: zooming, "showing info boxes when data point is clicked" as "abilities". (example: XYZoomingAbility.js). Basically, such "abilities" accept "chart" object, play around with public variables of "chart" to add functionality. What this allows me to do is to add an ability by writing: activateZoomAbility(chartObject); My goal is to separate "visualization" from "interactivity". I want "interactivity" like: zooming to be plugged into the chart rather than built inside the chart. Like, I don't want my bubble chart to know anything about "zooming". However, I do want zoomable bubble chart. What is the best way to do this? How to test and what to test? I have written mixed tests: jasmine and actual html files so that I can test manually on browser.

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Multithreaded UI desktop application issues

- by igor

I am involved into development a rich UI project: desktop windows application. Application uses asynchronous invocations and in its turn it should be ready to process external messages (events). The problem is clear: at first time it was built as a simple prototype and it was not stress tested and all was fine. Then application was grown: the number of calls to server and number of events from server are high and performance is low. What is more users noticed that sometimes performance is extremal low. Asynchronous invocations based on thread pool (BeginInvoke, EndInvoke), external events are going from WCF service (.NET 3.5). My goal is synchronization of all tasks and putting priorities to every executions in desktop application. My question is: is there any practice how to reach my goal: patterns, task priority list, others? What should I do at first, second and next times? Thanks

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Where do you search/look for game developers for an indie game startup?

- by G.Campos

Hey there I just recently saw stackoverflow had a game dev sister site so here I am, wondering if you experienced fellows know where one can search/look for game developers for an indie game startup? In other words: I have a game idea which I've written down with as much detail as possible (so anyone else can understand how it works) and now I'm looking for a heavy php programmer with whom to pair up in order to go from idea to reality. I'm a front-end/interface designer and an intermediate programmer. I recognize my project requires heavy programming skills which I do not have as of today =) So, what websites, communities or places do you recommend I go look into? Where do good programmers interested in indie games go look for projects if they don't have their own? Thanks in advance G.Campos

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Is it a "pattern smell" to put getters like "FullName" or "FormattedPhoneNumber" in your model?

- by DanM

I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC app, and I've been getting into the habit of putting what seem like helpful and convenient getters into my model/entity classes. For example: public class Member { public int Id { get; set; } public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public string PhoneNumber { get; set; } public string FullName { get { return FirstName + " " + LastName; } } public string FormattedPhoneNumber { get { return "(" + PhoneNumber.Substring(0, 3) + ") " + PhoneNumber.Substring(3, 3) + "-" + PhoneNumber.Substring(6); } } } I'm wondering people think about the FullName and FormattedPhoneNumber getters. They make it very easy to create standardized data formats throughout the app, and they seem to save a lot of repeated code, but it could definitely be argued that data format is something that should be handled in mapping from model to view-model. In fact, I was originally applying these data formats in my service layer where I do my mapping, but it was becoming a burden to constantly have to write formatters then apply them in many different places. E.g., I use "Full Name" in most views, and having to type something like model.FullName = MappingUtilities.GetFullName(entity.FirstName, entity.LastName); all over the place seemed a lot less elegant than just typing model.FullName = entity.FullName (or, if you use something like AutoMapper, potentially not typing anything at all). So, where do you draw the line when it comes to data formatting. Is it "okay" to do data formatting in your model or is that a "pattern smell"? Note: I definitely do not have any html in my model. I use html helpers for that. I'm strictly talking about formatting or combining data (and especially data that is frequently used).

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Responsive website VS mobile website

- by Saif Bechan

I am creating a new blog. Nowadays, especially for a blog, it's important that the websites are accessible for all devices. Now I have to make a choice on what to do. I have seen 2 options. Option 1 is to go with a normal fixed website, for example 960px wide (grid960). And for mobile users have a mobile version. This takes some more time, but then there are 2 good versions of the website. Option 2 I haven't seen a lot yet, creating a adaptive website, or also called responsive website. I am now looking into the LESS framework, where the website automatically switches to to required width. Only downside is that when the normal browser is re-sized, everything re-sizes. Another problem I found is that pinch-to-zoom on devices does not work. Now the question is, which one would you prefer for a blog. One that constantly changes layout when you move your device, or one where you have the choice to view mobile and normal. If there are any other options, please let me know.

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Scene Graph Traversing Techniques

- by Bunkai.Satori

Scene Graph seems to be the most effective way of representing the game world. The game world usually tends to be as large as the memory and device can handle. In contrast, the screen of the device captures only a fraction of the Game World/Scene Graph. Ideally, I wish to process(update and render) only the visible game objects/nodes on per-frame basis. My question therefore is, how to traverse the scene graph so, that I will focus only on the game notes that are in the camera frustum? How to organize data so that I can easily focus only on the scene graph nodes visible to me? What are techniques to minimize scenegraph traversal time? Is there such way as more effective traversal, or do I have to traverse whole scene graph on per-frame basis?

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S#arp Architecture 1.5.1 released

- by AlecWhittington

So far we have had some great success with the 1.5 release of S#arp Architecture, but there were a few issues that made it into the release that needed to be corrected. These issues were: Unnecessary assemblies in the root /bin and SolutionItemsContainer folders Nant folder removed from root /bin - this was causing issues with the build scripts that come with the project if the user did not have Nant installed and available via a path variable VS 2010 template - the CrudScaffoldingForEnterpriseApp...(read more)

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Issuse with multiple student result printing request

- by dotman14

I'm not really sure about how to ask this question but i'll try my best to make it clear enough. I have a Student Result Application where by students result are managed, over several academic sessions, all having two semesters each. During each semester students take different courses and have results based on the semester. The application is done now and i'm using a PDF Libaray to crop the final result page to hand over to the students each semester. If a student request a particular semester result it's a straight forward issue and there are no complications when it comes to printing out the result. My issue is this: in a case where a student requests to have a combination of semesters...say 3rd year rain semester , 4th year rain semester and 5th year hamattarn semester. Please how can i handle this issue? Does the user picks these options at the user interface level or there's a special way to handle issues like this? Also, if i'm to display these multiple student result how could this be be done, knowing fully well that i'll have to print the different result seperately. Hopefully i've being able to make my situation clear enough. Thanks for your time and patience. Expecting your comments and answers. Thanks.

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Will it hurt my website's SEO friendliness if I host a french targetted website at, let's say, godaddy.com?

- by Suraj

Hi guys, I have read that the server location is important for a website to be SEO friendly. I am planning to build a website from scratch which is targetted mainly to french audience (in france), but I am planning to host the web site at godaddy.com. My concern is will it hurt the website SEO friendliness? Or do you recommend me to host the website in france itself? I have also read that I need to have a static IP Address. If it's true, can anyone explain me for what reason? Can anyone suggest me some good web hosting companies, prefereable in france? Thanks in advance!

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Character Stats and Power

- by Stephen Furlani

I'm making an RPG game system and I'm having a hard time deciding on doing detailed or abstract character statistics. These statistics define the character's natural - not learned - abilities. For example: Mass Effect: 0 (None that I can see) X20 (Xtreme Dungeon Mastery): 1 "STAT" Diablo: 4 "Strength, Magic, Dexterity, Vitality" Pendragon: 5 "SIZ, STR, DEX, CON, APP" Dungeons & Dragons (3.x, 4e): 6 "Str, Dex, Con, Wis, Int, Cha" Fallout 3: 7 "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." RIFTS: 8 "IQ, ME, MA, PS, PP, PE, PB, Spd" Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st ed?): 12-ish "WS, BS, S, T, Ag, Int, WP, Fel, A, Mag, IP, FP" HERO (5th ed): 14 "Str, Dex, Con, Body, Int, Ego, Pre, Com, PD, ED, Spd, Rec, END, STUN" The more stats, the more complex and detailed your character becomes. This comes with a trade-off however, because you usually only have limited resources to describe your character. D&D made this infamous with the whole min/max-ing thing where strong characters were typically not also smart. But also, a character with a high Str typically also has high Con, Defenses, Hit Points/Health. Without high numbers in all those other stats, they might as well not be strong since they wouldn't hold up well in hand-to-hand combat. So things like that force trade-offs within the category of strength. So my original (now rejected) idea was to force players into deciding between offensive and defensive stats: Might / Body Dexterity / Speed Wit / Wisdom Heart Soul But this left some stat's without "opposites" (or opposites that were easily defined). I'm leaning more towards the following: Body (Physical Prowess) Mind (Mental Prowess) Heart (Social Prowess) Soul (Spiritual Prowess) This will define a character with just 4 numbers. Everything else gets based off of these numbers, which means they're pretty important. There won't, however, be ways of describing characters who are fast, but not strong or smart, but absent minded. Instead of defining the character with these numbers, they'll be detailing their character by buying skills and powers like these: Quickness Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Dodging. for a character that wants to be faster, or the following for a big, tough character Body Building Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Lifting, Pushing, or Throwing objects. [EDIT - removed subjectiveness] So my actual questions is what are some pitfalls with a small stat list and a large amount of descriptive powers? Is this more difficult to port cross-platform (pen&paper, PC) for example? Are there examples of this being done well/poorly? Thanks,

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Multithreded UI desktop application issues

- by igor

I am involved into development a rich UI project: desktop windows application. Application uses asynchronous invocations and in its turn it should be ready to process external messages (events). The problem is clear: at first time it was built as a simple prototype and it was not stress tested and all was fine. Then application was grown: the number of calls to server and number of events from server are high and performance is low. What is more users noticed that sometimes performance is extremal low. Asynchronous invocations based on thread pool (BeginInvoke, EndInvoke), external events are going from WCF service (.NET 3.5). My goal is synchronization of all tasks and putting priorities to every executions in desktop application. My question is: is there any practice how to reach my goal: patterns, task priority list, others? What should I do at first, second and next times? Thanks

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Extracting Data from a Source System to History Tables

- by Derek D.

This is a topic I find very little information written about, however it is very important that the method for extracting data be done in a way that does not hinder performance of the source system. In this example, the goal is to extract data from a source system, into another database (or server) all [...]

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Configuration data: single-row table vs. name-value-pair table

- by Heinzi

Let's say you write an application that can be configured by the user. For storing this "configuration data" into a database, two patterns are commonly used. The single-row table CompanyName | StartFullScreen | RefreshSeconds | ... ---------------+-------------------+------------------+-------- ACME Inc. | true | 20 | ... The name-value-pair table ConfigOption | Value -----------------+------------- CompanyName | ACME Inc. StartFullScreen | true (or 1, or Y, ...) RefreshSeconds | 20 ... | ... I've seen both options in the wild, and both have obvious advantages and disadvantages, for example: The single-row tables limits the number of configuration options you can have (since the number of columns in a row is usually limited). Every additional configuration option requires a DB schema change. In a name-value-pair table everything is "stringly typed" (you have to encode/decode your Boolean/Date/etc. parameters). (many more) Is there some consensus within the development community about which option is preferable?

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What's wrong with JavaScript

- by ts01

There is a lot of buzz around Dart recently, often questioning Google motivations and utility of Dart as replacement for JavaScript. I was searching for rationale of creating Dart rather than investing more effort in ECMAScript. In well known leaked mail its author is saying that Javascript has historical baggage that cannot be solved without a clean break. But there is only one concrete example given (apart of performance concerns) of "fundamental language problems", which is an existence of a single Number primitive So, my questions are: How an existence of a single Number primitive can be a "fundamental problem"? Are there other known "fundamental problems" in JavaScript?

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What are current Biggest Challenges faced by Ecommerce Applications ?

- by Rachel

I am in the process to start Product Development for E-commerce and Online Retail domain but before starting I would like to know what are the biggest challenges faced by current state of Art E-Commerce Application ? Also I have not experience building e-commerce products and so what things should I keep in mind before developing one ? Is there are books, articles, blogs outside which I should refer to gain some knowledge before starting out ? Update: What are you thoughts on the recommendation engines for ecommerce applications ? What challenges we have with current state of recommendations engines for ecommerce web application and how can we overcome them ?

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Adventures in the Land of CloudDB/NoSQL/NoAcid

- by KKline

Cloud, Bunny, or CloudBunny? Last year, some of my friends from Quest Software attended Hadoop World in New York. In 2009, I never would've guessed that Quest would be there with products, community initiatives, as a major sponsor and with presenters? There were just under 1,000 attendees who weren’t the typical devheads and geekasaurs you'd normally see at very techie events like Code Camps, SQL Saturdays, Cloud Camps and or even other NoSQL events such as the Cassandra Summit. We're talkin' enterprise...(read more)

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Cluster Nodes as RAID Drives

- by BuckWoody

I'm unable to sleep tonight so I thought I would push this post out VERY early. When you don't sleep your mind takes interesting turns, which can be a good thing. I was watching a briefing today by a couple of friends as they were talking about various ways to arrange a Windows Server Cluster for SQL Server. I often see an "active" node of a cluster with a "passive" node backing it up. That means one node is working and accepting transactions, and the other is not doing any work but simply "standing by" waiting for the first to fail over. The configuration in the demonstration I saw was a bit different. In this example, there were three nodes that were actively working, and a fourth standing by for all three. I've put configurations like this one into place before, but as I was looking at their architecture diagram, it looked familar - it looked like a RAID drive setup! And that's not a bad way to think about your cluster arrangements. The same concerns you might think about for a particular RAID configuration provides a good way to think about protecting your systems in general. So even if you're not staying awake all night thinking about SQL Server clusters, take this post as an opportunity for "lateral thinking" - a way of combining in your mind the concepts from one piece of knowledge to another. You might find a new way of making your technical environment a little better. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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Using virtual functions

- by Tucker Morgan

I am starting to use virtual functions, and i am programming a simple text game, my question is this, if i have a virtual function called spec_abil with in a Super class called rpg_class. If you allow the player to class what class they want to play, say a mage class, a archer class, and a warrior class, which all have their own spec_abil function. How do you write it so that the program knows which one to use depending on the chosen class.

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ASP.NET MVC: Moving code from controller action to service layer

- by DigiMortal

I fixed one controller action in my application that doesn’t seemed good enough for me. It wasn’t big move I did but worth to show to beginners how nice code you can write when using correct layering in your application. As an example I use code from my posting ASP.NET MVC: How to implement invitation codes support. Problematic controller action Although my controller action works well I don’t like how it looks. It is too much for controller action in my opinion. [HttpPost] public ActionResult GetAccess(string accessCode) { if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(accessCode.Trim())) { ModelState.AddModelError("accessCode", "Insert invitation code!"); return View(); } Guid accessGuid; try { accessGuid = Guid.Parse(accessCode); } catch { ModelState.AddModelError("accessCode", "Incorrect format of invitation code!"); return View(); } using(var ctx = new EventsEntities()) { var user = ctx.GetNewUserByAccessCode(accessGuid); if(user == null) { ModelState.AddModelError("accessCode", "Cannot find account with given invitation code!"); return View(); } user.UserToken = User.Identity.GetUserToken(); ctx.SaveChanges(); } Session["UserId"] = accessGuid; return Redirect("~/admin"); } Looking at this code my first idea is that all this access code stuff must be located somewhere else. We have working functionality in wrong place and we should do something about it. Service layer I add layers to my application very carefully because I don’t like to use hand grenade to kill a fly. When I see real need for some layer and it doesn’t add too much complexity I will add new layer. Right now it is good time to add service layer to my small application. After that it is time to move code to service layer and inject service class to controller. public interface IUserService { bool ClaimAccessCode(string accessCode, string userToken, out string errorMessage); // Other methods of user service } I need this interface when writing unit tests because I need fake service that doesn’t communicate with database and other external sources. public class UserService : IUserService { private readonly IDataContext _context; public UserService(IDataContext context) { _context = context; } public bool ClaimAccessCode(string accessCode, string userToken, out string errorMessage) { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(accessCode.Trim())) { errorMessage = "Insert invitation code!"; return false; } Guid accessGuid; if (!Guid.TryParse(accessCode, out accessGuid)) { errorMessage = "Incorrect format of invitation code!"; return false; } var user = _context.GetNewUserByAccessCode(accessGuid); if (user == null) { errorMessage = "Cannot find account with given invitation code!"; return false; } user.UserToken = userToken; _context.SaveChanges(); errorMessage = string.Empty; return true; } } Right now I used simple solution for errors and made access code claiming method to follow usual TrySomething() methods pattern. This way I can keep error messages and their retrieval away from controller and in controller I just mediate error message from service to view. Controller Now all the code is moved to service layer and we need also some modifications to controller code so it makes use of users service. I don’t show here DI/IoC details about how to give service instance to controller. GetAccess() action of controller looks like this right now. [HttpPost] public ActionResult GetAccess(string accessCode) { var userToken = User.Identity.GetUserToken(); string errorMessage; if (!_userService.ClaimAccessCode(accessCode, userToken, out errorMessage)) { ModelState.AddModelError("accessCode", errorMessage); return View(); } Session["UserId"] = Guid.Parse(accessCode); return Redirect("~/admin"); } It’s short and nice now and it deals with web site part of access code claiming. In the case of error user is shown access code claiming view with error message that ClaimAccessCode() method returns as output parameter. If everything goes fine then access code is reserved for current user and user is authenticated. Conclusion When controller action grows big you have to move code to layers it actually belongs. In this posting I showed you how I moved access code claiming functionality from controller action to user service class that belongs to service layer of my application. As the result I have controller action that coordinates the user interaction when going through access code claiming process. Controller communicates with service layer and gets information about how access code claiming succeeded.

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How to represent a tree structure in NoSQL

- by Vlad Nicula

I'm new to NoSQL and have been playing around with a personal project on the MEAN stack (Mongo ExpressJs AngularJs NodeJs). I'm building a document editor of sorts that manages nodes of data. Each document is actually a tree. I have a CRUD api for documents, to create new trees and a CRUD api for nodes in a given document. Right now the documents are represented as a collection that holds everything, including nodes. The children parent relationship is done by ids. So the nodes are an map by id, and each node has references to what nodes are their children. I chose this "flat" approach because it is easier to get a node by id from a document. Being used to having a relation table between nodes and documents, a relation table between nodes and children nodes I find it a bit weird that I have to save the entire "nodes" map each time I update a node. Is there a better way to represent such a data type in NoSQL?

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Evolution of an Application: how to manage and improve core engine?

- by Phil Carter

The web application I work on has been live for a year now, but it's time for it to evolve and one of the ways in which it is evolving is into a multi-brand application - in this case several different companies using the application, different templates/content and some slight business logic changes between them. The problem I'm facing is implementing a best practice across the site where there are differences in business logic for each brand. These will mostly be very superficial, using a an alternative mailing list provider or capturing some extra data in a form. I don't want to have if(brand === x) { ... } else { ... } all over the site especially as most of what needs to be changed can be handled with extending the existing class. I've thought of several methods that could be used to instantiate the correct class, but I'm just not sure which is going to be best especially as some seem to lead to duplication of more code than should be necessary. Here's what I've considered: 1) Use a Static Loader similar to Zend_Loader which can take the class being requested, and has knowledge of the Brand and can then return the correct object. $class = App_Loader::getObject('User', $brand); 2) Factory classes. We use these in the application already for Products but we could utilise them here also to provide a transparent interface to the class. 3) Routing the page request to a specific brand controller. This however seems like it would duplicate a lot of code/logic. Is there a pattern or something else I should be considering to solve this problem? 4) How to manage a growing project that has multiple custom instances in production? Update This is a PHP application so the decisions on which class to load are made per request. There could be upwards of 100+ different 'brands' running.

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How to Handle frame rates and synchronizing screen repaints

- by David Kroukamp

I would first off say sorry if the title is worded incorrectly. Okay now let me give the scenario I'm creating a 2 player fighting game, An average battle will include a Map (moving/still) and 2 characters (which are rendered by redrawing a varying amount of sprites one after the other). Now at the moment I have a single game loop limiting me to a set number of frames per second (using Java): Timer timer = new Timer(0, new AbstractAction() { @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { long beginTime; //The time when the cycle begun long timeDiff; //The time it took for the cycle to execute int sleepTime; //ms to sleep (< 0 if we're behind) int fps = 1000 / 40; beginTime = System.nanoTime() / 1000000; //execute loop to update check collisions and draw gameLoop(); //Calculate how long did the cycle take timeDiff = System.nanoTime() / 1000000 - beginTime; //Calculate sleep time sleepTime = fps - (int) (timeDiff); if (sleepTime > 0) {//If sleepTime > 0 we're OK ((Timer)e.getSource()).setDelay(sleepTime); } } }); timer.start(); in gameLoop() characters are drawn to the screen ( a character holds an array of images which consists of their current sprites) every gameLoop() call will change the characters current sprite to the next and loop if the end is reached. But as you can imagine if a sprite is only 3 images in length than calling gameLoop() 40 times will cause the characters movement to be drawn 40/3=13 times. This causes a few minor anomilies in the sprited for some charcters So my question is how would I go about delivering a set amount of frames per second in when I have 2 characters on screen with varying amount of sprites?

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Is it necessary to create a database with as few tables as possible

- by Shaheer

Should we create a database structure with a minimum number of tables? Should it be designed in a way that everything stays in one place or is it okay to have more tables? Will it in anyway affect anything? I am asking this question because a friend of mine modified some database structure in mediaWiki. In the end, instead of 20 tables he was using only 8, and it took him 8 months to do that (it was his college assignment). EDIT I am concluding the answer as: size of the tables does NOT matter, until the case is exceptional; in which case the denormalization may help. Thanks to everyone for the answers.

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What are the downsides to using dependency injection?

- by kerry

I recently came across an interesting question on stack overflow with some interesting reponses. I like this post for three reasons. First, I am a big fan of dependency injection, it forces you to decouple your code, create cohesive interfaces, and should result in testable classes. Second, the author took the approach I usually do when trying to evaluate a technique or technology; suspend personal feelings and try to find some compelling arguments against it. Third, it proved that it is very difficult to come up with a compelling argument against dependency injection. What are the downsides to using dependency injection?

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