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• Can One Get a Solid Programming Foundation Without Going To College/University?

  - by Daniel

  First, I have already searched the site and read all the previous "self-taught vs. college" topics. The majority of the answers defended that going to college was the best choice, for two main reasons: Going to college gives you the paper, which is essential to landing jobs, especially in tough economic times. Going to college gives you a solid programming base, teaching you the principles that will be essential regardless of the language/path you take after. Here comes my question: I am not worried about reason 1 at all, because I already have my own company (I build websites/ do affiliate marketing) and a stable financial situation, so I am pretty sure I won't need to look around for a job. I am worried about reason 2 though. That is, I want to make sure I'll have as solid a programming foundation as anyone else out there, and I am wondering if that is possible with self-learning. Suppose I take my time to study the very basics, like discrete maths, algorithm design, programming logic, computer architecture, Assembly, C programming, databases and data structures - mostly using books,online resources and lots of coding. Say I spend 1-2 years covering those basics. Do you think my foundation would be solid, or still lack in comparison to someone who went to college?

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• Scalable solution for website polling

  - by Tom Irving

  I'm looking to add push notifications to one of my iOS apps. The app is a client for a website which doesn't offer push notifications. What I've come up with so far: App sends a message to home server when transitioning to background, asking the server to start polling the website for the logged in user. The home server starts a new process to poll for that user. Polling happens every so many seconds / minutes. When the user returns to the iOS app, the app sends a message to the home server to stop polling. The home server kills the process polling for the user. Repeat. The problem is that this soon becomes stupid: 100s of users means 100s of different processes. It's just not scalable in the slighest. What I've written so far is in PHP, using CURL to do the polling and I started with PHP a few days ago, so maybe I'm missing something obvious that could help me with this. Some advice would be great.

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• Agile bug fixing - what's the preferred process for testing?

  - by Andrew Stephens

  When a bug is fixed, the dev set its status to "resolved" and the bug is reassigned back to the person that created it. In our case this is usually the product owner - we don't have dedicated testers. But what's a good process for controlling how/when the PO tests the software? Should he be given the latest build after each bug is resolved/checked-in? Or what about every morning? Or should he only receive a build at (or close to) the end of the iteration, to include all of that iteration's new functionality and bug fixes? We are using TFS by the way.

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• How should modules access data outside their scope?

  - by Joe

  I run into this same problem quite often. First, I create a namespace and then add modules to this namespace. Then issue I always run into is how best to initialize the application? Naturally, each module has its own startup procedure so should this data(not code in some cases, just a list of items to run) stay with the module? Or should there be a startup procedure in the global namespace which has the startup data for ALL the modules. Which is the more robust way of organizing this situation? Should some things be made centralized or should there be strict adherence to modules encapsulating everything about themselves? Though this is a general architecture questions, Javascript centric answers would be really appreciated!

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• Any language where every class instance is a class too?

  - by Dokkat

  Taking inspiration from Javascript prototypes, I had the idea of a language where every instance can be used as a class. Before I potentially reinvent the wheel, I would like to ask if there is a language already using this concept: //To declare a Class, extend the base class (in this case, Type) Type(Weapon,{price:0}); //Same syntax to inherit; simply extend the parent: Weapon(Sword,{price:3}); Weapon(Axe,{price:4}); Sword(Katana,{price:7}); Sword(Dagger,{price:3}); //And the same to create an instance: Katana(myKatana,{nickname:"Leon"}); myKatana.price; // 7 myKatana.nickname; // Leon // An operator to return children of a class; Sword_; // [Katana, Dagger] // An operator to return array of descendants; Sword__; // [Katana, Dagger, myKatana] // An operator to return array of parents; Sword^; // Weapon // Arrays can be used as elements Sword__.price += 1; //increases price of Sword's descendants by 1 mySword.price; //8 // And to access specific element (using its name instead of index) var name = "mySword" Katana_[name]; // [mySword] Katana_[name].nickname; // Leon Has this kind of approach been already studied/implemented?

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• I have 5 days of vouchers for MS training… help me choose? [closed]

  - by Shyatic

  I'm a Microsoft centric guy (systems engineering side) and I already know the syntax of VB, have done VBScript pretty extensively and Excel VBA stuff as well. I want to make the leap into proper programming, probably with C# because it teaches me syntax I can use for Java if I want to go that route at some point. Since I have vouchers for 5 days of programming, and I can understand logic and understand how the .NET framework works... I would love to hear ideas on which MS Courses I should take. My primary focus is to work on web applications with web services that interact and do neat stuff... like for example, to create a 'chat' room or something interactive on the web. Or should I do something with HTML5/JS? I am really not sure... like I said, I want to work to make web services/sites. Not making the next Facebook mind you, but I'd like to work towards something in that spectrum on a much smaller scale. Please give me any advice, I'd like to book these classes asap Obviously getting involved with SQL and things that I will require would be important here.. you guys know better than me! Thanks!

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• How to Detect Sprites in a SpriteSheet?

  - by IAE

  I'm currently writing a Sprite Sheet Unpacker such as Alferds Spritesheet Unpacker. Now, before this is sent to gamedev, this isn't necessarily about games. I would like to know how to detect a sprite within a spriitesheet, or more abstactly, a shape inside of an image. Given this sprite sheet: I want to detect and extract all individual sprites. I've followed the algorithm detailed in Alferd's Blog Post which goes like: Determine predominant color and dub it the BackgroundColor Iterate over each pixel and check ColorAtXY == BackgroundColor If false, we've found a sprite. Keep going right until we find a BackgroundColor again, backtrack one, go down and repeat until a BackgroundColor is reached. Create a box from location to ending location. Repeat this until all sprites are boxed up. Combined overlapping boxes (or within a very short distance) The resulting non-overlapping boxes should contain the sprite. This implementation is fine, especially for small sprite sheets. However, I find the performance too poor for larger sprite sheets and I would like to know what algorithms or techniques can be leveraged to increase the finding of sprites. A second implementation I considered, but have not tested yet, is to find the first pixel, then use a backtracking algorithm to find every connected pixel. This should find a contiguous sprite (breaks down if the sprite is something like an explosion where particles are no longer part of the main sprite). The cool thing is that I can immediately remove a detected sprite from the sprite sheet. Any other suggestions?

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• How do you end up with event-sourcing if you use a xDD approach?

  - by Tomas Jansson

  When working in a TDD or BDD manner your unit tests are supposed to drive your design. But how do you end up with event-sourcing using a xDD techniques? As I see it event sourcing is something you need to adopt early on to take full advantage of it. Lets say that you start without event-sourcing and do a release. Later on when you are releasing version 2.0 you realize that it would be great to use event-sourcing, but at that point you alread have missed all the events from version 1.0 so it makes it much harder to implement. Or do you take some kind of backup of your db from before event-sourcing and use that as base line and then add event-sourcing on top of that?

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• Is php|architect any good?

  - by Andrew Heath

  Kind of a hard topic to search for, as architect turns up a lot about software architects instead. After 8 months of PHP self-study, I finally stumbled across the php|architect site. The length of time it took me to find it makes me suspicious of its quality. 3 related questions: do professional PHP coders read/care about php|architect? is it a good source for PHP beginners? assuming yes to either of the above, how far back in the archives to articles remain relevant? (ex: does stuff written about PHP4 still matter?)

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• Androids development life cycle model query [closed]

  - by Andrew Rose

  I have been currently researching Google and their approach to marketing the Android OS. Primarily using an open source technique with the Open Hand Alliance and out souring through third-party developers. I'm now keen to investigate their approach using various development life cycle models in the form of waterfall, spiral, scrum, agile etc. And i'm just curious to have some feedback from professionals and what approach they think Google would use to have a positive effect on their business. Thanks for your time Andy Rose

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• Empirical Evidence of Popularity of Git and Mercurial

  - by ana

  It's 2012! Mercurial and Git are both still strong. I understand the trade-offs of both. I also understand everyone has some sort of preference for one or the other. That's fine. I'm looking for some information on level of usage of both. For example, on stackoverflow.com, searching for Git gets you 12000 hits, Mercurial gets you 3000. Google Trends says it's 1.9:1.0 for Git. What other empirical information is available to estimate the relative usage of both tools?

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• Generic log analyzer that produces reports

  - by Eugene

  About 600 customers use our application. We have very detailed logs for everything that happens in the application, from changes in the data model, memory and CPU/GPU usage to clicks on the UI elements. We want to be able to parse the logs coming from these customers and analyze them to understand how users use our application and what happens internally in the application. Is there a log analyzer that can produce such reports automatically?

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• Looking for a simple to use email server that can be programmatically (preferably remotely) used

  - by sr2222

  I've been poking around the internet for much of the day, but I can't seem to find a good server to fit my needs. What I need is a simple to use and deploy (pref open source) lightweight email server that I can create users on programmaticly that has IMAP or POP support. I'd prefer something with an existing service interface, but if I have to write a REST API on top of an easy to use API, that's acceptable. The purpose of this tool will be to allow a test automation framework to create new email accounts and retrieve email sent to those addresses. I need text, html, and possibly attachment support as well. Perhaps it's my noobishness, but I can't really suss out the details from the documentation on the servers available out there to figure out which fit my needs.

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• How to manage a developer who has poor communication skills

  - by djcredo

  I manage a small team of developers on an application which is in the mid-point of its lifecycle, within a big firm. This unfortunately means there is commonly a 30/70 split of Programming tasks to "other technical work". This work includes: Working with DBA / Unix / Network / Loadbalancer teams on various tasks Placing & managing orders for hardware or infrastructure in different regions Running tests that have not yet been migrated to CI Analysis Support / Investigation Its fair to say that the Developers would all prefer to be coding, rather than doing these more mundane tasks, so I try to hand out the fun programming jobs evenly amongst the team. Most of the team was hired because, though they may not have the elite programming skills to write their own compiler / game engine / high-frequency trading system etc., they are good communicators who "can get stuff done", work with other teams, and somewhat navigate the complex beaurocracy here. They are good developers, but they are also good all-round technical staff. However, one member of the team probably has above-average coding skills, but below-average communication skills. Traditionally, the previous Development Manager tended to give him the Programming tasks and not the more mundane tasks listed above. However, I don't feel that this is fair to the rest of the team, who have shown an aptitute for developing a well-rounded skillset that is commonly required in a big-business IT department. What should I do in this situation? If I continue to give him more programming work, I know that it will be done faster (and conversly, I would expect him to complete the other work slower). But it goes against my principles, and promotes the idea that you can carve out a "comfortable niche" for yourself simply by being bad at the tasks you don't like.

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• PHP: A config file in .ini or .php format?

  - by Tim Visee

  I'm working on a huge CMS system, and I asked myself what configuration format I should use. There are two common formats for configuration files. The first one is an INI file, containg all the configuration properties. Then you can simply parse this INI file using build in PHP functions. A second option is to use a PHP file containing a regular PHP array with these configuration properties. Now, it's easier to edit an INI file, but a PHP file give's you more options, for example it allows you to add a function which retrieves one of the configuration options while reading the configuration file. Note: The PHP configuration file would only contain an array of configuration, no initialization functions or anything. (This is possible of course, but it's not implemented by default) Now, what is recommend for me to use as configuration file? What is the most common format for a configuration file? Should I go for simplicity with the INI files, or with a more dynamic one using PHP. One thing to note, this is not for personal usage. I'm planning to release the CMS system soon, and a lot of websites are scheduled already to change to my CMS system.

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• Acceptance tests done first...how can this be accomplished?

  - by Crazy Eddie

  The basic gist of most Agile methods is that a feature is not "done" until it's been developed, tested, and in many cases released. This is supposed to happen in quick turnaround chunks of time such as "Sprints" in the Scrum process. A common part of Agile is also TDD, which states that tests are done first. My team works on a GUI program that does a lot of specific drawing and such. In order to provide tests, the testing team needs to be able to work with something that at least attempts to perform the things they are trying to test. We've found no way around this problem. I can very much see where they are coming from because if I was trying to write software that targeted some basically mysterious interface I'd have a very hard time. Although we have behavior fairly well specified, the exact process of interacting with various UI elements when it comes to automation seems to be too unique to a feature to allow testers to write automated scripts to drive something that does not exist. Even if we could, a lot of things end up turning up later as having been missing from the specification. One thing we considered doing was having the testers write test "scripts" that are more like a set of steps that must be performed, as described from a use-case perspective, so that they can be "automated" by a human being. This can then be performed by the developer(s) writing the feature and/or verified by someone else. When the testers later get an opportunity they automate the "script" for regression purposes mainly. This didn't end up catching on in the team though. The testing part of the team is actually falling behind us by quite a margin. This is one reason why the apparently extra time of developing a "script" for a human being to perform just did not happen....they're under a crunch to keep up with us developers. If we waited for them, we'd get nothing done. It's not their fault really, they're a bottle neck but they're doing what they should be and working as fast as possible. The process itself seems to be set up against them. Very often we end up having to go back a month or more in what we've done to fix bugs that the testers have finally gotten to checking. It's an ugly truth that I'd like to do something about. So what do other teams do to solve this fail cascade? How can we get testers ahead of us and how can we make it so that there's actually time for them to write tests for the features we do in a sprint without making us sit and twiddle our thumbs in the meantime? As it's currently going, in order to get a feature "done", using agile definitions, would be to have developers work for 1 week, then testers work the second week, and developers hopefully being able to fix all the bugs they come up with in the last couple days. That's just not going to happen, even if I agreed it was a reasonable solution. I need better ideas...

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• How to self Motivate technically to put my ideas into execution or just getting a job at MNC like google or microsoft..

  - by Demla Pawan

  I mean, How to self Motivate to get a job at google or create another google in future. ,as there is no mentor who can guide me on this topic, so asked it here: I'm a Graduate in BE IT,but with less grades,with interest in learning new programming languages, but not yet done anything great like developed some system or anything. And I'm left with 2 more years to prove my worth to someone. So,is their a quick guide to start learning a language and then just go on implementing your ideas and it gets appreciated or I get a good Job ant Big MNC's. By the way, I just build one website for my one client and running my wordpress blog. And I had tried my hands on basic of C++,Java,JS,JSP,PHP,Ubuntu,web designing in past.

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• I'm tasked with leading the documentation effort for an existing, entirely undocumented, software product - what resources are there to help me?

  - by Ben Rose

  I'm a software developer at a technology company. I have been tasked with leading the documentation effort for the product I work on. The goal is to produce documentation internal to developer, and the project spills over into the business side, where it covers requirements documentation. This project is challenging. Specifically, I'm dealing with a product which: - has been around for a long time, at least 6 years. - has no form of documentation other than some small, outdated pieces here and there. - has comments in the code, but they are technical and do not convey any over-arching behavior (even on technical side). - as a consequence of having little to no documentation, is often unnecessarily complex under the covers In addition, we have not been given a lot of time to work on this project. I do not have any formal documentation or writing background, training, or experience. I have displayed some ability in writing/communication around the office, which may be why I was assigned to this project. Please share your advice or recommendation for resources to help me prepare and deal with this project. I'm looking for references to books/website/forums/whatever, to help me come up with the design of a plan with milestones, learn about best practices, task delegation, templates, buy-in, etc. I'm hoping specifically for resources targeting or giving special mention of introducing good documentation to existing, undocumented, projects. I would be very grateful for your responses. Ben

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• Should adapters or wrappers be unit tested?

  - by m3th0dman

  Suppose that I have a class that implements some logic: public MyLogicImpl implements MyLogic { public void myLogicMethod() { //my logic here } } and somewhere else a test class: public MyLogicImplTest { @Test public void testMyLogicMethod() { /test my logic } } I also have: @WebService public MyWebServices class { @Inject private MyLogic myLogic; @WebMethod public void myLogicWebMethod() { myLogic.myLogicMethod(); } } Should there be a test unit for myLogicWebMethod or should the testing for it be handled in integration testing.

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• Why do I have to choose between "management" and "technical" tracks in my career?

  - by Stephen Gross

  I was recently laid off, and although I found a new gig I'm a bit frustrated with how career tracks work in the land of software development. I really love doing a bit of everything: coding, testing, architect(ing), leadership/management, customer contact, requirements gathering, staff development, etc. Software companies, however, want me to fit into a niche: I'm either a coder, a tester, or a manager. When I try to explain to them that I'm best when I'm doing all of those at once, they seem very confused. I'm sympathetic to their interests, but at the same time frustrated that the industry works this way. Any advice? Do I just need to get with the program, so to speak?

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• Colleague unwilling to use unit tests "as it's more to code"

  - by m.edmondson

  A colleague is unwilling to use unit tests and instead opting for a quick test, pass it to the users, and if all is well it is published live. Needless to say some bugs do get through. I mentioned we should think about using unit tests - but she was all against it once it was realised more code would have to be written. This leaves me in the position of modifying something and not being sure the output is the same, especially as her code is spaghetti and I try to refactor it when I get a chance. So whats the best way forward for me?

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• What are some of the benefits of a "Micro-ORM"?

  - by Wayne M

  I've been looking into the so-called "Micro ORMs" like Dapper and (to a lesser extent as it relies on .NET 4.0) Massive as these might be easier to implement at work than a full-blown ORM since our current system is highly reliant on stored procedures and would require significant refactoring to work with an ORM like NHibernate or EF. What is the benefit of using one of these over a full-featured ORM? It seems like just a thin layer around a database connection that still forces you to write raw SQL - perhaps I'm wrong but I was always told the reason for ORMs in the first place is so you didn't have to write SQL, it could be automatically generated; especially for multi-table joins and mapping relationships between tables which are a pain to do in pure SQL but trivial with an ORM. For instance, looking at an example of Dapper: var connection = new SqlConnection(); // setup here... var person = connection.Query<Person>("select * from people where PersonId = @personId", new { PersonId = 42 }); How is that any different than using a handrolled ADO.NET data layer, except that you don't have to write the command, set the parameters and I suppose map the entity back using a Builder. It looks like you could even use a stored procedure call as the SQL string. Are there other tangible benefits that I'm missing here where a Micro ORM makes sense to use? I'm not really seeing how it's saving anything over the "old" way of using ADO.NET except maybe a few lines of code - you still have to write to figure out what SQL you need to execute (which can get hairy) and you still have to map relationships between tables (the part that IMHO ORMs help the most with).

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• Which .NET REST approach/technology/tool should I use?

  - by SonOfPirate

  I am implementing a RESTful web service and several client applications that are mostly in Silverlight. I am finding a litany of options for developing both the server-side and client-side of the API but am not sure which is the best approach. I'm concerned about stability as well as a platform that will continue to exist a few months from now. We started using the REST Starter Kit with .NET 3.5 but moved to the new WCF Web API when updating to .NET 4.0. All of their documentation indicates that WCF Web API is the replacement for the RSK. However, Web API is only in Preview 4 and does not include support for Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 clients (yet). WCF Web API looks like a wrapper on top of the WCF WebHttp Services stuff provided in the System.ServiceModel.Web library which makes me think that maybe it would be simpler to just go with the built-in stuff but Web API does offer some nice features. I am specifically tied-up trying to determine the best course for the client-side. My main requirement is that I need to support deserializing into my client-side objects quickly and easily. The Web API offers a nice client library but doesn't have a Silverlight version. I'd like to use the latest approach and the toolset that is being actively developed and supported. Is the REST Starter Kit really obsolete? Has anyone had any success implementing the WCF Web API toolkit? Is there merit to using either of these over the built-in WCF WebHttp Services features found in System.ServiceModel.Web? Is there a single solution that works for any client (web, Silverlight, etc.)? What suggestions do you have?

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• is it possible to use shopify for just their shopping cart component or should I just roll my own

  - by timpone

  I'm working on an e-commerce site and am a rails developer; due to the nature of the items, I am managing them in their own database so I'm really looking for something that is only for the shopping cart aspect (there are things like heavy nesting and integration with other pieces of the app that would be very difficult to reproduce). It seems like there are two ways that I can go. (1) One way is rolling my own shopping cart and using something like Stripe (which I have been evaluating and am working fine with it). This literally could be as easy as creating an orders table and a line items table and a lot of front-end. (2) Or I could try to integrate into a third-party shopping cart like Shopify. I am not really sure if I can just use the shopify shopping cart or whether there is any advantage to this. If I already have most of my app done, would shopify (or another shopping cart app) provide any significant benefit (it clearly could)? Or would the integration be too much of a headache? Like for example, when a user 'adds to order' on my site, can I post to shopify and associate it with that user? thx

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• Getting rid of Massive View Controller in iOS?

  - by Earl Grey

  I had a discussion with my colleague about the following problem. We have an application where we need filtering functionality. On any main screen within the upper navigation bar, there is a button in the upper right corner. Once you touch that button, an custom written Alert View like view will pop up modally, behind it a semitransparent black overlay view. In that modal view, there is a table view of options, and you can choose one exclusively. Based on your selection, once this modal view is closed, the list of items in the main view is filtered. It is simply a modally presented filter to filter the main table view.This UI design is dictated by the design department, I cannot do anything about it so let accept this as a premise. Also the main filter button in the navbar will change colours to indicate that the filter is active. The question I have is about implementation. I suggested to my colleague that we create a separate XYZFilter class that will be an instance created by the main view controller acquire the filtering options handle saving and restoration of its state - i.e. last filter selected provide its two views - the overlay view and the modal view be the datasource for the table in its modal view. For some unknown reason, my colleague was not impressed by that approach at all. He simply wants to do these functionalities in the main view controller, maybe out of being used to do this in the past like that :-/ Is there any fundamental problem with my approach? I want to keep the view controller small, not to have spaghetti code create a reusable component (for use outside the project) have more object oriented, decoupled approach. prevent duplication of code as we need the filtering in two different places but it looks the same in both.. Any advice?

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