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  • Write own messaging system vs. utilize existing ones

    - by A.Rashad
    We are trying to have our own startup, with a middleware application to glue small applications with enterprise legacy systems. for such middle-ware to function properly, we will need some sort of messaging system to make different components talk to each other in a reliable way. the alternatives are: use an existing messaging system, such as 0MQ, jBOSS, WebSphere MQ, etc. build our own messaging system the way we see the problem I am more biased towards the later option for the following reasons: to have more control over our final product to avoid any licensing problems later on to learn about messaging while writing the code to invent something new, that might cost us lots of $$$ if reused an existing system What would you do if in my shoes?

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  • PowerShell programming conventions

    - by Tahir Hassan
    Do you follow any any conventions when programming in PowerShell? For example, in scripts which are to be maintained long-term do you: Use the real cmdlet name or alias? Specify the cmdlet parameter name in full or only partially (dir -Recurse versus dir -r) When specifying string arguments for cmdlets do you enclose them in quotes (New-Object 'System.Int32' versus New-Object System.Int32 When writing functions and filters do you specify the types of parameters? Do you write cmdlets in the (official) correct case? For keywords like BEGIN...PROCESS...END do you write them in uppercase only? Thanks for any replies.

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  • Need personal advice on how to get out of a company..

    - by SOfan
    Hi, I am an SO user since past 6 months and this is the first time I am turning to SO for personal help. I have asked technical questions before with my real ID. I am stuck inside a service based IT company for the past one year and haven't been able to decide if to leave it, when to leave it and how to leave it. I had taken 2 weeks LWP on medical reason roughly at end of 1 year and then soon after reporting, I applied for 2 months more LWP (on medical/personal ground) with the intention of working on my health,take up a hobby class to ward off depression,pessimism, to have some fun in life, and to look for a job which I really would be excited about - that interests me and which matches with my strength. My leave starts from this Monday. So in any case, I had hard set in mind that I will leave the company after I join them back hopefully with some job offer already in hand (after figuring out what I want do). Neither I can stand the past project,past colleagues,company, HR, pathetically low salary. But if I really listen to my heart, I don't want to have to go back to that office after my sabbatical and again have to see those people. I will have to resign it after my sabbatical ends. Then HR people perhaps wont like it, may even accuse me on face or behind back that primary purpose of my leave must have been to hunt for a better job and I lied about medical and person reasons. Also, if they get nasty and force me to serve 2 months notice period. There is no way I see myself after sabbatical resuming in old project or starting new work. It will be a pain. Since they have already approved 2 months leave and stuff, ideally if they want, they should be just able to relieve me right on the next day after I join back. But, I don't know if they want to get nasty, will they mention about my 2 months sabbatical leave in my experience letter or more scary, the term medical/personal reason. I have hard earned my experience here, have worked against my will, mostly it has been painful and slogged like anything, because I realize the importance of work experience in IT industry. I don't have greed to have those 2 months included extra in my experience letter, but I don't want to mess up with my experience letter in a way which makes my next employer ask question, get suspicious, or be wary if I have any medical reason going on. Being an emotional,moody person or somebody who can't be in an environment, once my mind and heart starts hating it. I think it perhaps is best, if I resign on Monday itself telling them (in polite manner) something that look I took sabbatical for some reason but I don't want to resume working in the company after my sabbatical ends. So please accept my resignation. Now tell me what you want to do about my leave request, my notice period and when you are willing to relieve me. What should I write and how? Some background: I am working in an IT company in India.I am overqualified in the company. It is grossly underpaying me. My education qualifications far exceed anyone's in the whole company being a CS undergrad as well as a CS grad. I joined this company after finishing the grad. I had self-doubts about my skills and interest as a programmer. I like doing research oriented work, though didn't have any particular success during grad. My life here has been very hectic. The project containing many many sub-projects has kept me on my toes and I have never really liked the work. I have been playing against my strength. Also the company strict internet usage policy (you can't read gmails, can't browse any non-work related sites not even news). When working for a client, from the machine we can't even check company related emails.For this one has to go to kiosk like 5 machines in a small room etc. Most of the times those machines are not available, so it was not unusual to keep making rounds to these kiosk machines to check company emails, browse company related emails etc.So it was not so easy to keep in touch with company related basic affairs for a not particular careful person. Things like this which are new to me, make me feel restricted. I am an undecisive person with a sense of failure, self-doubt, not meeting up unrealistic expectation. Somewhere at back of mind, I envy my classmates who make a smooth transition from company to company without causing any gap in their resume. I on other hand have gaps in resume. I get tired after working in a place for sometime. problem with colleagues in general. I am not particular great with people, have few friends, not known for a fun nature, rather serious, scholar. I am not a typical conventional female. I think females are usually more disciplined. But I am not so. I reach office late (though after informing manager). I don't want to blame them entirely, because from my past, it is not unusual for me to get undecisive on things. Also I had doubts about my ability as researched and to succeed there. of building a relationship in a group, to have something to talk about, newspaper. I get cut-off from people. peer pressure. I make blunders in coding, lose patience. Consciously or unconsciously I feel contempt for people here, work here, environment here. I have doubts that either I go to a place which does innovation, does research oriented work, product biggies, have great motivated people, have competent people passionate about products they are building. But then I also doubt my ability to survive there. I have identified that an idea job for me would be 4 days a week, a high salary job. When among people in company/team, I can't think much. I need some time at home to read good authentic books written in good style on what work I am doing.So that I am comfortable with my understanding of work. I get into pressure easily under deadline and need 5th day to cool myself off. I took for 2 weeks leave, because each day was hell for me. May be the depression phase of bipolar is on and also partially it could be that being a work centered person, who derives happiness,self-esteem from work, haven't been enjoying work and have been working for the sole person of proving stability, and ability to stick, against all odds, and facing what challenges I see, bonding with people, identifying opportunities to learn in given task etc.have been averaging one day LWP in 1 week or 10 days. or may be because of my nature,ADD,not being able to switch context,out of touch with news, don't have a circle of friends with who I enjoy. less knowledge in general to talk about, just some technical stuff.anyway, so due to emotional reason, some practical reason etc, I wanted to be very sure before leaving. So my leave starts from Monday and I should feel happy about it. I have taken the leave to for a few purposes - to take care of my health by regular yoga/exercise (with project on, I just can't do anything regular), reassess myself to see what I want to try next which work I might like, look for next job, take up a hobby which I like say singing. I am not clear on my career,job aspiration. I have tried my hands on research. During this year appraisal yesterday, I even had some conflict with my last manager. In meeting with me one on one, he would say all nice things about me, but in feedback to new manager, he hasn't given any excellent feedback. It is all only good. I am angry at this old Manager. Also new manager also scolded me as I didn't agree to his appraisal and waited to hear myself from old Manager. He kind of scolded me for wasting his time. Am I being unethical somewhere? I am always very conscious of if I am cheating anywhere. What advice I am seeking? How to resign and what to write in resignation letter

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  • A little SQL tip for C# developers

    - by MikeParks
    The other day at work I came across a handy little block of SQL code from Jeremiah Clark's blog. It's pretty simple logic but through the mind of a C# developer making some quick DB updates, seems to me that it's more likely to end up writing out the code in Solution 1 instead of Solution 2 below to solve the problem. Basically, I needed to check and see if a specific record existed in Table1. If it does exist, then update that record, otherwise insert a new record into Table1. Solution 1: IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM Table1 WHERE Column1='SomeValue')     UPDATE Table1 SET (...) WHERE Column1='SomeValue' ELSE     INSERT INTO Table1 VALUES (...) Solution 2: UPDATE Table1 SET (...) WHERE Column1='SomeValue' IF @@ROWCOUNT=0     INSERT INTO Table1 VALUES (...)         As Jeremiah explains, they both accomplish the same thing but from a performance standpoint, Solution 2 is the better way to go (saved table/index scan). Just wanted to throw this small tip out there. Thanks! - Mike

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  • Webcast Q&A: Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    Last Thursday we had the second webcast in our WebCenter in Action webcast series, "Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter, where customer Michael Chander from Qualcomm and Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal from Oracle Partner Keste shared how Oracle WebCenter is powering Qualcomm’s externally facing website and providing a seamless experience for their customers. In case you missed it, here's a recap of the Q&A.   Mike Chandler, Qualcomm Q: Did you run into any issues when integrating all of the different applications together?A: Definitely, our main challenges were in the area of user provisioning and security propagation, all the standard stuff you might expect when hooking up SSO for authentication and authorization. In addition, we spent several iterations getting the UI’s in sync. While everyone was given the same digital material to build too, each team interpreted and implemented it their own way. Initially as a user navigated, if you were looking for it, you could slight variations in color or font or width , stuff like that. So we had to pull all the developers responsible for the UI together and get pixel level agreement on a lot of things so we could ensure seamless transitions across applications. Q: What has been the biggest benefit your end users have seen?A: Wow, there have been several. An SSO enabled environment was huge a win for our users. The portal application that this replaced had not really been invested in by the business. With this project, we had full business participation and backing, and it really showed in some key areas like the shopping experience. For example, while ordering in the previous site, the items did not have any pictures or really usable descriptions. A tremendous amount of work was done to try and make the site more intuitive and user friendly. Site performance has also drastically improved thanks to new hardware, improved database design, and of course the fact that ADF has made great strides in runtime performance. Q: Was there any resistance internally when implementing the solution? If so, how did you overcome that?A: Within a large company, I’m sure there is always going to be competition for large projects, as there was here. Once we got through the technical analysis and settled on the technology choices, it was actually no resistance to implementing the solution. This project was fully driven by the business with the aim of long term growth. I can confidently say that the fact that this project was given the utmost importance by both the business and IT really help put down any resistance that you would typically see while implementing a new solution. Q: Given the performance, what do you estimate to be the top end capacity of the system? A:I think our top end capacity is really only limited by our hardware. I’m comfortable saying we could grow 10x on our current hardware, both in terms of transactions and users. We can easily spin up new JVM instances if needed. We already use less JVM’s than we had planned. In addition, ADF is doing a very good job with his connection pooling and application module pooling, so we see a very good ratio of users connected to the systems vs db connections, without impacting performace. Q: What's the overview or summary of feedback from the users interacting with the site?A: Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from both the business and our customers. They’re very happy with the new SSO environment , the new LAF, and the performance of the site. Of course, it’s not all roses. No matter what, there are always going to be people that don’t like the layout or the color scheme, etc. By and large though, customers are happy and the business is happy. Q: Can you describe the impressions about the site before and after the project within Qualcomm?A: Before the project, the site worked and people were using it, but most people were not happy with it. It was slow and tended to be a bit tempermental, for example a user would perform a transaction and the system would throw and unexpected error. The user could back up and retry the steps and things would work fine, so why didn’t work the first time?. From a UI perspective, we’d hear comments like it looked like it was built by a high school student.  Vince Casarez & Gourav Goyal, Keste Q: Did you run into any obstacles when implementing the solution?A: It's interesting some people call them "obstacles" on this project we just called them "dependencies".  There were both technical and business related dependencies that we had to work out. Mike points out the SSO dependencies and the coordination and synchronization between the teams to have a seamless login experience and a seamless end user experience.  There was also a set of dependencies on the User Acceptance testing to make sure that everyone understood the use cases for how the system would be used.  With a branching into a new market and trying to match a simple user experience as many consumer sites have today, there was always a tendency for the team members to provide their suggestions on how things could be simpler.  But with all the work up front on the user design and getting the business driving this set of experiences, this minimized the downstream suggestions that tend to distract a team.  In this case, all the work up front allowed us to enumerate the "dependencies" and keep the distractions to a minimum. Q: Was there a lot of custom work that needed to be done for this particular solution?A: The focus for this particular solution was really on the custom processes. The interesting thing is that with the data flows and the integration with applications, there are some pre-built integrations, but realistically for the process flow, we had to build those. The framework and tooling we used made things easier so we didn’t have to implement core functionality, like transitioning from screen to screen or from flow to flow. The design feature of Task Flows really helped speed the development and keep the component infrastructure in line with the dynamic processes.  Task flows and other elements like Skins are core to the infrastructure or technology stack of Oracle. This then allowed the team to center the project focus around the business flows and use cases to meet the core requirements and keep the project on time. Q: What do you think were the keys to success for rolling out WebCenter?A:  The 5 main keys to success were: 1) Sponsorship from the whole organization around this project from senior executive agreement, business owners driving functionality, and IT development alignment; 2) Upfront design planning and use case definition to clearly define the project scope and requirements; 3) Focussed development and project management aligned with the top level goals and drivers; 4) User acceptance and usability testing along the way to identify potential issues and direct resolution of the issues;  and 5) Constant prioritization of the issues for development to fix by the business.  It also helps to have great team chemistry and really smart people working on the project. If you missed the webcast, be sure to catch the replay to see a live demonstration of WebCenter in action!  Qualcomm Provides a Seamless Experience for Customers with Oracle WebCenter from Oracle WebCenter

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  • What are the fundamentals of game development?

    - by Matt
    Hi, I completely do not understand how a video game can be coded. I'm a beginner programmer and only have experience writing console applications that do math and what not. I do not understand how these logical processes can make images move on the screen (video games). Obviously if i jumped into a game development book or something like that I would understand but I am currently still getting a grasp of the fundamentals of programming in general. Could anyone give a simple explanation , coding wise, on the jump between making a computer do simple math to making a computer produce amazing graphical programs such as video games? Maybe there are some intro videos someone can point me to? I

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  • phpbb users table entries deletion and its effects. what are all the clean up work before deleting an user

    - by Jayapal Chandran
    I am writing a window program which will run from the system tray. which will ping my phpbb board site to fetch new users registration information. So with the result i can check whether the user is spam user or not. if i feel it is a spam user then i will delete that entry from the users table. before deleting the users table what are all the other table that i should delete. so that there will not be any unlinked references which will then in due course of time gets numerous and waste of disk space. so i want to know what i should do before deleting an user so that all his other activities should be cleaned off before i deleting a user.

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  • What do I need to do, to get placed in any software company?

    - by Anto Aravinth
    I'm doing my 3rd year CSE Engineering. I guess this is the right time to ask this question! As in the next year, I'm going to do projects, "get my hands dirty". And there is only few days left out, as I know many people in Stack Overflow are working in Software field, I thought to ask these question. Does the project that I'm doing in my final year need to be excellent? If so, what kind of project to do? And how do you say that the project is excellent or not? Writing the code is very fun and serious at times. But the code should have a good algorithm? And mostly in any software companies interview, what kind of question they ask? Not but not the least, mastering in any particular language speaks in interviews?

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  • Predicate delegate in C#

    - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama
    I am writing few post on different type of delegates and and this post also will be part of it. In this post I am going to write about Predicate delegate which is available from C# 2.0. Following is list of post that I have written about delegates. Delegates in C#. Multicast delegates in C#. Func delegate in C#. Action delegate in C#. Predicate delegate in C#: As per MSDN predicate delegate is a pointer to a function that returns true or false and takes generics types as argument. It contains following signature. Predicate<T> – where T is any generic type and this delegate will always return Boolean value. The most common use of a predicate delegate is to searching items in array or list. So let’s take a simple example. Following is code for that. Read More

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  • How to specify which keys CapsLock affects?

    - by Seattle Jörg
    Using Maverick, I am not able to get the CapsLock behaviour I want: I would like it to affect essentially the alphabetical, numerical, and punctuation keys, i.e. all the keys that print something (as opposed to, say, the error keys), but only them. To illuminate this with an example: when writing code that uses % as the symbol for a comment, I want to be able to position the cursor at the start of a range of lines I want to comment out, then hit CapsLock, then iteratively hit the 5 key (using QWERTZ, Shift+5 gives %) and the arrow down key, so that I can quickly place a % at the start of the lines. Ubuntu in default configuration takes CapsLock literally, so that it affects only alphabetic keys. Under Preferences/Keyboard/Layout/Options I can make it act as a pressed Shift, but then the action of the arrow keys is to select text. All the other options available are equivalent to one of these two in my case. Is it possible to somehow get this behaviour? This is standard in Windows.

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  • Maintainability of Boolean logic - Is nesting if statements needed?

    - by Vaccano
    Which of these is better for maintainability? if (byteArrayVariable != null) if (byteArrayVariable .Length != 0) //Do something with byteArrayVariable OR if ((byteArrayVariable != null) && (byteArrayVariable.Length != 0)) //Do something with byteArrayVariable I prefer reading and writing the second, but I recall reading in code complete that doing things like that is bad for maintainability. This is because you are relying on the language to not evaluate the second part of the if if the first part is false and not all languages do that. (The second part will throw an exception if evaluated with a null byteArrayVariable.) I don't know if that is really something to worry about or not, and I would like general feedback on the question. Thanks.

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  • Where should i organize my matrices in a 3D Game engine?

    - by Need4Sleep
    I'm working with a group of people from around the world to create a game engine(and hopefully a game with it) within the next upcoming years. My first task was writing a camera class for the engine to use in order to add cameras to the scene, position and follow points in the scene. The problem i have is with using matrices for transformations in the class, should i keep matrices separate to each class? such as have the model matrix in the model class, camera matrix in the camera class, or have all matrices placed in one class/chuck? I could see pros and cons for each method, but i wanted to hear some input form a more professional standpoint.

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  • SQLAuthority News Milestone of 1300th Post and A Few Updates

    Today is my 1300th blog post and I realize that my blog has been quite running such a long journey. I have been writing for a lengthy time on this tech blog. Today I would like to go back and briefly recall the posts that were part of my blogs history. Read all list of [...]...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Mobile Web or Objective-C?

    Cameron Moll is worried about a future in which we’ll all write Objective-C for the iPhone OS instead of writing web standards for the mobile web.At one point in time, J2ME (now Java ME) and WAP were the starting points for a discussion on mobile strategy and the web. Then, for a brief period of time, you talked about HTML/CSS. Now, for a growing majority of mobile strategies that don’t require a global presence on widely varying devices, the discussion begins with iPhone.Emphasis mine. Strategy...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Chambers In A Castle Algorithm

    - by 7Aces
    Problem Statement - Given a NxM grid of 1s & 0s (1s mark walls, while 0s indicate empty chambers), the task is to identify the number of chambers & the size of the largest. And just to whet my curiosity, to find in which chamber, a cell belongs. It seems like an ad hoc problem, since the regular algorithms just don't fit in. I just can't get the logic for writing an algorithm for the problem. If you get it, pseudo-code would be of great help! Note - I have tried the regular grid search algorithms, but they don't suffice the problem requirements. Source - INOI Q Paper 2003

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  • Static GitHub powered blog engine

    - by Daniel Cazzulino
    Blog engines were the new &quot;cool thing to write&quot; after the fever of writing a new DI framework was over. It was kinda like the new &quot;hello world++&quot; example. Almost every single engine uses a database of some sort to keep posts and comments. Almost every one is not leveraging the web as a consequence ;) I was intrigued by the possibilities that a flexible and general-purpose hosting solution like Github could offer for a static blog engine: basically keeping plain markdown/HTML/razor/WLW/whatever files that through a publish/build time process generate static files that pass for a &quot;blog engine&quot;. GitHub even supports custom domain names, so why not? Such an &quot;engine&quot; would have a number of benefits: Plain CSS styling Arbitrary JavaScript Leverage the web infrastructure (caching, CDNs, etc.) ...Read full article

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  • Embed IF text parser in another game?

    - by DragonFax
    Are there any existing interactive fiction text parsing engines that I can embed in another game or application? I'm looking to use something as a library. I can pass it the available objects and verbs from my own side. It will parse the sentences from the user and give me back some sort of structure/AST describing what the user asked for. Then my own code can then act upon that request. I don't need something SIRI level. The simple sentences and actions that current IF games support is fine. But I'm not looking to write a whole text/sentence parser myself. This isn't an If game and I can't write it entirely in an interactive-fiction language like inform 7. Unfortunatly, I can't seem to find any examples of anyone using the text parsing capabilities of these engines without writing the entire game in that engine's language.

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  • 2010 SQLPeople Person of the Year

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction Back in 2010, I started recognizing the SQLPeople Person of the Year. It's been a tradition ever since. "But Andy, you're writing this in 2010." Yep. Good eye, Pep. The Award Goes To: Steve Jones ( Blog | @way0utwest ). I am not a DBA - I'm a database developer. I joke and say I look like the world's greatest DBA when there's no contention, the jobs are finishing successfully, queries return data quickly and accurately, and the backups succeed. But anyone looks like the world's greatest...(read more)

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  • What types of programming require practical category theory?

    - by Alexander Gruber
    Category theory has applications in theoretical computer science and obviously is central to abstract mathematics. I have heard that it also has direct practical applications in programming and software development. What type of programming is practical category theory necessary for? What do programmers use category theory to accomplish? Please note my use of "necessary" and "require" in this post. I realize that in some sense most programmers will benefit from having experience in different types of theories, but I am looking for direct applications where the usage of category theory is essential, i.e. if you didn't know category theory, you probably couldn't do it. Also, I'd like to clarify that by "what type of programming," I am hoping less for a broad answer like "functional programming," and more for specific applications like "writing bank software" or "making operating systems."

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  • Command line options style - POSIX or what?

    - by maaartinus
    Somewhere I saw a rant against java/javac allegedly using a mix of Windows and Unix style like java -classpath ... -ea ... Something IMHO, it is no mix, it's just like find works as well, isn't it? AFAIK, according to POSIX, the syntax should be like java --classpath ... --ea ... Something and -abcdef would mean specifying 6 short options at once. I wonder which version leads in general to less typing and less errors. I'm writing a small utility in Java and in no case I'm going to use Windows style /a /b since I'm interested primarily in Unix. What style should I choose?

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  • How to review the current state of open source vs. closed source graphics drivers?

    - by Bucic
    How to know whether it's worth it to replace open source drivers installed by default with proprietary ones. Are there any benchmarks? Major known issues summaries. I don't mean 'at the time of writing this post'. I mean an up-to-date status on how the drivers compare. This page https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ certainly doesn't do much on the matter, nor it even mentions Intel. EDIT: I've just learned there is no Intel proprietary driver because they made their drivers open source http://askubuntu.com/a/17395/29347

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  • Web technologies on GUI apps

    - by Apalala
    I developed many GUI applications for the Windows platform during my early professional career, and saw several GUI frameworks come, have whole magazines devoted to them, and then fade away. MFC is iconic. Tasked with writing yet another GUI application, I starter researching cross-platform frameworks like Qt and WxWindows. I found the same steep learning curves I knew from before, and tooling doesn't help much in building a functional and elegant user interface because its clumsy and complicated. But people are building beautiful and functional UIs on the Web all the time (look at this site!). The standards, the libraries, and the tools are certainly there. My thought and my question: Why not write a GUI in which most of the UI is handled by an embedded browser? I already know that the Qt widgets support a large part of CSS and JavaScript, and programmers with good knowledge about web development are relatively easy to find, ..., so... Have you done something like that before? What's your experience/advise?

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  • What is the politically correct way of refactoring other's code?

    - by dukeofgaming
    I'm currently working in a geographically distributed team in a big company. Everybody is just focused on today's tasks and getting things done, however this means sometimes things have to be done the quick way, and that causes problems... you know, same old, same old. I'm bumping into code with several smells such as: big functions pointless utility functions/methods (essentially just to save writing a word), overcomplicated algorithms, extremely big files that should be broken down into different files/classes (1,500+ lines), etc. What would be the best way of improving code without making other developers feel bad/wrong about any proposed improvements?

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  • How should I design a wizard for generating requirements and documentation

    - by user1777663
    I'm currently working in an industry where extensive documentation is required, but the apps I'm writing are all pretty much cookie cutter at a high level. What I'd like to do is build an app that asks a series of questions regarding business rules and marketing requirements to generate a requirements spec. For example, there might be a question set that asks "Does the user need to enter their age?" and a follow-up question of "What is the minimum age requirement?" If the inputs are "yes" and "18", then this app will generate requirements that look something like this: "The registration form shall include an age selector" "The registration form shall throw an error if the selected age is less than 18" Later on down the line, I'd like to extend this to do additional things like generate test cases and even code, but the idea is the same: generate some output based on rules determined by answering a set of questions. Are there any patterns I could research to better design the architecture of such an application? Is this something that I should be modeling as a finite state machine?

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  • PASS Summit – looking back on my first time

    - by Fatherjack
      So I was lucky enough to get my first experience of PASS Summit this year and took some time beforehand to read some blogs and reference material to get an idea on what to do and how to get the best out of my visit. Having been to other conferences – technical and non-technical – I had a reasonable idea on the routine and what to expect in general. Here is a list of a few things that I have learned/remembered as the week has gone by. Wear comfortable shoes. This actually needs to be broadened to Take several pairs of comfortable shoes. You will be spending many many hours, for several days one after another. Having comfortable feet that can literally support you for the duration will make the week in general a whole lot better. Not only at the conference but getting to and from you could well be walking. In the evenings you will be walking around town and standing talking in various bars and clubs. Looking back, on some days I was on my feet for over 20 hours. Make friends. This is a given for the long term benefits it brings but there is also an immediate reward in being at a conference with a friend or two. Some events are bigger and more popular than others and some have the type of session that every single attendee will want to be in. This is great for those that get in but if you are in the bathroom or queuing for coffee and you miss out it sucks. Having a friend that can get in to a room and reserve you a seat is a great advantage to make sure you get the content that you want to see and still have the coffee that you need. Don’t go to every session you want to see This might sound counter intuitive and it relies on the sessions being recorded in some way to guarantee you don’t totally miss out. Both PASS Summit and SQL Bits sessions are recorded (summit is audio, SQLBits is video) and this means that if you get into a good conversation with someone over a coffee you don’t have to break it up to go to a session. Obviously there is a trade-off here and you need to decide on the tipping point for yourself but a conversation at a place like this could make a big difference to the next contract or employer you have or it might simply be great catching up with some friends you don’t see so often. Go to at least one session you don’t want to Again, this will seem to be contrary to normal logic but there is no reason why you shouldn’t learn about a part of SQL Server that isn’t part of your daily routine. Not only will you learn something new but you will also pick up on the feelings and attitudes of the people in the session. So, if you are a DBA, head off to a BI session and so on. You’ll hear BI speakers speaking to a BI audience and get to understand their point of view and reasoning for making the decisions they do. You will also appreciate the way that your decisions and instructions affect the way they have to work. This will help you a lot when you are on a project, working with multiple teams and make you all more productive. Socialise While you are at the conference venue, speak to people. Ask questions, be interested in whoever you are speaking to. You get chances to talk to new friends at breakfast, dinner and every break between sessions. The only people that might not talk to you would be speakers that are about to go and give a session, in most cases speakers like peace and quiet before going on stage. Other than that the people around you are just waiting for someone to talk to them so make the first move. There is a whole lot going on outside of the conference hours and you should make an effort to join in with some of this too. At karaoke evenings or just out for a quiet drink with a few of the people you meet at the conference. Either way, don’t be a recluse and hide in your room or be alone out in the town. Don’t talk to people Once again this sounds wrong but stay with me. I have spoken to a number of speakers since Summit 2013 finished and they have all mentioned the time it has taken them to move about the conference venue due to people stopping them for a chat or to ask a question. 45 minutes to walk from a session room to the speaker room in one case. Wow. While none of the speakers were upset about this sort of delay I think delegates should take the situation into account and possibly defer their question to an email or to a time when the person they want is clearly less in demand. Give them a chance to enjoy the conference in the same way that you are, they may actually want to go to a session or just have a rest after giving their session – talking for 75 minutes is hard work, taking an extra 45 minutes right after is unbelievable. I certainly hope that they get good feedback on their sessions and perhaps if you spoke to a speaker outside a session you can give them a mention in the ‘any other comments’ part of the feedback, just to convey your gratitude for them giving up their time and expertise for free. Say thank you I just mentioned giving the speakers a clear, visible ‘thank you’ in the feedback but there are plenty of people that help make any conference the success it is that would really appreciate hearing that their efforts are valued. People on the registration desk, volunteers giving schedule guidance and directions, people on the community zone are all volunteers giving their time to help you have the best experience possible. Send an email to PASS and convey your thoughts about the work that was done. Maybe you want to be a volunteer next time so you could enquire how you get into that position at the same time. This isn’t an exclusive list and you may agree or disagree with the points I have made, please add anything you think is good advice in the comments. I’d like to finish by saying a huge thank you to all the people involved in planning, facilitating and executing the PASS Summit 2013, it was an excellent event and I know many others think it was a totally worthwhile event to attend.

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