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  • New college grad, psychology major, wants to code professionally. Should I get Sun Java-certified?

    - by Anita
    I just graduated from a fairly well-known liberal arts college in May. Interestingly, I majored in psychology, with a concentration in social psychology. In college I took Intro to Computer Science and hated it (used to blame it on myself; now I blame it on the professor :) However, I've always wanted to be a programmer, and finally got my wish by getting hired by a company that was willing to let me learn coding from scratch in exchange for low pay. Well, what do you know, I just got laid off this morning, and need a new job by November to pay the bills. I loved the coding part of my job at the company, and managed to learn enough Java to feel competent in the job and curious to learn more. I think my goal now is to become a professional programmer. I still know very little (never used Swing, for example) but nothing that a good book can't fix. That's the background anyway; sorry for the rambling - I'm still in shock from the layoff :( It seems to me the quickest way to get noticed by companies, without a CS degree, is by getting certification. I'm halfway through studying for the SCJP and can probably sit for an exam in a week or two. Am I right in my assumption that certs will help in my case? And in general, do I have a bat's chance in hell of making it against formally trained programmers? My assets are really just raw intelligence and intense curiosity; well, maybe a love for problem-solving too. Thanks all - feel free to edit/tag the post!

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  • 9 Gigapixel Photo Captures 84 Million Stars

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    The European Southern Observatory has released an absolutely enormous picture of the center of the Milky Way captured by their VISTA telescope–the image is 9 gigapixels and captures over 84 million stars. From the press release: The large mirror, wide field of view and very sensitive infrared detectors of ESO’s 4.1-metre Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) make it by far the best tool for this job. The team of astronomers is using data from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea programme (VVV), one of six public surveys carried out with VISTA. The data have been used to create a monumental 108 200 by 81 500 pixel colour image containing nearly nine billion pixels. This is one of the biggest astronomical images ever produced. The team has now used these data to compile the largest catalogue of the central concentration of stars in the Milky Way ever created. Want to check out all 9 billion glorious pixels in their uncompressed state? Be prepared to wait a bit, the uncompressed image is available for download but it weighs in at a massive 24.6GB. 84 Million Stars and Counting [via Wired] How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

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  • More CPU cores may not always lead to better performance – MAXDOP and query memory distribution in spotlight

    - by sqlworkshops
    More hardware normally delivers better performance, but there are exceptions where it can hinder performance. Understanding these exceptions and working around it is a major part of SQL Server performance tuning.   When a memory allocating query executes in parallel, SQL Server distributes memory to each task that is executing part of the query in parallel. In our example the sort operator that executes in parallel divides the memory across all tasks assuming even distribution of rows. Common memory allocating queries are that perform Sort and do Hash Match operations like Hash Join or Hash Aggregation or Hash Union.   In reality, how often are column values evenly distributed, think about an example; are employees working for your company distributed evenly across all the Zip codes or mainly concentrated in the headquarters? What happens when you sort result set based on Zip codes? Do all products in the catalog sell equally or are few products hot selling items?   One of my customers tested the below example on a 24 core server with various MAXDOP settings and here are the results:MAXDOP 1: CPU time = 1185 ms, elapsed time = 1188 msMAXDOP 4: CPU time = 1981 ms, elapsed time = 1568 msMAXDOP 8: CPU time = 1918 ms, elapsed time = 1619 msMAXDOP 12: CPU time = 2367 ms, elapsed time = 2258 msMAXDOP 16: CPU time = 2540 ms, elapsed time = 2579 msMAXDOP 20: CPU time = 2470 ms, elapsed time = 2534 msMAXDOP 0: CPU time = 2809 ms, elapsed time = 2721 ms - all 24 cores.In the above test, when the data was evenly distributed, the elapsed time of parallel query was always lower than serial query.   Why does the query get slower and slower with more CPU cores / higher MAXDOP? Maybe you can answer this question after reading the article; let me know: [email protected].   Well you get the point, let’s see an example.   The best way to learn is to practice. To create the below tables and reproduce the behavior, join the mailing list by using this link: www.sqlworkshops.com/ml and I will send you the table creation script.   Let’s update the Employees table with 49 out of 50 employees located in Zip code 2001. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 where EmployeeID % 50 = 1 update Employees set Zip = 2001 where EmployeeID % 50 != 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go   Let’s create the temporary table #FireDrill with all possible Zip codes. drop table #FireDrill go create table #FireDrill (Zip int primary key) insert into #FireDrill select distinct Zip from Employees update statistics #FireDrill with fullscan go  Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --First serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) goThe query took 1011 ms to complete.   The execution plan shows the 77816 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 799624.  No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.  Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 1912 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 79360 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 799624.  The estimated number of rows between serial and parallel plan are the same. The parallel plan has slightly more memory granted due to additional overhead. Sort properties shows the rows are unevenly distributed over the 4 threads.   Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.   Intermediate Summary: The reason for the higher duration with parallel plan was sort spill. This is due to uneven distribution of employees over Zip codes, especially concentration of 49 out of 50 employees in Zip code 2001. Now let’s update the Employees table and distribute employees evenly across all Zip codes.   update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go  Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --Serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) go   The query took 751 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 77816 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 784707.  No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.   Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 661 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 79360 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 784707.  Sort properties shows the rows are evenly distributed over the 4 threads. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.    Intermediate Summary: When employees were distributed unevenly, concentrated on 1 Zip code, parallel sort spilled while serial sort performed well without spilling to tempdb. When the employees were distributed evenly across all Zip codes, parallel sort and serial sort did not spill to tempdb. This shows uneven data distribution may affect the performance of some parallel queries negatively. For detailed discussion of memory allocation, refer to webcasts available at www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts.     Some of you might conclude from the above execution times that parallel query is not faster even when there is no spill. Below you can see when we are joining limited amount of Zip codes, parallel query will be fasted since it can use Bitmap Filtering.   Let’s update the Employees table with 49 out of 50 employees located in Zip code 2001. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 where EmployeeID % 50 = 1 update Employees set Zip = 2001 where EmployeeID % 50 != 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go  Let’s create the temporary table #FireDrill with limited Zip codes. drop table #FireDrill go create table #FireDrill (Zip int primary key) insert into #FireDrill select distinct Zip       from Employees where Zip between 1800 and 2001 update statistics #FireDrill with fullscan go  Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --Serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) go The query took 989 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 77816 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 785594. No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.  Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 1799 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 79360 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 785594.  Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.    The estimated number of rows between serial and parallel plan are the same. The parallel plan has slightly more memory granted due to additional overhead.  Intermediate Summary: The reason for the higher duration with parallel plan even with limited amount of Zip codes was sort spill. This is due to uneven distribution of employees over Zip codes, especially concentration of 49 out of 50 employees in Zip code 2001.   Now let’s update the Employees table and distribute employees evenly across all Zip codes. update Employees set Zip = EmployeeID / 400 + 1 go update statistics Employees with fullscan go Let’s execute the query serially with MAXDOP 1. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --Serially with MAXDOP 1 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 1) go The query took 250  ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 9016 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 79973.8.  No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.  Now let’s execute the query in parallel with MAXDOP 0.  --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute query with uneven Zip code distribution --In parallel with MAXDOP 0 set statistics time on go declare @EmployeeID int, @EmployeeName varchar(48),@zip int select @EmployeeName = e.EmployeeName, @zip = e.Zip from Employees e       inner join #FireDrill fd on (e.Zip = fd.Zip)       order by e.Zip option (maxdop 0) go The query took 85 ms to complete.  The execution plan shows the 13152 KB of memory was granted while the estimated rows were 784707.  No Sort Warnings in SQL Server Profiler.    Here you see, parallel query is much faster than serial query since SQL Server is using Bitmap Filtering to eliminate rows before the hash join.   Parallel queries are very good for performance, but in some cases it can hinder performance. If one identifies the reason for these hindrances, then it is possible to get the best out of parallelism. I covered many aspects of monitoring and tuning parallel queries in webcasts (www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts) and articles (www.sqlworkshops.com/articles). I suggest you to watch the webcasts and read the articles to better understand how to identify and tune parallel query performance issues.   Summary: One has to avoid sort spill over tempdb and the chances of spills are higher when a query executes in parallel with uneven data distribution. Parallel query brings its own advantage, reduced elapsed time and reduced work with Bitmap Filtering. So it is important to understand how to avoid spills over tempdb and when to execute a query in parallel.   I explain these concepts with detailed examples in my webcasts (www.sqlworkshops.com/webcasts), I recommend you to watch them. The best way to learn is to practice. To create the above tables and reproduce the behavior, join the mailing list at www.sqlworkshops.com/ml and I will send you the relevant SQL Scripts.   Register for the upcoming 3 Day Level 400 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Performance Monitoring & Tuning Hands-on Workshop in London, United Kingdom during March 15-17, 2011, click here to register / Microsoft UK TechNet.These are hands-on workshops with a maximum of 12 participants and not lectures. For consulting engagements click here.   Disclaimer and copyright information:This article refers to organizations and products that may be the trademarks or registered trademarks of their various owners. Copyright of this article belongs to R Meyyappan / www.sqlworkshops.com. You may freely use the ideas and concepts discussed in this article with acknowledgement (www.sqlworkshops.com), but you may not claim any of it as your own work. This article is for informational purposes only; you use any of the suggestions given here entirely at your own risk.   Register for the upcoming 3 Day Level 400 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 Performance Monitoring & Tuning Hands-on Workshop in London, United Kingdom during March 15-17, 2011, click here to register / Microsoft UK TechNet.These are hands-on workshops with a maximum of 12 participants and not lectures. For consulting engagements click here.   R Meyyappan [email protected] LinkedIn: http://at.linkedin.com/in/rmeyyappan  

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  • FireLog: proper installation...

    - by kent
    I have installed the firewiresdk26 on my dev mac... and in the Tools/ directory is FireLog. I have run the FireLog 2.0.0.pkg installer on my dev mac, but the payload it deploys is installed in my /System/Library tree, as opposed to my /Developer/SDKs tree. so when I try to include the header iokit/firewire/FireLog.h it does not get found. am I missing something? or doing something wrong? or is this an error in the installer (either FW26 or FireLog installers?) I realize that the FireLog installer is intended to be run on the machine to be debugged remotely and thus it makes sense that the framework is placed in the /System/Library path, however none of the installers gets it into my developer path... I guess I just have to move it over there by hand, but before I do that I wanted to see if I'm just overlooking something silly and need to read the docs with more concentration or something... anyone run into this before? [thx]

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  • What skills are needed to be successful at robotics?

    - by Click Upvote
    I'm considering studying to be a robotics engineer. The desire to work in that field is definitely there.. but I'm wondering what my chances of success would be. Generally I'm good with mental tasks of any sort such as programming, maths, physics, etc, and I think i'd be able to do electrical work such as soldering wires, changing batteries, etc. However, I'm not so good with things of a physical nature where I have to use my hands. For example, if you give me some vegetables to slice and dice, all of them will be diced un-evenly and some will look ugly. This might be because I have poor mind-hand coordination or because of a lack of concentration. Thoughts?

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  • displaying .aspx and .aspx.cs files such that its not understood by the browser

    - by user287745
    i have to give the user the option to upload his own aspx and aspx.cs files on to the server, adjust the hyperlink to point to a page which would do the following display the aspx and aspx.cs files code onto the page without actually rendering the code the browser should not understand anything, and while reading the files to display them the method be such that nothing is processed on the server regarding the code within the files to prevent from unnecessary problems many user would try to cause. i have tried many ways of displaying it but it ends up on displaying the actual comments instead of the code. please suggest with links to examples how to achieve the above. please note main concentration is on asp.net and c# using vs08, so j script and ready-made tools be avoided if feasible thank you all

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  • How do you manage your time as a team leader?

    - by Bryan Slatner
    Where I work, my role has been evolving from a pure development role to team leadership. I find that this suits me, and I'm generally enjoying it. One aspect of the job that continually vexes me, though, is time management. My day used to be pure coding. Now, I still have a largely full plate of coding duties, but I'm expected to mentor other developers, work on requirements, make design decisions for other developers, evaluate bug reports from users, assign them to developers, and so on. I find that my day has become on interruption after another and the prolonged periods of sustained concentration needed to get any actual quality coding done are becoming rarer and rarer. Today, I finally grabbed my laptop and escaped to a coffee shop so I could get some actual work done. How do the team leads here manage their day -- or manage their workplace -- so they don't let their administrative tasks overwhelm them?

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  • Improving my career in web development

    - by Dilse Naaz
    Hi I am a new guy in web development using .net technology. I have strong ambition to make up a good career in this field. But when i starting to learn something from the internet tutorials, i can't complete that. I will stop the reading before completion. so i decided everyday to start a new life in development. But i cant to do that. please help me for improving my career by suggesting some tips for increasing the concentration or something like that. thanks in advance.

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  • How to deploy updates to .NET website in cluster

    - by royappa
    We are operating a corporate web application on a load-balanced cluster that consists of two identical IIS servers talking to a single MSSQL database. To deploy updates I am using this primitive process: 1) Make a copy of the entire site folder (wwwroot\inetpub\whatever) on each IIS box 2) Download the updated, compiled files onto each IIS box from our development area 3) Shut down IIS both web servers 4) Copy the new and updated files into the wwwroot folder (overwriting any same files) 5) Then restart IIS on both machines When there are database changes involved there are a few other steps. The whole process is fairly quick but it is ugly and fraught with danger, so it has to be done with full concentration. I would like to just push one button to make it all happen. And I want a one-click rollback in case there is a problem (that's the reason I make the copy in step #1). I am looking for tools to manage and improve this process. If it also helped us maintain a changelog, that would be nice. Thanks.

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  • How much does precomputation (matching a series of strings and their permutations with a set number

    - by nipun
    Consider a typical slots machine with n reels(say reel1: a,b,c,d,w1,d,b, ..etc). On play we generate a concatenated string of n objects (like for above, chars) We have a paytable which lists winning strings with payout amounts. The problem is a wild character (list of wilds: w1,w2) which can replace {w1:a,b,c},{w2:a} ..etc. Is it really worthwhile to have all possible winning strings permutations with the wilds precomputed and used or simply at the time of occurance, generate all combinations with the pattern in hand accordingly. I did'nt really see much difference initially, but now if I need to scale the machine to handle 11+ reels with a much higher concentration of wilds than previously, I need to figure out the exact approach for this particular bit. Any ideas will be really appreciated :)

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  • Source of (programmer) inefficiency

    - by Daniel
    I am interested to gain a better insight about the possible reasons of personal inefficiency as programmers (and only in programming) due to – simply - our own errors (because we are humans – well, almost all of us). I am not interested in how much we are productive or in how many adjustements the customer asks for when the work is done, but where and how each of us spend that part of its time in tasks that are unproductive and there is no one to blame except ourselves. Excluding ego - feeding and / or self – gratification, what I am trying to get (for all of us) is: what are the common issues eating our time; insight on reasons for that issues; identify simple way for us, personally (not delegating actions to other or our organizations), to correct our own problems. Please, do not think in academic terms but aim at the opportunity to compare our daily experiences and understand what are and how we try to fix our personal deficiencies. If you are interested to respond to this post, please: integrate the list if you see something important (or obvious) missing; highlight or name honestly your first issue tellng the way you try to address and solve your issue acting on yourself and yourself only in a sort of "continuous quality improving" My criteria for accepting the answer is: choose the best solution (feasibility and utility) to fix one (or more) of the problems of the list. Of course, selecting an error is not a vote on our skills: maybe we are hyper professional programmers and we lose ten minutes only every year or we are terribly inefficient, losing a couple of days a week: reasons for inefficiency could be really the same - but in a different scale. A possible list: Plain error in the names (variables, functions). Inability to see the obvious in your code. Misreading. Lack of concentration. Trying to use a technology you have not mastered. Errors with data types. Time required to understand your previous code or your documentation. Trying to do something more than requested because you enjoy it Using solutions more complicated than required because you enjoy it. Plain logical errors. Errors due to your fault in communications. Distraction My first personal issue: "Trying to use a technology you do not master." I have to use daily several technologies and I often need to spend significant time correcting code because my assumptions were plainly wrong. Reasons for this: production needs put high pressure and make difficult to find the time to learn. I try to address this reading technical books - as many as I can - even if this actually consumes a lot of time.

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  • RIM's current BB7 developer toolset is a joke

    - by mbrit
    tl;dr - RIM's current developer toolset is not fit for purpose.Background to this is that I'm currently working on a PhoneGap/Cordova project for a client that has to run on BlackBerry. The tooling is so ridiculous to use that even though I had a gentle dig at them in a Guardian piece it's worth having a more full-on attack.At the moment, RIM's pitch is that apps are built for the current BBOS7 devices using WebWorks. This is an HTML-based toolset. Essentially a browser is spun up in a native app container and your app is powered by JavaScript. Specific JavaScript libraries exist that thunk down to native capabilities no the device. I happen to use PhoneCap/Cordova in combination with this.The tooling is non-existent. I'm using TextMate, Ant, and Terminal to develop the app. There's no "console.log" output, and no debugging. The only way to instrument the app is to put "alert" calls in your code.Apart from the fact that that's *not* fine in 2012, how about this… every time you deploy a new app to the device, the device has to reboot. This process takes six minutes on a relatively modern BlackBerry device. How about this as well - in order to get a file into the package it has to be signed. My small app over here has 100 different files (75 or so generated). Signing doesn't happen locally, it happens on RIM's servers in Waterloo. Thus whenever you deploy the app you have this utility have to call RIM's servers 100 times. More to the point, sometimes during the day these servers have "micro-downtime" moments where they're unreachable for five or ten minutes, normally two or three times a day. Oh yes, you'll also get an email sent to you per signing on success or failure. 100 inbound emails, per deployment.(I started this post at the beginning of one of these cycles, by the way. That's how long it takes to build and deploy *once*. By the way, the change I made didn't work.)To clarify:* Change the script,* Build it using Ant,* Ant will spin up a Java app that talks to RIM's servers to sign it.* Receive 100 emails, assuming the server is up.* App deployed - takes about 30 seconds.* BlackBerry device restarts - takes about six minutes.* Find and open the app. Go through security prompts.* Test the app, with no "console.log" output and no debugger."Why not use the simulator?" I hear you ask. Well, apart from the fact that the simulator refused to reach any network service over HTTPS that I happen to own? (Some people suggest changing DNS settings for this known issue.) Admittedly, the simulator does show you console.log, but you still have the "six minute" restart issue on the simulator.Developers will understand this problem. Breaking concentration for six-plus minutes every time you want to deploy an app turns developing into a nightmare. Combining that with no worthy debugging tools turns the toolset into a joke.

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  • Gauging Maturity of your BPM Strategy - part 1 / 2

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} In this post I will discuss the essence of maturity assessment and the business imperative for doing the same in the context of BPM. Social psychology purports that an individual progresses from being a beginner to an expert in a given activity or task along four stages of self-awareness: Unconscious Incompetence where the individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit and may even deny the usefulness of the skill. Conscious Incompetence where the individual recognizes the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. Conscious Competence where the individual understands or knows how to do something but demonstrating the skill requires explicit concentration. Unconscious Competence where the individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and serves as a basis of developing other complementary skills. We can extend the above thinking to an organization as a whole by measuring an organization’s level of competence in a specific area or capability, as an aggregate of the competence levels of individuals it is comprised of. After all organizations too like individuals, evolve through experience, develop “memory” and capabilities that are shaped through a constant cycle of learning, un-learning and re-learning. Hence the key to organizational success lies in developing these capabilities to enable execution of its strategy in-line with the external environment i.e. demand, competition, economy etc. However developing a capability merits establishing a base line in order to Assess the magnitude of improvement from past investments Identify gaps and short-comings Prioritize future investments in the right areas A maturity assessment is essentially an organizational self-awareness check that is aimed at depicting the “as-is” snapshot of an existing capability in-order to guide future investments to develop that capability in-line with business goals. This effectively is the essence of a maturity Organizational capabilities stem through its architecture, routines, culture and intellectual resources that are implicitly and explicitly embedded in its business processes. Given that business processes underpin realization of organizational capabilities, is what has prompted business transformation and process management efforts. Thus, the BPM capability of an organization needs to be measured on an on-going basis to ensure delivery of its planned benefits. In my next post I will describe Oracle’s BPM Maturity assessment methodology.

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  • How is programming affected by spatial aptitude?

    - by natli
    The longer I work on a project, the less clear it becomes. It's like I cannot seperate various classes/objects anymore in my head. Everything starts mixing up, and it's extremely hard to take it all apart again. I start putting functions in classes where they really don't belong, and make silly mistakes such as writing code that I later find was 100% obsolete; things are no longer clearly mappable in my head. It isn't until I take a step back for several hours (or days somtimes!) that I can actually see what's going on again, and be productive. I usually try to fight through this, I am so passionate about coding that I wouldn't for the life of me know what else I could be doing. This is when stuff can get really weird, I get so up in my head that I sort of lose touch with reality (to some extent) in that various actions, such as pouring a glass of water, no longer happen on a concious level. It happens on auto pilot, during which pretty much all of my concious concentration (is that even a thing?) is devoted to borderline pointless problem solving (trying to seperate elements of code). It feels like a losing battle. So I took an IQ test a while ago (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale I believe it was) and it turned out my Spatial Aptitude was quite low. I still got a decent score, just above average, so I won't have to poke things with a stick for a living, but I am a little worried that this is such a handicap when writing/engineering computer programs that I won't ever be able to do it seriously or professionally. I am very much interested in what other people think of this.. could a low spatial aptitude be the cause of the above described problems? Maybe I should be looking more along the lines of ADD or something similar, because I did get diagnosed with ADD at the age of 17 (5 years ago) but the medicine I received didn't seem to affect me that much so I never took it all that serious. Sorry if I got a little off topic there, I know this is not a mental help board, the question should be clear; How is programming affected by spatial aptitude? As far as I know people are born with low/med/high spatial aptitude, so I think it's interesting to find out if the more fortunate are better programmers by birth right.

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  • How employable am I as a programmer?

    - by dsimcha
    I'm currently a Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in computational biology and am starting to think about what I want to do after graduate school. I feel like I've accumulated a lot of programming skills while in grad school, but taken a very non-traditional path to learning all this stuff. I'm wondering whether I would have an easy time getting hired as a programmer and could fall back on that if I can't find a good job directly in my field, and if so whether I would qualify for a more prestigious position than "code monkey". Things I Have Going For Me Approximately 4 years of experience programming as part of my research. I believe I have a solid enough grasp of the fundamentals that I could pick up new languages and technologies pretty fast, and could demonstrate this in an interview. Good math and statistics skills. An extensive portfolio of open source work (and the knowledge that working on these projects implies): I wrote a statistics library in D, mostly from scratch. I wrote a parallelism library (parallel map, reduce, foreach, task parallelism, pipelining, etc.) that is currently in review for adoption by the D standard library. I wrote a 2D plotting library for D against the GTK Cairo backend. I currently use it for most of the figures I make for my research. I've contributed several major performance optimizations to the D garbage collector. (Most of these were low-hanging fruit, but it still shows my knowledge of low-level issues like memory management, pointers and bit twiddling.) I've contributed lots of miscellaneous bug fixes to the D standard library and could show the change logs to prove it. (This demonstrates my ability read other people's code.) Things I Have Going Against Me Most of my programming experience is in D and Python. I have very little to virtually no experience in the more established, "enterprise-y" languages like Java, C# and C++, though I have learned a decent amount about these languages from small, one-off projects and discussions about language design in the D community. In general I have absolutely no knowledge of "enterprise-y" technlogies. I've never used a framework before, possibly because most reusable code for scientific work and for D tends to call itself a "library" instead. I have virtually no formal computer science/software engineering training. Almost all of my knowledge comes from talking to programming geek friends, reading blogs, forums, StackOverflow, etc. I have zero professional experience with the official title of "developer", "software engineer", or something similar.

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  • Can I recover a non-system disk deleted during 2008 R2 setup?

    - by serialhobbyist
    I've done a truly stupid thing and 'deleted' the data disk on a Server 2008 R2 box. Can I recover it? If so, how? I was rebuilding the box because a motherboard change had broken things. I've built loads of boxes and was going through the standard stuff without much concentration. I got to the disk screen which normally displays the two paritions on the drive: the recovery one and the system one. As normal, I deleted the two things I saw. It was only when two lots of unallocated space didn't merge into one that the full horror of what I'd done hit me. Yes, I've got backups... of the stuff I have space to back up. The real irony is that, earlier in the day, I'd ordered to 1 TB disks to deal with the problem. So, anyway, I'd really like to get this partition back because it'll save me a lot of time. How can I do it?

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  • How to use Koala Facebook Graph API?

    - by reko
    I am a Rails newbie. I want to use Koala's Graph API. In my controller @graph = Koala::Facebook::API.new('myFacebookAccessToken') @hello = @graph.get_object("my.Name") When I do this, I get something like this { "id"=>"123456", "name"=>"First Middle Last", "first_name"=>"First", "middle_name"=>"Middle", "last_name"=>"Last", "link"=>"http://www.facebook.com/MyName", "username"=>"my.name", "birthday"=>"12/12/1212", "hometown"=>{"id"=>"115200305133358163", "name"=>"City, State"}, "location"=>{"id"=>"1054648928202133335", "name"=>"City, State"}, "bio"=>"This is my awesome Bio.", "quotes"=>"I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. - William Ernest Henley\r\n\r\n"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.\" - Mark Twain", "work"=>[{"employer"=>{"id"=>"100751133333", "name"=>"Company1"}, "position"=>{"id"=>"105763693332790962", "name"=>"Position1"}, "start_date"=>"2010-08", "end_date"=>"2011-07"}], "sports"=>[{"id"=>"104019549633137", "name"=>"Sport1"}, {"id"=>"103992339636529", "name"=>"Sport2"}], "favorite_teams"=>[{"id"=>"105467226133353743", "name"=>"Fav1"}, {"id"=>"19031343444432369133", "name"=>"Fav2"}, {"id"=>"98027790139333", "name"=>"Fav3"}, {"id"=>"104055132963393331", "name"=>"Fav4"}, {"id"=>"191744431437533310", "name"=>"Fav5"}], "favorite_athletes"=>[{"id"=>"10836600585799922", "name"=>"Fava1"}, {"id"=>"18995689436787722", "name"=>"Fava2"}, {"id"=>"11156342219404022", "name"=>"Fava4"}, {"id"=>"11169998212279347", "name"=>"Fava5"}, {"id"=>"122326564475039", "name"=>"Fava6"}], "inspirational_people"=>[{"id"=>"16383141733798", "name"=>"Fava7"}, {"id"=>"113529011990793335", "name"=>"fava8"}, {"id"=>"112032333138809855566", "name"=>"Fava9"}, {"id"=>"10810367588423324", "name"=>"Fava10"}], "education"=>[{"school"=>{"id"=>"13478880321332322233663", "name"=>"School1"}, "type"=>"High School", "with"=>[{"id"=>"1401052755", "name"=>"Friend1"}]}, {"school"=>{"id"=>"11482777188037224", "name"=>"School2"}, "year"=>{"id"=>"138383069535219", "name"=>"2005"}, "type"=>"High School"}, {"school"=>{"id"=>"10604484633093514", "name"=>"School3"}, "year"=>{"id"=>"142963519060927", "name"=>"2010"}, "concentration"=>[{"id"=>"10407695629335773", "name"=>"c1"}], "type"=>"College"}, {"school"=>{"id"=>"22030497466330708", "name"=>"School4"}, "degree"=>{"id"=>"19233130157477979", "name"=>"c3"}, "year"=>{"id"=>"201638419856163", "name"=>"2011"}, "type"=>"Graduate School"}], "gender"=>"male", "interested_in"=>["female"], "relationship_status"=>"Single", "religion"=>"Religion1", "political"=>"Political1", "email"=>"[email protected]", "timezone"=>-8, "locale"=>"en_US", "languages"=>[{"id"=>"10605952233759137", "name"=>"English"}, {"id"=>"10337617475934611", "name"=>"L2"}, {"id"=>"11296944428713061", "name"=>"L3"}], "verified"=>true, "updated_time"=>"2012-02-24T04:18:05+0000" } How do I show this entire hash in the view in a good format? This is what I did from what ever I learnt.. In my view <% @hello.each do |key, value| %> <li><%=h "#{key.to_s} : #{value.to_s}" %></li> <% end %> This will get the entire thing converted to a list... It works awesome if its just one key.. but how to work with multiple keys and show only the information... something like when it outputs hometown : City, State rather than something like hometown : {"id"=>"115200305133358163", "name"=>"City, State"} Also for education if I just say education[school][name] to display list of schools attended? The error i get is can't convert String into Integer I also tried to do this in my controller, but I get the same error.. @fav_teams = @hello["favorite_teams"]["name"] Also, how can I save all these to the database.. something like just the list of all schools.. not their id no's? Update: The way I plan to save to my database is.. lets say for a user model, i want to save to database as :facebook_id, :facebook_name, :facebook_firstname, ...., :facebook_hometown .. here I only want to save name... when it comes to education.. I want to save.. school, concentration and type.. I have no idea on how to achieve this.. Looking forward for help! thanks!

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  • Move on and look elsewhere, or confront the boss?

    - by Meister
    Background: I have my Associates in Applied Science (Comp/Info Tech) with a strong focus in programming, and I'm taking University classes to get my Bachelors. I was recently hired at a local company to be a Software Engineer I on a team of about 8, and I've been told they're looking to hire more. This is my first job, and I was offered what I feel to be an extremely generous starting salary ($30/hr essentially + benefits and yearly bonus). What got me hired was my passion for programming and a strong set of personal projects. Problem: I had no prior experience when I interviewed, so I didn't know exactly what to ask them about the company when I was hired. I've spotted a number of warning signs and annoyances since then, such as: Four developers when I started, with everyone talking about "Ben" or "Ryan" leaving. One engineer hired thirty days before me, one hired two weeks after me. Most of the department has been hiring a large number of people since I started. Extremely limited internet access. I understand the idea from an IT point of view, but not only is Facebook blocked, but so it Youtube, Twitter, and Pandora. I've also figured out that they block all access to non-DNS websites (http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/) and strangely enough Miranda-IM. Low cubicles. Which is fine because I like my immediate coworkers, but they put the developers with the customer service, customer training, and QA department in a huge open room. Noise, noise, noise, and people stop to chitchat all day long. Headphones only go so far. Several emails have been sent out by my boss since I started telling us programmers to not talk about non-work-related-things like Video Games at our cubicles, despite us only spending maybe five minutes every few hours doing so. Further digging tells me that this is because someone keeps complaining that the programmers are "slacking off". People are looking over my shoulder all day. I was in the Freenode webchat to get help with a programming issue, and within minutes I had an email from my boss (to all the developers) telling us that we should NOT be connected to any outside chat servers at work. Version control system from 2005 that we must access with IE and keep the Java 1.4 JRE installed to be able to use. I accidentally updated to Java 6 one day and spent the next two days fighting with my PC to undo this "problem". No source control, no comments on anything, no standards, no code review, no unit testing, no common sense. I literally found a problem in how they handle string resource translations that stems from the simple fact that they don't trim excess white spaces, leading to developers doing: getResource("Date: ") instead of: getResource("Date") + ": ", and I was told to just add the excess white spaces back to the database instead of dealing with the issue directly. Some of these things I'd like to try to understand, but I like having IRC open to talk in a few different rooms during the day and keep in touch with friends/family over IM. They don't break my concentration (not NEARLY as much as the lady from QA stopping by to talk about her son), but because people are looking over my shoulder all day as they walk by they complain when they see something that's not "programmer-looking work". I've been told by my boss and QA that I do good, fast work. I should be judged on my work output and quality, not what I have up on my screen for the five seconds you're walking by So, my question is, even though I'm just barely at my 90 days: How do you decide to move on from a job and looking elsewhere, or when you should start working with your boss to resolve these issues? Is it even possible to get the boss to work with me in many of these things? This is the only place I heard back from even though I sent out several resume's a day for several months, and this place does pay well for putting up with their many flaws, but I'm just starting to get so miserable working here already. Should I just put up with it?

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  • Spotlight on an office – Utrecht

    - by Maria Sandu
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} This time in our monthly topic, we have our spotlight on the brand new Oracle office in Utrecht, the Netherlands. About 35km south-east of Schiphol Airport and centrally located in the Netherlands, Oracle moved into the Facet building in March 2011. Facet is much more than an office building, it creates a work environment that relates to the ‘No Limits’ philosophy Oracle has in the Netherlands. “No Limits” means the building belongs to everyone. You choose the best place to work, based on the activities of that moment. To point this out, we currently have 1050 people working for Oracle Netherlands, and 623 workplaces. There is virtually no limit to where you can sit in our shiny new offices; we no longer have 'zoning', where departments own specific areas in the building, Even the Managing Director of Oracle Netherlands, does not have an office and he chooses a different working place every day. So make sure you are prepared when he is sitting next to you one day! If nobody has a fixed workplace, then you would think that finding a colleague could be tricky. Oracle uses CU (‘SeeYou’) which makes all of us easier to locate. Upon entering the building you receive a text stating where the greatest concentration of your buddies is sitting. Our internal messaging service also proves to be very valuable finding your colleagues. The heart of our building is the great RestOrant, with a very busy coffee bar. It offers an informal place for people to meet and is busy all day, not just at lunch time! The O-Bar in the atrium on the ground floor is also a very popular place to meet and drink tea or coffee and gives a breathtaking introduction to the office to any of our first time visitors. For a few minutes of relaxation during the working day, there are table tennis facilities and a Wii room on every floor! So if you are interested in joining Oracle in this Netherlands or anywhere else in EMEA, please have a look at http://campus.oracle.com for all of our latest vacancies and internships.

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  • What tools/techniques can benefit a solo developer?

    - by Michael Runyon
    Hello, I am a solo developer, working in a very small web development firm. There is occasional support for development from contractors, but for the most part, if code is written in the office, I am writing it. Many of the articles and such on here talk extensively about the tools and techniques used for collaboration of developers in teams, but that is a non-issue with me, as there is no one to (technically) collaborate with. Yet, I feel that in many ways, there are things that could be adjusted for efficiency. Our small office doesn't participate in many of the meetings/team constructions that most of the techniques rely heavily upon....we mostly just walk around and talk to one another when something is needed. This works great for all of the Just-In-Time, 15 minute fix stuff that probably populates 50% of my day, but I am also constantly working on major projects that require my total concentration, and between a flurry of tiny fixes, and being the primary admin on the 4-6 servers that we own, I find it almost impossible to get real, heavy lifting done. What suggestions can you some of you offer to help me/us become more productive/efficient, without adopting all of the corporate/teamwork practices that we are trying desperately to avoid? At what cost for efficiency is our total relaxation?

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  • How to create a column containing a string of stars to inidcate levels of a factor in a data frame i

    - by PaulHurleyuk
    (second question today - must be a bad day) I have a dataframe with various columns, inculding a concentration column (numeric), a flag highlighting invalid results (boolean) and a description of the problem (character) dput(df) structure(list(x = c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), rawconc = c(77.4, 52.6, 86.5, 44.5, 167, 16.2, 59.3, 123, 1.95, 181), reason = structure(c(NA, NA, 2L, NA, NA, NA, 2L, 1L, NA, NA), .Label = c("Fails Acceptance Criteria", "Poor Injection"), class = "factor"), flag = c("False", "False", "True", "False", "False", "False", "True", "True", "False", "False" )), .Names = c("x", "rawconc", "reason", "flag"), row.names = c(NA, -10L), class = "data.frame") I can create a column with the numeric level of the reason column df$level<-as.numeric(df$reason) df x rawconc reason flag level 1 1 77.40 <NA> False NA 2 2 52.60 <NA> False NA 3 3 86.50 Poor Injection True 2 4 4 44.50 <NA> False NA 5 5 167.00 <NA> False NA 6 6 16.20 <NA> False NA 7 7 59.30 Poor Injection True 2 8 8 123.00 Fails Acceptance Criteria True 1 9 9 1.95 <NA> False NA 10 10 181.00 <NA> False NA and here's what I want to do to create a column with 'level' many stars, but it fails df$stars<-paste(rep("*",df$level)sep="",collapse="") Error: unexpected symbol in "df$stars<-paste(rep("*",df$level)sep" df$stars<-paste(rep("*",df$level),sep="",collapse="") Error in rep("*", df$level) : invalid 'times' argument rep("*",df$level) Error in rep("*", df$level) : invalid 'times' argument df$stars<-paste(rep("*",pmax(df$level,0,na.rm=TRUE)),sep="",collapse="") Error in rep("*", pmax(df$level, 0, na.rm = TRUE)) : invalid 'times' argument It seems that rep needs to be fed one value at a time. I feel that this should be possible (and my gut says 'use lapply' but my apply fu is v. poor) ANy one want to try ?

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  • Primary language - C++/Qt, C#, Java?

    - by Airjoe
    I'm looking for some input, but let me start with a bit of background (for tl;dr skip to end). I'm an IT major with a concentration in networking. While I'm not a CS major nor do I want to program as a vocation, I do consider myself a programmer and do pretty well with the concepts involved. I've been programming since about 6th grade, started out with a proprietary game creation language that made my transition into C++ at college pretty easy. I like to make programs for myself and friends, and have been paid to program for local businesses. A bit about that- I wrote some programs for a couple local businesses in my senior year in high school. I wrote management systems for local shops (inventory, phone/pos orders, timeclock, customer info, and more stuff I can't remember). It definitely turned out to be over my head, as I had never had any formal programming education. It was a great learning experience, but damn was it crappy code. Oh yeah, by the way, it was all vb6. So, I've used vb6 pretty extensively, I've used c++ in my classes (intro to programming up to algorithms), used Java a little bit in another class (had to write a ping client program, pretty easy) and used Java for some simple Project Euler problems to help learn syntax and such when writing the program for the class. I've also used C# a bit for my own simple personal projects (simple programs, one which would just generate an HTTP request on a list of websites and notify if one responded unexpectedly or not at all, and another which just held a list of things to do and periodically reminded me to do them), things I would've written in vb6 a year or two ago. I've just started using Qt C++ for some undergrad research I'm working on. Now I've had some formal education, I [think I] understand organization in programming a lot better (I didn't even use classes in my vb6 programs where I really should have), how it's important to structure code, split into functions where appropriate, document properly, efficiency both in memory and speed, dynamic and modular programming etc. I was looking for some input on which language to pick up as my "primary". As I'm not a "real programmer", it will be mostly hobby projects, but will include some 'real' projects I'm sure. From my perspective: QtC++ and Java are cross platform, which is cool. Java and C# run in a virtual machine, but I'm not sure if that's a big deal (something extra to distribute, possibly a bit slower? I think Qt would require additional distributables too, right?). I don't really know too much more than this, so I appreciate any help, thanks! TL;DR Am an avocational programmer looking for a language, want quick and straight forward development, liked vb6, will be working with database driven GUI apps- should I go with QtC++, Java, C#, or perhaps something else?

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  • Primary language - QtC++, C#, Java?

    - by Airjoe
    I'm looking for some input, but let me start with a bit of background (for tl;dr skip to end). I'm an IT major with a concentration in networking. While I'm not a CS major nor do I want to program as a vocation, I do consider myself a programmer and do pretty well with the concepts involved. I've been programming since about 6th grade, started out with a proprietary game creation language that made my transition into C++ at college pretty easy. I like to make programs for myself and friends, and have been paid to program for local businesses. A bit about that- I wrote some programs for a couple local businesses in my senior year in high school. I wrote management systems for local shops (inventory, phone/pos orders, timeclock, customer info, and more stuff I can't remember). It definitely turned out to be over my head, as I had never had any formal programming education. It was a great learning experience, but damn was it crappy code. Oh yeah, by the way, it was all vb6. So, I've used vb6 pretty extensively, I've used c++ in my classes (intro to programming up to algorithms), used Java a little bit in another class (had to write a ping client program, pretty easy) and used Java for some simple Project Euler problems to help learn syntax and such when writing the program for the class. I've also used C# a bit for my own simple personal projects (simple programs, one which would just generate an HTTP request on a list of websites and notify if one responded unexpectedly or not at all, and another which just held a list of things to do and periodically reminded me to do them), things I would've written in vb6 a year or two ago. I've just started using Qt C++ for some undergrad research I'm working on. Now I've had some formal education, I [think I] understand organization in programming a lot better (I didn't even use classes in my vb6 programs where I really should have), how it's important to structure code, split into functions where appropriate, document properly, efficiency both in memory and speed, dynamic and modular programming etc. I was looking for some input on which language to pick up as my "primary". As I'm not a "real programmer", it will be mostly hobby projects, but will include some 'real' projects I'm sure. From my perspective: QtC++ and Java are cross platform, which is cool. Java and C# run in a virtual machine, but I'm not sure if that's a big deal (something extra to distribute, possibly a bit slower? I think Qt would require additional distributables too, right?). I don't really know too much more than this, so I appreciate any help, thanks! TL;DR Am an avocational programmer looking for a language, want quick and straight forward development, liked vb6, will be working with database driven GUI apps- should I go with QtC++, Java, C#, or perhaps something else?

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  • Managing highly repetitive code and documentation in Java

    - by polygenelubricants
    Highly repetitive code is generally a bad thing, and there are design patterns that can help minimize this. However, sometimes it's simply inevitable due to the constraints of the language itself. Take the following example from java.util.Arrays: /** * Assigns the specified long value to each element of the specified * range of the specified array of longs. The range to be filled * extends from index <tt>fromIndex</tt>, inclusive, to index * <tt>toIndex</tt>, exclusive. (If <tt>fromIndex==toIndex</tt>, the * range to be filled is empty.) * * @param a the array to be filled * @param fromIndex the index of the first element (inclusive) to be * filled with the specified value * @param toIndex the index of the last element (exclusive) to be * filled with the specified value * @param val the value to be stored in all elements of the array * @throws IllegalArgumentException if <tt>fromIndex &gt; toIndex</tt> * @throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if <tt>fromIndex &lt; 0</tt> or * <tt>toIndex &gt; a.length</tt> */ public static void fill(long[] a, int fromIndex, int toIndex, long val) { rangeCheck(a.length, fromIndex, toIndex); for (int i=fromIndex; i<toIndex; i++) a[i] = val; } The above snippet appears in the source code 8 times, with very little variation in the documentation/method signature but exactly the same method body, one for each of the root array types int[], short[], char[], byte[], boolean[], double[], float[], and Object[]. I believe that unless one resorts to reflection (which is an entirely different subject in itself), this repetition is inevitable. I understand that as a utility class, such high concentration of repetitive Java code is highly atypical, but even with the best practice, repetition does happen! Refactoring doesn't always work because it's not always possible (the obvious case is when the repetition is in the documentation). Obviously maintaining this source code is a nightmare. A slight typo in the documentation, or a minor bug in the implementation, is multiplied by however many repetitions was made. In fact, the best example happens to involve this exact class: Google Research Blog - Extra, Extra - Read All About It: Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts are Broken (by Joshua Bloch, Software Engineer) The bug is a surprisingly subtle one, occurring in what many thought to be just a simple and straightforward algorithm. // int mid =(low + high) / 2; // the bug int mid = (low + high) >>> 1; // the fix The above line appears 11 times in the source code! So my questions are: How are these kinds of repetitive Java code/documentation handled in practice? How are they developed, maintained, and tested? Do you start with "the original", and make it as mature as possible, and then copy and paste as necessary and hope you didn't make a mistake? And if you did make a mistake in the original, then just fix it everywhere, unless you're comfortable with deleting the copies and repeating the whole replication process? And you apply this same process for the testing code as well? Would Java benefit from some sort of limited-use source code preprocessing for this kind of thing? Perhaps Sun has their own preprocessor to help write, maintain, document and test these kind of repetitive library code? A comment requested another example, so I pulled this one from Google Collections: com.google.common.base.Predicates lines 276-310 (AndPredicate) vs lines 312-346 (OrPredicate). The source for these two classes are identical, except for: AndPredicate vs OrPredicate (each appears 5 times in its class) "And(" vs Or(" (in the respective toString() methods) #and vs #or (in the @see Javadoc comments) true vs false (in apply; ! can be rewritten out of the expression) -1 /* all bits on */ vs 0 /* all bits off */ in hashCode() &= vs |= in hashCode()

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  • Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 4: Application Development Considerations

    - by Tim Murphy
    This is the final part in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Application Development Considerations Now we get to the actual building of your solutions.  What are the skills and resources that will be needed in order to develop a smartphone application in the enterprise? Language Knowledge One of the first things you need to consider when you are deciding which platform language do you either have the most in house skill base or can you easily acquire.  If you already have developers who know Java or C# you may want to use either Android or Windows Phone.  You should also take into consideration the market availability of developers.  If your key developer leaves how easy is it to find a knowledgeable replacement? A second consideration when it comes to programming languages is the qualities exposed by the languages of a particular platform.  How well does that development language and its associated frameworks support things like security and access to the features of the smartphone hardware?  This will play into your overall cost of ownership if you have to create this infrastructure on your own. Manage Limited Resources Everything is limited on a smartphone: battery, memory, processing power, network bandwidth.  When developing your applications you will have to keep your footprint as small as possible in every way.  This means not running unnecessary processes in the background that will drain the battery or pulling more data over the airwaves than you have to.  You also want to keep your on device in as compact a format as possible. Mobile Design Patterns There are a number of design patterns that have either come to life because of smartphone development or have been adapted for this use.  The main pattern in the Windows Phone environment is the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model).  This is great for overall application structure and separation of concerns.  The fun part is trying to keep that separation as pure as possible.  Many of the other patterns may or may not have strict definitions, but some that you need to be concerned with are push notification, asynchronous communication and offline data storage. Real estate is limited on smartphones and even tablets. You are also limited in the type of controls that can be represented in the UI. This means rethinking how you modularize your application. Typing is also much harder to do so you want to reduce this as much as possible.  This leads to UI patterns.  While not what we would traditionally think of as design patterns the guidance each platform has for UI design is critical to the success of your application.  If user find the application difficult navigate they will not use it. Development Process Because of the differences in development tools required, test devices and certification and deployment processes your teams will need to learn new way of working together.  This will include the need to integrate service contracts of back-end systems with mobile applications.  You will also want to make sure that you present consistency across different access points to corporate data.  Your web site may have more functionality than your smartphone application, but it should have a consistent core set of functionality.  This all requires greater communication between sub-teams of your developers. Testing Process Testing of smartphone apps has a lot more to do with what happens when you lose connectivity or if the user navigates away from your application. There are a lot more opportunities for the user or the device to perform disruptive acts.  This should be your main testing concentration aside from the main business requirements.  You will need to do things like setting the phone to airplane mode and seeing what the application does in order to weed out any gaps in your handling communication interruptions. Need For Outside Experts Since this is a development area that is new to most companies the need for experts is a lot greater. Whether these are consultants, vendor representatives or just development community forums you will need to establish expert contacts. Nothing is more dangerous for your project timelines than a lack of knowledge.  Make sure you know who to call to avoid lengthy delays in your project because of knowledge gaps. Security Security has to be a major concern for enterprise applications. You aren't dealing with just someone's game standings. You are dealing with a companies intellectual property and competitive advantage. As such you need to start by limiting access to the application itself.  Once the user is in the app you need to ensure that the data is secure at all times.  This includes both local storage and across the wire.  This means if a platform doesn’t natively support encryption for these functions you will need to find alternatives to secure your data.  You also need to keep secret (encryption) keys obfuscated or locked away outside of the application. People can disassemble the code otherwise and break your encryption. Offline Capabilities As we discussed earlier one your biggest concerns is not having connectivity.  Because of this a good portion of your code may be dedicated to handling loss of connection and reconnection situations.  What do you do if you lose the network?  Back up all your transactions and store of any supporting data so that operations can continue off line. In order to support this you will need to determine the available flat file or local data base capabilities of the platform.  Any failed transactions will need to support a retry mechanism whether it is automatic or user initiated.  This also includes your services since they will need to be able to roll back partially completed transactions.  What ever you do, don’t ignore this area when you are designing your system. Deployment Each platform has different deployment capabilities. Some are more suited to enterprise situations than others. Apple's approach is probably the most mature at the moment. Prior to the current generation of smartphone platforms it would have been Windows CE. Windows Phone 7 has the limitation that the app has to be distributed through the same network as public facing applications. You mark them as private which means that they are only accessible by a direct URL. Unfortunately this does not make them undiscoverable (although it is very difficult). This will change with Windows Phone 8 where companies will be able to certify their own applications and distribute them.  Given this Windows Phone applications need to be more diligent with application access in order to keep them restricted to the company's employees. My understanding of the Android deployment schemes is that it is much less standardized then either iOS or Windows Phone. Someone would have to confirm or deny that for me though since I have not yet put the time into researching this platform further. Given my limited exposure to the iOS and Android platforms I have not been able to confirm this, but there are varying degrees of user involvement to install and keep applications updated. At one extreme the user just goes to a website to do the install and in other case they may need to download files and perform steps to install them. Future Bluetooth Today we use Bluetooth for keyboards, mice and headsets.  In the future it could be used to interrogate car computers or manufacturing systems or possibly retail machines by service techs.  This would open smartphones to greater use as a almost a Star Trek Tricorder.  You would get you all your data as well as being able to use it as a universal remote for just about any device or machine. Better corporation controlled deployment At least in the Windows Phone world the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8 will include a private certification and deployment option that is currently not available with Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We currently have to run the apps through the Marketplace certification process and use a targeted distribution method. Platform independent approaches HTML5 and JavaScript with Web Service has become a popular topic lately for not only creating flexible web site, but also creating cross platform mobile applications.  I’m not yet convinced that this lowest common denominator approach is viable in most cases, but it does have it’s place and seems to be growing.  Be sure to keep an eye on it. Summary From my perspective enterprise smartphone applications can offer a great competitive advantage to many companies.  They are not cheap to build and should be approached cautiously.  Understand the factors I have outlined in this series, do you due diligence and see if there is a portion of your business that can benefit from the mobile experience. del.icio.us Tags: Architecture,Smartphones,Windows Phone,iOS,Android

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