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• Five development tools I can't live without

  - by bconlon

  When applying to join Geeks with Blogs I had to specify the development tools I use every day. That got me thinking, it's taken a long time to whittle my tools of choice down to the selection I use, so it might be worth sharing. Before I begin, I appreciate we all have our preferred development tools, but these are the ones that work for me. Microsoft Visual Studio Microsoft Visual Studio has been my development tool of choice for more years than I care to remember. I first used this when it was Visual C++ 1.5 (hats off to those who started on 1.0) and by 2.2 it had everything I needed from a C++ IDE. Versions 4 and 5 followed and if I had to guess I would expect more Windows applications are written in VC++ 6 and VB6 than any other language. Then came the not so great versions Visual Studio .Net 2002 (7.0) and 2003 (7.1). If I'm honest I was still using v6. 2005 was better and 2008 was simply brilliant. Everything worked, the compiler was super fast and I was happy again...then came 2010...oh dear. 2010 is a big step backwards for me. It's not encouraging for my upcoming WPF exploits that 2010 is fronted in WPF technology, with the forever growing Find/Replace dialog, the issues with C++ intellisense, and the buggy debugger. That said it is still my tool of choice but I hope they sort the issue in SP1. I've tried other IDEs like Visual Age and Eclipse, but for me Visual Studio is the best. A really great tool. Liquid XML Studio XML development is a tricky business. The W3C standards are often difficult to get to the bottom of so it's great to have a graphical tool to help. I first used Liquid Technologies 5 or 6 years back when I needed to process XML data in C++. Their excellent XML Data Binding tool has an easy to use Wizard UI (as compared to Castor or JAXB command line tools) and allows you to generate code from an XML Schema. So instead of having to deal with untyped nodes like with a DOM parser, instead you get an Object Model providing a custom API in C++, C#, VB etc. More recently they developed a graphical XML IDE with XML Editor, XSLT, XQuery debugger and other XML tools. So now I can develop an XML Schema graphically, click a button to generate a Sample XML document, and click another button to run the Wizard to generate code including a Sample Application that will then load my Sample XML document into the generated object model. This is a very cool toolset. Note: XML Data Binding is nothing to do with WPF Data Binding, but I hope to cover both in more detail another time. .Net Reflector Note: I've just noticed that starting form the end of February 2011 this will no longer be a free tool !! .Net Reflector turns .Net byte code back into C# source code. But how can it work this magic? Well the clue is in the name, it uses reflection to inspect a compiled .Net assembly. The assembly is compiled to byte code, it doesn't get compiled to native machine code until its needed using a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. The byte code still has all of the information needed to see classes, variables. methods and properties, so reflector gathers this information and puts it in a handy tree. I have used .Net Reflector for years in order to understand what the .Net Framework is doing as it sometimes has undocumented, quirky features. This really has been invaluable in certain instances and I cannot praise enough kudos on the original developer Lutz Roeder. Smart Assembly In order to stop nosy geeks looking at our code using a tool like .Net Reflector, we need to obfuscate (mess up) the byte code. Smart Assembly is a tool that does this. Again I have used this for a long time. It is very quick and easy to use. Another excellent tool. Coincidentally, .Net Reflector and Smart Assembly are now both owned by Red Gate. Again kudos goes to the original developer Jean-Sebastien Lange. TortoiseSVN SVN (Apache Subversion) is a Source Control System developed as an open source project. TortoiseSVN is a graphical UI wrapper over SVN that hooks into Windows Explorer to enable files to be Updated, Committed, Merged etc. from the right click menu. This is an essential tool for keeping my hard work safe! Many years ago I used Microsoft Source Safe and I disliked CVS type systems. But TortoiseSVN is simply the best source control tool I have ever used. --- So there you have it, my top 5 development tools that I use (nearly) every day and have helped to make my working life a little easier. I'm sure there are other great tools that I wish I used but have never heard of, but if you have not used any of the above, I would suggest you check them out as they are all very, very cool products. #

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• A .NET Developers day with the iPad.

  - by mbcrump

  The Apple iPad is currently getting a lot of buzz because of the app store, the book store and of course iTunes. I had the chance to play with one and this is what I have learned about the device. Let’s get this out of the way first, the iPad is awesome. It is the device for media consumption and casual web browsing. But how does it measure up to those of us with .NET on our brains all days. Let’s find out… Main Screen – you can customize everything on this page. I guess I should replace that image with a C# or VS logo. Its pretty standard stuff if you have an iPhone.   Programming Books If you have a subscription to Safari Books Online, then you are in luck, its very easy to read the books on the iPad. Just fire up Safari web browser and goto the Safari Books Online. The biggest benefit that I can see with the iPad is the ability to read books wherever and not have to worry about purchasing books that I already have the .PDF for. Below is a sample from Code Complete 2nd Edition. Below is a PDF of the ECMA-334 C# Language Specification. As you can see its very readable and you should have no problem reading actual code.   Example of Code shown below: It is however easier to read the PDF and store them with a 3rd party PDF reader. I have seen several for .99 cents or less. You can however switch the screen to vertical to get more viewing space as shown below: I was disappointed with the iBooks application. I could not find a single .NET programming book anywhere. I was able to download the excellent sci-fi book “A memory of Wind” for free though. If I just overlooked them, then please email me with the names and titles. I couldn’t even find a technology category in the categories list. Web Surfing – Technical Sites Below is an example of my site in Safari. The code is very readable and the experience was identical to viewing it in Firefox. I tried multiple programming site and the pages looked great except those that used flash and of course it did not display on those pages.   News Apps - Technical Content The standard NY Times and USA Today looked great, but the Technical Content was lacking. It would probably be better to use Google Reader for online technical news.     YouTube Videos – Technical Content  Since its YouTube, we already know that a lot of technical content exist and it plays great on the iPad. I watched several programming videos and could clearly see the code being written. Taking Technical Notes The iPad comes with a great notepad for taking notes. I found that it was easy to take notes regarding projects that I am currently working on.   Calendar The calendar that ships with the iPad is great for organizing. You can setup exchange server or manually enter the information. Pretty standard stuff.    Random Applications that I like: TweetDeck.   and Adobe Ideas. Adobe Ideas is kinda like SketchFlow except you use your finger to mock up the sketches.  Don’t forget that the iPad is great for any type of podcasting. That pretty much sums it up, I would definitely recommend this device as it will only get better. I believe the iOS4 comes out on the 24th and the iPad will only get more and more apps. You could save a few bucks by waiting for the 2nd generation, but that’s a call that only you can make.

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• Applying for internship

  - by Margus

  At the moment I'm thinking about applying for internship at Eesti Energia. I seem to be eligible, but before contacting them I need to learn how to compile an informative and complete CV and cover letter. I do not consider myself as shallow minded, but also I'm not sure how to convincingly justify the stand of interest and how internship will help me in my future career. Course of life Tallinna Tehnikagümnaasium 2003 - 2006 Tallinna Tehnikaülikool 2006 – 2009 Military service at Signal Batallion Tallinna Tehnikaülikool 2010 – ... I started my academic career as Computer and Systems Engineer, but as I excelled in programming classes, I changed my major to Software Engineer and taken my specialty in web applications and logic. Nowadays I mainly use Java, Mathematica and C# to solve problems. For 2 times, I have taken part in ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, where my team won the nationals and did pretty well in Europe. Also as part of notable thing in my academic career, my team wrote the Kalah game AI, that won in University's main programming class AI tournament. My hobbies are mind games and occasional problem solving. Few years ago I also competed in International Checkers EM (requires being in top 3 in nationals) as part of cadet and junior age group - I did not come close to winning, but I exceeded about half of the players each time. In high school and gymnasium I took part and later was the captain of team, that passes regionals and made it to top 3 of nationals (and later won) in (blitz) russian checkers. That was impressive because, it was a team effort as we only had (depending on year) 2-3 strong players. Although I started programming exactly 9,5 years ago I have no work experience. Well actually thats not true, as I completed my army duty, I was hired for a year (days still counting) to be apart of communicational (emergency) infrastructure action group where I'm the teams IT specialist (it's more complicated). So I consider myself to be aware of: rough conditions, teamwork, high stress tolerance, being on time and what responsibility means. As negative things I can mention: I do not have drivers licence. Although only Estonian and English are noted as requirements, then Russian is most likely required as well and I barely understand some of it. Reasons why I want to apply there, are: I need to do at least 4-6 week traineeship and it's in the right field I have the requirements and tasks seem easy enough Company is well known and has fairly good reputation Family and friend think, that it would be acceptable place to work Myriad of options to do final thesis about open up Work place is located in the same city I live atm. At moment, I see myself having a hard time explain why I would prefer it or where I see myself in 10 years if I was offered a job there. Question I have some idea how Curriculum Vitæ should look like, or I can google for template, but I'm not sure how to write informative one. Last I did one, it looked like: picture + contact information + education. Vaguely I only remember, that cover letter should be custom tailored for each place you apply containing ...

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• I am not satisfied with my career and accomplished nothing in my life. what should I do now [on hold]

  - by user2906155

  After my complete my College education I got chance to work on software programming. I work on few software and now nothing make me feel good. I don't like web-programming. Can't have too much mind to play with other people in team a designer or a senior. it's totally time wasting for me. We do integration without any source code control. copy through pen drive. I write in too many language for web-programming but know nothing about any language specially. I don't like to have a BOSS. I would like to do something on my own. From last 3 year I thing I will got a better job but I am unable to get it. I am not good at Programming nor my English is native. I have a big list for pay then my salary. I have problem with nothing. my atmosphere is about illiterate people. they abuse 24 hours a day. this thing make me sick. people watch CRIME patrol my home (watching rape in TV because it's happen to someone). I do my work from home. I don't like to live in my state. All state is one of the biggest illiterate state of my country. Once I apply for a Job in China and it's look like I can get thing Job but I don't get it. My family doesn't want me to settle anywhere else. I told my family 4 time a day that I can't live in this worst situation. Everyone (including the person who I work for) tell me that you can do it only you have money. Now I really don't know how to make money. My job not allow me to work for anyone. My productivity going down since I don't learn anything new. I thing if this happen to me for next 2 year I don't have any knowledge more then a peon. I hate it. When I was in other city then I see that if I spent 7 days their all my 7 days going better. even I go for travelling in green places then I like it. but all I hate it where I work for. When I work on other city then I see my productivity are improved and I don't hate my work. I listen a song "If you don't your love what are you doing it for". I seriously don' t know what I still live here because this place gave me nothing but depression and trouble. for people I clear that I don't belong to RICH or middle class family. All I got is doing something on my own or help of someone. affording a rental place make my run on footpath. All I save in one month is just 10$ (approximately) (actually I afford some guys's education now). Can a programmer live worst life like this. I really not happy. Today is a festival in India and I don't celebrate it because I really hate myself. I want to do suicide. someone guide me how to start solving this headache

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• A programmer who doesn't get to program - where to turn? [closed]

  - by Just an Anon

  I'm in my mid 20's, and have been working as a full time programmer / developer for the last ~6 years, with several years of part-time freelancing before this, and three straight years of freelancing in the middle of this short career. I work mostly with PHP and the Drupal framework. By and large, I focus on programming custom pieces of functionality; these, of course, vary greatly from project to project. I've got years of solid experience with OOP (have done some Java & C# years ago, too) including intensive experience with front-end development, and even some design work. I've lead small teams (2-4 people) of developers. And of course, given the large amount of freelancing, I've got decent project- & client-management skills. My problem is staying motivated at any place of employment. In the time mentioned I've worked (full-time) at six local companies. The longest I've stayed at any company was just over a year. I find that I'll get hired and be very excited and motivated for the first few months, but the work quickly gets "stale." By that I mean that the interesting components (ie. the programming) get done, and the rest of the work turns into boring cleanup (move a button, add text, change colours, add a field). I don't get challenged, and I don't feel like I'm learning anything new. This happens repeatedly time and time again, and I always end up leaving for either a new opportunity, or to freelance. I'm wondering if perhaps I've painted myself into a corner with the rather niche work market (although with very high demand and good compensation) and need to explore other career choices. Another possibility is that I may be choosing the wrong places of employment, mostly small agencies, and need to look into working for a larger, more established firm. I find programming, writing code, and architecting solutions very rewarding. When I'm working on an interesting problem I lose all sense of time and 14-16 hours can fly by like minutes. I get the same exciting feeling when I'm doing high-level planning of a complex system, breaking up the work and figuring out how everything will tie-in together. I absolutely hate doing small, "stupid" changes that pose no challenge, yet seem to make up more and more of my work. I want to find a workplace where I will get to work on such tasks, be challenged, and improve in all areas of product development. This maybe a programming job, management, architecture of desktop apps, or may be managing a taco stand on a beach in Mexico - I don't know, and I need some advice and real-world feedback. What are some job areas worth exploring? The requirements are fairly simple: working with computers interacting with others challenging decent pay (I'm making just short of 90k / year with a month of vacation & some benefits, and would like to stay in this range, but am willing to take a temporary cut in pay for a more interesting position) Any advice would be much appreciated!

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• Why is 0 false?

  - by Morwenn

  This question may sound dumb, but why does 0 evaluates to false and any other [integer] value to true is most of programming languages? String comparison Since the question seems a little bit too simple, I will explain myself a little bit more: first of all, it may seem evident to any programmer, but why wouldn't there be a programming language - there may actually be, but not any I used - where 0 evaluates to true and all the other [integer] values to false? That one remark may seem random, but I have a few examples where it may have been a good idea. First of all, let's take the example of strings three-way comparison, I will take C's strcmp as example: any programmer trying C as his first language may be tempted to write the following code: if (strcmp(str1, str2)) { // Do something... } Since strcmp returns 0 which evaluates to false when the strings are equal, what the beginning programmer tried to do fails miserably and he generally does not understand why at first. Had 0 evaluated to true instead, this function could have been used in its most simple expression - the one above - when comparing for equality, and the proper checks for -1 and 1 would have been done only when needed. We would have considered the return type as bool (in our minds I mean) most of the time. Moreover, let's introduce a new type, sign, that just takes values -1, 0 and 1. That can be pretty handy. Imagine there is a spaceship operator in C++ and we want it for std::string (well, there already is the compare function, but spaceship operator is more fun). The declaration would currently be the following one: sign operator<=>(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); Had 0 been evaluated to true, the spaceship operator wouldn't even exist, and we could have declared operator== that way: sign operator==(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs); This operator== would have handled three-way comparison at once, and could still be used to perform the following check while still being able to check which string is lexicographically superior to the other when needed: if (str1 == str2) { // Do something... } Old errors handling We now have exceptions, so this part only applies to the old languages where no such thing exist (C for example). If we look at C's standard library (and POSIX one too), we can see for sure that maaaaany functions return 0 when successful and any integer otherwise. I have sadly seen some people do this kind of things: #define TRUE 0 // ... if (some_function() == TRUE) { // Here, TRUE would mean success... // Do something } If we think about how we think in programming, we often have the following reasoning pattern: Do something Did it work? Yes -> That's ok, one case to handle No -> Why? Many cases to handle If we think about it again, it would have made sense to put the only neutral value, 0, to yes (and that's how C's functions work), while all the other values can be there to solve the many cases of the no. However, in all the programming languages I know (except maybe some experimental esotheric languages), that yes evaluates to false in an if condition, while all the no cases evaluate to true. There are many situations when "it works" represents one case while "it does not work" represents many probable causes. If we think about it that way, having 0 evaluate to true and the rest to false would have made much more sense. Conclusion My conclusion is essentially my original question: why did we design languages where 0 is false and the other values are true, taking in account my few examples above and maybe some more I did not think of? Follow-up: It's nice to see there are many answers with many ideas and as many possible reasons for it to be like that. I love how passionate you seem to be about it. I originaly asked this question out of boredom, but since you seem so passionate, I decided to go a little further and ask about the rationale behind the Boolean choice for 0 and 1 on Math.SE :)

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• Best ways to teach a beginner to program?

  - by Justin Standard

  Original Question I am currently engaged in teaching my brother to program. He is a total beginner, but very smart. (And he actually wants to learn). I've noticed that some of our sessions have gotten bogged down in minor details, and I don't feel I've been very organized. (But the answers to this post have helped a lot.) What can I do better to teach him effectively? Is there a logical order that I can use to run through concept by concept? Are there complexities I should avoid till later? The language we are working with is Python, but advice in any language is welcome. How to Help If you have good ones please add the following in your answer: Beginner Exercises and Project Ideas Resources for teaching beginners Screencasts / blog posts / free e-books Print books that are good for beginners Please describe the resource with a link to it so I can take a look. I want everyone to know that I have definitely been using some of these ideas. Your submissions will be aggregated in this post. Online Resources for teaching beginners: A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python How to Think Like a Computer Scientist Alice: a 3d program for beginners Scratch (A system to develop programming skills) How To Design Programs Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Learn To Program Robert Read's How To Be a Programmer Microsoft XNA Spawning the Next Generation of Hackers COMP1917 Higher Computing lectures by Richard Buckland (requires iTunes) Dive into Python Python Wikibook Project Euler - sample problems (mostly mathematical) pygame - an easy python library for creating games Create Your Own Games With Python ebook Foundations of Programming for a next step beyond basics. Squeak by Example Recommended Print Books for teaching beginners Accelerated C++ Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner Code by Charles Petzold

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• Are there code signing certificates cheaper than US$99 per year? [closed]

  - by gerryLowry

  K Software discounts Comodo code signing certificates to US$99 per year. In the past, I've seen Commodo code signing certificates for US$80. I'm excluding CAcert which AFAIK are FREE but are not covered by browsers like Internet Explorer AFAIK. QUESTION: What is the best price per year for a code signing certificate? Thank you ~~ gerry (lowry) Edit: **THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN CLOSED** from the FAQ: http://stackoverflow.com/faq ---------------------------- What kind of questions can I ask here? Programming questions, of course! As long as your question is: * detailed and specific <====== YES! * written clearly and simply <====== YES! * of interest to other programmers <====== YES! I've been programming for over 40 years. http://gerrylowryprogrammer.com/ I've taught computer programming at the community college level. I'm a Star level contributer to forums.asp.net. http://forums.asp.net/members/gerrylowry.aspx IMO, I've a very good idea what is of interest to other programmers. MORE INFORMATION http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_signing http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537361%28VS.85%29.aspx also: via Google: code signing Ensuring the integrity of code and executables that one distributes is just as much about programming as is knowing how to flip bits in assembler, use delegates in C#, and use the BDD context/specification still of "test first testing".

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• Getting SSL to work with Apache/Passenger on OSX

  - by jonnii

  I use apache/passenger on my development machine, but need to add SSL support (something which isn't exposed through the control panel). I've done this before in production, but for some reason I can't seem to get it work on OSX. The steps I've followed so far are from a default apache osx install: Install passenger and passenger preference pane. Add my rails app (this works) Create my ca.key, server.crt and server.key as detailed on the apple website. At this point I need to start editing the apache configs, so I added: # Apache knows to listen on port 443 for ssl requests. Listen 443 Listen 80 I thought I'd try editing the passenger pref pane generated config first to get everything working, when I add: It starts off looking like this <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName myapp.local DocumentRoot "/Users/jonnii/programming/ruby/myapp/public" RailsEnv development <Directory "/Users/jonnii/programming/ruby/myapp/public"> Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> </VirtualHost> I then append this: <VirtualHost *:443> ServerName myapp.local DocumentRoot "/Users/jonnii/programming/ruby/myapp/public" RailsEnv development <directory "/Users/jonnii/programming/ruby/myapp/public"> Order allow,deny Allow from all </directory> # SSL Configuration SSLEngine on SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +StdEnvVars +StrictRequire #Self Signed certificates SSLCertificateFile /private/etc/apache2/ssl.key/server.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile /private/etc/apache2/ssl.key/server.key SSLCertificateChainFile /private/etc/apache2/ssl.key/ca.crt SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0 </VirtualHost> The files referenced all exist (I doubled checked that), but now when I restart my apache I can't even get to myapp.local. However apache can still server the default page when I click on it in the sharing preference panel. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• are there code signing certificates cheaper than US $99 per year? [closed]

  - by gerryLowry

  ksoftware discounts Commodo code signing certificates to US $99 per year. in the past, I've seen Commodo code signing certificates for US $80. I'm excluding CAcert which AFAIK are FREE but are not covered by browsers like IE AFAIK. QUESTION: What is the best price per year for a code signing certificate? Thank you ~~ gerry (lowry) Edit: **THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN CLOSED** from the FAQ: http://stackoverflow.com/faq ---------------------------- What kind of questions can I ask here? Programming questions, of course! As long as your question is: * detailed and specific <====== YES! * written clearly and simply <====== YES! * of interest to other programmers <====== YES! I've been programming for over 40 years. http://gerrylowryprogrammer.com/ I've taught computer programming at the community college level. I'm a Star level contributer to forums.asp.net. http://forums.asp.net/members/gerrylowry.aspx imo, I've a very good idea what is of interest to other programmers. MORE INFORMATION Ensuring the integrity of code and executables that one distributes is just as much about programming as is knowing how to flip bits in assembler, use delegates in c#, and use the BDD context/specification still of "test first testing".

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• Writing fortran robust and "modern" code

  - by Blklight

  In some scientific environments, you often cannot go without FORTRAN as most of the developers only know that idiom, and there is lot of legacy code and related experience. And frankly, there are not many other cross-platform options for high performance programming ( C++ would do the task, but the syntax, zero-starting arrays, and pointers are too much for most engineers ;-) ). I'm a C++ guy but I'm stuck with some F90 projects. So, let's assume a new project must use FORTRAN (F90), but I want to build the most modern software architecture out of it. while being compatible with most "recent" compilers (intel ifort, but also including sun/HP/IBM own compilers) So I'm thinking of imposing: global variable forbidden, no gotos, no jump labels, "implicit none", etc. "object-oriented programming" (modules with datatypes + related subroutines) modular/reusable functions, well documented, reusable libraries assertions/preconditions/invariants (implemented using preprocessor statements) unit tests for all (most) subroutines and "objects" an intense "debug mode" (#ifdef DEBUG) with more checks and all possible Intel compiler checks possible (array bounds, subroutine interfaces, etc.) uniform and enforced legible coding style, using code processing tools C stubs/wrappers for libpthread, libDL (and eventually GPU kernels, etc.) C/C++ implementation of utility functions (strings, file operations, sockets, memory alloc/dealloc reference counting for debug mode, etc.) ( This may all seem "evident" modern programming assumptions, but in a legacy fortran world, most of these are big changes in the typical programmer workflow ) The goal with all that is to have trustworthy, maintainable and modular code. Whereas, in typical fortran, modularity is often not a primary goal, and code is trustworthy only if the original developer was very clever, and the code was not changed since then ! (i'm a bit joking here, but not much) I searched around for references about object-oriented fortran, programming-by-contract (assertions/preconditions/etc.), and found only ugly and outdated documents, syntaxes and papers done by people with no large-scale project involvement, and dead projects. Any good URL, advice, reference paper/books on the subject?

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• How to learn how to program?

  - by twinbornJoint

  I would like to know the best methods for learning to program. I've been directed towards the Python language because I was told it is good for beginners. I ultimately want to make games for OS X/iPhone. My problem is that I understand what I read but I can't apply my knowledge to anything. I am a programming noob. Should I stick with Python? (is there a better language I should be learning?) Where can I learn programming theory? I get very hyper when reading my book sometimes, any tips on staying calm and focusing? What are effective ways to learn how to program? Are there standard exercises for programming? (I feel solving problems helps my understanding immensely) Ultimately I feel like I am in a never ending tunnel that leads me no where. It feels like I am just completely unable to pursue anything in the world of programming, yet it is something I want to do very much. Thanks.

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• How to push further as a programmer?

  - by MaXX

  For the last, hmm, 6 months I've been reading into Programming in C, I got myself K&Rv2, BEEJ's socket guide, Expert C programming, Linux Systems Programming, the ISO/IEC 9899:1999 specification (real, and not draft). After receiving them from Amazon, I got Linux installed, and got to it. I'm done with K&R, about halfway through Expert C Programming, but still feel weak as a programmer, I'm sure it takes much more than 6 months of reading to become truly skilled, but my question is this: I've done all the exercises in K&Rv2 (in chapter 1) and some in other chapters, most of which are generally really boring. How do I lift my skills, and become truly great? I've invested money, time and a general lifestyle for something I truly desire, but I'm not sure how exactly to achieve it. Could someone explain to me, perhaps if I need to continuously code, what exactly I'm to code? I'm pretty sure, coding up hello world programs isn't going to teach me any more than I already know about anything. A friend of mine said "read" (with emphasis on read) a man page a day, but reading is all I do, I want to do, but I'm not sure what! I'm interested in security, but I'm not sure as a novice what to code that would be considered enough. Ah, I hope you don't delete this paste :) Thanks

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• C++: Conceptual problem in designing an intepreter

  - by sub

  I'm programming an interpreter for an experimental programming language (educational, fun,...) So far, everything went well (Tokenizer & Parser), but I'm getting a huge problem with some of the data structures in the part that actually runs the tokenized and parsed code. My programming language basically has only two types, int and string, and they are represented as C++ strings (std class) and ints Here is a short version of the data structure that I use to pass values around: enum DataType { Null, Int, String } class Symbol { public: string identifier; DataType type; string stringValue; int intValue; } I can't use union because string doesn't allow me to. This structure above is beginning to give me a headache. I have to scatter code like this everywhere in order to make it work, it is beginning to grow unmaintainable: if( mySymbol.type == Int ) { mySymbol.intValue = 1234; } else { mySymbol.stringValue = "abcde"; } I use the Symbol data structure for variables, return values for functions and general representation of values in the programming language. Is there any better way to solve this? I hope so!

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• The Proper Use of the VM Role in Windows Azure

  - by BuckWoody

  At the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) in 2010 we announced an addition to the Computational Roles in Windows Azure, called the VM Role. This new feature allows a great deal of control over the applications you write, but some have confused it with our full infrastructure offering in Windows Hyper-V. There is a proper architecture pattern for both of them. Virtualization Virtualization is the process of taking all of the hardware of a physical computer and replicating it in software alone. This means that a single computer can “host” or run several “virtual” computers. These virtual computers can run anywhere - including at a vendor’s location. Some companies refer to this as Cloud Computing since the hardware is operated and maintained elsewhere. IaaS The more detailed definition of this type of computing is called Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) since it removes the need for you to maintain hardware at your organization. The operating system, drivers, and all the other software required to run an application are still under your control and your responsibility to license, patch, and scale. Microsoft has an offering in this space called Hyper-V, that runs on the Windows operating system. Combined with a hardware hosting vendor and the System Center software to create and deploy Virtual Machines (a process referred to as provisioning), you can create a Cloud environment with full control over all aspects of the machine, including multiple operating systems if you like. Hosting machines and provisioning them at your own buildings is sometimes called a Private Cloud, and hosting them somewhere else is often called a Public Cloud. State-ful and Stateless Programming This paradigm does not create a new, scalable way of computing. It simply moves the hardware away. The reason is that when you limit the Cloud efforts to a Virtual Machine, you are in effect limiting the computing resources to what that single system can provide. This is because much of the software developed in this environment maintains “state” - and that requires a little explanation. “State-ful programming” means that all parts of the computing environment stay connected to each other throughout a compute cycle. The system expects the memory, CPU, storage and network to remain in the same state from the beginning of the process to the end. You can think of this as a telephone conversation - you expect that the other person picks up the phone, listens to you, and talks back all in a single unit of time. In “Stateless” computing the system is designed to allow the different parts of the code to run independently of each other. You can think of this like an e-mail exchange. You compose an e-mail from your system (it has the state when you’re doing that) and then you walk away for a bit to make some coffee. A few minutes later you click the “send” button (the network has the state) and you go to a meeting. The server receives the message and stores it on a mail program’s database (the mail server has the state now) and continues working on other mail. Finally, the other party logs on to their mail client and reads the mail (the other user has the state) and responds to it and so on. These events might be separated by milliseconds or even days, but the system continues to operate. The entire process doesn’t maintain the state, each component does. This is the exact concept behind coding for Windows Azure. The stateless programming model allows amazing rates of scale, since the message (think of the e-mail) can be broken apart by multiple programs and worked on in parallel (like when the e-mail goes to hundreds of users), and only the order of re-assembling the work is important to consider. For the exact same reason, if the system makes copies of those running programs as Windows Azure does, you have built-in redundancy and recovery. It’s just built into the design. The Difference Between Infrastructure Designs and Platform Designs When you simply take a physical server running software and virtualize it either privately or publicly, you haven’t done anything to allow the code to scale or have recovery. That all has to be handled by adding more code and more Virtual Machines that have a slight lag in maintaining the running state of the system. Add more machines and you get more lag, so the scale is limited. This is the primary limitation with IaaS. It’s also not as easy to deploy these VM’s, and more importantly, you’re often charged on a longer basis to remove them. your agility in IaaS is more limited. Windows Azure is a Platform - meaning that you get objects you can code against. The code you write runs on multiple nodes with multiple copies, and it all works because of the magic of Stateless programming. you don’t worry, or even care, about what is running underneath. It could be Windows (and it is in fact a type of Windows Server), Linux, or anything else - but that' isn’t what you want to manage, monitor, maintain or license. You don’t want to deploy an operating system - you want to deploy an application. You want your code to run, and you don’t care how it does that. Another benefit to PaaS is that you can ask for hundreds or thousands of new nodes of computing power - there’s no provisioning, it just happens. And you can stop using them quicker - and the base code for your application does not have to change to make this happen. Windows Azure Roles and Their Use If you need your code to have a user interface, in Visual Studio you add a Web Role to your project, and if the code needs to do work that doesn’t involve a user interface you can add a Worker Role. They are just containers that act a certain way. I’ll provide more detail on those later. Note: That’s a general description, so it’s not entirely accurate, but it’s accurate enough for this discussion. So now we’re back to that VM Role. Because of the name, some have mistakenly thought that you can take a Virtual Machine running, say Linux, and deploy it to Windows Azure using this Role. But you can’t. That’s not what it is designed for at all. If you do need that kind of deployment, you should look into Hyper-V and System Center to create the Private or Public Infrastructure as a Service. What the VM Role is actually designed to do is to allow you to have a great deal of control over the system where your code will run. Let’s take an example. You’ve heard about Windows Azure, and Platform programming. You’re convinced it’s the right way to code. But you have a lot of things you’ve written in another way at your company. Re-writing all of your code to take advantage of Windows Azure will take a long time. Or perhaps you have a certain version of Apache Web Server that you need for your code to work. In both cases, you think you can (or already have) code the the software to be “Stateless”, you just need more control over the place where the code runs. That’s the place where a VM Role makes sense. Recap Virtualizing servers alone has limitations of scale, availability and recovery. Microsoft’s offering in this area is Hyper-V and System Center, not the VM Role. The VM Role is still used for running Stateless code, just like the Web and Worker Roles, with the exception that it allows you more control over the environment of where that code runs.

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• What character to separate words in filenames? Dashes? Periods? Underscores?

  - by Christopher Albon

  This question isn't about a specific programming language, but more about general best practices. What characters are best (greatest compatibility over programming languages, OSs, file systems, etc.) to separate words in filenames? For example: file.name.txt file_name.txt file-name.txt FileName.txt filename.txt

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• Is there a way to map a local drive letter in a Virtual PC Guest O/S to a host drive?

  - by Clay Nichols

  I have a bunch of programming projects on my P:\ drive (on Windows 7) I'm now doing some programming within Virtual PC Windows XP Mode and I'd like to "call" that drive, within the Win XP guest, the P: drive. I've mapped drive letter P: to "network" drive on the Host but that goes across the network so it's very slow. I tried using the SUBST command but it wouldn't take the \tsclients\p as a parameter. Basically, the command line interpreter (is that DOS on Win 7 ??) doesn't recognize that directory (\tsclients\p)

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• In Windows Virtual PC: Is there a way to assign local drive letter in the Guest O/S that points to a

  - by Clay Nichols

  I have a bunch of programming projects on my P:\ drive (on Windows 7) I'm now doing some programming within Virtual PC Windows XP Mode and I'd like to "call" that drive, within the Win XP guest, the P: drive. I've mapped drive letter P: to "network" drive on the Host but that goes across the network so it's very slow. I tried using the SUBST command but it wouldn't take the \tsclients\p as a parameter. Basically, the command line interpreter (is that DOS on Win 7 ??) doesn't recognize that directory (\tsclients\p)

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• Graphing a dataset

  - by brooke

  What type of graphical tool shows the shape of the data set by stacking x's above each data value on q number line?

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• How to use RRDTOOL for one value per day

  - by Octopus

  I have to create a graphical representation for staff salary. The staff is getting there salaries per day and I have there information in below format. This is one month data i.e. 1st March to 31st March <DATE>,<NAME1>,<NAME2>,<NAME3>......<NAME N> YYYY-MM-DD,name1,name2,Name3,.......name4 . . so on.. 1) Is rrdtool a better solution to create graphs and find AVERAGE, MAX, MIN. 2) If yes, How can I use above csv file to create RRD. 3) If no, what else I can use this to automate the graphical information on my website. Any suggestion in perl would be really appreciated.

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• How can I use RRDTOOL to plot values from a CSV file?

  - by Octopus

  I have to create a graphical representation for staff salary. The staff is getting their salaries per day and I have there information in below format. This is one month data i.e. 1st March to 31st March <DATE>,<NAME1>,<NAME2>,<NAME3>......<NAME N> YYYY-MM-DD,name1,name2,Name3,.......name4 . . so on.. 1) Is rrdtool a better solution to create graphs and find AVERAGE, MAX, MIN. 2) If yes, How can I use above CSV file to create RRD. 3) If no, what else I can use this to automate the graphical information on my website. Any suggestion in Perl would be really appreciated.

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• Visual C# GUI Designer basic tutorial

  - by cusack

  Hi, can you recommend a Visual C# Form Designer tutorial that is targeted at experienced programmers who have at least a basic knowledge of C# but are new to the VS C# Form Designer. At least it shouldn't be targeted at programming newbs, like Introduction to Visual C# 2008 Express Edition (it explains how a comment looks like in C#). So far I've found C# Programming Tutorial - Programming Winforms in C# on stackoverflow. Wishlist: ;-) I'm more interested in focus on the designer itself rather than an explanation of single gui-elements. In other words explaining separation between generated-code, what to not edit manually (visual-c#-designer-responsibility) and on the other hand the parts for which the programmer himself is responsible. So a little more abstract best-practice point of view pointing out some caveats would be great as well. I would prefer text over video as well, but that's minor. /Wishlist Perhaps even a Microsoft reference specific to the Visual c# forms designer (which I seem to have been unable to find) would be helpful.

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• I never really understood: what is CGI?

  - by claws

  CGI is a Comman Gateway Interface. As the name says, it is a "common" gateway interface for everything. It is so trivial and naive from the name. I feel that I understood this and I felt this every time I encountered this word. But frankly, I didn't. I'm still confused. I am a PHP programmer. I did lot of web development. user (client) request for page --- webserver(-embedded PHP interpreter) ---- Server side(PHP) Script --- MySQL Server. Now say my PHP Script can fetch results from MySQL Server && MATLAB Server && Some other server. So, now PHP Script is the CGI? because its interface for the between webserver & All other servers? I don't know. Sometimes they call CGI, a technology & othertimes they call CGI a program or someother server. What exactly is CGI? Whats the big deal with /cgi-bin/*.cgi? Whats up with this? I don't know what is this cgi-bin directory on the server for. I don't know why they have *.cgi extensions. Why does Perl always comes in the way. CGI & Perl (language). I also don't know whats up with these two. Almost all the time I keep hearing these two in combination "CGI & Perl". This book is another great example CGI Programming with Perl Why not "CGI Programming with PHP/JSP/ASP". I never saw such things. CGI Programming in C this confuses me a lot. in C?? Seriously?? I don't know what to say. I"m just confused. "in C"?? This changes everything. Program needs to be compiled and executed. This entirely changes my view of web programming. When do I compile? How does the program gets executed (because it will be a machine code, so it must execute as a independent process). How does it communicate with the web server? IPC? and interfacing with all the servers (in my example MATLAB & MySQL) using socket programming? I'm lost!! They say that CGI is depreciated. Its no more in use. Is it so? What is its latest update? Once, I ran into a situation where I had to give HTTP PUT request access to web server (Apache HTTPD). Its a long back. So, as far as I remember this is what I did: Edited the configuration file of Apache HTTPD to tell webserver to pass all HTTP PUT requests to some put.php ( I had to write this PHP script) Implement put.php to handle the request (save the file to the location mentioned) People said that I wrote a CGI Script. Seriously, I didn't have clue what they were talking about. Did I really write CGI Script? I hope you understood what my confusion is. (Because I myself don't know where I'm confused). I request you guys to keep your answer as simple as possible. I really can't understand any fancy technical terminology. At least not in this case. EDIT: I found this amazing tutorial "CGI Programming Is Simple!" - CGI Tutorial Which explains the concepts in simplest possible way. I've only have one complaint about this tutorial. Just to make what ever he explained complete he should have shown the C code he used for generating response for those GET / POST requests. I've also added link to this tutorial to Wikipedia's article : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface

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• What makes you come back to stackoverflow every day? [closed]

  - by rmarimon

  I know this is not a programming question. Let's try to label it a programming community question so that it doesn't get closed. I've been wondering what makes the programming community so prone to helping others in stackoverflow. Is this something particular to programmers? Do you think lawyers and accountants would help other lawyers and programmers as we do? What makes you come back to stackoverflow every day? It would be great to have an answer per reason so that we can get the list of reasons. In my case, I come to stackoverflow to ask questions that I can't solve quickly, and to test how good I am when answering questions. So far I’ve failed miserably at trying to answer questions but it has helped me understand how little I know.

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• Uses of Erlang in Telecom

  - by user94154

  I'm a web developer and a college student majoring in telecommunications. This means I'm decent at programming and I know a little about telecom networks (at a high, non-technical level). I keep reading that Erlang is used all over the telecom industry (supposedly for its performance). I'm wondering if there's anyway I can combine my programming skills with my telecommunications major with Erlang. Is most of the Erlang/telecom stuff closed source? Are there any open source telecom projects written Erlang? UPDATE: sipwiz's comment makes me think in terms of a question larger than "uses of Erlang". How can I leverage a high-level understanding of telecom networks and the telecom regulatory environment with programming. I hope this hasn't veered too off-topic for SO.

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