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• The road to become a programmer [closed]

  - by user68991

  I'm looking for a 'career' change, I don't actually have a career at the moment since I haven't been able to find a job since I graduated with a degree in Materials Engineering. One of my loves has always been computers and programming, though I have never studied it seriously. When I was 11 I wrote a very basic graphical 'game' using notepad and HTML, where I drew each possible position of the main character on the different 'maze' level in MSPaint, using pictures of arrows as links to a new page with the character in a new position, and various other buttons would pop up 'search box', 'press button' etc. At the time I thought this was an amazing achievement of my programming skills. I've used a little bit of FORTRAN 90 whilst I was at university, which rekindled my interest in programming. When I was a kid I mainly used C and HTML, but only very basically as my 'game' suggests. I want to learn a new programming language, I'm not entirely sure where I want to go with it, but the number one contender at the moment is android apps. I'm looking at learning Java, but I've read that it's a difficult place to begin with; so I've also looked at learning Visual Basic, which I believe is also object oriented(?) but a little easier to understand? (not that I know what an object is anyway). Any information people could give me regarding which language to learn, and if there are any good online tutorial for that language I'd really appreciate it. Some of the tutorials I've used so far are full or jargon I can't understand. Also, I'm not afraid of maths having got an engineering degree. Thanks in advance for any help/advice. James

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• Why prefer a wildcard to a type discriminator in a Java API (Re: Effective Java)

  - by Michael Campbell

  In the generics section of Bloch's Effective Java (which handily is the "free" chapter available to all: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/effective/generics.pdf), he says: If a type parameter appears only once in a method declaration, replace it with a wildcard. (See page 31-33 of that pdf) The signature in question is: public static void swap(List<?> list, int i, int j) vs public static void swap(List<E> list, int i, int j) And then proceeds to use a static private "helper" function with an actual type parameter to perform the work. The helper function signature is EXACTLY that of the second option. Why is the wildcard preferable, since you need to NOT use a wildcard to get the work done anyway? I understand that in this case since he's modifying the List and you can't add to a collection with an unbounded wildcard, so why use it at all?

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• I'm creating my own scalable, rapid prototyping web server. How should I design it?

  - by Mike Willliams

  I'm going to create my own web server that focuses on scalability, rapid prototyping and the use of JavaScript as the server's scripting language, much like node.js. It will use a Model-View-Controller design pattern so a web application can support more concurrent users just by adding hardware -- and not having to redesign the software. Basically, I'm aiming to produce a framework that allows for fast and easy development of cloud applications without the need to write lots of boiler plate code. I've got some questions about this... How hard will it be to put MySQL in the cloud? How could I go about implementing this and make the resulting product free? Will I have to write my own engine or modify an existing one, if I do what should I watch out for? To make this scalable I need to adjust from one server to hundreds of servers this creates the requirement for the servers to be load balancing, how should I do this? If I balance based on the work load per server I would need gateway to handle all the incoming requests. Is it the right idea to have all the servers check into the gateway and update there status. By having the servers run through a gateway if the gateway dies all the incoming requests are ignored. I'm thinking that having all the servers maintain a list of each other, or at least a few I could rebuild the list of servers and establish a new gateway. Is it worth it? Or should I have a backup gateway that could switch out? Should I let the user choose? How should I pick which server handles the database and which handles the page serving? Should I spread the database so that queries are preformed on multiple servers? Which would theoretically improve performance. The servers would need to mirror the database at least once so that if a server goes down the database isn't corrupted. So this brings up writing another question, should I broadcast SQL queries so that all the servers can take a bit of the work load? If I do it that way wouldn't a query clog up the network so that other queries couldn't be preformed? What are my alternatives? Finally, is there a free solution already out there that might need a little modification that suits my needs?

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• creating a google wave clone using php/mysql/jquery

  - by jeansymolanza

  seasons greetings to all. i have a question that has been rather bugging me as of late. does anyone know how one can create a google wave clone using php/mysql/jquery as primary points of development. any ideas on how this might be possible and recommend any starting points? i have some time off work and it would be an interesting project to undertake as i want to use it in an e-learning framework next year. i will be testing the product on a XAMPP local server. i understand some of the technologies that google wave using but i am rather curious as to how these can be developed to a decent standard using php/mysql/jquery (i mention these three because i am quite adept at them). any links to resources best suited to an intermediate programmer would be appreciated. many thanks and God bless. so far i have this: http://konrness.com/javascript/google-wave-style-scroll-bar-jquery-plugin/

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• Some Insight on the Field of Knowledge Representations and Reasoning

  - by picmate

  I started following an MS in computer sciences after about two years of work for a software company. I worked primarily in data warehousing and business intelligence related software development during my previous occupation. There is a high chance for me to select a research in knowledge representations, ontologies and reasoning, as there are no other research available in any other interesting fields, such as pattern recognition and navigation. I developed an interest towards knowledge representation with what I learnt from the courses I am taking currently. But I do not have a deep understanding of it in terms of which areas such a field would have an impact in a real life scenario, and how it will help me when I am hunting for a job in the near future. Some thought about this would be greatly appreciated.

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• Purpose of NOP instruction and align statement in x86 assembly

  - by alvonellos

  It has been a year or so since I last took an assembly class. In that class, we were using MASM with the Irvine libraries to make it easier to program in. After we'd gone through most of the instructions, he said that the NOP instruction essentially did nothing and not to worry about using it. Anyway, it was about midterm and he has some example code that wouldn't run properly, so he told us to add a NOP instruction and it worked fine. I asked I'm after class why and what it actually did, and he said he didn't know. Anybody know?

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• How to choose a job? [closed]

  - by Aadi Droid

  When given multiple opportunities from various software giants, as a fresher out of school how should one decide which company to go for? Just as an example I have offers from two companies, won't name them but the two biggest dream companies for any SDE. While one company offers tremendous learning opportunites and and a good pay but coupled with really bad employee support and perks. While the other offers a relaxed work environment where learning happens by choice, with a slightly lower pay but amazing employee facilities and perks. Assuming the fresher has a plan to go for his masters degree in two years what are the most important things he should be looking at?

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• Few specific questions on how games are developed

  - by russ

  When it comes to programming games from the old school sega games like sonic to indie games or angry birds or even to more advance games like Diablo, how exactly is level design done? As in, are the levels sometimes designed straight out of code in an IDE? Or do they create a visual level design editor where things can be placed at the click of a mouse button? I'm imagining old school games or very simple ones like indies are done via code, where extremely complicated ones require a visual editor. Is this correct? Also, when it comes to libraries like SDL or XNA, how often are these used rather than just utilizing OpenGL or DirectX? What about creating your own game engine vs utilizing one already made? Do most use already built engines? This question is directed toward the whole gaming spectrum of indie/big game development. Thanks.

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• How should I implement a command processing application?

  - by Nini Michaels

  I want to make a simple, proof-of-concept application (REPL) that takes a number and then processes commands on that number. Example: I start with 1. Then I write "add 2", it gives me 3. Then I write "multiply 7", it gives me 21. Then I want to know if it is prime, so I write "is prime" (on the current number - 21), it gives me false. "is odd" would give me true. And so on. Now, for a simple application with few commands, even a simple switch would do for processing the commands. But if I want extensibility, how would I need to implement the functionality? Do I use the command pattern? Do I build a simple parser/interpreter for the language? What if I want more complex commands, like "multiply 5 until >200" ? What would be an easy way to extend it (add new commands) without recompiling? Edit: to clarify a few things, my end goal would not be to make something similar to WolframAlpha, but rather a list (of numbers) processor. But I want to start slowly at first (on single numbers). I'm having in mind something similar to the way one would use Haskell to process lists, but a very simple version. I'm wondering if something like the command pattern (or equivalent) would suffice, or if I have to make a new mini-language and a parser for it to achieve my goals?

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• Stored procedure Naming conventions?

  - by Chris

  One of our senior developers has stated that we should be using a naming convention for stored procedures with an "objectVerb" style of naming such as ("MemberGetById") instead of a "verbObject" type of naming ("GetMemberByID"). The reasoning for this standard is that all related stored procedures would be grouped together by object rather than by the action. While I see the logic for this way of naming things, this is the first time that I have seen stored procedures named this way. My opinion of the naming convention is that the name can not be read naturally and takes some time to determine what the words are saying and what the procedure might do. What are your takes on this? Which way is the more common way of naming a stored proc, and does a what types of stored proc naming conventions have you used or go by?

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• Which iPhone ad API has produced the highest revenue for you?

  - by Kyle Humfeld

  This isn't a technical question, but more of a request for advice and empirical/anecdotal data. I'm nearly done writing a free app for iPhone, and I'm at the stage where I'm going to put ads into the app. I've had mixed success in the past with iAd (their fill rates have been atrocious recently, and their payouts have cut by about 75% over the past 4 months or so), and would like to know how much ad revenue you, the community, has seen from the various ad APIs you've used for your iPhone apps. This isn't a request for opinion, i.e. which is 'better', only what kinds of numbers you're seeing. I don't need absolute figures, but 'iAd pays x% higher than AdMob, and y% lower than AdSense' would be extremely helpful to me as I make my decision as to which ad API to integrate into my App. Also, have you had any experience or success with integrating multiple ad APIs into the same app? That's something I'm considering doing in my current iAd-filled apps (particularly my iPad app, which has yet to receive a single impression after nearly 60,000 requests)... something like: 1) Request-from-iAd 2) if that fails, request-from-adSense 3) if that fails, request-from-adMob 4) if that fails, ... etc.

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• Which iPhone ad API has produced the highest revenue for you?

  - by Kyle Humfeld

  This isn't a technical question, but more of a request for advice and empirical/anecdotal data. I'm nearly done writing a free app for iPhone, and I'm at the stage where I'm going to put ads into the app. I've had mixed success in the past with iAd (their fill rates have been atrocious recently, and their payouts have cut by about 75% over the past 4 months or so), and would like to know how much ad revenue you, the community, has seen from the various ad APIs you've used for your iPhone apps. This isn't a request for opinion, i.e. which is 'better', only what kinds of numbers you're seeing. I don't need absolute figures, but 'iAd pays x% higher than AdMob, and y% lower than AdSense' would be extremely helpful to me as I make my decision as to which ad API to integrate into my App. Also, have you had any experience or success with integrating multiple ad APIs into the same app? That's something I'm considering doing in my current iAd-filled apps (particularly my iPad app, which has yet to receive a single impression after nearly 60,000 requests)... something like: 1) Request-from-iAd 2) if that fails, request-from-adSense 3) if that fails, request-from-adMob 4) if that fails, ... etc.

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• Is Unix/Linux adoption a measure of developer skill? [closed]

  - by adeptsage

  Is Linux/Unix based OS adoption for development (or recreation) a rough measure of the awareness, adaptability and/or skill of a developer, after considering factors like learning curve for effective code testing via the CLI, basic scripting, tweaking, etc. I have no intention of starting flame wars between Windows and Linux as better dev environments, and personal choice of OSes for dev, but what i do wish to know is that - will the level of adaptability of a person who uses a Unix based system be defined by the fact that he programs on a Unix based OS?

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• Is it ok to replace optimized code with readable code?

  - by Coder

  Sometimes you run into a situation where you have to extend/improve an existing code. You see that the old code is very lean, but it's also difficult to extend, and takes time to read. Is it a good idea to replace it with modern code? Some time ago I liked the lean approach, but now, it seems to me that it's better to sacrifice a lot of optimizations in favor of higher abstractions, better interfaces and more readable, extendable code. The compilers seem to be getting better as well, so things like struct abc = {} are silently turned into memsets, shared_ptrs are pretty much producing the same code as raw pointer twiddling, templates are working super good because they produce super lean code, and so on. But still, sometimes you see stack based arrays and old C functions with some obscure logic, and usually they are not on the critical path. Is it good idea to change such code if you have to touch a small piece of it either way?

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• When should we use weak entities when modelling a database?

  - by Songo

  This is basically a question about what are weak entities? When should we use them? How should they be modeled? What is the main difference between normal entities and weak entities? Does weak entities correspond to value objects when doing Domain Driven Design? To help keep the question on topic here is an example taken from Wikipedia that people can use to answer these question: In this example OrderItem was modeled as a weak entity, but I can't understand why it can't be modeled as a normal entity. Another question is what if I want to track the order history (i.e. the changes in it status) would that be a normal or weak entity?

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• Pythonic Java. Yes, or no?

  - by OscarRyz

  Python use of indentation for code scope was initially very polemic and now is considered one of the best language features, because it helps ( almost by forcing us ) to have a consistent style. Well, I saw this post http://bit.ly/hmvTe9 where someone posted Java code with ; y {} aligned to the right margin to look more pythonic. It was very shocking at first ( as a matter of fact, if I ever see Java code like that in one of my projects I would be scared! ) However, there is something interesting here. Do we need all those braces and semicolons? How would the code would look like without them? class Person int age void greet( String a ) if( a == "" ) out.println("Hello stranger") else out.printf("Hello %s%n", a ) int age() return this.age class Main void main() new Person().greet("") Looks good to me, but in such small piece of code is hard to appreciate it, and since I don't Python too much, I can't tell by looking at existing libraries if it would be cleaner or not. So I took the first file of a library named: jAlarms I found and this is the result: ( WARNING : the following image may be disturbing for some people ) http://pxe.pastebin.com/eU1R4xsh Obviously it doesn't compile. This would be a compiling version using right aligned {} and ; http://pxe.pastebin.com/2uijtbYM Question What would happen if we could code like this? Would it make things clearer? Would it make it harder? I see braces, and semicolons as help to the parser and we, as humans have get used to them, but do we really need them? I guess is hard to tell specially since many mainstream languages do use braces, C, C++, Java, C# JavaScript Assuming the compiler wouldn't have problems without them, would you use them? Please comment.

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• Am I too young to burn out?

  - by Steve McMesse

  I feel like I have burned out, even though I am only out of college for 5 years. For the first 3 years of my career, things were going awesome. I was never anything special in school, but I felt special at my company. Looking back, I could tell that I made all the right moves: I actively tried to improve myself daily. I made a point of helping anyone I could. I made a point (and read books about) being a good team member. I had fun. After 3 years in a row as being rated as a top employee, I converted that political capital into choosing to work on an interesting, glamorous project with only 2 developers: me and a highly respected senior technical leader. I worked HARD on that project, and it came out a huge success. High in quality, low in bugs, no delays, etc. The senior tech lead got a major promotion and a GIGANTIC bonus. I got nothing. I was so disappointed that I just stopped caring. Over the last year, I have just kind of floated. During my first 4 years I felt energized after a 10 hour day. Now I can barely be bothered to work 6 hours a day. Any advice? I don't even know what I'm asking. I am just hoping smart people see this and drop me a few pieces of wisdom.

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• When are Getters and Setters Justified

  - by Winston Ewert

  Getters and setters are often criticized as being not proper OO. On the other hand most OO code I've seen has extensive getters and setters. When are getters and setters justified? Do you try to avoid using them? Are they overused in general? If your favorite language has properties (mine does) then such things are also considered getters and setters for this question. They are same thing from an OO methodology perspective. They just have nicer syntax. Sources for Getter/Setter Criticism (some taken from comments to give them better visibility): http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2003/jw-0905-toolbox.html http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=23 http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AccessorsAreEvil http://www.darronschall.com/weblog/2005/03/no-brain-getter-and-setters.cfm http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/encapsulation_violation_with_getters_and To state the criticism simply: Getters and Setters allow you to manipulate the internal state of objects from outside of the object. This violates encapsulation. Only the object itself should care about its internal state. And an example Procedural version of code. struct Fridge { int cheese; } void go_shopping(Fridge fridge) { fridge.cheese += 5; } Mutator version of code: class Fridge { int cheese; void set_cheese(int _cheese) { cheese = _cheese; } int get_cheese() { return cheese; } } void go_shopping(Fridge fridge) { fridge.set_cheese(fridge.get_cheese() + 5); } The getters and setters made the code much more complicated without affording proper encapsulation. Because the internal state is accessible to other objects we don't gain a whole lot by adding these getters and setters. The question has been previously discussed on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/565095/java-are-getters-and-setters-evil http://stackoverflow.com/questions/996179

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• How does TDD address interaction between objects?

  - by Gigi

  TDD proponents claim that it results in better design and decoupled objects. I can understand that writing tests first enforces the use of things like dependency injection, resulting in loosely coupled objects. However, TDD is based on unit tests - which test individual methods and not the integration between objects. And yet, TDD expects design to evolve from the tests themselves. So how can TDD possibly result in a better design at the integration (i.e. inter-object) level when the granularity it addresses is finer than that (individual methods)?

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• What is the difference between WCF service and a simple Web service in developing using .NET Framework?

  - by Steve Johnson

  My questions are: What is the difference between WCF service and a simple Web service in .NET Framework? What a WCF Service can do which a .NET Web service cant? In other words, what are the limitation of .NET Web services which were overcome in WCF services? I understand that WCF are REST based and .NET web services are SOAP based. But I need to know more than that. How a developer will make a design decision whether to developer a Web service or a WCF service?

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• C# : When to go Fluent

  - by ach

  In many respects I really like the idea of Fluent interfaces, but with all of the modern features of C# (initializers, lambdas, named parameters) I find myself thinking, "is it worth it?", and "Is this the right pattern to use?". Could anyone give me, if not an accepted practice, at least their own experience or decision matrix for when to use the Fluent pattern? Conclusion: Some good rules of thumb from the answers so far: Fluent interfaces help greatly when you have more actions than setters, since calls benefit more from the context pass-through. Fluent interfaces should be thought of as a layer over top of an api, not the sole means of use. The modern features such as lambdas, initializers, and named parameters, can work hand-in-hand to make a fluent interface even more friendly. ... Edit: Here is an example of what I mean by the modern features making it feel less needed. Take for example a (perhaps poor example) Fluent interface that allows me to create an Employee like: Employees.CreateNew().WithFirstName("Peter") .WihtLastName("Gibbons") .WithManager() .WithFirstName("Bill") .WithLastName("Lumbergh") .WithTitle("Manager") .WithDepartment("Y2K"); Could easily be written with initiallizers like: Employees.Add(new Employee() { FirstName = "Peter", LastName = "Gibbons", Manager = new Employee() { FirstName = "Bill", LastName = "Lumbergh", Title = "Manager", Department = "Y2K" } }); I could also have used named parameters in a constructors in this example.

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• Self Documenting Code Vs. Commented Code

  - by Phill

  I had a search but didn't find what I was looking for, please feel free to link me if this question has already being asked. Earlier this month this post was made: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/why-youre-a-bad-php-programmer/ Basically to sum it up, you're a bad programmer if you don't write comments. My personal opinion is that code should be descriptive and mostly not require comment's unless the code cannot be self describing. In the example given // Get the extension off the image filename $pieces = explode('.', $image_name); $extension = array_pop($pieces); The author said this code should be given a comment, my personal opinion is the code should be a function call that is descriptive: $extension = GetFileExtension($image_filename); However in the comments someone actually made just that suggestion: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/why-youre-a-bad-php-programmer/comment-page-2/#comment-357130 The author responded by saying the commenter was "one of those people", i.e, a bad programmer. What are everyone elses views on Self Describing Code vs Commenting Code?

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• agile as our first project management methodology [closed]

  - by Hasan Khan

  we are a small web development company that has till now been working on client projects. we employed little to no project management and that has cost us a lot. we've used only the barest of tools (wireframing, prototyping etc) but no formal project management process has been put into place. we've learnt from our mistakes and want to prevent them from happening in the future. also, we are looking to develop our own products and we understand that putting in a proper project management paradigm will help. after a lot of research, we've sort of settled on agile for a few reasons: agile seems to scale well with team size. our team is small right now and we hope to grow and agile seems to be a process that we can put in place now and grow with. agile will help us with customers who just can't seem to make up their minds and keep changing requirements. we'd appreciate the community's thoughts on this. is this a correct way to think? will agile be a good system to put into place, where there has been none till now? are there any resources that may help us in our position? pretty much all of the resources that we've found start by comparing agile to x (where x = any management methodology) and why its better than x and how agile can be implemented in place of x. we're looking for resources that can help us out in our particular situation. thanks for all your help!

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• Does Azure only support ASP.NET MVC applications and if so how should I adapt my design?

  - by RPK

  I am writing a small ASP.NET Web Application. My worries are that I want to keep the architecture same giving me the option to install it on an Intranet or on a Cloud Platform. I am not using MVC but lately learned that Azure only supports ASP.NET MVC applications. I want to know whether ASP.NET Web Forms application work on Azure/AppHarbor or not. Do I need to convert this application to MVC if Web Forms is not supported? Will the same application run on Intranet as well?

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• Is there any practical use for the empty type in Common Lisp?

  - by Pedro Rodrigues

  The Common Lisp spec states that nil is the name of the empty type, but I've never found any situation in Common Lisp where I felt like the empty type was useful/necessary. Is it there just for completeness sake (and removing it wouldn't cause any harm to anyone)? Or is there really some practical use for the empty type in Common Lisp? If yes, then I would prefer an answer with code example. For example, in Haskell the empty type can be used when binding foreign data structures, to make sure that no one tries to create values of that type without using the data structure's foreign interface (although in this case, the type is not really empty).

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