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• What is the convention for the star location in reference variables?

  - by Brett Ryan

  Have been learning Objective-C and different books and examples use differing conventions for the location of the star (*) when naming reference variables. MyType* x; MyType *y; MyType*z; // this also works Personally I prefer the first option as it illustrates that x is a "pointer type of MyType". I see the first two used interchangeably, and sometimes in the same code I've seen differing uses of both. I want to know what is the most common convention It's been a very long time since I've programmed in C (15 years) so I can't remember if all variants are legal for C also or if this is Objective-C specific. I'd prefer answers which state why one is better than the other, as how I explained how I read it above.

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• Studies on code documentation productivity gains/losses

  - by J T

  Hi everyone, After much searching, I have failed to answer a basic question pertaining to an assumed known in the software development world: WHAT IS KNOWN: Enforcing a strict policy on adequate code documentation (be it Doxygen tags, Javadoc, or simply an abundance of comments) adds over-head to the time required to develop code. BUT: Having thorough documentation (or even an API) brings with it productivity gains (one assumes) in new and seasoned developers when they are adding features, or fixing bugs down the road. THE QUESTION: Is the added development time required to guarantee such documentation offset by the gains in productivity down-the-road (in a strictly economical sense)? I am looking for case studies, or answers that can bring with them objective evidence supporting the conclusions that are drawn. Thanks in advance!

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

  - by Vaccano

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

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• Working with fubar/refuctored code

  - by Keyo

  I'm working with some code which was written by a contractor who left a year ago leaving a number of projects with buggy, disgustingly bad code. This is what I call cowboy PHP, say no more. Ideally I'd like to leave the project as is and never touch it again. Things break, requirements change and it needs to be maintained. Part A needs to be changed. There is a bug I cannot reproduce. Part A is connect to parts B D and E. This kind of work gives me a headache and makes me die a little inside. It kills my motivation and productivity. To be honest I'd say it's affecting my mental health. Perhaps being at the start of my career I'm being naive to think production code should be reasonably clean. I would like to hear from anyone else who has been in this situation before. What did you do to get out of it? I'm thinking long term I might have to find another job. Edit I've moved on from this company now, to a place where idiots are not employed. The code isn't perfect but it's at least manageable and peer reviewed. There are a lot of people in the comments below telling me that software is messy like this. Sure I don't agree with the way some programmers do things but this code was seriously mangled. The guy who wrote it tried to reinvent every wheel he could, and badly. He stopped getting work from us because of his bad code that nobody on the team could stand. If it were easy to refactor I would have. Eventually after many 'just do this small 10minute change' situations had ballooned into hours of lost time (regardless of who on the team was doing the work) my boss finally caved in it was rewritten.

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• At what size of data does it become beneficial to move from SQL to NoSQL?

  - by wobbily_col

  As a relational database programmer (most of the time), I read articles about how relational databases don't scale, and NoSQL solutions such as MongoDB do. As most of the databases I have developed so far have been small to mid scale, I have never had a problem that hasn't been solved by some indexing, query optimization or schema redesign. What sort of size would I expect to see MySQL struggling with. How many rows? (I know this is going to depend on the application, and type of data stored. the one that got me thing was basically a genetics database, so would have one main table, with 3 or 4 lookup tables. The main table will contain amongst other things, a chromosome reference, and a position coordinate. It will likely get queried for a number of entries between two potions on a chromosome, to see what is stored there).

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• With Choice Comes Complexity

  - by BuckWoody

  "Complex" may be defined as "Having many steps, details or parts." Many of Microsoft's products, including SQL Server, can be complex. I'm stating what most data professionals already know - there's usually multiple ways to do things in SQL Server. For instance, to import some data into a table you can use graphical tools, SQLCMD, bcp, SQL Server Integration Services, BULK INSERT, even PowerShell, just to name a few tools at your disposal. That's really not the issue, though. The bigger issue is that there are normally multiple thought-processes, or methods, that you have available for a task. That's both a strength and a weakness. If things were more simple, you would have fewer choices. Sometimes that's a good thing. Just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. However, your particular situation may not fit that tool or process, so having more options increases your ability to get your job done the way you need to do it. On the other hand, that's more for you to learn, which is harder. There's another side of this benefit/difficulty that you need to be aware of. Even if you're quite good at what you do, keep in mind that the way you know how to do something may not be the only way to do it. Keep your mind open to new possibilities, and most importantly - to new knowledge. SQL Server professionals teach me something new every day. So embrace the complexity - on balance, it's a good thing! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Naming standard for additional A records/IP addresses for IIS servers?

  - by serialhobbyist

  When you're adding another IP address to and IIS server, what naming standards do you use for the A records? Background: I've a bunch of sites on an IIS server which use (CNAME'd) host-headers and a single IP address. Server names (and A records) adhere to unfriendly (as in difficult-to-remember) naming standards whereas CNAMEs, and therefore host-headers, can be friendly. Now I've a need for several SSL certificates for different sites. I was thinking about using an additional IP address for each to-be-SSL'd site but still using friendly CNAMEs. So then I come to what to call the A record. What do you do? Related to this question.

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• Could someone help me understand SQL TDE Database encryption?

  - by SLC

  I don't quite follow how it works. According to the MSDN Article there is a big hierarchy of keys protecting other keys and passwords. At some point the database is encrypted. You query the database which is encrypted, and it works seamlessly. If you're able to simply connect to the database as normal and not have to worry about any of the encryption from a developer point of view, how exactly is it secure? Surely anyone can simply connect and do select * from x and the data is revealed. Sorry my question is a bit scattered, I am just very confused by the article.

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• ISO 12207: Verification of integration and Unit test validation

  - by user970696

  I have received comments from the supervisor reviewing my thesis. He asked two questions I cannot answer right now: If ISO 12207 says under "Integration verification" that it "checks that components are correctly and completely integrated into a system", how this can be verified without testing, if all testing is validation? How without testing can I know that system is integrated correctly and fully? If unit testing is validation, how does it match the ISO definiton of validation "that requirements for intended use were fulfilled" if its so low level?

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• Standard -server to server- and -browser to server- authentication method

  - by jeruki

  I have server with some resources; until now all these resources were requested through a browser by a human user, and the authentication was made with an username/password method, that generates a cookie with a token (to have the session open for some time). Right now the system requires that other servers make GET requests to this resource server but they have to authenticate to get them. We have been using a list of authorized IPs but having two authentication methods makes the code more complex. My questions are: Is there any standard method or pattern to authenticate human users and servers using the same code? If there is not, are the methods I'm using now the right ones or is there a better / more standard way to accomplish what I need? Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

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• Using SQL tables for storing user created level stats. Is there a better way?

  - by Ivan

  I am developing a racing game in which players can create their own tracks and upload them to a server. Players will be able to compare their best track times to their friends and see world records. I was going to generate a table for each track submitted to store the best times of each player who plays the track. However, I can't predict how many will be uploaded and I imagine too many tables might cause problems, or is this a valid method? I considered saving each player's best times in a string in a single table field like so: level1:00.45;level2:00.43;level3:00.12 If I did this I wouldn't need a separate table for each level (each level could just have a row in a 'WorldRecords' table). However, this just causes another problem because the text would eventually reach the limit for varchar length. I also considered storing the times data in XML files. This would avoid database issues and server disk space can be increased if needed. But I imagine this would be very slow. To update one players best time on one level, I would have to check every node in the file to find their time record to update. Apologies for the wall of text. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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• The overlooked OUTPUT clause

  - by steveh99999

  I often find myself applying ad-hoc data updates to production systems – usually running scripts written by other people. One of my favourite features of SQL syntax is the OUTPUT clause – I find this is rarely used, and I often wonder if this is due to a lack of awareness of this feature.. The OUTPUT clause was added to SQL Server in the SQL 2005 release – so has been around for quite a while now, yet I often see scripts like this… SELECT somevalue FROM sometable WHERE keyval = XXX UPDATE sometable SET somevalue = newvalue WHERE keyval = XXX -- now check the update has worked… SELECT somevalue FROM sometable WHERE keyval = XXX This can be rewritten to achieve the same end-result using the OUTPUT clause. UPDATE sometable SET somevalue = newvalue OUTPUT deleted.somevalue AS ‘old value’,              inserted.somevalue AS ‘new value’ WHERE keyval = XXX The Update statement with output clause also requires less IO - ie I've replaced three SQL Statements with one, using only a third of the IO.  If you are not aware of the power of the output clause – I recommend you look at the output clause in books online And finally here’s an example of the output produced using the Northwind database…  

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• Control convention for circular movement?

  - by Christian

  I'm currently doing a kind of training project in Unity (still a beginner). It's supposed to be somewhat like Breakout, but instead of just going left and right I want the paddle to circle around the center point. This is all fine and dandy, but the problem I have is: how do you control this with a keyboard or gamepad? For touch and mouse control I could work around the problem by letting the paddle follow the cursor/finger, but with the other control methods I'm a bit stumped. With a keyboard for example, I could either make it so that the Left arrow always moves the paddle clockwise (it starts at the bottom of the circle), or I could link it to the actual direction - meaning that if the paddle is at the bottom, it goes left and up along the circle or, if it's in the upper hemisphere, it moves left and down, both times toward the outer left point of the circle. Both feel kind of weird. With the first one, it can be counter intuitive to press Left to move the paddle right when it's in the upper area, while in the second method you'd need to constantly switch buttons to keep moving. So, long story short: is there any kind of existing standard, convention or accepted example for this type of movement and the corresponding controls? I didn't really know what to google for (control conventions for circular movement was one of the searches I tried, but it didn't give me much), and I also didn't really find anything about this on here. If there is a Question that I simply didn't see, please excuse the duplicate.

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• Is writing comments inside methods not a good practice?

  - by Srini Kandula

  A friend told me that writing comments inside methods is not good. He said that we should have comments only for the method definitions(javadocs) but not inside the method body. It seems he read in a book that having comments inside the code means there is a problem in the code. I don't quite understand his reasoning. I think writing comments inside the method body is good and it helps other developers to understand it better and faster. Please provide your comments.

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• if ('constant' == $variable) vs. if ($variable == 'constant')

  - by Tom Auger

  Lately, I've been working a lot in PHP and specifically within the WordPress framework. I'm noticing a lot of code in the form of: if ( 1 == $options['postlink'] ) Where I would have expected to see: if ( $options['postlink'] == 1 ) Is this a convention found in certain languages / frameworks? Is there any reason the former approach is preferable to the latter (from a processing perspective, or a parsing perspective or even a human perspective?) Or is it merely a matter of taste? I have always thought it better when performing a test, that the variable item being tested against some constant is on the left. It seems to map better to the way we would ask the question in natural language: "if the cake is chocolate" rather than "if chocolate is the cake".

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• "static" as a semantic clue about statelessness?

  - by leoger

  this might be a little philosophical but I hope someone can help me find a good way to think about this. I've recently undertaken a refactoring of a medium sized project in Java to go back and add unit tests. When I realized what a pain it was to mock singletons and statics, I finally "got" what I've been reading about them all this time. (I'm one of those people that needs to learn from experience. Oh well.) So, now that I'm using Spring to create the objects and wire them around, I'm getting rid of static keywords left and right. (If I could potentially want to mock it, it's not really static in the same sense that Math.abs() is, right?) The thing is, I had gotten into the habit of using static to denote that a method didn't rely on any object state. For example: //Before import com.thirdparty.ThirdPartyLibrary.Thingy; public class ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper { public static Thingy newThingy(InputType input) { new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build(); } } //called as... ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(input); //After public class ThirdPartyFactory { public Thingy newThingy(InputType input) { new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build(); } } //called as... thirdPartyFactoryInstance.newThingy(input); So, here's where it gets touchy-feely. I liked the old way because the capital letter told me that, just like Math.sin(x), ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(x) did the same thing the same way every time. There's no object state to change how the object does what I'm asking it to do. Here are some possible answers I'm considering. Nobody else feels this way so there's something wrong with me. Maybe I just haven't really internalized the OO way of doing things! Maybe I'm writing in Java but thinking in FORTRAN or somesuch. (Which would be impressive since I've never written FORTRAN.) Maybe I'm using staticness as a sort of proxy for immutability for the purposes of reasoning about code. That being said, what clues should I have in my code for someone coming along to maintain it to know what's stateful and what's not? Perhaps this should just come for free if I choose good object metaphors? e.g. thingyWrapper doesn't sound like it has state indepdent of the wrapped Thingy which may itself be mutable. Similarly, a thingyFactory sounds like it should be immutable but could have different strategies that are chosen among at creation. I hope I've been clear and thanks in advance for your advice!

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• How important is it that you know the C++ standard?

  - by Nim

  I did try searching, but I did not see a similar question (either that or my search terminology was incorrect - if so, feel free to close). I am an avid user of SO, and I notice that there are lots of references to the C++ standard in discussions and answers - and I have to admit, I have never read this particular document, the language makes my eyes hurt... So, the question is, can a C++ developer really code for a living without ever having read this document? Is it really important for us mere mortals who are not in the business of writing compilers?

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• Is it Considered Good SQL practice to use GUID to link multiple tables to same Id field?

  - by Mallow

  I want to link several tables to a many-to-many(m2m) table. One table would be called location and this table would always be on one side of the m2m table. But I will have a list of several tables for example: Cards Photographs Illustrations Vectors Would using GUID's between these tables to link it to a single column in another table be considered 'Good Practice'? Will Mysql let me to have it automatically cascade updates and delete? If so, would multiple cascades lead to an issues? UPDATE I've read that GUID (a hex number) Generally takes up more space in a database and slows queries down. However I could still generate 'unique' ids by just having the table initial's as part of the id so that the table card's id would be c0001, and then Illustrations be I001. Regardless of this change, the questions still stands.

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• How to define a natural id in database?

  - by gcc

  There are a lot of manuals. I am trying to create an database to hold information of these documents. But, there is a small problem. How can I give meaningful id to the manuals? Are there any standard or logic behind the giving meaningful id to the documents? If there is no standard, can you tell me how I should do that? example: table : manual id | manual name EDIT: Not Meaningful ID 1 or M1 or foo 2 C2 bar 3 P123 name ... ... ... (i) (ii) (iii) (i) Not meaningful for me because if some item deleted, there can be gap. ex 1 33 100. (ii) random character can be confusing when one try to give a name to new manual (iii) Why giving name is not preferred is because finding a name to the manual as ID is hard after 500 manuals. Meaningful : New ID * Can be easily produced even if after 1000 manuals * Should not be so complicated

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• What is the worst programmer habit?

  - by 0x4a6f4672

  Many people get into programming because programming is fun. At least in the beginning. After some time doing it professionally, programming is no longer fun, often just hard work. Sometimes we develop bad habits along the way to make it fun again. Some bad habits of programmers are well known, for example the "I fix that in a second" habit, the "reinvent the wheel" practice or the "all code except mine is crap" attitude (which often leads to "I will re-write the entire program from scratch" syndrome). There are things which a programmer should never do. What is the worst programmer habit?

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• How do you avoid name similarities between your classes and the native ones?

  - by Oscar

  I just ran into an "interesting problem", which I would like your opinion about: I am developing a system and for many reasons (meaning: abstraction, technology independence, etc) we create our own types for exchanging information. For instance: if there is a method which is called SendEmail and is invoked by the business logic, it way have a parameter of type OurCompany.EMailMessage, which is an object which is completely technology independent and contains only "business relevant data" (for instance, no information abut head encoding). Inside the SendEmail function, we get this information from our EMailMEssage object and create a MailMessage (this one is technolgy specific) object so it can be sent over the network. As you can already notice, our class has a very similar name to the "native" language class. The problem is: this is exactly what they are, email messages, so it is hard to find another meaningful name for them. Do you have this problem often? How do you manage it? Edit: @mgkrebbs just commented about using fully qualified names. This is our current approach, but a little bit too verbose, IMHO. I would like something cleaner, if possible.

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• Assignments in mock return values

  - by zerkms

  (I will show examples using php and phpunit but this may be applied to any programming language) The case: let's say we have a method A::foo that delegates some work to class M and returns the value as-is. Which of these solutions would you choose: $mock = $this->getMock('M'); $mock->expects($this->once()) ->method('bar') ->will($this->returnValue('baz')); $obj = new A($mock); $this->assertEquals('baz', $obj->foo()); or $mock = $this->getMock('M'); $mock->expects($this->once()) ->method('bar') ->will($this->returnValue($result = 'baz')); $obj = new A($mock); $this->assertEquals($result, $obj->foo()); or $result = 'baz'; $mock = $this->getMock('M'); $mock->expects($this->once()) ->method('bar') ->will($this->returnValue($result)); $obj = new A($mock); $this->assertEquals($result, $obj->foo()); Personally I always follow the 2nd solution, but just 10 minutes ago I had a conversation with couple of developers who said that it is "too tricky" and chose 3rd or 1st. So what would you usually do? And do you have any conventions to follow in such cases?

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• How to name a method that both performs a task and returns a boolean as a status?

  - by Limbo Exile

  If there is a method bool DoStuff() { try { // doing stuff... return true; } catch (Exception ex) { return false; } } should it rather be called IsStuffDone()? Both names could be misinterpreted by the user: If the name is DoStuff() why does it return a boolean? If the name is IsStuffDone() it is not clear whether the method performs a task or only checks its result. Is there a convention for this case? Or an alternative approach, as this one is considered flawed? For example in languages that have output parameters, like C#, a boolean status variable could be passed to the method as one and the method's return type would be void.

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• Naming conventions for newtype deconstructors (destructors?)

  - by Petr Pudlák

  Looking into Haskell's standard library we can see: newtype StateT s m a = StateT { runStateT :: s -> m (a, s) } newtype WrappedMonad m a = WrapMonad { unwrapMonad :: m a } newtype Sum a = Sum { getSum :: a } Apparently, there (at least) 3 different prefixes used to unwrap a value inside a newtype: un-, run- and get-. (Moreover run- and get- capitalizes the next letter while un- doesn't.) This seems confusing. Are there any reasons for that, or is that just a historical thing? If I design my own newtype, what prefix should I use and why?

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• Automating the Backup of a SQL Server 2008 Express Database

  - by JaydPage

  Steps Involved: 1) Create a Database Backup Script. 2) Create a Scheduled Task To Run the Backup Script. 1 Create a Database Backup Script. a) Download and install SQL Server Management Studio. This is a free tool available on the Microsoft website. b) Once Management Studio is installed launch it and connect to the SQL server instance that contains the database that you want to back up. c) Right click on the database and then in the menu choose Tasks -> Back up... d) This will open up a window where you can choose your backup options, once you are happy with the options click on the "Script" button near the top and select the "Script Action to File" option. e) Save the File. 2 Create a Schedule Task to Run the Backup Script a) Open up Windows Task Scheduler. b) Create a new Task using the wizard, when asked to select a program browse to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\binn\SQLCMD.exe c) There are 2 arguments that need to be set: -S \SERVER_INSTANCE_NAME  -i "PATH_OF_SQLBACKUP_SCRIPT" where SERVER_INSTANCE_NAME  is the name of the instance of SQL server that contains your database e.g. (local) and PATH_OF_SQLBACKUP_SCRIPT is the path of your backup script e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\DatastoreBackup.sql" d) Adjust the task to run at the desired times and you are done.

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