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• Professional Developers, may I join you?

  - by Ben

  I currently work in technical support for a software/hardware company and for the most part it's a good job, but it's feeling more and more like I'm getting 'stuck' here. No raises in the 5 years I've been here, and lately there seems to be more hiring from the outside than promotion from within. The work I do is more technical than end-user support, as we deal primarily with our field technicians who have a little more technical skill than the general user base. As a result I get into much more technical support issues... often tracking down bugs in our software, finding performance bottlenecks in our database schema, etc. The work I'm most proud of are the development projects I've come up with on my own, and worked on during lunch breaks and slow periods in Support. Over the years I've written a number of useful utilities for the company. Diagnostic type applications that several departments use and appreciate. These include apps that simulate our various hardware devices, log file analysis, time-saving utilities for our work processes, etc. My best projects have been the hardware simulation programs, which are the type of thing we probably wouldn't have put a full-time developer on had anyone thought to do it, but they've ended up being popular and useful enough to be used by development, QA, R&D, and Support. They allow us to interface our software with simulated hardware, rather than clutter up our work areas with bulky, hard to acquire equipment. Since starting here my life has moved forward (married, kid, one more on the way), but it feels like my career has not. I still earn what I earned walking in the door my first day. Company budget is tight, bonuses have gone down, and no raises or cost of living / inflation adjustments either. As the sole source of income for my family I feel I need to do more, and I'd like to have a more active role in creating something at work, not just cleaning up other people's mistakes. I enjoy technical work, and I think development is the next logical step in my career. I'd like to bring some "legitimacy" to my part-time development work, and make myself a more skilled and valuable employee. Ultimately if this can help me better support my family, that would be ideal. Can I make the jump to professional developer? I have an engineering degree, but no formal education in computer science. I write WinForms apps using the .NET framework, do some freelance web development, have volunteered to write software for a nonprofit, and have started experimenting with programming microcontrollers. I enjoy learning new things in the limited free time I have available. I think I have the aptitude to take on a development role, even in an 'apprentice' capacity if such an option is possible. Have any of you moved into development like this? Do any of you developers have any advice or cautionary tales? Are there better career options I haven't thought of? I welcome any and all related comments and thank you in advance for posting them.

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• Is creating a full application in Silverlight advisable?

  - by Anthony

  Is creating a huge public site fully in Silverlight really advisable? for eg. an ecommerce site. I don't want to start any debate but actually I feel Silverlight shouldn't be used for full website because the biggest loss you incur is of SEO. No search engines till today can parse the xap file and index it based on it's content. You can get around it by doing ifs and thens like if Silverlight is not supported then make an Asp.Net equivalent page for it but that only doubles our effort of making application, more than anything else. Why write double code in 2 applications meant for the same purpose. If that is the only option why not create Asp.Net application only. What are your views? Thanks in advance :)

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• Optimize strategies for xml parsing?

  - by Future2020

  I am looking for general optimization tips and guidelines for xml parsing. One of the optimization strategies is of course selecting the "right" parser. A detailed comparison between the available parsers for ios can be found here http://www.raywenderlich.com/553/how-to-chose-the-best-xml-parser-for-your-iphone-project. However, I am currently trying to investigate general guidelines and tips on how to optimize by payloads to increase the performance as possible. This question is similar to (a question I have posted in the context of ios) but I have not got a sufficient answer. So this question is not in the context of any particular programming language.

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• How to design database having multiple interrelated entities

  - by Sharath Chandra

  I am designing a new system which is more of a help system for core applications in banks or healthcare sector. Given the nature of the system this is not a heavy transaction oriented system but more of read intensive. Now within this application I have multiple entities which are related to each other. For e.g. Assume the following entities in the system User Training Regulations Now each of these entities have M:N Relationship with each other. Assuming the usage of a standard RDBMS, the design may involve many relationship tables each containing the relationships one other entity ("User_Training", "User_Regulations", "Training_Regulations"). This design is limiting since I have more than 3 entities in the system and maintaining the relationship graph is difficult this way. The most frequently used operation is "given an entity get me all the related entities" . I need to design the database where this operation is relatively inexpensive. What are the different recommendations for modelling this kind of database.

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• Is there a resource that explains the benefits of layered programming?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  Some developers I know favor what I would call a procedural programming style. I recognize that procedural programming has its uses, albeit not in the business application world of .NET programming. So let's say we have a winform application with a buttonclick event. The buttonclick handles everything from the UI configuration to the database call and data manipulation. So you end up with a method that is 100's of lines of code long. Outside the fact that this code can't be considered test-able for various reasons, this style of programming is fragile to change. I can talk bout OO, Anti-patterns, etc. The problem is that any distinct topic I can dream up requires a great deal of explanation to understand the potential benefits. Outside of finding a new job (lots of businesses program this way), how can I teach these kinds of developers how to write better code? Obviously we can't sit around a round table and discuss pro's and con's all day due to time constraints and real work that has to be done. Although, training and intense training is the only thing I can think of to fix these problems. Not to say I write perfect code, I most certainly do not. I do believe there are certain best practices that should be followed as a rule E.G. OO in the context of .NET. The most common excuse I hear is "we can't write code fast enough if we do it like that".

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• Why do I have to choose between "management" and "technical" tracks in my career?

  - by Stephen Gross

  I was recently laid off, and although I found a new gig I'm a bit frustrated with how career tracks work in the land of software development. I really love doing a bit of everything: coding, testing, architect(ing), leadership/management, customer contact, requirements gathering, staff development, etc. Software companies, however, want me to fit into a niche: I'm either a coder, a tester, or a manager. When I try to explain to them that I'm best when I'm doing all of those at once, they seem very confused. I'm sympathetic to their interests, but at the same time frustrated that the industry works this way. Any advice? Do I just need to get with the program, so to speak?

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• With which class to start Test Driven Development of card game application? And what would be the next 5 to 7 tests?

  - by Maxis

  I have started to write card game applications. Some model classes: CardSuit, CardValue, Card Deck, IDeckCreator, RegularDeckCreator, DoubleDeckCreator Board Hand and some game classes: Turn, TurnHandler IPlayer, ComputerPlayer, HumanPlayer IAttackStrategy, SimpleAttachStrategy, IDefenceStrategy, SimpleDefenceStrategy GameData, Game are already written. My idea is to create engine, where two computer players could play game and then later I could add UI part. Already for some time I'm reading about Test Driven Development (TDD) and I have idea to start writing application from scratch, as currently I have tendency to write not needed code, which seems usable in future. Also code doesn't have any tests and it is hard to add them now. Seems that TDD could improve all these issue - minimum of needed code, good test coverage and also could help to come to right application design. But I have one issue - I can't decide from where to start TDD? Should I start from bottom - Card related classes or somewhere on top - Game, TurnHandler, ... ? With which class you would start? And what would be the next 5 to 7 tests? (use the card game you know the best) I would like to start TDD with your help and then continue on my own!

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• How do functional languages handle random numbers?

  - by Electric Coffee

  What I mean about that is that in nearly every tutorial I've read about functional languages, is that one of the great things about functions, is that if you call a function with the same parameters twice, you'll always end up with the same result. How on earth do you then make a function that takes a seed as a parameter, and then returns a random number based on that seed? I mean this would seem to go against one of the things that are so good about functions, right? Or am I completely missing something here?

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• Cannot Create a connection to Data Source VB 2010 [closed]

  - by CLO_471

  I seem to be having some issues with my Visual Basic 2010. I am trying to create a connection to a data source and it is just not working. Even my old connections in my other projects are not working. When I get into VB I try and create a connection by clicking Add New Data Source Database DataSet New Connection and when I click on New Connection the screen disappears and I am not able to select anything. Does anyone know of a glitch or something? I have checked my ODBC connections and all is good and I have been able to play around with my Access connections (which I am trying to connect) and Queries and everything seems to be working fine. I have rebooted several times, uninstalled and resinstalled VB and have also repaired the entire application. I am not sure what else to try or what else to do. Any help would be much appreciated. My computer specs are XP SP3, Core2 Duo at 2.80 and 3GB RAM

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• Need Help in Pointing to focus on the Key elements in Code Review Phase?

  - by Sankar Ganesh

  Hi Friends, Let us share your views on the Code Review process, If someone gave a code snippet and ask you to review that code, then what are the major things you will focus on that code Review process. For Instance: I will check any dead code is available in that code, other than Checking Dead Code, what are the key elements to be focused on CODE REVIEW PROCESS. Thanks For Sharing Your Views Sankar Ganesh.S

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• Where and how to mention Stackoverflow participation in the résumé?

  - by Sandeepan Nath

  I think I have good enough reputation on SO now - here is my profile - http://stackoverflow.com/users/351903/sandeepan-nath. Well, this may not be that much as compared to so many other users out there but I am happy with mine. So, I was thinking of adding my profile link on my résumé. (Just the profile link and not that "I have this much reputation on SO"). Those who haven't seen, can see this question Would you put your stackoverflow profile link on your CV / Resume?. How would this look like? Forums/Blogs/Miscellaneous others No blogging as yet but active participant in Stackoverflow. My profile link - http://stackoverflow.com/users/351903/sandeepan-nath I think of putting this section after Project Details and Technical Expertise sections. Any tips/advice? Thanks Update MKO has made a very good point - "do you really want a potential employeer to be able to evaluate in detail everything you've ever written on SO". I thought of commenting but it would be too long - In my questions/answers I put a lot of statements like - "AFAIK ...", "following are my assumptions so far ...", "am I correct to conclude that... ?", "I doubt if it is possible to ..." etc. when I am not sure about something and I rarely involve in fights with other users. However I do argue on topics sometimes if I feel it is necessary and if I have a valid point. I do accept my mistakes and apologize for the same. As we all know nobody is perfect. I must have written many things which may be judged as wrong by a potential employer. But what if the same employer notices that I have improved in the quality of content by comparing old content with new one? Isn't that great? I also try to go back to older questions/answers and put corrective comments etc. when I feel I was wrong or if I can improve my post. Of course there are many employers who want you (potential employees) to be correct each and every time. They immediately remove you from consideration when you say a single incorrect thing. I have personally met such an interviewer few months back. He didn't even care to listen to any good thing I had done after he found a single wrong thing. Now the question is do you really care to work with such people? Or do you like those people who give value to the fact that you are striving to improve every day. I personally prefer the latter.

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• Algorithm to figure out appointment times?

  - by Rachel

  I have a weird situation where a client would like a script that automatically sets up thousands of appointments over several days. The tricky part is the appointments are for a variety of US time zones, and I need to take the consumer's local time zone into account when generating appointment dates and times for each record. Appointment Rules: Appointments should be set from 8AM to 8PM Eastern Standard Time, with breaks from 12P-2P and 4P-6P. This leaves a total of 8 hours per day available for setting appointments. Appointments should be scheduled 5 minutes apart. 8 hours of 5-minute intervals means 96 appointments per day. There will be 5 users at a time handling appointments. 96 appointments per day multiplied by 5 users equals 480, so the maximum number of appointments that can be set per day is 480. Now the tricky requirement: Appointments are restricted to 8am to 8pm in the consumer's local time zone. This means that the earliest time allowed for each appointment is different depending on the consumer's time zone: Eastern: 8A Central: 9A Mountain: 10A Pacific: 11A Alaska: 12P Hawaii or Undefined: 2P Arizona: 10A or 11A based on current Daylight Savings Time Assuming a data set can be several thousand records, and each record will contain a timezone value, is there an algorithm I could use to determine a Date and Time for every record that matches the rules above?

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• Good questions to ask a potential new boss?

  - by David Johnstone

  I first asked this question on Stack Overflow, but it turns out this is a better place for it. Imagine you were working as a software developer. Imagine that the manager of your team leaves and your company is looking for a replacement. Imagine that as part of the hiring process you had the opportunity to talk with him. You are not the only person doing an interview, and while it is not ultimately your decision whether or not to hire him, you do have an influence. What questions would you ask? What would you talk with him about?

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• Is it more valuable to double major in Computer Science/Software Engineering or get an undergraduate CS degree with a Masters in SE?

  - by Austin Hyde

  A friend and I (both in college) are currently in a debate over which is better, in terms of employment opportunities, experience, and education: a Bachelors degree in both Computer Science and Software Engineering, or a Bachelors in Computer Science with a Masters in Software Engineering. My point of view is that I would rather go to school for 4-4.5 years to learn both sides of the field, and be out working on real projects gaining real experience, by going the double major route. His point of view is that it would look better to potential employers if he had a Bachelors in CS and Masters in SE. That way, when he's finally done after 4 years of CS and 2-4 of SE (depending on where he goes), he can pretty much have his choosing of what he wants to do. We are both in agreement on the distinction between the two degrees: CS is "traditional" and about the theory of algorithms, data structures, and programming, where SE is the study of the design of software and the implementation of CS theory. So, what's your stance on this debate? Have you gone one route or another? And most importantly, why?

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• Controllers in CodeIgniter

  - by Dileep Dil

  I little bit new to the CodeIgniter framework and this is my first project with this framework. During a chat on StackOverflow somebody said that we need to make controllers tiny as possible. Currently I have a default controller named home with 1332 lines of codes (and increasing) and a model named Profunction with 1356 lines of codes (and increasing). The controller class have about 46 functions on it and also with model class. I thought that Codeigniter can handle large Controllers or Models well, is there any problem/performance issue/security issues regarding this?

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• Immutable Method in Java

  - by Chris Okyen

  In Java, there is the final keyword in lieu of the const keyword in C and C++. In the latter languages there are mutable and immutable methods such as stated in the answer by Johannes Schaub - litb to the question How many and which are the uses of “const” in C++? Use const to tell others methods won't change the logical state of this object. struct SmartPtr { int getCopies() const { return mCopiesMade; } }ptr1; ... int var = ptr.getCopies(); // returns mCopiesMade and is specified that to not modify objects state. How is this performed in Java?

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• Explanation on how "Tell, Don't Ask" is considered good OO

  - by Pubby

  This blogpost was posted on Hacker News with several upvotes. Coming from C++, most of these examples seem to go against what I've been taught. Such as example #2: Bad: def check_for_overheating(system_monitor) if system_monitor.temperature > 100 system_monitor.sound_alarms end end versus good: system_monitor.check_for_overheating class SystemMonitor def check_for_overheating if temperature > 100 sound_alarms end end end The advice in C++ is that you should prefer free functions instead of member functions as they increase encapsulation. Both of these are identical semantically, so why prefer the choice that has access to more state? Example 4: Bad: def street_name(user) if user.address user.address.street_name else 'No street name on file' end end versus good: def street_name(user) user.address.street_name end class User def address @address || NullAddress.new end end class NullAddress def street_name 'No street name on file' end end Why is it the responsibility of User to format an unrelated error string? What if I want to do something besides print 'No street name on file' if it has no street? What if the street is named the same thing? Could someone enlighten me on the "Tell, Don't Ask" advantages and rationale? I am not looking for which is better, but instead trying to understand the author's viewpoint.

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• Why do iterators in Python raise an exception?

  - by NullUserException

  Here's the syntax for iterators in Java (somewhat similar syntax in C#): Iterator it = sequence.iterator(); while (it.hasNext()) { System.out.println(it.next()); } Which makes sense. Here's the equivalent syntax in Python: it = iter(sequence) while True: try: value = it.next() except StopIteration: break print(value) I thought Exceptions were supposed to be used only in, well, exceptional circumstances. Why does Python use exceptions to stop iteration?

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• Empirical Evidence of Popularity of Git and Mercurial

  - by ana

  It's 2012! Mercurial and Git are both still strong. I understand the trade-offs of both. I also understand everyone has some sort of preference for one or the other. That's fine. I'm looking for some information on level of usage of both. For example, on stackoverflow.com, searching for Git gets you 12000 hits, Mercurial gets you 3000. Google Trends says it's 1.9:1.0 for Git. What other empirical information is available to estimate the relative usage of both tools?

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• Inserting HTML code with jquery

  - by J. Robertson

  One of our web applications is a page that takes in a serial number and various information is returned and displayed to the user. The serial is passed via AJAX, and based on the response, one of the following can happen - An error message is shown A new form replaces the previous form Now, the way I am handling this is to use jQuery to destroy (using $.remove()) the table that displayed the initial serial form, then I'm appending another html table that contains another form. Right now I am including that additional form as part of the html source, and just setting it to display:none, then using jQuery to show it when appropriate. However, I don't like this approach because if someone views source on the page, they can see that table html code that is not being displayed. My next thought would be to use AJAX to read in another HTML file, and append it that way. However, I am trying to keep down the number of files this project uses, and since most pages in our project will use AJAX, I could see a case where there are multiple files containing HTML snippets - and that feels sloppy to me. What is the best way to handle a case where multiple html elements are being shown and removed with jQuery?

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• Is there a language or design pattern that allows the *removal* of object behavior or properties in a class hierarchy?

  - by Sebastien Diot

  A well-know shortcoming of traditional class hierarchies is that they are bad when it comes to model the real world. As an example, trying to represent animals species with classes. There are actually several problems when doing that, but one that I never saw a solution to is when a sub-class "looses" a behavior or properties that was defined in a super-class, like a penguin not being able to fly (there are probably better examples, but that's the first one that comes to my mind, having seen "Madagascar 2" recently). On the one hand, you don't want to define for every property and behavior some flag that specifies if it is at all present, and check it every time before accessing that behavior or property. You would just like to say that birds can fly, simply and clearly, in the Bird class. But then it would be nice if one could define "exceptions" afterward, without having to use some horrible hacks everywhere. This often happens when a system has been productive for a while. You suddenly find an "exception" that doesn't fit in the original design at all, and you don't want to change a large portion of your code to accommodate it. So, is there some language or design patterns that can cleanly handle this problem, without requiring major changes to the "super-class", and all the code that uses it? Even if a solution only handle a specific case, several solutions might together form a complete strategy. [EDIT] Forgot about the Liskov Substitution Principle. That is why you can't do it. Assuming you define "traits/interfaces" for all major "feature groups", you can freely implement traits in different branches of the hierarchy, like the Flying trait could be implemented by Birds, and some special kind of squirrels and fish. So my question could amount to "How could I un-implement a trait?" If your super-class is a Java Serializable, you have to be one too, even if there is no way for you to serialize your state, for example if you contained a "Socket". So one way to do it is to always define all your traits in pair from the start: Flying and NotFlying (which would throw UnsupportedOperationExceiption, if not checked against). The Not-trait would not define any new interface, and could be simply checked for. Sounds like a "cheap" solution, in particular if used from the start.

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• Etymology of software project names [closed]

  - by Benoit

  I would like to have a reference community wiki here in order to know what etymology software name have or why they are named that way. I was wondering why Imagemagick's mogrify was named this way. Today I wondered the same for Apache Lucene. It would be handy to have a list here. Could we extend such a list? Let me start and let you edit it please. I will ask for this to be community wiki. For each entry please link to an external reference. GNU Emacs: stand for “Editor MACroS”. Apache Lucene: Armenian name Imagemagick mogrify: from “transmogrify”. Thanks.

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• Agile and different facet of software development

  - by arjun

  It is said that the Kanban methodology is suited for software maintenance and support areas, whereas Scrum is more suited for new product development. No process or methods are complete. Using the right one will help you succeed, but they will not guarantee success. Which agile approach is best suited for a project which is basically a re-platforming from one technology to another (say from Java to .NET).

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• Are outdated comments an urban myth?

  - by Karl Bielefeldt

  I constantly see people making the claim that "comments tend to become outdated." The thing is, I think I have seen maybe two or three outdated comments my entire career. Outdated information in separate documents happens all the time, but in my experience outdated comments in the code itself are exceedingly rare. Have I just been lucky in who I work with? Are certain industries more prone to this problem than others? Do you have specific examples of recent outdated comments you've seen? Or are outdated comments more of a theoretical problem than an actual one?

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• Test Data in a Distributed System

  - by Davin Tryon

  A question that has been vexing me lately has been about how to effectively test (end-to-end) features in a distributed system. Particuarly, how to effectively manage (through time) test data for feature testing. The system in question is a typical SOA setup. The composition is done in JavaScript when call to several REST APIs. Each service is built as an independent block. Each service has some kind of persistent storage (SQL Server in most cases). The main issue at the moment is how to approach test data when testing end-to-end features. Functional end-to-end testing occurs through the UI, and it is therefore necessary for test data to be set up before the test run (this could be manual or automated testing). As is typical in a distributed system, identifiers from one service are used as a link in another service. So, some level of synchronization needs to be present in the data to effectively test. What is the best way to manage and set up this data after a successful deployment to a test environment? For example, is it better to manage this test data inside each service? Or package it together with the testing suite? Does that testing suite exist as a separate project? I'm interested in design guidance about how to store and manage this test data as the application features evolve.

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