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  • Recommendation for Improving Programming Skills

    - by Moaz ELdeen
    I'm 25, I know C++ syntax since 9 years.. but It seems that I have copied so much code, and I didn't learn that much and didn't solve a lot of algorithms in my own. Currently I'm working for computer vision programmer as a junior and I have difficulity of doing algorithms like blob tracking or object tracking, writing algorithms like KNN, Quadtree,..etc. I don't know what to do, or what to improve, I tried to write asteriods game, I have finished it, and here you can watch it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw0L4aCB4TU What should I do more to enhance my skills ?

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  • Alternative way of developing for ASP.NET to WebForms - Any problems with this?

    - by John
    So I have been developing in ASP.NET WebForms for some time now but often get annoyed with all the overhead (like ViewState and all the JavaScript it generates), and the way WebForms takes over a lot of the HTML generation. Sometimes I just want full control over the markup and produce efficient HTML of my own so I have been experimenting with what I like to call HtmlForms. Essentially this is using ASP.NET WebForms but without the form runat="server" tag. Without this tag, ASP.NET does not seem to add anything to the page at all. From some basic tests it seems that it runs well and you still have the ability to use code-behind pages, and many ASP.NET controls such as repeaters. Of course without the form runat="server" many controls won't work. A post at Enterprise Software Development lists the controls that do require the tag. From that list you will see that all of the form elements like TextBoxes, DropDownLists, RadioButtons, etc cannot be used. Instead you use normal HTML form controls. But how do you access these HTML controls from the code behind? Retrieving values on post back is easy, you just use Request.QueryString or Request.Form. But passing data to the control could be a little messy. Do you use a ASP.NET Literal control in the value field or do you use <%= value % in the markup page? I found it best to add runat="server" to my HTML controls and then you can access the control in your code-behind like this: ((HtmlInputText)txtName).Value = "blah"; Here's a example that shows what you can do with a textbox and drop down list: Default.aspx <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="NoForm.Default" %> <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="NoForm.Default" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form action="" method="post"> <label for="txtName">Name:</label> <input id="txtName" name="txtName" runat="server" /><br /> <label for="ddlState">State:</label> <select id="ddlState" name="ddlState" runat="server"> <option value=""></option> </select><br /> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </form> </body> </html> Default.aspx.cs using System; using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; namespace NoForm { public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { //Default values string name = string.Empty; string state = string.Empty; if (Request.RequestType == "POST") { //If form submitted (post back) name = Request.Form["txtName"]; state = Request.Form["ddlState"]; //Server side form validation would go here //and actions to process form and redirect } ((HtmlInputText)txtName).Value = name; ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("ACT")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("NSW")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("NT")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("QLD")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("SA")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("TAS")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("VIC")); ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem("WA")); if (((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.FindByValue(state) != null) ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Value = state; } } } As you can see, you have similar functionality to ASP.NET server controls but more control over the final markup, and less overhead like ViewState and all the JavaScript ASP.NET adds. Interestingly you can also use HttpPostedFile to handle file uploads using your own input type="file" control (and necessary form enctype="multipart/form-data"). So my question is can you see any problems with this method, and any thoughts on it's usefulness? I have further details and tests on my blog.

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  • Why do some opensouce libraries lack comments?

    - by entropy
    I don't know if this happens to most Opensource libraries, but many of I know and use (for example OpenSSL, Webkit, ...) they all lack comments, or contain very few comments. Not to mention their very few documents, it is hard to read their source code. We can hardly understand what a member variable means, or what this function does. This seems to be against coding standard practice Why is that? How can people collaborate to these opensource with very few comments?

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  • Who should control navigation in an MVVM application?

    - by SonOfPirate
    Example #1: I have a view displayed in my MVVM application (let's use Silverlight for the purposes of the discussion) and I click on a button that should take me to a new page. Example #2: That same view has another button that, when clicked, should open up a details view in a child window (dialog). We know that there will be Command objects exposed by our ViewModel bound to the buttons with methods that respond to the user's click. But, what then? How do we complete the action? Even if we use a so-called NavigationService, what are we telling it? To be more specific, in a traditional View-first model (like URL-based navigation schemes such as on the web or the SL built-in navigation framework) the Command objects would have to know what View to display next. That seems to cross the line when it comes to the separation of concerns promoted by the pattern. On the other hand, if the button wasn't wired to a Command object and behaved like a hyperlink, the navigation rules could be defined in the markup. But do we want the Views to control application flow and isn't navigation just another type of business logic? (I can say yes in some cases and no in others.) To me, the utopian implementation of the MVVM pattern (and I've heard others profess this) would be to have the ViewModel wired in such a way that the application can run headless (i.e. no Views). This provides the most surface area for code-based testing and makes the Views a true skin on the application. And my ViewModel shouldn't care if it displayed in the main window, a floating panel or a child window, should it? According to this apprach, it is up to some other mechanism at runtime to 'bind' what View should be displayed for each ViewModel. But what if we want to share a View with multiple ViewModels or vice versa? So given the need to manage the View-ViewModel relationship so we know what to display when along with the need to navigate between views, including displaying child windows / dialogs, how do we truly accomplish this in the MVVM pattern?

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  • Architecture for subscription based application

    - by John
    This is about the architecture of my application I think. I have a Rails application where companies can administrate all things related to clients. Companies can buy a subscription and their users can access the application online. Hopefully I will get multiple companies subscribing to my appplication/service. Thing is, what should I do with my code and database? Seperate app code base and database per company One app code base but seperate database per company One app code base and one database The decision I am to make involves security (e.g. user from company X should not see any data from company Y) performance (let's suppose it becomes successful, it should have a good performance) and scalability (again, if successful, it should have a good performance but also easy for me to handle all the companies, code changes, etc) For sake of maintainability, I tend to opt for the one code base. For the database I really don't know at this moment. So what do you think is the best option?

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  • What is the best way to track / record the current programming project you work on? [duplicate]

    - by user2424160
    This question already has an answer here: Methodology for Documenting Existing Code Base 6 answers When do you start documenting the code? 13 answers Where should a programmer explain the extended logic behind the code? 5 answers I have been in this problem for long time and I want to know how it's done in real / big companies project? Suppose I have the project to build a website. Now I divide the project into sub tasks and do it. But you know that suppose I have task1 in hand like export the page to pdf. Now I spend 3 days to do that , came across various problems, many Stack Overflow questions and in the end I solve it. Now 4 months after someone told me that there is some error in the code. Now by that I completely forgot about (60%) of how I did it and why I do this way. I document the code but I can't write the whole story of that in the code. Then I have to spend much time on code to find what was the problem so that I added this line etc. I want to know that is there any way that i can log steps in completing the project. So that I can see how I end up with code, what errors I got, what questions I asked on SO and etc. How people do it in real time? Which software to use? I know in our project management software called JIRA we have tasks but that does not cover what steps I took to solve that tasks. What is the best way so that when I look back at my 2 year old project, I know how I solve particular task?

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  • What are your programming idiosyncrasies?

    - by EpsilonVector
    I noticed that I have a peculiar habit of finishing every line with a space. It carries over from my prose writing where a paragraph can have multiple sentences and so it is very common to follow a period with a space, and I end up doing that automatically for every period (or when it comes to programming- semicolon). It started out as something automatic, but I'm so used to this by now that if I miss the space it actually bothers me and I end up returning to that line to input it. What are some of your programming idiosyncrasies?

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  • flat files vs. RDBMS database, few read/writes, few changes

    - by Bob Lapique
    I have to handle data from long term (years, decades) climate monitoring stations. The data flow usually starts with raw data (voltages, etc.) plus quality check information (pressure, temperature, flow rate, etc.) generally recorded @ 1Hz. Then, the data are assigned a quality flag (human and/or program), processed (apply calibration curves) and flagged. So, we basically end up with 2 datasets : raw and processed data. New data are typically added once a day (~500Ko/day/instrument). Simultaneous queries are not likely to ever happen. I wanted to go for a RDBMS (we have a MySQL server) and have some experience in database design, but the IT guy keeps telling me that flat files will to the job just as well. I suspect him to try to make his life easier when it comes to backup/upgrade the MySQL. There are not so many links between data, they don't change much, but the quality flags will change. A RDBMS is easier to compare data from different instruments on a "many days" scale, compared to daily text files. Well, what would you advise ? Thanks.

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  • How to verify that all files are intact prior to install?

    - by Kalle H. Väravas
    I'm working on my CMS (in PHP platform) for a long time now. The main program is done and I'm currently developing the Installer part. Installation itself will be fairly simple: Upload all files Verify that the "content/" dir has correct permissions Check if ALL files are intact and not modified [This is the subject of this question] Insert the config data and first settings Run install (Generate all DB tables and insert sample data etc.) Now the question-mark is at step 3. How do I verify ALL files? Verification itself should compare all CMS root-directories files against a list from remote location. List should contain filename, filesize and filetype. This way the user can check, that there are no unnecessary or corrupted files, that could indicated a breach in the software. I have seen some software installers do that, but I cannot find any right now and there for I'm clueless on the most optimal method for this. Of course there always is a simple array trick, but there surely must be a better and faster method?!

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  • Using PDO with MVC

    - by mister martin
    I asked this question at stackoverflow and received no response (closed as duplicate with no answer). I'm experimenting with OOP and I have the following basic MVC layout: class Model { // do database stuff } class View { public function load($filename, $data = array()) { if(!empty($data)) { extract($data); } require_once('views/header.php'); require_once("views/$filename"); require_once('views/footer.php'); } } class Controller { public $model; public $view; function __construct() { $this->model = new Model(); $this->view = new View(); // determine what page we're on $page = isset($_GET['view']) ? $_GET['view'] : 'home'; $this->display($page); } public function display($page) { switch($page) { case 'home': $this->view->load('home.php'); break; } } } These classes are brought together in my setup file: // start session session_start(); require_once('Model.php'); require_once('View.php'); require_once('Controller.php'); new Controller(); Now where do I place my database connection code and how do I pass the connection onto the model? try { $db = new PDO('mysql:host='.DB_HOST.';dbname='.DB_DATABASE.'', DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD); $db->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION); } catch(PDOException $err) { die($err->getMessage()); } I've read about Dependency Injection, factories and miscellaneous other design patterns talking about keeping SQL out of the model, but it's all over my head using abstract examples. Can someone please just show me a straight-forward practical example?

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  • "UML is the worst thing to ever happen to MDD." Why?

    - by Florents
    William Cook in a tweet wrote that: "UML is the worst thing to ever happen to MDD. Fortunately many people now realize this ..." I would like to know the reasoning behind that claim (apparently, I'm not referring to his personal opinion). I've noticed that many people out there don't like UML that much. Also it is worth mentioning that he is in academia, where UML is preety much the holy grail of effective design and modelling.

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  • Should a server "be lenient" in what it accepts and "discard faulty input silently"?

    - by romkyns
    I was under the impression that by now everyone agrees this maxim was a mistake. But I recently saw this answer which has a "be lenient" comment upvoted 137 times (as of today). In my opinion, the leniency in what browsers accept was the direct cause of the utter mess that HTML and some other web standards were a few years ago, and have only recently begun to properly crystallize out of that mess. The way I see it, being lenient in what you accept will lead to this. The second part of the maxim is "discard faulty input silently, without returning an error message unless this is required by the specification", and this feels borderline offensive. Any programmer who has banged their head on the wall when something fails silently will know what I mean. So, am I completely wrong about this? Should my program be lenient in what it accepts and swallow errors silently? Or am I mis-interpreting what this is supposed to mean? The original question said "program", and I take everyone's point about that. It can make sense for programs to be lenient. What I really meant, however, is APIs: interfaces exposed to other programs, rather than people. HTTP is an example. The protocol is an interface that only other programs use. People never directly provide the dates that go into headers like "If-Modified-Since". So, the question is: should the server implementing a standard be lenient and allow dates in several other formats, in addition to the one that's actually required by the standard? I believe the "be lenient" is supposed to apply to this situation, rather than human interfaces. If the server is lenient, it might seem like an overall improvement, but I think in practice it only leads to client implementations that end up relying on the leniency and thus failing to work with another server that's lenient in slightly different ways. So, should a server exposing some API be lenient or is that a very bad idea? Now onto lenient handling of user input. Consider YouTrack (a bug tracking software). It uses a language for text entry that is reminiscent of Markdown. Except that it's "lenient". For example, writing - foo - bar - baz is not a documented way of creating a bulleted list, and yet it worked. Consequently, it ended up being used a lot throughout our internal bugtracker. Next version comes out, and this lenient feature starts working slightly differently, breaking a bunch of lists that (mis)used this (non)feature. The documented way to create bulleted lists still works, of course. So, should my software be lenient in what user inputs it accepts?

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  • Using template questions in a technical interview

    - by Desolate Planet
    I've recently been in an argument with a colleage about technical questions in interviews. As a graduate, I went round lots of companies and noticed they used the same questions. An example is "Can you write a function that determines if a number is prime or not?", 4 years later, I find that particular question is quite common even for a junior developer. I might not be looking at this the correct way, but shouldn't software houses be intelligent enought to think up their own interview questions. This may well be the case, but I've been to about 16 interviews as a graduate and the same questions came up in about 75% of them. This leads me to believe that many companies are lazy and simply Google: 'Template questions for interviewing software developers' and I kind of look down on that. Question: Is it better to use a sest of questions off some template or should software houses strive to be more original and come up with their own interview material? From my point of view, if I failed an inteview and went off and looked for good answers to the questions I messed up on, I could fly through the next interview if they questions are the same.

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  • Alternative to "inheritance v composition??"

    - by Frank
    I have colleagues at work who claim that "Inheritance is an anti-pattern" and want to use composition systematically instead, except in (rare, according to them) cases where inheritance is really the best way to go. I want to suggest an alternative where we continue using inheritance, but it is strictly forbidden (enforced by code reviews) to use anything but public members of base classes in derived classes. For a case where we don't need to swap components of a class at runtime (static inheritance), would that be equivalent enough to composition? Or am I forgetting some other important aspect of composition?

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  • Making Modular, Reusable and Loosely Coupled MVC Components

    - by Dusan
    I am building MVC3 application and need some general guidelines on how to manage complex client side interaction between my components. Here is my definition of one component in general way: Component which has it's own controller, model and view. All of the component's logic is placed inside these three parts and component is sort of "standalone", it contains it's own form, data needed for interaction, updates itself with Ajax and so on. Beside this internal logic and behavior of the component, it needs to be able to "Talk" to the outside world. By this I mean it should provide data and events (sort of) so when this component gets embedded in pages can notify other components which then can update based on the current state and data. I have an idea to use client ViewModel (in java-script) which would hookup all relevant components on page and control interaction between them. This would make components reusable, modular - independent of the context in which they are used. How would you do this, I am a bit stuck as I do not know if this is a good approach and there is a technical possibility to achieve this using java-script/jquery. The confusing part is about update via Ajax, how to ensure that component is properly linked to ViewModel when component is Ajax updated (or even worse removed or dynamically added). Also, how should this ViewModel be constructed and which technicalities to use here and in components to work as synergy??? On the web, I have found the various examples of the similar approach, but they are oversimplified (even for dummies) or over specific and do not provide valuable resource or general solution for this kind of implementation. If you have some serious examples it would be, also, very helpful. Note: My aim is to make interactions between many components on the same page simpler and more robust and elegant.

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  • Is gettext appropriate for internationalizing user help documentation?

    - by Richard JP Le Guen
    On my project, we have po files to internationalize/translate various labels, error messages, button-text etc. We also have separate po files for the entirety of our help documentation, which is included in the product. Is this an appropriate use of gettext - putting entire documents in po files as opposed to just labels and messages? The format has been made all the more complicated because sometimes (for tooltips or "what's this" icons) only a small part of the help doc is needed, resulting in single phrases/paragraphs being entries in the po file, which are then concatenated together when the user views the help... making the actual act of translation challenging. Is there a better way to internationalize end user help documentation?

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  • designing classes with similar goal but widely different decisional core

    - by Stefano Borini
    I am puzzled on how to model this situation. Suppose you have an algorithm operating in a loop. At every loop, a procedure P must take place, whose role is to modify an input data I into an output data O, such that O = P(I). In reality, there are different flavors of P, say P1, P2, P3 and so on. The choice of which P to run is user dependent, but all P have the same finality, produce O from I. This called well for a base class PBase with a method PBase::apply, with specific reimplementations of P1::apply(I), P2::apply(I), and P3::apply(I). The actual P class gets instantiated in a factory method, and the loop stays simple. Now, I have a case of P4 which follows the same principle, but this time needs additional data from the loop (such as the current iteration, and the average value of O during the previous iterations). How would you redesign for this case?

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  • How does trilicense (mpl,gpl,lgpl) work when you want to use it on public website

    - by tomok
    I have tried to search for this answer for quite some time and I have gone through all the various FAQ's and documentation regarding the three licenses; but none of them have been able to answer a question that I have. So I've been working an idea for a website for sometime now and recently I found open source software that has many of components that are similar. It is licensed under the mpl/gpl/lgpl licenses. I think for the most part I understand the ramifications, due to the searches and reading, of what is required if I modify/use and want to distribute the software. But what if I want to modify and not distribute, but use it on a public website that I generate ad revenue from? Is this illegal? It doesn't seem like it is from reading other open source system, say like Drupal, where they allow you to use the software but it's not considered "distribution" if people just go to the website. I know this site may not be the best resource and I've tried some other sites, but I haven't received any clear replies back. If you know some other resource that I could contact also, please let me know. Links for those who don't know: MPL - Wikipedia, Legalese GPL - Wikipedia, Legalese LGPL - Wikipedia, Legalese

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  • 0.00006103515625 GB of RAM. Is .NET MicroFramework part of Windows CE?

    - by Rocket Surgeon
    The .NET MicroFramework claims to work on 64K RAM and has list of compatible targets vendors. At the same time, same vendors who ship hardware and create Board Support Packages (vendors like Adeneo) keep releasing something named Windows 7 CE BSP for the same hardware targets. Obviously the OS as heavy as WinCE needs more than 64K RAM. So, somehow .NET MicroFramework is relevant to WinCE, but how ? Is it part of bigger OS or is it base of it, or are both mutually exclusive ? Background: 0.00006103515625 GByte of RAM is same as 64Kbyte of RAM. I am looking for possiblity to use Microsoft development tools for small target like BeagleBone. http://www.adeneo-embedded.com/About-Us/News/Release-of-TI-BeagleBone Nice. Now .. where is a MicroFramework for the same beaglebone ? Is it inside the released pile ?

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  • Planning milestones and time

    - by Ignas
    I was hired by a marketing company a year ago initially for link building / SEO stuff, but I'm actually a Web developer and took the job just in desperation to have one (I'm still quite young and just finished 2nd year of University). From the 3rd day my boss realised that I'm not into that stuff at all and since he had an idea of a web based app we started to plan it. I estimated that it shouldn't take me longer than two months to do it, but as I was making it we soon realised that we want to add more and more stuff to make it even better. So the development on my own lasted for about 4 months, but then it became an enterprise size app and we hired another programmer to work along me. The guy was awesome at what he did, but because I was assigned to be programmer/project manager I had to set up milestones with deadlines and we missed most of them, because most of the time it was too much work, and my lack of experience kept me setting really optimistic deadlines. We still kept adding features and had changed the architecture of the application twice. My boss is a great guy and he gets that when we add features it expands the time frame in which things should be done so he wasn't angry at me nor the other guy. But I was feeling bad (I still am) that I suck at planning. I gained loads of experience from the programming side, but I still lack the management/planning skills which make me go nuts. So over the last year I have dedicated probably about 8 months of work to this app (obviously my studies affected it) and we're launching as a closed beta this month. So my question is how do I get better at planning/managing a project, how do you estimate the times? What do you take into consideration when setting goals. I'm working alone again because the other guy moved from the city. But I'm sure we'll be hiring to help me maintain it so I need to get better at it. Any hints, points or anything on the topic are appreciated.

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  • How exactly is an Abstract Syntax Tree created?

    - by Howcan
    I think I understand the goal of an AST, and I've build a couple of tree structures before, but never an AST. I'm mostly confused because the nodes are text and not number, so I can't think of a nice way to input a token/string as I'm parsing some code. For example, when I looked at diagrams of AST's, the variable and its value were leaf nodes to an equal sign. This makes perfect sense to me, but how would I go about implementing this? I guess I can do it case by case, so that when I stumble upon an "=" I use that as a node, and add the value parsed before the "=" as the leaf. It just seems wrong, because I'd probably have to make cases for tons and tons of things, depending on the syntax. And then I came upon another problem, how is the tree traversed? Do I go all the way down the height, and go back up a node when I hit the bottom, and do the same for it's neighbor? I've seen tons of diagrams on ASTs, but I couldn't find a fairly simple example of one in code, which would probably help.

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  • Refactor or Concentrate on Completing App

    - by Jiew Meng
    Would you refactor your app as you go or focus on completing app first? Refactoring will mean progress of app app will slow down. Completing app will mean you get a possibly very hard to maintain app later on? The app is a personal project. I don't really know how to answer "What drives the functionality and design", but I guess it's to solve inefficiencies in current software out there. I like minimal easy to use software too. So I am removing some features and add some that I feel will help.

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  • Masters vs. PhD - long [closed]

    - by Sterling
    I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully having people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the most important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I can't even really accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have at once obviously, but just to know I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money…get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long…not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the "publish or perish" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say "I made this" rather than "I managed a group of people that made this." I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. I When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry…just some really great new application or system…there is a shelf-life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, "The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will." Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years…I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help.

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  • Enterprise VS Regular corporate developer

    - by Rick Ratayczak
    Ok, I "almost" lost a job offer because I "didn't have enough experience as an enterprise software engineer". I've been a programmer for over 16 years, and the last 12-14 professionally, at companies big and small. So this made me think of this question: What's the difference between a software engineer and an enterprise software engineer? Is there really a difference between software architecture and enterprise architecture? BTW: I try to do what every other GOOD software programmer does, like architecture, tdd, SDLC, etc.

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  • How to make a great functional specification

    - by sfrj
    I am going to start a little side project very soon, but this time i want to do not just the little UML domain model and case diagrams i often do before programming, i thought about making a full functional specification. Is there anybody that has experience writing functional specifications that could recommend me what i need to add to it? How would be the best way to start preparing it? Here i will write down the topics that i think are more relevant: Purpose Functional Overview Context Diagram Critical Project Success Factors Scope (In & Out) Assumptions Actors (Data Sources, System Actors) Use Case Diagram Process Flow Diagram Activity Diagram Security Requirements Performance Requirements Special Requirements Business Rules Domain Model (Data model) Flow Scenarios (Success, alternate…) Time Schedule (Task Management) Goals System Requirements Expected Expenses What do you think about those topics? Shall i add something else? or maybe remove something?

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