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• Elegant ways to handle if(if else) else

  - by Benjol

  This is a minor niggle, but every time I have to code something like this, the repetition bothers me, but I'm not sure that any of the solutions aren't worse. if(FileExists(file)) { contents = OpenFile(file); // <-- prevents inclusion in if if(SomeTest(contents)) { DoSomething(contents); } else { DefaultAction(); } } else { DefaultAction(); } Is there a name for this kind of logic? Am I a tad too OCD? I'm open to evil code suggestions, if only for curiosity's sake...

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• If you develop on multiple operating systems, is it better to have multiple computers + displays?

  - by dan

  I develop for iOS and Linux. My preferred OS is Ubuntu. Now my software shop (me and a partner) is developing for Windows too. Now the question is, is it more efficient to have multiple workstations, one for each target OS? Efficiency and productivity is a higher priority than saving money. I have a 3.4Ghz i7 desktop workstation running Ubuntu and virtualized Windows with two displays, and I'm putting together an even more powerful i7 Hackintosh with 16GB RAM (to replace my weak 2.2Ghz i5 Macbook Pro). My specific dilemma is whether I should sell the first computer and triple boot on the second one, or buy two more displays and run both desktop systems simultaneously. Would appreciate answers from developers who write software for multiple OSes. Running guest OSes in VirtualBox on one system not ideal, because in my experience performance is seriously degraded under virtualization. So the choice is between dual/triple booting on one system vs having two systems, one for OSX+iOS/Windows (dual boot) and the other for Ubuntu (which I prefer to use as my main OS). For much of our work, I write a server-side application in Linux and a client for iOS (or for Windows or OS X) simultaneously.

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• Reformatting and version control

  - by l0b0

  Code formatting matters. Even indentation matters. And consistency is more important than minor improvements. But projects usually don't have a clear, complete, verifiable and enforced style guide from day 1, and major improvements may arrive any day. Maybe you find that SELECT id, name, address FROM persons JOIN addresses ON persons.id = addresses.person_id; could be better written as / is better written than SELECT persons.id, persons.name, addresses.address FROM persons JOIN addresses ON persons.id = addresses.person_id; while working on adding more columns to the query. Maybe this is the most complex of all four queries in your code, or a trivial query among thousands. No matter how difficult the transition, you decide it's worth it. But how do you track code changes across major formatting changes? You could just give up and say "this is the point where we start again", or you could reformat all queries in the entire repository history. If you're using a distributed version control system like Git you can revert to the first commit ever, and reformat your way from there to the current state. But it's a lot of work, and everyone else would have to pause work (or be prepared for the mother of all merges) while it's going on. Is there a better way to change history which gives the best of all results: Same style in all commits Minimal merge work ? To clarify, this is not about best practices when starting the project, but rather what should be done when a large refactoring has been deemed a Good Thing™ but you still want a traceable history? Never rewriting history is great if it's the only way to ensure that your versions always work the same, but what about the developer benefits of a clean rewrite? Especially if you have ways (tests, syntax definitions or an identical binary after compilation) to ensure that the rewritten version works exactly the same way as the original?

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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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• How to get feedback from the community on large chunks of code?

  - by MainMa

  Code Review.SE is great when you need feedback on a precise, short piece of code. But where to get similar feedback about the code itself when: you have thousands of LOC, don't have colleagues in your workplace ready or willing to review the code¹, don't have thousands of dollars to spend for a professional review by a third party developer?² Places like CodePlex are a good idea to get your project known³, but from what I've seen, the feedback you get on known projects are consumer feedback, i.e. concerns the bugs and feature requests, not the quality of the source code itself. What are the social way to get the community involved in the code review of the codebase of a certain size for an open source project which doesn't have the scale of Firefox or similar products? ¹ Which is the case for most personal and open source projects, or projects done in companies where the practice of regular and complete code review is nonexistent. ² Which is, again, the case for most personal and open source projects. ³ Even if too many projects published on CodePlex never get known, either because nobody cares or because they are presented not very well.

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• Should you salary reflect how much work there is for you or does that not matter? [closed]

  - by Kevin Simper

  I am working in a consulting company, where the company mostly do IT support. The website is also only focused on IT support, and we do not therefore capture leads for the Web Department. We aim for Small busniess, which needs new computers and firewalls. We were having a performance conversation and talked about salary and my employer told that he was not impressed by the revenue I was generating. I told that I did not have enough work and I would like to get more tasks and project so that i could reach the goal, but that i did not think it was my fault that there was not enough work. He said that it was not his fault either, but he could not pay me more. Is he right that I should not get paid more just because my employee can not get enough Web projects, or should i be paid what i am worth not based on the work amount the sales generate?

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• What are the dos and dont's when leaving a job? [closed]

  - by john ryan

  I'm going to resign from my current employer (manufacturing sector), where I've been working for 2.6 years as an IT Application Developer. It's the first company I've worked in after I graduated from college. I don't have any problem with the company, I just realized that I want to learn new technologies and get out of my comfort zone and move to the IT industry. I already got a job offer from another company. My IT manager has told me that I am one of the best players in our group, that our group is enough to support our company and that it would be unacceptable if anyone of us resigned. They will counter the offer, but I'm set on leaving. My problem is that I don't know what are the essential dos and don'ts when resigning from a current employer. For example I'm expecting a lot of inquiries on why I'm leaving from people in the company, what do I need to say?

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• Using 'new' in a projection?

  - by davenewza

  I wish to project a collection from one type (Something) to another type (SomethingElse). Yes, this is a very open-eneded question, but which of the two options below do you prefer? Creating a new instance using new: var result = query.Select(something => new SomethingElse(something)); Using a factory: var result = query.Select(something => SomethingElse.FromSomething(something)); When I think of a projection, I generally think of it as a conversion. Using new gives me this idea that I'm creating new objects during a conversion, which doesn't feel right. Semantically, SomethingElse.FromSomething() most definitely fits better. Although, the second option does require addition code to setup a factory, which could become unnecessarily compulsive.

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• When to use typedef?

  - by futlib

  I'm a bit confused about if and when I should use typedef in C++. I feel it's a balancing act between readability and clarity. Here's a code sample without any typedefs: int sum(std::vector<int>::const_iterator first, std::vector<int>::const_iterator last) { static std::map<std::tuple<std::vector<int>::const_iterator, std::vector<int>::const_iterator>, int> lookup_table; std::map<std::tuple<std::vector<int>::const_iterator, std::vector<int>::const_iterator>, int>::iterator lookup_it = lookup_table.find(lookup_key); if (lookup_it != lookup_table.end()) return lookup_it->second; ... } Pretty ugly IMO. So I'll add some typedefs within the function to make it look nicer: int sum(std::vector<int>::const_iterator first, std::vector<int>::const_iterator last) { typedef std::tuple<std::vector<int>::const_iterator, std::vector<int>::const_iterator> Lookup_key; typedef std::map<Lookup_key, int> Lookup_table; static Lookup_table lookup_table; Lookup_table::iterator lookup_it = lookup_table.find(lookup_key); if (lookup_it != lookup_table.end()) return lookup_it->second; ... } The code is still a bit clumsy, but I get rid of most nightmare material. But there's still the int vector iterators, this variant gets rid of those: typedef std::vector<int>::const_iterator Input_iterator; int sum(Input_iterator first, Input_iterator last) { typedef std::tuple<Input_iterator, Input_iterator> Lookup_key; typedef std::map<Lookup_key, int> Lookup_table; static Lookup_table lookup_table; Lookup_table::iterator lookup_it = lookup_table.find(lookup_key); if (lookup_it != lookup_table.end()) return lookup_it->second; ... } This looks clean, but is it still readable? When should I use a typedef? As soon as I have a nightmare type? As soon as it occurs more than once? Where should I put them? Should I use them in function signatures or keep them to the implementation?

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• Functions that only call other functions. Is this a good practice?

  - by Eric C.

  I'm currently working on a set of reports that have many different sections (all requiring different formatting), and I'm trying to figure out the best way to structure my code. Similar reports we've done in the past end up having very large (200+ line) functions that do all of the data manipulation and formatting for the report, such that the workflow looks something like this: DataTable reportTable = new DataTable(); void RunReport() { reportTable = DataClass.getReportData(); largeReportProcessingFunction(); outputReportToUser(); } I would like to be able to break these large functions up into smaller chunks, but I'm afraid that I'll just end up having dozens of non-reusable functions, and a similar "do everything here" function whose only job is to call all these smaller functions, like so: void largeReportProcessingFunction() { processSection1HeaderData(); calculateSection1HeaderAverages(); formatSection1HeaderDisplay(); processSection1SummaryTableData(); calculateSection1SummaryTableTotalRow(); formatSection1SummaryTableDisplay(); processSection1FooterData(); getSection1FooterSummaryTotals(); formatSection1FooterDisplay(); processSection2HeaderData(); calculateSection1HeaderAverages(); formatSection1HeaderDisplay(); calculateSection1HeaderAverages(); ... } Or, if we go one step further: void largeReportProcessingFunction() { callAllSection1Functions(); callAllSection2Functions(); callAllSection3Functions(); ... } Is this really a better solution? From an organizational point of view I suppose it is (i.e. everything is much more organized than it might otherwise be), but as far as code readability I'm not sure (potentially large chains of functions that only call other functions). Thoughts?

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• Unix tools in business use: are they helpful?

  - by Prometheus

  Do you think knowing Unix tools like sed, awk, LaTeX, Perl give you a great edge in the business world? (e.g. being a manager) From my short reflection, the only profession that needs those sort of (plain text) tools is programming. Because even when I do creative writing, I rarely ever need it. I mean, do CEOs and executives of large corporations ever learn this kind of stuff if they were not CS major to begin with?

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• Is there a cheaper non-express non-student, non-msdn version of Visual Studio 2010 that supports plugins in the US than the $710 Professional Edition?

  - by Justin Dearing

  I've never actually purchased a copy of Visual Studio myself. SharpDevelop and Express edition have always been good enough for my personal use, and my employers always furnished me with the IDEs I needed to serve them. However, I'm thinking of actually paying for a copy for my personal laptop. I need this mainly so I can open solutions that contain web projects. So my question is: Is there an edition cheaper than the $710 Pro edition on Amazon that will do what I need: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-C5E-00521-Visual-Studio-Professional/dp/B0038KTO8S/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1287456230&sr=8-2 ? What I need is defined as: Open up a solution with C#, Web App, VB.NET, and Web Projects. Install addins like resharper, testdriven.net, etc, SCM plugins, etc. Some level of db project support. At least to be able to open a dbproj. I only need that for SCM hooks. SSMS and SQLCMD are good enough for actually editing databases. Ability to install F#, IronPython, IronRuby etc. Now naturally I'm a fairly intelligent resourceful person so I realize I can get Visual Studio in a questionable manner. Thats not what I'm looking to do. I want a legal copy, I don't want a student copy, or an MSDN copy. I want a real copy, I just want to make sure I get the cheapest edition that serves my needs.

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• What's wrong with circular references?

  - by dash-tom-bang

  I was involved in a programming discussion today where I made some statements that basically assumed axiomatically that circular references (between modules, classes, whatever) are generally bad. Once I got through with my pitch, my coworker asked, "what's wrong with circular references?" I've got strong feelings on this, but it's hard for me to verbalize concisely and concretely. Any explanation that I may come up with tends to rely on other items that I too consider axioms ("can't use in isolation, so can't test", "unknown/undefined behavior as state mutates in the participating objects", etc.), but I'd love to hear a concise reason for why circular references are bad that don't take the kinds of leaps of faith that my own brain does, having spent many hours over the years untangling them to understand, fix, and extend various bits of code. Edit: I am not asking about homogenous circular references, like those in a doubly-linked list or pointer-to-parent. This question is really asking about "larger scope" circular references, like libA calling libB which calls back to libA. Substitute 'module' for 'lib' if you like. Thanks for all of the answers so far!

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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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• 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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• Handle complexity in large software projects

  - by Oliver Vogel

  I am a lead developer in a larger software projects. From time to time its getting hard to handle the complexity within this project. E. g. Have the whole big picture in mind all the time Keeping track of the teammates work results Doing Code Reviews Supply management with information etc. Are there best practices/ time management techniques to handle these tasks? Are there any tools to support you having an overview?

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• Was a Big Fish in a Little Pond, Am Now a Little Fish in a Big Pond. How Do I Grow? [closed]

  - by Ziv

  I've finished high school where I was in the top three in my class, I studied a little and there too I was pretty much Big Fish in a bigger pond than high school. Now I got into my first job in a very big company, there are some incredibly talented programmers and researchers here (mostly in departments not related to mine) and for the first time I really feel like I'm incredibly average - I do not want to be average. I read technical books all the time, I try to code on my personal time but I don't feel like that's enough. What can I do to become a leading programmer again in this big company? Is there anything specifically that can be done to make myself known here? This is a very big company so in order to advance you must be very good and shine in your field.

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• Diplomatically point out the obvious problem in a product

  - by exiter2000

  As we all know, every software has bugs in it. It is matter of time to discover it. Suppose if you just found your product has potential big issue and it was not developed by you. How would you deal with it? I usually speak up with some data & analysis even if it is not my part of code. I am wondering if it is too offensive because I often faced on some resistance(depending on the issue), which would eventually be gone.

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• How do I change the keyboard layout to a non-standard one on a Live (USB) session?

  - by Agmenor

  I am running Ubuntu 13.04 in a Live (USB) session. My physical keyboard layout is called Bépo, it is the French language Dvorak method-based layout. I would like to change my input layout to this too. To do this, I tried booting in a French spoken session, then open the Keyboard Layout preferences app. Normally, to add a layout, you should click on the + sign and select your layout. However the list that appears is very short and does not contain what I want. On the contrary, on a persistent non-live installation, the choice of Bépo is present. This is also the case during an installation of Ubuntu. So I do I change the keyboard layout of my live session to the correct one?

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• Where to find common database abbreviations in Spanish

  - by jmh_gr

  I'm doing a little pro bono work for an organization in Central America. I'm ok at Spanish and my contacts are perfectly fluent but are not techincal people. Even if they don't care what I call some fields in a database I still want to make as clean a schema as possible, and I'd like to know what some typical abbreviations are for field / variable names in Spanish. I understand abbreviations and naming conventions are entirely personal. I'm not asking for the "correct" or "best" way to abbreviate database object names. I'm just looking for references to lists of typical abbreviations that would be easily recognizable to a techincally competent native Spanish speaker. I believe I am a decent googler but I've had no luck on this one. For example, in my company (where English is the primary language) 'Date' is always shortened to 'DT', 'Code' to 'CD', 'Item' to 'IT', etc. It's easy for the crowds of IT temp workers who revolve through on various projects to figure out that 'DT' stands for 'Date', 'YR' for 'Year', or 'TN' for 'Transaction' without even having to consult the official abbreviations list.

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• Is it wrong to use a boolean parameter to determine behavior?

  - by Ray

  I have seen a practice from time to time that "feels" wrong, but I can't quite articulate what is wrong about it. Or maybe it's just my prejudice. Here goes: A developer defines a method with a boolean as one of its parameters, and that method calls another, and so on, and eventually that boolean is used, solely to determine whether or not to take a certain action. This might be used, for example, to allow the action only if the user has certain rights, or perhaps if we are (or aren't) in test mode or batch mode or live mode, or perhaps only when the system is in a certain state. Well there is always another way to do it, whether by querying when it is time to take the action (rather than passing the parameter), or by having multiple versions of the method, or multiple implementations of the class, etc. My question isn't so much how to improve this, but rather whether or not it really is wrong (as I suspect), and if it is, what is wrong about it.

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• I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?

  - by TiredProgrammer

  I have just recently started my career as a web developer for a medium sized company. As soon as I started I got the task of expanding an existing application (badly coded, developed by multiple programmers over the years, handles the same tasks in different ways, zero structure) So after I had successfully extended this application with the requested functionality, they gave me the task to fully maintain the application. This was of course not a problem, or so I thought. But then I got to hear I wasn't allowed to improve the existing code and to only focus on bug fixes when a bug gets reported. From then on I have had 3 more projects just like the above, that I now also have to maintain. And I got 4 projects where I was allowed to create the application from scratch, and I have to maintain those as well. At this moment I'm slightly beginning to get crazy from the daily mails of users (read managers) for each application I have to maintain. They expect me to handle these mails directly while also working on 2 other new projects (and there are already 5 more projects lined up after those). The sad thing is I have yet to receive a bug report on anything that I have coded myself, for that I have only received the occasional lets do things 180 degrees different change requests. Anyway, is this normal? In my opinion I'm doing the work equivalent of a whole team of developers. Was I an idiot when I initially expected things to be different? I guess this post has turned into a big rant, but please tell me that this is not the same for every developer. P.S. My salary is almost equal if not lower then that of a cashier at a supermarket.

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• css - use universal '*' selector vs. html or body selector?

  - by Michael Durrant

  Applying styles to the body tag will be applied to the whole page, so body { font-family: Verdana } will be applied to the whole page. This could also be done with * {font-family: Verdana} which would apply to all elements and so would seem to have the same effect. I understand the principle that in the first instance the style is being applied to one tag, body for the whole page whereas in the second example the font is being applied against each individual html elements. What I am asking is what is the practical difference in doing that, what are the implications and what is a reason, situation or best practice that leads to using one over another. One side-effect is certainly speed (+1 Rob). I am most interested in the actual reason to choose one over the other in terms of functionality.

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• S11 launched

  - by unixman

  Now that Oracle Solaris 11 is out, its time to do 2 things -- 1) Its time to see what's in it, what's new and why its important, and then assess why it might make sense to begin evaluating it for your needs and 2) Its time to acknowledge, give thanks to and congratulate all the R&D personnel, architects, engineers, designers and testers who've put in so much effort and energy into helping make Solaris 11 (and SunOS 5.11) what it has become -- starting way back circa 2004 and, more importantly, culminating in the recent years and months -- staying focused on the execution, unwavering in the face of various challenges. For #1 above, here are a few good things to get going with - Watch the product launch replay - Visit the Solaris 11 Spotlight section on oracle.com - Get comfortable through introductory videos and detailed "how-to" guides (ex: how to create and publish IPS packages), white papers on the new default root file system, ZFS, and reap the benefits brought on by the fundamental shift in easing the administration experience - Look at the next level of software lifecycle management that is enabled by technologies such as Automated Installer and Image Packaging System -- that dramatically address patch management-related challenges - Understand how we continue to innovate in areas of service intelligence, reliability and availability - Start to evaluate enhancements in virtualization capabilities -- whether influenced by the need to consolidate or motivated by the need to have increased service mobility across physical systems, leveraging hardware-level abstractions - Gain more control over your network-centric services through enhancements in network resource management, observability and I/O performance - Look beyond your existing infrastructure with confidence that you can re-host and transition to newer systems with the use of Solaris 10 zones running on top of Solaris 11 - Relish in the fact that you can do all this, get your data to be secure and encrypted and more, on both, SPARC and x86-based systems. - Stay informed by keeping an eye on relevant blogs, which we've begun turning up recently. - Go through a hands-on lab - Sign up to take a class or just opt to watch various videos to begin to raise your comfort level with these technologies For #2 above -- There are many ways to do that. One way is to just say "thanks" with an email, a post, or a simple card,  similar to this one seen at a Barnes and Noble store recently.  The front of the card is followed by what's inside... and as the saying goes, now more then ever "it's what's inside that counts" And here's the inside of the card: So, what are you waiting for ? Go download and try it out, and please let us know what you think of it!

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• Is sending data to a server via a script tag an outdated paradigm?

  - by KingOfHypocrites

  I inherited some old javascript code for a website tracker that submits data to the server using a script url: var src = "http://domain.zzz/log/method?value1=x&value2=x" var e = document.createElement('script'); e.src = src; I guess the idea was that cross domain requests didn't haven't to be enabled perhaps. Also it was written back in 2005. I'm not sure how well XmlHttpRequests were supported at the time. Anyone could stick this on their website and send data to our server for logging and it ideally would work in most any browser with javascript. The main limitation is all the server can do is send back javascript code and each request has to wait for a response from the server (in the form of a generic acknowledgement javascript method call) to know it was received, then it sends the next. I can't find anyone doing this online or any metrics as to whether this faster or more secure than XmlHttpRequests. I don't know if this is just an old way of doing things or it's still the best way to send data to the server when you are mostly trying to send data one way and you need the best performance possible. So in summary is sending data via a script tag an outdated paradigm? Should I abandon in favor of using XmlHttpRequsts?

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