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• Why is Python used for high-performance/scientific computing (but Ruby isn't)?

  - by Cyclops

  There's a quote from a PyCon 2011 talk that goes: At least in our shop (Argonne National Laboratory) we have three accepted languages for scientific computing. In this order they are C/C++, Fortran in all its dialects, and Python. You’ll notice the absolute and total lack of Ruby, Perl, Java. It was in the more general context of high-performance computing. Granted the quote is only from one shop, but another question about languages for HPC, also lists Python as one to learn (and not Ruby). Now, I can understand C/C++ and Fortran being used in that problem-space (and Perl/Java not being used). But I'm surprised that there would be a major difference in Python and Ruby use for HPC, given that they are fairly similar. (Note - I'm a fan of Python, but have nothing against Ruby). Is there some specific reason why the one language took off? Is it about the libraries available? Some specific language features? The community? Or maybe just historical contigency, and it could have gone the other way?

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• Shoring up deficiencies in a "home grown" programmer?

  - by JohnP

  I started out by teaching myself BASIC on a Vic 20, and in college (mid 80's) I had Fortran, Pascal, limited C, machine and assembler (With a smattering of COBOL). I didn't touch programming from approx 1989 to 1999. At that point, I was lucky enough to get hired as a Clipper programmer. Took me about 6 months to learn most of it, and by now (13 yrs) I'm pretty expert in it. I have also picked up Cold Fusion, some C#, some ASP, SQL, etc. I know programming structures, but in most languages I'm missing the esoterics, and I know my code could be much tighter. The problem is that I've learned what I needed to, to get the job done. This results in a lot of gaps in practical knowledge. I am also missing out on a TON of theory. Things like SRP, Refactoring, etc are alien terms. (Although I grok the intent after a short read). In addition, I am in the position now of teaching junior programmers the company and our software, and I don't want to pass on the knowledge gaps. I know this is somewhat of a subjective question and may be closed, but how do you go back and pick up what you've missed?

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• During interviews, how do I gauge a company's respect for my position?

  - by Bluu

  I'm a web developer who previously joined a software company not knowing their value and respect went to big data analysis, not their website. Sure, they needed a public-facing website, but I eventually found that the most exciting, valued projects there went to data teams. Realizing this, members of the web team were picked off and switched teams, making it hard for those left behind to keep up the work load, and making us look bad. At times it seemed the company culture sneered at us, wondering, "What does that team even do here?" A friend of mine had the opposite problem at another software company. All he wanted to do was crunch big numbers. However he complained that the rest of the company wouldn't shut up about developing the usability of their website. Meanwhile his analytics team languished. I've also heard of salespeople getting love at a company, while engineering as a whole is undervalued, or vice versa. As for my story, if I could have known the company was like that, I might have avoided the job in the first place. So, before I join a new company, how do I gauge its actual respect for my programming role? For its other roles? I want to avoid companies that aren't serious about my particular focus in programming, or, perhaps bigger picture, companies that don't value everybody who works there. (Note I think gauging the company's attitude toward the basic needs of its programmers is covered by these related questions.)

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• F# &ndash; Converting your C# brain to the F# way

  - by MarkPearl

  My brain still thinks in C#!!! I have been looking at F# and trying to figure out the basics of it, but all the time in the back of my mind I am going – what is the C# equivalent to this or that… It’s frustrating because I almost want a F# to C# dictionary the whole time – and simply translate my C# code to F# – which would negate the main motivation for learning F# – as I want learn functional programming - if I was simply doing C# code in a F# syntax I would be gaining nothing! So I am experiencing pain while my brain forms some new neural networks… but luckily I live in a country where we have 11 official spoken languages, and plenty more unofficial languages so I have gone through the pain of learning how to speak a new language before – and I am finding the process is almost identical in learning a programming language that promotes a different way of looking at problems (from Object Orientated to Functional). That beings said… the first thing to learn is the basic syntax… I have searched the web for appropriate places to get a translation – and have been quite disappointed with what is out there for F#. Luckily, OCaml came to the rescue. There are some really good tutorials on getting started with OCaml syntax, one in particular that stood out was the OCamal-Tutorial. What I particularly like about it is that it is doing comparisons between C based languages and OCaml. Give it a read sometime – it’s well worth it and has definitely helped me understand F# a little better.

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• How to avoid jumping to a solution when under pressure? [closed]

  - by GlenPeterson

  When under a particularly strict programming deadline (like an hour), if I panic at all, my tendency is to jump into coding without a real plan and hope I figure it out as I go along. Given enough time, this can work, but in an interview it's been pretty unsuccessful, if not downright counter-productive. I'm not always comfortable sitting there thinking while the clock ticks away. Is there a checklist or are there techniques to recognize when you understand the problem well enough to start coding? Maybe don't touch the keyboard for the first 5-10 minutes of the problem? At what point do you give up and code a brute-force solution with the hope of reasoning out a better solution later? When is it most productive to think and design more vs. code some experiments to and figure out the design later? Here is a list of techniques for taking a math test and another for taking an oral exam. Is there is a similar list of techniques for handling a programming problem under pressure? ANSWERS: I think this is a valid answer: How To Solve It. I found the link as an answer to Steps to solve or approach towards a solution. There were also some really good tips at Is thinking out loud during an interview really the best strategy?. A great and concise argument for TDD is the first answer to TDD Writing code vs Figuring out the answer to a problem?. My question may be a near-duplicate of that one.

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• tips, guidelines, points to remember for rendering professional code?

  - by ronnieaka

  I'm talking about giving clients professional looking code. The whole nine yards, everything you hardcore professional highly experienced programmers here probably do when coding freelance or for the company you work in. I'm fresh out of college and I'm going into freelance. I just want to be sure that my first few projects leave a good after-taste of professionalism imprinted on the clients' minds. When I Googled what i'm asking here, I was given pages that showed various websites and tools that let you make flashy websites and templates etc. The $N package and such stuff. I can't recall the word experts use for it. Standard, framework [i know that's not it]. English isn't my first language so I'm sorry I don't really don't know the exact phrase for it. That abstract way of writing code so that you don't come across as a sloppy programmer. That above mentioned way for programming websites and desktop software [in python/C/C++/Java]. EDIT: i can work on the accruing vast knowledge and know-how and logic building etc. what i'm asking for is the programming standard/guidelines you guys follow so that the client on seeing code feels that its a professional solution. Like comment blocks, a particular indentation style something like that. Is there any book on it or specific list of points for enterprise type coding by them? Especially here as in my case, for building websites [php for now..], and desktop software [c/c++/java/python]

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• Location-Based redirection and duplication in sub-directories affecting SEO

  - by Joshua

  I currently own the website www.xyz.com. The website has a sub-directory for each of the 3 target countries: .../en-US/ (United States), .../es-MX/ (Mexico), and .../es-DO/ (Dominican Republic). I have two main questions about this setup: Currently, the main domain/root (xyz.com) contains a blank index.php file, but I would like for a user to be redirected to one of the sub-directories based on their regional location. What is the best way to accomplish this? I have looked at using browser language-based redirection, but how would I know whether to direct a user to the MX or DO site if the browser language is set to spanish? Is there a way to detect a user's geographic location? Also, the 3 websites are practically identical except they all have 3 unique color schemes and the US site is in english while the MX and DO sites are in spanish. My problem is that I believe GoogleBot is penalizing/banning my site because the spanish text on the MX and DO pages are nearly identical and are thus marked as duplicates/spam. Is there a way to avoid this?

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• What patterns book for iOS development contains this specific information? [closed]

  - by Brett Ryan

  I've read several books on iOS development and Objective-C, however what a lot of them teach is how to work with interfaces and all contain the model inside the view controller, i.e. a UITableViewController based view will simply have an NSArray as it's model. I'm interested in what the best practices are for designing the structure of an application. Specifically I'm interested in best practices for the following: How to separate a model from the view controller. I think I know how to do this by simply replacing the NSArray style example with a specific model object, however what I do not know how to do is alert the view when the model changes. For example in .NET I would solve this by conforming to INotifyPropertyChanged and databinding, and similarly with Java I would use PropertyChangeListener. How to create a service model for my domain objects. For example I want to learn the best way to create a service for a hypothetical Widget object to manage an internal DB and also services for communicating with remote endpoints. I need to learn the best ways to do this in a way that interface components can subscribe to events such as widgetUpdated. These services should be singleton classes and some how dependency injected into model/controller objects. Books I've read so far are: Programming in Objective-C (4th Edition) Beginning iOS 5 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK The iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook: Expanded Electronic Edition: Essentials and Advanced Recipes for iOS Programmers Learn Objective-C on the Mac: For OS X and iOS I've also purchased the following updated books but not yet read them. The Core iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook (4th edition Programming in Objective-C (5th Edition) I come from a Java and C# background with 15 years experience, I understand that many of the ways I would do things in these languages may not fit to the ObjC way of developing applications. Would someone be able to provide me with the book on this topic containing this specific subject matter?

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• Learning curve for web development

  - by refro

  At the moment our team has a huge challenge, we're being asked to deliver a new GUI for an embedded controller. The deadline is very tight and is set on April 2013. Our team is very diverse, some people are on the level of functional programming (mostly C), others (including myself) have mastered object oriented programming (C++, C#). We built a prototype for Android, although it has its quirks, it is mostly just OO. For the future there is a wish to support multiple platforms (Windows, Android, iOS). In my opinion a HTML5 app with a native app shell is the way to go. When gathering more information on the frameworks to use etc., it became obvious to me a paradigm shift is needed. None of us have a web background so we need to learn from the ground up. The shift from functional to OO took us about 6 months to become productive (and some of the early subsystems were rewritten because they were a total mess). Can we expect the learning curve to be similar? Can this be pulled off with a web app? (My feeling says it will already be hard to pull off as a native app which is at the edge of our comfort zone).

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• JQueryMobile - Problems with dialog boxes [closed]

  - by Richard van Hees

  I'm programming in JQueryMobile, but I can't seem to get some things as I want. First it's good to tell I am mostly programming in a multi-page template. I have a login function in the web based app. The idea is that the user sees he's not logged in and the user can click on the button to log in. A dialog box pops up, in which the user can enter his credentials. This dialog box is in front of the previous page, in my case just index.php. The page for profile is at profile.php#profile. In this case the url for the dialog box is index.php#profile&ui-state=dialog. Don't ask me why, that's how JQueryMobile works, I guess. Anyway, after the user clicks on 'Login' in the pop-up, I want a new dialog to pop-up in which it says you are logged in and I want the content of the page behind it (index.php#profile) to refresh. Of course I want this all to move very smooth and no refreshing of the whole page, to prevent loading time and thus a blank screen for a second. In short: User not logged in Clicks on login Dialog pops up with form Clicks login New dialog pops up with 'success' (or whatever) in the same style as the previous dialog Clicks ok Page behind the dialogues has been refreshed without user noticing Also another thing that doesn't really work out for me: I can't seem to get a dialog to pop up, triggered by an action in another dialog. It just appears as a normal page.

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• Layers - Logical seperation vs physical

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  Some programmers recommend logical seperation of layers over physical. For example, given a DL, this means we create a DL namespace not a DL assembly. Benefits include: faster compilation time simpler deployment Faster startup time for your program Less assemblies to reference Im on a small team of 5 devs. We have over 50 assemblies to maintain. IMO this ratio is far from ideal. I prefer an extreme programming approach. Where if 100 assemblies are easier to maintain than 10,000...then 1 assembly must be easier than 100. Given technical limits, we should strive for < 5 assemblies. New assemblies are created out of technical need not layer requirements. Developers are worried for a few reasons. A. People like to work in their own environment so they dont step on eachothers toes. B. Microsoft tends to create new assemblies. E.G. Asp.net has its own DLL, so does winforms. Etc. C. Devs view this drive for a common assembly as a threat. Some team members Have a tendency to change the common layer without regard for how it will impact dependencies. My personal view: I view A. as silos, aka cowboy programming and suggest we implement branching to create isolation. C. First, that is a human problem and we shouldnt create technical work arounds for human behavior. Second, my goal is not to put everything in common. Rather, I want partitions to be made in namespaces not assemblies. Having a shared assembly doesnt make everything common. I want the community to chime in and tell me if Ive gone off my rocker. Is a drive for a single assembly or my viewpoint illogical or otherwise a bad idea?

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• What should a programmer's yearly routine be to maximize their technical skills?

  - by sguptaet

  2 years ago I made a big career change into programming. I learned various technologies on my own without any prior experience. I really love it and feel lucky with all the resources around us to help us learn. Books, courses, open-source, etc. There are so many avenues. I'm wondering what a good routine would be to follow to maximize my software development skills. I don't believe just building software is the way, because that leaves no time for learning new concepts or technologies. I'm looking for an answer like this: Take a new concept sabbatical/workshop 2 weeks per year. Read 1 theoretical and 1 practical programming book per year. Learn 1 additional language every 2 years. Take a 1 week vacation every 6 months. Etc. I realize that the above might sound naive and unrealistic as there are so many factors. But I'd like to know the "recipe" that you think is best that will serve as a guide for people.

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• i18n and L10n (1)

  - by Aaron Li

  Internationalization (i18n) is a way of designing and developing a software product to function in multiple locales. This process involves identifying the locales that must be supported, designing features which support those locales, and writing code that functions equally well in any of the supported locales. Localization (L10n) is a process of modifying or adapting a software product to fit the requirements of a particular locale. This process includes (but may not be limited to) translating the user interface, documentation and packaging, changing dialog box geometries, customizing features (if necessary), and testing the translated product to ensure that it still works (at least as well as the original). i18n is a pre-requisite for L10n. Resource is 1. any part of a program which can appear to the user or be changed or configured by the user. 2. any piece of the program's data, as opposed to its code. Core product is the language independent portion of a software product (as distinct from any particular localized version of that product - including the English language version). Sometimes, however, this term is used to refer to the English product as opposed to other localizations.   Useful links http://www.mozilla.org/docs/refList/i18n/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+int_localization/

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• Do you think we will ever settle on a "standard" platform? [closed]

  - by GazTheDestroyer

  The recent explosion of phone platforms has depressed me (slightly), and made me wonder if we will ever reach any kind of standard for presentation? I don't mean language or IDE. Different languages have different strengths and I can see that there may always be a need for disparity, although I do note that languages are merging somewhat in functionality, with traditional imperitive languages like C++ now supporting things like lambdas. What I'm really talking about is a common presentation mechanism. Before smart phones and tablets came along, the web seemed to be finally becoming a reasonable platform for presenting an application that was globally accessible, not just geographically, but by platform too. Sure there are still (sometimes infuriating) implementation differences and quirks, but if you wrote a decent site you knew it could be accessed on anything from a PC to a phone to a C64 running the right software. "Write Once Run Anywhere" seemed to finally be becoming a reality. However, in the last few years we've seen an explosion of mobile operating systems, and the ubiquitous "app". A good site is no longer enough, you need a native "app", and of course we have a sudden massive disparity in OS, language, and APIs needed to write them as each battles for supremecy. It's kind of weird how the cycle of popularity goes. Mainframes with terminals - thin client. PC - thick client. Web browser - thin client. Phone app - thick(ish) client. I just wonder if you think there will ever be a global standard for clients, or whether the "shiny and different" cycle will always continue along with the battle of the tech du jour.

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• Who wants to keep developing?

  - by wcm

  I'm a bit older than most of my peers, having come into programming in my mid 30's. The thing is, I love what I do. Most of my project managers and bosses are my age or younger. I'm really OK with that. I, however, have no desire to climb the company ladder. While I regularly take on the responsibility of making sure that projects get done and my peers often look to me for programming and architectural guidance, I just like writing code and want to keep doing it for as long as possible. Honestly, my only real goal is grow into being a crusty old tech lead until I retire. IF I retire. I would so much rather learn the latest and greatest new technology than PMP my resume. Are there others out there who feel like this because I often feel rather alone in my pathology? EDIT Something I didn't make clear is that I really like helping and mentoring other developers. It makes me feel good and useful and (to be brutaly honest) important.

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• Been doing .NET for several years and am thinking about a platform change. Where do people suggest I go?

  - by rsteckly

  Hi, I've been programming in .NET for several years now and am thinking maybe its time to do a platform switch. Any suggestions about which platform would be the best to learn? I've been thinking about going back to C++ development or just focusing on T-SQL within the Microsoft stack. I'm thinking of switching because: a) I feel that the .NET platform is increasingly becoming commodified--meaning that its more about learning a GUI and certain things to click around than really understanding programming. I'm concerned that this will lend itself to making developers on that stack increasingly paid less. b) It's very frustrating to spend your entire day essentially debugging something that should work but doesn't. Usually, Microsoft releases something that suggests anyone can just click here and there and poof there's your application. Most of the time it doesn't work and winds up sucking so much more time than it was supposed to save. c) I recently led a team in a small startup to build a WPF application. We were really hit hard with people complaining about having to download the runtime. Our code was also not portable to any other platform. Added to which, the ram usage and slowness to load of the app was remarkable for its size. I researched it and we could not find a way to optimize it. d) I'm a little concerned about being wedded to the Windows platform. What are the pros and cons of adding another platform and which platform do people suggest? Thanks!

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• Which topics do I need to research to enable me to complete my self-assigned "Learning Project"?

  - by Anonymous -

  I want to continue learning C#. I've read parts of a few books recommended on here and the language is feeling more familiar by the day. I'd like to tackle a mid-sized personal project to take my expertise to the next level. What I'd like to do, is create an application that 'manages expenses', that runs on multiple machines on a LAN. So for example, say we have person1 and person2 on seperate machines running the application, when person1 enters an expense, it will appear on person2's (pretty UI) view of the expenses database and vice versa. What topics do I need to research to make this possible for me? I plan on learning WPF for the UI (though the steep learning curve (or so I'm told) has me a little anxious about that at this stage. With regards to the database, which database would you recommend I use? I don't want a 'server' for the database to run on, so do I need to use an embedded database that each client machine runs a copy of that updates to each other (upon startup/entering of expense on any machine etc)? What topics under networking should I be looking at? I haven't studied networking before in any language, so do I need to learn about sockets or?

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• Does lesser wide screen fit better than a large one?

  - by artaxerxe

  About 3 weeks ago I changed my job. At the former workplace, I had 2 monitors for doing programming (GUI and core programming). Here, at the place where I am, the administrators gave me a laptop (15.6 inch) and wanted to provide me a wider screen additional to the laptop's one. I said that for now I want to test as it is, with the laptop's screen. I also want to mention, that in the current job I'm not targeted for GUI development. My feeling until now (but it can be just a feeling) is that working on this single not so wide screen, I'm not so weary after a full day work as I was with 2 wide monitors. Does anyone have any recommendations on this problem? Does lesser screens (in my case exclusively 15.6 inch vs 20 inch screens) affect your eyes? If anyone have any knowledge about, please feel free to say what's your opinion. P.S. I think that's a good site for this kind of question. Otherwise, please guide me on what site from StackExchange should I put it. Thanks.

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• Placeholders in strings

  - by dotancohen

  I find that I sometimes use placeholders in strings, like this: $ cat example-apache <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName ##DOMAIN_NAME## ServerAlias www.##DOMAIN_NAME## DocumentRoot /var/www/##DOMAIN_NAME##/public_html </VirtualHost> Now I am sure that it is a minor issue if the placeholder is ##DOMAIN_NAME##, !!DOMAIN_NAME!!, {{DOMAIN_NAME}}, or some other variant. However, I now need to standardize with other developers on a project, and we all have a vested interest in having our own placeholder format made standard in the organization. Are there any good reasons for choosing any of these, or others? I am trying to quantify these considerations: Aesthetics and usability. For example, __dict__ may be hard to read as we don't know how many underscores are in there. Compatibility. Will some language try to do something funny with {} syntax in a string (such as PHP does with "Welcome to {$siteName} today!")? Actually, I know that PHP and Python won't, but others? Will a C++ preprocessor choke on ## format? If I need to store the value in some SQL engine, will it not consider something a comment? Any other pitfalls to be wary of? Maintainability. Will the new guy mistake ##SOME_PLACEHOLDER## as a language construct? The unknown. Surely the wise folk here will think of other aspects of this decision that I have not thought of. I might be bikeshedding this, but if there are real issues that might be lurking then I would certainly like to know about them before mandating that our developers adhere to a potentially-problematic convention.

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• The best programmer is N times more effective than the worst? Who Cares?

  - by StevenWilkins

  There is a latent belief in programming that the best programmer is N times more effective than the worst. Where N is usually between 10 and 100. Here are some examples: http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity-factor/ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html http://haacked.com/archive/2007/06/25/understanding-productivity-differences-between-developers.aspx There is some debate as to whether or not it's been proven: http://morendil.github.com/folklore.html I'm confident in the accuracy of these statements: The best salesmen in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst The best drivers in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst The best soccer players in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst The best CEOs in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst In some cases, I'm sure the difference is greater. In fact, you could probably say that The best [insert any skilled profession here] in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst We don't know what N is for the rest of these professions, so why concern ourselves with what the actual number is for programming? Can we not just say that the number is large enough so that it's very important to hire the best people and move on already?

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• What helped YOU learn C++? [on hold]

  - by Tips48

  So here's my attempt to not get this question closed for too subjective :P I'm a young programmer, specifically interested in Game Development. I've written my first couple games in Java, which I would consider my self intermediate-Advanced in. As I start to prepare myself for college and (hopefully) internships, I've noticed that learning C/C++ is essential to the industry. I've decided to start with C++, and so I read a couple of books that I saw were suggested. Anyway, now I have a decent understanding of the basics, but I really want to enhance my language knowledge. Instead of just asking for things to do, I was wondering what were some exercises that you did that really helped you understand the language? Preferably they would be near the beginner level. I understand that they obviously won't be directly related to Game Development, but it be nice if there were some things that I could transfer over eventually. (Specifically, I struggle with memory (pointers, etc) since there is no such concept in Java) Thanks! - Tips P.S.: Here's to hoping this isn't to subjective :P

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• Creating dynamic plots

  - by geoff92

  I'm completely new to web programming but I do have a programming background. I'd like to create a site that allows users to visit, enter some specifications into a form, submit the form, and then receive a graph. I have a few questions about this, only because I'm pretty ignorant: Is there a good framework I should start in? I know a lot of java, I'm okay with python, and I learned Ruby in the past. I figure I might use ruby on rails only because I hear of it so often and I think I've also heard it's easy. If anyone has some other recommendation, please suggest. The user will be entering data into a form. I'm guessing the request they'll be making should be one of a GET request, right? Because I don't intend for any of the data they're entering to modify my server (in fact, I don't intend on having a database). The data the user inputs will be used to perform calculations involving lots of matrices. I've written this functionality in python. If I use ruby on rails, should it be instead written in Ruby? Somewhere I've heard that you can either place the load of the work on your server or on the client's computer. Since the code performs heavy math, which option is preferable? How do I alter the setup to either make the client do the work or my server? Should I be using a "cgi-bin"? In the code that I have now, I use matplotlib, a python library, and then "show" the plot in order to see the graph. I specify the x and y limits, but I am able to "drag" the graph in order to see more data within the plot window. Ultimately, I want a graph to be shown on my site with the drag functionality. Is this possible? What if the client drags the graph so far, more computations must be made? Thanks!

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• Bikeshedding: Placeholders in strings

  - by dotancohen

  I find that I sometimes use placeholders in strings, like this: $ cat example-apache <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName ##DOMAIN_NAME## ServerAlias www.##DOMAIN_NAME## DocumentRoot /var/www/##DOMAIN_NAME##/public_html </VirtualHost> Now I am sure that it is a minor issue if the placeholder is ##DOMAIN_NAME##, !!DOMAIN_NAME!!, {{DOMAIN_NAME}}, or some other variant. However, I now need to standardize with other developers on a project, and we all have a vested interest in having our own placeholder format made standard in the organization. Are there any good reasons for choosing any of these, or others? I am trying to quantify these considerations: Aesthetics and usability. For example, __dict__ may be hard to read as we don't know how many underscores are in there. Compatibility. Will some language try to do something funny with {} syntax in a string (such as PHP does with "Welcome to {$siteName} today!")? Actually, I know that PHP and Python won't, but others? Will a C++ preprocessor choke on ## format? If I need to store the value in some SQL engine, will it not consider something a comment? Any other pitfalls to be wary of? Maintainability. Will the new guy mistake ##SOME_PLACEHOLDER## as a language construct? The unknown. Surely the wise folk here will think of other aspects of this decision that I have not thought of. I might be bikeshedding this, but if there are real issues that might be lurking then I would certainly like to know about them before mandating that our developers adhere to a potentially-problematic convention.

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• Discrete Math and Computing Course

  - by ShrimpCrackers

  I was recently admitted into a Computing and Software Systems program (basically software engineering) and one of the first courses I'll be taking is called Mathematical Principles of Computing. The course description: "Integrating mathematical principles with detailed instruction in computer programming. Explores mathematical reasoning and discrete structures through object-oriented programming. Includes algorithm analysis, basic abstract data types, and data structures." I'm not a fan of math, but I've been doing well in all my math classes mostly A's and B's ever since I started two years ago, and I've been doing math every quarter - never took a quarter without math - so I've been doing it all in sequence without gaps. However, I'm worried about this class. I've read briefly on what discrete math is and from what my advisor told me, its connection with computer science is that it has alot to do with proving algorithms. One thing that my instructors briefly touched on and never went into detail was proving algorithms, and when I tried, I just wasn't very good at mathematical induction. It's one of the things that I ignored every time it showed up in a homework problem (usually in Calculus III which I'm finishing up right now). Questions: 1. What can I expect from this class? 2. How can I prepare myself for this class? 3. Other tips? Thank you.

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• On Developing Web Services with Global State

  - by user74418

  I'm new to web programming. I'm more experienced and comfortable with client-side code. Recently, I've been dabbling in web programming through Python's Google App Engine. I ran into some difficulty while trying to write some simple apps for the purposes of learning, mainly involving how to maintain some kind of consistent universally-accessible state for the application. I tried to write a simple queueing management system, the kind you would expect to be used in a small clinic, or at a cafeteria. Typically, this is done with hardware. You take a number from a ticketing machine, and when your number is displayed or called you approach the counter for service. Alternatively, you could be given a small pager, which will beep or vibrate when it is your turn to receive service. The former is somewhat better in that you have an idea of how many people are still ahead of you in the queue. In this situation, the global state is the last number in queue, which needs to be updated whenever a request is made to the server. I'm not sure how to best to store and maintain this value in a GAE context. The solution I thought of was to keep the value in the Datastore, attempt to query it during a ticket request, update the value, and then re-store it with put. My problem is that I haven't figured out how to lock the resource so that other requests do not check the value while it is in the middle of being updated. I am concerned that I may end up ticket requests that have the same queue number. Also, the whole solution feels awkward to me. I was wondering if there was a more natural way to accomplish this without having to go through the Datastore. Can anyone with more experience in this domain provide some advice on how to approach the design of the above application?

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