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• Is committing/checking in code everyday a good practice?

  - by ArtB

  I've been reading Martin Fowler's note on Continuous Integration and he lists as a must "Everyone Commits To the Mainline Every Day". I do not like to commit code unless the section I'm working on is complete and that in practice I commit my code every three days: one day to investigate/reproduce the task and make some preliminary changes, a second day to complete the changes, and a third day to write the tests and clean it up^ for submission. I would not feel comfortable submitting the code sooner. Now, I pull changes from the repository and integrate them locally usually twice a day, but I do not commit that often unless I can carve out a smaller piece of work. Question: is committing everyday such a good practice that I should change my workflow to accomodate it, or it is not that advisable? Edit: I guess I should have clarified that I meant "commit" in the CVS meaning of it (aka "push") since that is likely what Fowler would have meant in 2006 when he wrote this. ^ The order is more arbitrary and depends on the task, my point was to illustrate the time span and activities, not the exact sequence.

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• prism and multiple screens

  - by Avi

  OK - I am studying Prism a little because of a "free weekend" offer on Pluralsight. As this is proving too complex for me, I went to the Prism book and looked at the forward, and this is what it said: What comes after “Hello, World?” WPF and Silverlight developers are blessed with an abundance of excellent books... There’s no lack of tutorials on Model-View-ViewModel ... But they stop short of the guidance you need to deliver a non-trivial application in full. Your first screen goes well. You add a second screen and a third. Because you started your solution with the built-in “Navigation Application Template,” adding new screens feels like hanging shirts on a closet rod. You are on a roll. Until the harsh reality of real application requirements sets in. As it happens, your application has 30 screens not three. There’s no room on that closet rod for 30 screens. Some screens are modal pop-ups; you don’t navigate to a pop-up. Screens become interdependent such that user activity in one screen triggers changes that propagate throughout the UI. Some screens are optional; others are visible only to authorized users. Some screens are permanent, while other screens can be opened and closed at will. You discover that navigating back to a previously displayed screen creates a new instance. That’s not what you expected and, to your horror, the prior instance is gone along with the user’s unsaved changes. Now the issue is, I don't relate to this description. I've never been a UI programmer, but same as everyone else I'm using Windows apps such as MS-Office, and web sites such as Amazon, Facebook and StackExchange. And I look at these and I don't see many "so many screens" issues! Indeed, the only applications having many windows I can think of is Visual Studio. Maybe also Visio, a little. But take Word - You have a ribbon and a main window. Or take Facebook: You have those lists on the left (Favorites, Lists, Groups etc.), the status middle, the adds and then the Contacts sidebar. But it's only one page. Of course, I understand that in enterprise scenarios there are dashboad applications where multiple segments of the screen are updated from multiple non-related services. This I dig. But other scenarios? So - What am I missing? What is the "multiple screens" monster Pirsm is supposed to be the silver bullet solution for? Shoud I invest in studying Prism in addition to learning WPF or ASP.NET MVC?

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• Legitimate use of the Windows "Documents" folder in programs.

  - by romkyns

  Anyone who likes their Documents folder to contain only things they place there knows that the standard Documents folder is completely unsuitable for this task. Every program seems to want to put its settings, data, or something equally irrelevant into the Documents folder, despite the fact that there are folders specifically for this job1. So that this doesn't sound empty, take my personal "Documents" folder as an example. I don't ever use it, in that I never, under any circumstances, save anything into this folder myself. And yet, it contains 46 folders and 3 files at the top level, for a total of 800 files in 500 folders. That's 190 MB of "documents" I didn't create. Obviously any actual documents would immediately get lost in this mess. My question is: can anything be done to improve the situation sufficiently to make "Documents" useful again, say over the next 5 years? Can programmers be somehow educated en-masse not to use it as a dumping ground? Could the OS start reporting some "fake" location hidden under AppData through the existing APIs, while only allowing Explorer and the various Open/Save dialogs to know where the "real" Documents folder resides? Or are any attempts completely futile or even unnecessary? 1For the record, here's a quick summary of the various standard directories that should be used instead of "Documents": RoamingAppData for user-specific data and settings. This is the directory to use for user-specific non-temporary data. Anything placed here will be available on any machine that a given user logs on to in networks where this is configured. Do not place large files here though, because they slow down login/logout in such environments. LocalAppData for user-and-machine-specific data and settings. This data differs for every user and every machine. This is also where very large user-specific data should be placed. ProgramData for machine-specific data and settings. These are the same regardless of which user is logged on, and will not roam to other machines in a network. GetTempPath for all files that may be wiped without loss of data when not in use. This is also the place for things like caches, because like temporary data, a cache does not need to be backed up. Place your huge cache here and you'll save your user some backup trouble. "Documents" itself should only ever be used if the user specified it manually by entering a path or selecting it in a Save dialog. That is the only time it is ever appropriate to save stuff in "Documents".

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• "Opportunity" to take over maintenance of a small internal website. What should I do?

  - by Dan

  I have been offered an "opportunity" to take over maintenance of a small internal website run by my group that provides information about schedules and photos of events the groups done. My manager sent me the link to the site and checked it out. The site looked clean and neat but loaded in ~5 seconds. I thought this was a little long considering the site really didn't contain a lot of content. This prompted me to take a look under the hood at the pages source code. To my horror it'd been totally hacked together using nested tables! I'm new so I really can't say no to this "opportunity" so what should I do with it? Every fiber of my being feels that the only correct thing to do is over hall the site using CSS, Div's, Span's and any other appropriate tags that a sane/good web developer would used to begin with instead of depending on the render incentive magic of tables. But I'd like to ask programmers with more experienced then me, who have been in this situation. What should I do? Is my only realistic option to leave the horror as is and only adjusting the content as requested? I'm really torn between good development and the corporate reality I'm part of. Is there some kind of middle ground where things can be made better even if they're not perfect? Thanks ahead of time.

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• Is implementing an interface defined in a subpackage an anti-pattern?

  - by Michael Kjörling

  Let's say I have the following: package me.my.pkg; public interface Something { /* ... couple of methods go here ... */ } and: package me.my; import me.my.pkg.Something; public class SomeClass implements Something { /* ... implementation of Something goes here ... */ /* ... some more method implementations go here too ... */ } That is, the class implementing an interface lives closer to the package hierarchy root than does the interface it implements but they both belong in the same package hierarchy. The reason for this in the particular case I have in mind is that there is a previously-existing package that groups functionality which the Something interface logically belongs to, and the logical (as in both "the one you'd expect" and "the one where it needs to go given the current architecture") implementation class exists previously and lives one level "up" from the logical placement of the interface. The implementing class does not logically belong anywhere under me.my.pkg. In my particular case, the class in question implements several interfaces, but that feels like it doesn't make any (or at least no significant) difference here. I can't decide if this is an acceptable pattern or not. Is it or is it not, and why?

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• bad practice to create a print friendly page to remove the use of pdfs?

  - by Phil

  the company I work for has a one page invoice that uses the library tcpdf. they wanted to do some design changes that I found are just incredibly difficult for setting up in .pdf format. using html/css I could easily create the page and have it print very nicely, but I have a feeling that I am over looking something. is it a good practice to set up a page just for printing? and if not, is it at least better than putting out a ugly .pdf? I could also use the CSS inline so that if they wanted to download it and open it they could.

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• Code to simulate a users actions, such as logging in

  - by Gortron

  I've recently begun working on a PHP application, replacing another developer. I believed the application was using an API to communicate with a remote service but when I looked through the code I found that it was using a set of functions to actually log in, fill out forms and submit them as a user might do in a browser. My intention is to replace this code, to use the services API instead. I've considered leaving the code as is and not replace it. It makes me wonder though is this a common practice in the software industry? To have a programme simulate a users actions in a browser to perform a set of actions? It feels to me that this is clever but poor programming, Have any other developers seen this?

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• Getting graduates up to speed?

  - by Simon

  This question got me thinking about how comapnies deal with newly-hired graduated. Do experienced programmers expect CS graduates to write clean code (by clean I mean code easily understandable by others — maybe that is too much to expect?) Or do significant portion of graduates at your place (if any) just end up testing and fixing small bugs on existing applications? And, even if they do bug fixes, do you end up spending double the amount of time just checking they did not end up breaking anything and creating new bugs? How do you deal with such scenarios when pair programming and code reviews are not available options (for reasons such as personal deadlines), and also what techniques did you find to get fresh graduate up to speed? Some suggestions would be great.

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• Can too much abstraction be bad?

  - by m3th0dman

  As programmers I feel that our goal is to provide good abstractions on the given domain model and business logic. But where should this abstraction stop? How to make the trade-off between abstraction and all it's benefits (flexibility, ease of changing etc.) and ease of understanding the code and all it's benefits. I believe I tend to write code overly abstracted and I don't know how good is it; I often tend to write it like it is some kind of a micro-framework, which consists of two parts: Micro-Modules which are hooked up in the micro-framework: these modules are easy to be understood, developed and maintained as single units. This code basically represents the code that actually does the functional stuff, described in requirements. Connecting code; now here I believe stands the problem. This code tends to be complicated because it is sometimes very abstracted and is hard to be understood at the beginning; this arises due to the fact that it is only pure abstraction, the base in reality and business logic being performed in the code presented 1; from this reason this code is not expected to be changed once tested. Is this a good approach at programming? That it, having changing code very fragmented in many modules and very easy to be understood and non-changing code very complex from the abstraction POV? Should all the code be uniformly complex (that is code 1 more complex and interlinked and code 2 more simple) so that anybody looking through it can understand it in a reasonable amount of time but change is expensive or the solution presented above is good, where "changing code" is very easy to be understood, debugged, changed and "linking code" is kind of difficult. Note: this is not about code readability! Both code at 1 and 2 is readable, but code at 2 comes with more complex abstractions while code 1 comes with simple abstractions.

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• Test driven development - convince me!

  - by Casebash

  I know some people are massive proponents of test driven development. I have used unit tests in the past, but only to test operations that can be tested easily or which I believe will quite possibly be correct. Complete or near complete code coverage sounds like it would take a lot of time. What projects do you use test-driven development for? Do you only use it for projects above a certain size? Should I be using it or not? Convince me!

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• What grammatical tense should I write my specifications in?

  - by John

  We are currently writing functional and technical specifications in a two column format; summary sentence and technical detail. The details often refer to an appendix with diagrams, layout designs ect. However I am struggling with what tense to write it in: With past tense as if the work is done I struggle to show highlight extensions of exiting work. Future tense as in it needs to do X starts to sound like a to do list or Tense neutral very hard as it has either going to be done or is done. To add further confusion this specification may be read by people who do not have English as a first language.

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• Should all, none, or some overriden methods call Super?

  - by JoJo

  When designing a class, how do you decide when all overridden methods should call super or when none of the overridden methods should call super? Also, is it considered bad practice if your code logic requires a mixture of supered and non-supered methods like the Javascript example below? ChildClass = new Class.create(ParentClass, { /** * @Override */ initialize: function($super) { $super(); this.foo = 99; }, /** * @Override */ methodOne: function($super) { $super(); this.foo++; }, /** * @Override */ methodTwo: function($super) { this.foo--; } }); After delving into the iPhone and Android SDKs, I noticed that super must be called on every overridden method, or else the program will crash because something wouldn't get initialized. When deriving from a template/delegate, none of the methods are supered (obviously). So what exactly are these "je ne sais quoi" qualities that determine whether a all, none, or some overriden methods should call super?

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• Defining formula through user interface in user form

  - by BriskLabs Pakistan

  I am a student and developing a simple assignment - windows form application in visual studio 2010. The application is suppose to construct formulas as per user requirement. The process: It has to pick data from columns of Microsoft Access database and the user should be able to pick the data by column name like we do in a drop down menu. and create reusable formulas in it ( configure it once and can change it again). followings are column titles from database that can be picked for example. e.g Col -1 : Marks in Maths Col -2 : Total Marks in Maths Col -3 : Marks in science Col -4 : Total marks in science Finally we should be able to construct any formula in the UI like (Col 1 + Col 3 ) / ( col 2 + col 4) = Formula 1 once this is formula is set saved and a name is assigned to it by user. he/she can use the formula and results shall appear in a window below. i.e He would be able to calculate his desired figures (formula) by only manipulating underlying data on the UI layer....choose the data for a period and apply the formula and get the answer Problem: It looks like I have to create an app where rules are set through UI....... this means no stored procedures are required in SQL.... please suggest the right approach.

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• More than one way to skin an Audit

  - by BuckWoody

  I get asked quite a bit about auditing in SQL Server. By "audit", people mean everything from tracking logins to finding out exactly who ran a particular SELECT statement. In the really early versions of SQL Server, we didn't have a great story for very granular audits, so lots of workarounds were suggested. As time progressed, more and more audit capabilities were added to the product, and in typical database platform fashion, as we added a feature we didn't often take the others away. So now, instead of not having an option to audit actions by users, you might face the opposite problem - too many ways to audit! You can read more about the options you have for tracking users here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280526(v=SQL.100).aspx  In SQL Server 2008, we introduced SQL Server Audit, which uses Extended Events to really get a simple way to implement high-level or granular auditing. You can read more about that here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd392015.aspx  As with any feature, you should understand what your needs are first. Auditing isn't "free" in the performance sense, so you need to make sure you're only auditing what you need to. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How to visualize code?

  - by gablin

  I've mostly only had to read my own code. As such, I've had no need to visualize the code as I already know how each and every class and module communicate with one another. But the few times I've had to read someone else's code - let us now assume we are talking about at least one larger module which contains several internal classes - I've almost always found myself wishing "This would have been so much easier to understand if I could just visualize it!" So what are the common methods or tools for enabling this? Which do you use, and why do you prefer them over the others? I've heard stuff like UML, module and class diagrams, but I imagine there are more. Furthermore, any of these is most likely better than anything I can devise on my own. EDIT: For those who answer with "Use pen and paper and just draw it": This isn't very helpful unless you explain this further. What exactly am I supposed to draw? A box for each class? Should I include the public methods? What about its fields? How should I draw connections that explain how one class uses another? What about modules? What if the language isn't object-oriented but functional or logical, or even just imperative (C, for instance)? What about global variables and functions? Is there an already-standardized way of drawing this, or do I need to think up of a method of my own? You get the drift.

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• Is it a bad practice to include all the enums in one file and use it in multiple classes?

  - by Bugster

  I'm an aspiring game developer, I work on occasional indie games, and for a while I've been doing something which seemed like a bad practice at first, but I really want to get an answer from some experienced programmers here. Let's say I have a file called enumList.h where I declare all the enums I want to use in my game: // enumList.h enum materials_t { WOOD, STONE, ETC }; enum entity_t { PLAYER, MONSTER }; enum map_t { 2D, 3D }; // and so on. // Tile.h #include "enumList.h" #include <vector> class tile { // stuff }; The main idea is that I declare all enums in the game in 1 file, and then import that file when I need to use a certain enum from it, rather than declaring it in the file where I need to use it. I do this because it makes things clean, I can access every enum in 1 place rather than having pages openned solely for accessing one enum. Is this a bad practice and can it affect performance in any way?

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• Pros and cons of creating a print friendly page to remove the use of pdfs?

  - by Phil

  the company I work for has a one page invoice that uses the library tcpdf. they wanted to do some design changes that I found are just incredibly difficult for setting up in .pdf format. Using html/css I could easily create the page and have it print very nicely, but I have a feeling that I am over looking something. What are the pros and cons of setting up a page just for printing? What are the pros and cons of putting out a .pdf? I could also use the CSS inline so that if they wanted to download it and open it they could.

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• Salting a public hash

  - by Sathvik

  Does it make any sense at all to salt a hash which might be available publicly? It doesn't really make sense to me, but does anyone actually do that? UPDATE - Some more info: An acquaintance of mine has a common salted-hash function which he uses throughout his code. So I was wondering if it made any sense at-all, to do so. Here's the function he used: hashlib.sha256(string+SALT).hexdigest() Update2: Sorry if it wasn't clear. By available publicly I meant, that it is rendered in the HTML of the project (for linking, etc) & can thus be easily read by a third party. The project is a python based web-app which involves user-created pages which are tracked using their hashes like myproject.com/hash so thus revealing the hash publicly. So my question is, whether in any circumstances would any sane programmer salt such a hash? Question: Using hashlib.sha256(string+SALT).hexdigest() vs hashlib.sha256(string).hexdigest() , when the hash isn't a secret.

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• How to get started in coding for JBoss

  - by Mister IT Guru

  I have an idea on how to revamp our internal application, after having accessed the needs of the users, addressing thier current issues, and the like. But I am not a coder. My last application I wrote was in college, in C, (java wasn't invented-ish!) and it was a booking system, with the option to add on other modules, blah blah. I got an A, but I became a system administrator instead, more intrested in designing and maintainend networks and infrastructure, but with the advent of virtualisation, and linux management tools such as puppet I can now manage infrastructure in my sleep! Now I want to write code - to put on my infastructure, and I want to build .... a booking system! This is just to get experience, but I am at a loss as to where to start. Setting up the environment, will take me about a day. Writing the spec, even how I want it to work, I already know, but as for actually coding in a decent manner, I can only guess. If anyone can recommend a book, website, blog, twitter person to follow, or just advice on how to build a kick butt basic jboss app, then please, "I AM READY TO LEARN" :)

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• Do I have to write a lot of boilerplate code if I keep working using Java?

  - by edem

  I'm working for a company writing ERP applications. My problem is that I have to write tons of boilerplate code. I came up with ideas to automatize/prevent the drudgery but only some of them were accepted. I have been told by the lead developer that my ideas tend to be go far afield and I should write code everyone can understand. I had a discussion about this lately and it seems to me that this kind of code ramp is within java's philosophy. I have to write lots of code to achiveve simple things not because it is necessary but because this is the way most of the people at the company think. Is this universally applicable to most of the companies out there using java or this is just my company's view? Do I have to get used to the drudgery if I keep working for java-based firms?

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• How can i manage my personal notes , code snippets files in one place online [closed]

  - by user1758043

  Whenever i work on any project , then i have so much notes , diagrams files , image s, brainstorming ideas which i want to keep. i want to put them in one place so that i can see the history of my work. Is there any toll whichere i can store this online. my company is using confluence but thats costly for me. I want something for single user but online in clou where i can store Notes Code snippets Diagrams , flowchart Attah files , images Books marks , sites

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• Using the @ in SQL Azure Connections

  - by BuckWoody

  The other day I was working with a client on an application they were changing to a hybrid architecture – some data on-premise and other data in SQL Azure and Windows Azure Blob storage. I had them make a couple of corrections - the first was that all communications to SQL Azure need to be encrypted. It’s a simple addition to the connection string, depending on the library you use. Which brought up another interesting point. They had been using something that looked like this, using the .NET provider: Server=tcp:[serverName].database.windows.net;Database=myDataBase; User ID=LoginName;Password=myPassword; Trusted_Connection=False;Encrypt=True; This includes most of the formatting needed for SQL Azure. It specifies TCP as the transport mechanism, the database name is included, Trusted_Connection is off, and encryption is on. But it needed one more change: Server=tcp:[serverName].database.windows.net;Database=myDataBase; User ID=[LoginName]@[serverName];Password=myPassword; Trusted_Connection=False;Encrypt=True; Notice the difference? It’s the User ID parameter. It includes the @ symbol and the name of the server – not the whole DNS name, just the server name itself. The developers were a bit surprised, since it had been working with the first format that just used the user name. Why did both work, and why is one better than the other? It has to do with the connection library you use. For most libraries, the user name is enough. But for some libraries (subject to change so I don’t list them here) the server name parameter isn’t sent in the way the load balancer understands, so you need to include the server name right in the login, so the system can parse it correctly. Keep in mind, the string limit for that is 128 characters – so take the @ symbol and the server name into consideration for user names. The user connection info is detailed here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee336268.aspx Upshot? Include the @servername on your connection string just to be safe. And plan for that extra space…  

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• Is it bad to be the only person supporting software you have developed?

  - by trpt4him

  My employer has a need for a web-based application to manage and share data within the department, with approximately 50-75 possible users. I feel I have the ability to write it for them. I would likely use Python/Django with a MySQL database, so it would be open source. However, I'm the only IT person in my department (our larger organization has a separate IT support staff with which I often work, but not for web development). I want to develop this application, but if I leave in 1-2 years, and someone else has to come in after me and support it, will this be seen as a bad decision? This is assuming all the obvious points -- I will write documentation, I will comment my code, and I will strive to follow good application design principles. But will that be enough? In principle, is it acceptable for one person to develop and support an entire web application? Is this a "do first, then show and ask" kind of situation, or should I be certain it will be adopted by everyone involved first?

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• Can I include a robots meta tag outside of the head in HTML snippets indeded to be SSIed?

  - by Dan

  I have a number of files in my site which are not intended for independent viewing, but rather to be AJAXed into content within the site. They obviously don't meet HTML standards (no body, head, etc.) as independent entities. I would like to prevent search engines from indexing these pages, but do not have access to /robots.txt (which would be much more ideal). My question is, could I include the following at the top of these partial HTML files and get the desired results? <meta name="robots" content="noindex, noarchive"> I guess there are two parts to this question. Will this cause any rendering issues in any browsers? Will search engines (at least Google & Bing) interpret this as intended?

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• Am I bored with programming? [closed]

  - by user1167074

  I have started programming 2 years back and I have learnt web programming while working for big corporate companies. I was very passionate and I even did couple of side projects which were well appreciated by my friends and colleagues. But for the past 2 months I am not doing anything really interesting with programming, even if I get good ideas I am not feeling like coding, sub consciously I am feeling like "So What?" if I do this project. I would like to know from the more experienced programmers if this is just a phase or am I really missing something? Thanks

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