Search Results

Search found 25198 results on 1008 pages for 'non programmers'.

Page 490/1008 | < Previous Page | 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493 494 495 496 497  | Next Page >

• How did we get saddled with the (hierarchical) filesystem as the basic data structure?

  - by user1936

  I'm self-taught and I don't have a CS degree. The more I've been learning about data structure, the more I wonder, in this day and age, how are we still saddled with the filesystem, with directories and files, as the basic data storage structure on the OS? I understand the simplicity of it, but it seems nowadays that there could be more options available natively. As far as I'm aware, the only project to improve the basic functionality of the filesystem was ReiserFS, where you could tell what line of a file was changed by whom, and when. For instance, if I could have native tagging for files, where I could tag images, diagrams, word-processing documents, an entire code repository, all as belonging to a single project, that would really be helpful to me. Since I'm stuck in the filesystem paradigm, I know that I could put all those into a single folder/directory, but what if they already exist in disparate directories, and they need to stay there? I know there are programs out there that can do this, but why aren't they on the filesystem? Something that would be nice to have is some kind of relational feature in the filesystem, like you get with RDBMSes. I understand that that was supposed to be part of Vista/7, but that fell off the feature list too. Sure, any program can store a binary file and have any data structure it wants in it, by why couldn't the OS offer more complex ways of storing data, beyond the simple heirarchy of the filesystem?

  Read the article

• When is it time to start afresh instead of trying to rewrite the existing project?

  - by gablin

  As projects grow and age and new features are introduced, there may come a time when it's probably better to start anew. Some features may require so much rewriting that it would be easier (and maybe faster) to just rewrite the whole thing from scratch. Also, then you have the opportunity to apply what you've learned from the first project and thus improve the code and design of the successor. Is there a way of recognizing when this time is? Is it just a gut feeling, or could you say that "after x years, you probably should start over", or some other rule of thumb?

  Read the article

• What significant lost advances on side tracks should be revived in the main stream of software?

  - by C.W.Holeman II

  In reading Alan Kay's question on Significant new inventions I was coming up with answers that were not new ideas but old ones that have been passed by in the main stream. So, what significant lost advances that happened on a side track should be revived in the main stream of software? These would be ideas that worked well in their context but a different context appeared and became dominant the context, even though it lacked the idea. It maybe that in the new dominant context one just cannot do something or it requires great effort to be exerted.

  Read the article

• How to justify rewriting/revamping legacy software in a business case?

  - by sxthomson

  I work for a great little software company which makes good revenue from our main software package. The problem for me is that it's almost unmaintainable. It's written in Delphi 7 (has upgraded versions over time) and has been worked on by a lot of developers over the past 20 or so years. The software lacks any meaningful architecture - there's no object orientation whatsoever, horrible amounts of cyclical dependencies and an over-reliance on global variables to name just a few things. Another huge thing for me is Delphi 7 does NOT support 64-bit. The problem here for me is that my management team don't care about technical things, they want to know why they should care. Obviously that's expected, so what I'm asking here is for some guidance, or tales, or pitfalls about this kind of thing. There's a few things I would love to include, namely for me, the length of time taken to debug/write a feature in "legacy" code, versus coherent, well structured OO code. Does anyone know of any blog posts or the like where this is talked about? For us in the company this is a huge reason. Despite being decent developers we feel like writing a new feature is just piling more rubbish on top. On top of that, even for me who has a decent level of understanding of the code, changing things is infuriating - a small change can have a ridiculous domino effect. Anyone have any experiences they'd like to share?

  Read the article

• What's better in terms of user experience - providing an email address or a link to my projects github account?

  - by Oliver Weiler

  What's better in terms of user experience? Provide the user an email account where he can report bugs, or a link to the projects github issues page (which requires a github account but may be easier to submit bugs to)? EDIT The application is a Bash script hosted on github. The GNU Coding Standards suggests using an email address, which may or may not an appropriate solution. Target audience is the CLI power user.

  Read the article

• Learning to program on punchcards

  - by Plutor

  I'd like to try programming with punch cards once in my life. How can I do this? I'm in my 30s, and grew up entirely in the PC era, programming on computers with screens and keyboards. I want to experience the way my father and grandfather used to work. I imagine the hardware (and probably the cards themselves) are no longer manufactured. Are there any universities or museums with functioning punch card readers anymore? I'm in Boston, but I'm willing to travel to do this. I asked MetaFilter, and I got some mixed answers (along with a lot of "no, don't do this" nay-saying). I did get a pointer to the Retro-Computing Society Of Rhode Island, but I haven't received a response to my email to them yet.

  Read the article

• How can I "bulk paste" a clipboard string of multi-line text into a readable ordered list?

  - by gunshor

  How can I "bulk paste" a clipboard string of multi-line text into a readable ordered list? I'm trying to demonstrate how to turn any string of multi-line text into an ordered list. The script (preferably JS) needs to respect: - carriage returns at the end of a line, to mean "that line ends here" - indentations at the beginning of a line, to mean "this is part of the item above it" - dashes at the beginning of a line, to mean "this is a task, and the line above it is its project"

  Read the article

• Connection String Incorrectly Formatted [migrated]

  - by Randy E

  I'm running into some issues. Every time I launch into debug mode and hit the "Create User" button, I'm getting an exception being thrown that is due to the Connection String either being in the wrong syntax or just wrong. Using Visual Studio 2010, project is .NET 3.5 with SQL 2008 Express. This is just a personal project that I'm testing some other things with, I know this generally isn't the recommended format but for a personal small project, I don't see the point in doing it any other way. The things I'm testing actually work :) Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;AttachDbFilename=|Data Directory|ASPAppDatabase.mdf;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True That doesn't work. Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;AttachDbFilename="|Data Directory|ASPAppDatabase.mdf";Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True Neither does that. Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;AttachDbFilename='|Data Directory|ASPAppDatabase.mdf';Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True And again, neither does that :/ However, rather than using "|Data directory| if I use the full path to the local DB file it works just fine and no exception is thrown, and I can read and write as I need. And just to cover all my bases, here is the button click event that creates the User. protected void btnAddUser_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { Membership.CreateUser(txtUserName.Text, txtPassword.Text); btnLogin_Click(sender, e); } So, what am I missing in regards to the |Data Directory|? Here is an example of the above not working correctly..taken directly from web.config. <add name="ASPAppDatabaseConnection" connectionString='Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|ASPAppDatabase.mdf;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True'/>

  Read the article

• Saving all hits to a web app

  - by bevanb

  Are there standard approaches to persisting data for every hit that a web app receives? This would be for analytics purposes (as a better alternative to log mining down the road). Seems like Redis would be a must. Is it advisable to also use a different DB server for that table, or would Redis be enough to mitigate the impact on the main DB? Also, how common is this practice? Seems like a no brainer for businesses who want to better understand their users, but I haven't read much about it.

  Read the article

• Advice on reconciling discordant data

  - by Justin

  Let me support my question with a quick scenario. We're writing an app for family meal planning. We'll produce daily plans with a target calorie goal and meals to achieve it for our nuclear family. Our calorie goal will be calculated for each person from their attributes (gender, age, weight, activity level). The weight attribute is the simplest example here. When Dad (the fascist nerd who is inflicting this on his family) first uses the application he throws approximate values into it for Daughter. He thinks she is 5'2" (157 cm) and 125 lbs (56kg). The next day Mom sits down to generate the menu and looks back over what the bumbling Dad did, quietly fumes that he can never recall anything about the family, and says the value is really 118 lbs! This is the first introduction of the discord. It seems, in this scenario, Mom is probably more correct that Dad. Though both are only an approximation of the actual value. The next day the dear Daughter decides to use the program and sees her weight listed. With the vanity only a teenager could muster she changes the weight to 110 lbs. Later that day the Mom returns home from a doctor's visit the Daughter needed and decides that it would be a good idea to update her Daughter's weight in the program. Hooray, another value, this time 117 lbs. Now how do you reconcile these data points? Measurement error, confidence in parties, bias, and more all confound the data. In some idealized world we'd have a weight authority of some nature providing the one and only truth. How about in our world though? And the icing on the cake is that this single data point changes over time. How have you guys solved or managed this conflict?

  Read the article

• Keeping a domain model consistent with actual data

  - by fstuijt

  Recently domain driven design got my attention, and while thinking about how this approach could help us I came across the following problem. In DDD the common approach is to retrieve entities (or better, aggregate roots) from a repository which acts as a in-memory collection of these entities. After these entities have been retrieved, they can be updated or deleted by the user, however after retrieval they are essentially disconnected from the data source and one must actively inform the repository to update the data source and make is consistent again with our in-memory representation. What is the DDD approach to retrieving entities that should remain connected to the data source? For example, in our situation we retrieve a series of sensors that have a specific measurement during retrieval. Over time, these measurement values may change and our business logic in the domain model should respond to these changes properly. E.g., domain events may be raised if a sensor value exceeds a predefined threshold. However, using the repository approach, these sensor values are just snapshots, and are disconnected from the data source. Does any of you have an idea on how to solve this following the DDD approach?

  Read the article

• Progressbar patterns (Eclipse)

  - by JesperE

  I've struggled quite a bit with Eclipse and progress-monitors to try to have good progressbars which report useful progress information to the user. Inevitably the code gets cluttered with lots of things like if (monitor.isCancelled()) return; ... lengthyMethodCall(monitor.newChild(10)); and all over the place I need to pass a IProgressMonitor as an argument to my methods. This is bad, for several reasons: The code gets cluttered with lots of code which is not relevant to what the function actually does. I need to manually guesstimate which parts of the code takes time, and which parts do not. It interacts badly with automated tests; where much of the information which goes into a progressbar instead should be logged for later inspection. Is there a way out of this? Are there tools which can help me out with one or more of these problems? Should I be looking at Aspect-Oriented Programming tools, or are there other alternatives?

  Read the article

• Deploying Asp.net MVC web application [migrated]

  - by Pankaj Upadhyay

  I have been trying to find a neat tutorial, guide or step by step instructions for deploying an Asp.net MVC3 webapp but have found nothing so far. Everyone talks about his version of the stroy and different type of MVC versions. Right now, I have build a simple Asp.net MVC web application which i need to deploy on my shared hosting account. In a very simple manner, I need to know which files should i copy. Do i upload everything in my webproject directory to the server including the controller directory, views, models, content and bin directory ?. What about the Global.asax, web.config, packages.config, myapp.publish.xml. In short, I have no idea which files should be uploaded and which should be not. I am sure of one thing that i need few(MVC and Razor dlls) following dlls in bin directory. Just treat me as someone who has never deployed any website NOTE:- I don't have VS SP1 installed and it doesn't install either. Basically i need a manual procedure.

  Read the article

• How to learn an API

  - by inovaovao

  When I find some interesting project (e.g. on GitHub) I often would like to use it and try it out to see how it works, but if there isn't a good documentation or some kind of tutorial it's hard to figure out how to use it. So my question is: how do you approach such a situation? How do you figure out which classes are important and how to chain them to put them to use? What would you look at first? An advice I found is to look at the tests (if there are any). But if there are unit tests for every class, how do you know which ones to look at first?

  Read the article

• How To Start Programming

  - by nayef harb

  I have taken a programming course 2 years ago but I haven't worked in programming since then. I recently found a programmer job, but there is no programming team so for me to gain valuable experience from. I am Programming by myself and making changes on a program already made by my Ex-colleague. I need to know what should I do to be on the right track for becoming a professional programmer without a team to take experience from. What are the good practices to improve and what are the bad ones? I'm using VB.Net, ASP.Net and SQL.

  Read the article

• What Design Pattern is seperating transform converters

  - by RevMoon

  For converting a Java object model into XML I am using the following design: For different types of objects (e.g. primitive types, collections, null, etc.) I define each its own converter, which acts appropriate with respect to the given type. This way it can easily extended without adding code to a huge if-else-then construct. The converters are chosen by a method which tests whether the object is convertable at all and by using a priority ordering. The priority ordering is important so let's say a List is not converted by the POJO converter, even though it is convertable as such it would be more appropriate to use the collection converter. What design pattern is that? I can only think of a similarity to the command pattern.

  Read the article

• Why would I want to use CRaSH?

  - by Adam Tannon

  Justed stumbled across CRaSH and although it looks mighty interesting, I'm wondering why a Java developer should invest time & energy into learning (yet another) shell language. What sort of standard- and cool-applications can CRaSH be used for? Is this like a Groovy-version of Jython? I guess, when the dust settles, I'm looking for CRaSH's "wow" factors. I'm sure they're there, but after spending ~20 minutes perusing the documentation I'm just not seeing them. Thanks in advance!

  Read the article

• Are there any off the shelf solutions for feature use analysis?

  - by Riviera

  I write a set of productivity tools that sells online and have tens of thousands of users. While we do get very good feedback, this tens to come from only the most vocal users, so we fear we might be missing the big picture. We would like to know if there is any off the shelf (or nearly so) solution to capture usage of different features and to report usage patterns and trends over time. Note: These tools are native apps, not web-based. I know about Google Analytics and the like. They're great, but I'm looking for native code solutions.

  Read the article

• My very first serious project and I'm concerned about security.

  - by ilhan

  I'm making a small social networking web site for a specific university's students (where I study) and I'm concerned about security (access to the database). What should I do? What I have to check for last time until I went online? (Yeah, Facebook Facebook. Facebook don't have that community sense. You cannot find all your department mates on Facebook. You cannot see all foreign students on Facebook. You cannot hide your identity on Facebook while commenting, etc etc. Just please don't compare it with Facebook, we had a great local social network until it went public . * ))

  Read the article

• Advice Required Regarding Creating a Self Learning, Self Organizing Programming Team....

  - by tGilani

  Hello I'm a senior student at my university and chairperson of IEEE Student Branch there. Recently I was thinking of some idea to acquaint students with the professional environment, how software is produced in the industry and get a practical experience.. Obviously trips to software houses are not enough and we cannot provide this many internships. So the idea of simulating a software house within the university popped in. Resources at my disposal are students with their own laptops, university UPS and lan network with internet access, and a reasonably sized room with a whiteboard and three hours free time daily.. :) However, I have absolutely no idea where to begin with. Milestones or whatever it may be called, are Requirements Document generation, sharing of resources, delegation of tasks, version controlling etc... I'd really appreciate some advice, programming tools (for JAVA), communication tools etc and other things used in a decent software house... Technologies to be targeted shall be random possibly starting with J2EE Spring Hibernate and Later Visual Programming in .NET C# and ASP.NET MVC as well as Android or iPhone development....

  Read the article

• Can I use wikipedia/commons images to create a logo for my program?

  - by bitmask

  I'm not perfectly clear on the implications of the GFDL for reusing pictures in this manner. Would adding a reference in the git's root folder's README suffice, or would that clutter every use of the logo, as you would have to attribute all original contributors on every single usage (like, e.g. presentations, flyers, websites, ...)? The software itself qualifies as FOSS, although it doesn't have a GNU* license.

  Read the article

• What is the term that means "keeping the arguments for different API calls as similar as possible"?

  - by larson4

  There is a word which I can never remember... it expresses a design goal that API calls (or functions or methods or whatever) should be as similar as reasonably possible in their argument patterns. It may also extend to naming as well. In other words, all other things being equal, it is probably bad to have these three functions: deleteUser(email) petRemove(petId,species) destroyPlanet(planetName,starName) if instead you could have deleteUser(userId) deletePet(petId) deletePlanet(planetId) What is the word for this concept? I keep thinking it's "orthogonal" but it definitely isn't. Its a very important concept, and to me it's one of the biggest things that makes some APIs a joy to work with (because once you learn a few things you can pretty much use everything without looking at doco), and others a pain (because every function is done inconsistently).

  Read the article

• Website File and Folder Structure

  - by Drummss

  I am having a problem learning how proper website structure should be. And by that I mean how to code the pages and how folder structure should be. Currently I am navigating around my website using GET variables in PHP when you want go to another page, so I am always loading the index.php file. And I would load the page I wanted like so: $page = "error"; if(isset($_GET["page"]) AND file_exists("pages/".$_GET["page"].".php")) { $page = $_GET["page"]; } elseif(!isset($_GET["page"])) { $page = "home"; } And this: <div id="page"> <?php include("pages/".$page.".php"); ?> </div> The reason I am doing this is because it makes making new pages a lot easier as I don't have to link style sheets and javascript in every file like so: <head> <title> Website Name </title> <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lato:300,400' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'> <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css" type="text/css"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.png"/> <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.10.4/jquery-ui.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> There is a lot of problems doing it this way as URLs don't look normal ("?page=apanel/app") if I am trying to access a page from inside a folder inside the pages folder to prevent clutter. Obviously this is not the only way to go about it and I can't find the proper way to do it because I'm sure websites don't link style sheets in every file as that would be very bad if you changed a file name or needed to add another file you would have to change it in every file. If anyone could tell me how it is actually done or point me towards a tutorial that would be great. Thanks for your time :)

  Read the article

• Will YouTube (or any video hosting service) provide a mp4 link to an uploaded video? [closed]

  - by DoubleJ

  I've looked into a number of video hosting options, but none seem to provide a .mp4 link to your uploaded video, which I require for use in a project using BigVideo.js. The only service I've found to provide this functionality so far is VimeoPro, which I can't afford. Is there any way to do this for free in YouTube? Or, otherwise, are there any other (preferably low- or no-cost) video hosting providers that will provide a .mp4 link?

  Read the article

• How do I transition from physics and math to programming?

  - by inovaovao

  I'm a physics PhD with little actual programming experience. I've always liked programming and played around with BASIC, Pascal as a teen, but the extent of my experience writing complex programs comes from an introductory course in computer science. Now I've decided that I'm more interested in programming than in physics and started to learn Java. Coming from a physics or math-heavy background, what would be the best strategy to maximize my value in the field?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493 494 495 496 497  | Next Page >