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• Practical refactoring

  - by ahb

  I've read about refactoring and probably did it before I even knew about it, however I don't really know much about it is actually done and what it practically means. What, from your view, is refactoring? How and when do you do it?

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• Unread email notifier, most practical approach

  - by Michael Pasqualone

  I'm in the process of writing a small php-cli script that will loop over over my personal inbox and then send me an SMS via a gateway. The question I have is: As will have the script launch via cron every 10 minutes, if there is an email sitting in my inbox that is not read before the next script launch then I will receive 2 sms. Does any one (pseudocode will do) have any idea what the best practice would be in php5 to ensure only 1 SMS is sent? What I am currently learning towards is towards storing the message ID in a sqlite DB and flagging a field whether an SMS has been sent or not - but wondering if there is an easier way?

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• Practical non-image based CAPTCHA approaches?

  - by Jeff Atwood

  It looks like we'll be adding CAPTCHA support to Stack Overflow. This is necessary to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious scripted activity. We only want human beings to post or edit things here! We'll be using a JavaScript (jQuery) CAPTCHA as a first line of defense: http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:Safer_Contact_Forms_Without_CAPTCHAs The advantage of this approach is that, for most people, the CAPTCHA won't ever be visible! However, for people with JavaScript disabled, we still need a fallback and this is where it gets tricky. I have written a traditional CAPTCHA control for ASP.NET which we can re-use. However, I'd prefer to go with something textual to avoid the overhead of creating all these images on the server with each request. I've seen things like.. ASCII text captcha: \/\/(_)\/\/ math puzzles: what is 7 minus 3 times 2? trivia questions: what tastes better, a toad or a popsicle? Maybe I'm just tilting at windmills here, but I'd like to have a less resource intensive, non-image based <noscript> compatible CAPTCHA if possible. Ideas?

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• jQuery.get() - Practical uses?

  - by RedWolves

  I am trying to understand why you would use jQuery.get() and jQuery.get(index). The docs say it is to convert the jQuery selection to the raw DOM object instead of working with the selection as a jQuery object and the methods available to it. So a quick example: $("div").get(0).innerHTML; is the same as: $("div").html(); Obviously this is a bad example but I am struggling to figure when you would use .get(). Can you help me understand when I would use this method in my code?

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• Type Casting variables in PHP: Is there a practical example?

  - by Stephen

  PHP, as most of us know, has weak typing. For those who don't, PHP.net says: PHP does not require (or support) explicit type definition in variable declaration; a variable's type is determined by the context in which the variable is used. Love it or hate it, PHP re-casts variables on-the-fly. So, the following code is valid: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; var_dump($value); // int(20) PHP also alows you to explicitly cast a variable, like so: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; $value = (string)$value; var_dump($value); // string(2) "20" That's all cool... but, for the life of me, I cannot conceive of a practical reason for doing this. I don't have a problem with strong typing in languages that support it, like Java. That's fine, and I completely understand it. Also, I'm aware of—and fully understand the usefulness of—type hinting in function parameters. The problem I have with type casting is explained by the above quote. If PHP can swap types at-will, it can do so even after you force cast a type; and it can do so on-the-fly when you need a certain type in an operation. That makes the following valid: $var = "10"; $value = (int)$var; $value = $value . ' TaDa!'; var_dump($value); // string(8) "10 TaDa!" So what's the point? Can anyone show me a practical application or example of type casting—one that would fail if type casting were not involved? I ask this here instead of SO because I figure practicality is too subjective. Edit in response to Chris' comment Take this theoretical example of a world where user-defined type casting makes sense in PHP: You force cast variable $foo as int -- (int)$foo. You attempt to store a string value in the variable $foo. PHP throws an exception!! <--- That would make sense. Suddenly the reason for user defined type casting exists! The fact that PHP will switch things around as needed makes the point of user defined type casting vague. For example, the following two code samples are equivalent: // example 1 $foo = 0; $foo = (string)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo; // example 2 $foo = 0; $foo = (int)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo; UPDATE Guess who found himself using typecasting in a practical environment? Yours Truly. The requirement was to display money values on a website for a restaurant menu. The design of the site required that trailing zeros be trimmed, so that the display looked something like the following: Menu Item 1 .............. $ 4 Menu Item 2 .............. $ 7.5 Menu Item 3 .............. $ 3 The best way I found to do that wast to cast the variable as a float: $price = '7.50'; // a string from the database layer. echo 'Menu Item 2 .............. $ ' . (float)$price; PHP trims the float's trailing zeros, and then recasts the float as a string for concatenation.

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• Any Practical Alternative to the Signals + Slots model for GUI Programming?

  - by IntermediateHacker

  The majority of GUI Toolkits nowadays use the Signals + Slots model. It was Qt and GTK+, if I am not wrong, who pioneered it. You know, the widgets or graphical objects (sometimes even ones that aren't displayed) send signals to the main-loop handler. The main-loop handler then calls the events, callbacks or slots assigned for that widget / graphical object. There are usually default (and in most cases virtual) event-handlers already provided by the toolkit for handling all pre-defined signals, therefore, unlike previous designs where the developer had to write the entire main-loop and handler for each and every message himself (think WINAPI), the developer only has to worry about the signals he needs to implement new functionality on. Now this design is being used in most modern toolkits as far as I know. There are Qt, GTK+, FLTK etc. There is Java Swing. C# even has a language feature for it ( events and delegates ), and Windows Forms has been developed on this design. In fact, over the last decade, this design for GUI programming has become a kind of an unwritten standard. Since it increases productivity and provides greater abstraction. However, my question is: Is there any alternative design, that is parallel or practical for modern GUI programming? i.e Is the Signals + Slots design, the only practical one in town? Is it feasible to do GUI Programming with any other design? Are any modern (preferably successful and popular) GUI toolkits built on an alternative design?

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• I didn't completely get 100% on a programming job interview, should I worry?

  - by user347598

  I recently had a phone job interview with a 1 hour Programming practical. It had two questions on it and I know I answered one completely correct and got most of the second correct. Should I worry about getting the Job just based on that? The actual phone job interview went very well and they told me that I answered their questions well and my questions I aimed at them were very good questions and some they had not heard before but should have in the past. so big question is should I worry? or is not 100% completion ok.

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• Type Casting variables in PHP: Is there a practical example?

  - by Stephen

  PHP, as most of us know, has weak typing. For those who don't, PHP.net says: PHP does not require (or support) explicit type definition in variable declaration; a variable's type is determined by the context in which the variable is used. Love it or hate it, PHP re-casts variables on-the-fly. So, the following code is valid: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; var_dump($value); // int(20) PHP also alows you to explicitly cast a variable, like so: $var = "10"; $value = 10 + $var; $value = (string)$value; var_dump($value); // string(2) "20" That's all cool... but, for the life of me, I cannot conceive of a practical reason for doing this. I don't have a problem with strong typing in languages that support it, like Java. That's fine, and I completely understand it. Also, I'm aware of—and fully understand the usefulness of—type hinting in function parameters. The problem I have with type casting is explained by the above quote. If PHP can swap types at-will, it can do so even after you force cast a type; and it can do so on-the-fly when you need a certain type in an operation. That makes the following valid: $var = "10"; $value = (int)$var; $value = $value . ' TaDa!'; var_dump($value); // string(8) "10 TaDa!" So what's the point? Can anyone show me a practical application or example of type casting—one that would fail if type casting were not involved? I ask this here instead of SO because I figure practicality is too subjective. Edit in response to Chris' comment Take this theoretical example of a world where user-defined type casting makes sense in PHP: You force cast variable $foo as int -- (int)$foo. You attempt to store a string value in the variable $foo. PHP throws an exception!! <--- That would make sense. Suddenly the reason for user defined type casting exists! The fact that PHP will switch things around as needed makes the point of user defined type casting vague. For example, the following two code samples are equivalent: // example 1 $foo = 0; $foo = (string)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo; // example 2 $foo = 0; $foo = (int)$foo; $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo;

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• Is there a quick and practical (hands on) way to learn another programming language?

  - by Tamsin

  Due to rather strange circumstances, I only have until Monday to learn (at least) the basics of PHP and .NET programming. I'm already fairly competent (though there is a lot of room for improvement) in C++ so I feel I have some of the concepts nailed already, but I need to get into the two languages in a bit more depth in a very short time frame. Unfortunately I won't have time to get any books so will need to exclusively use online resources, I'm more of a 'do-er' so any way to test my skills in a practical way would be a huge bonus :-)

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• How to get the most out of the book 'Practical Reverse Engineering: x86, x64, ARM, Windows Kernel, Reversing Tools, and Obfuscation'? [on hold]

  - by user3565816

  I was reading the book Practical Reverse Engineering: x86, x64, ARM, Windows Kernel, Reversing Tools, and Obfuscation by Bruce Dang et. al, as I am interested in learning about Reverse Engineering. However I found that most of what I was reading made very little sense to me and I felt confused. So my question is, what material should I go through first before returning to this book so that I can get the most out of it? Thanks in advance for your assistance.

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• Amusing or Sad? Network Solutions

  - by dbasnett

  When I got sick my email ended up in every drug sellers email list. Some days I get over 200 emails selling everything from Viagra to Xanax. Either they don't know what my condition is or they are telling me you are a goner, might as well chill-ax and have a good time. In order to cut down on the mail being downloaded I thought I would add all of the Junk email senders from Outlook to my Network Solution mail server. Much to my amazement I could not find that import Spammers button, so I submitted a tech support request. Here is the response: Thank you for contacting Network Solutions Customer Service Department. We are committed to creating the best Customer experience possible. One of the first ways we can demonstrate our commitment to this goal is to quickly and efficiently handle your recent request. We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused you. With regard to your concern, please be advised that we cannot import blocked senders in to you e-mail servers. An alternative option is for you to create a Custom Filter that filters unwanted e-mails. To create a Custom Filter: Open a Web browser (e.g., Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer, etc.). Type mail.[domain name].[ext] in the address line. Login to your Network Solutions email account. Click on the Configuration left menu tab. Click on the Custom Filter link. Type the rule name. blah, blah, blah Basically add them one at a time. "We are committed to creating the best Customer experience possible." No you are not. You are trying to squeeze every nickle you can out of me. "With regard to your concern, please be advised that we cannot import blocked senders in to you e-mail servers." Maybe I should apply for a job to write those ten complicated lines of code... Maybe I should question my choice of vendors, because if they truly "cannot" then they are to stupid to have my business. It is both amusing and sad. I'll be posting this in every forum I am a member of.

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• Is there any practical use for the empty type in Common Lisp?

  - by Pedro Rodrigues

  The Common Lisp spec states that nil is the name of the empty type, but I've never found any situation in Common Lisp where I felt like the empty type was useful/necessary. Is it there just for completeness sake (and removing it wouldn't cause any harm to anyone)? Or is there really some practical use for the empty type in Common Lisp? If yes, then I would prefer an answer with code example. For example, in Haskell the empty type can be used when binding foreign data structures, to make sure that no one tries to create values of that type without using the data structure's foreign interface (although in this case, the type is not really empty).

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• Oracle makes Virtualized Java Applications Practical. Announces Brand New Products

  - by blake.connell

  New Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder and Oracle WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option make running Java applications in a virtual environments easy and practical. • Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder is a new product designed to help organizations quickly and easily deploy multi-tier enterprise applications in virtualized environments. It enables administrators to quickly configure and provision these applications. • Oracle WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option delivers Oracle WebLogic Server on Oracle JRockit Virtual Edition delivering 'near-native' performance and increased server density. • Oracle WebLogic Server on Oracle JRockit Virtual Edition runs directly on Oracle VM without a guest operating system, a unique capability resulting in better performance and more application server runtime per system. Oracle WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder can drive operational efficiency and agility. Customers can dynamically scale up/down the underlying software infrastructure and applications with ease through software automation. Register for a live webinar with Oracle product experts Read the press release For more product information: Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Oracle WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option

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• Analysing a Visual Foxpro application to derive requirements. Tools/approaches/practices?

  - by Kabeer

  Hello. In an upcoming project I am supposed to re-engineer a huge application built on Visual Foxpro into a web-application. The target platform is .Net. The application from the end-users' perspective is very complex (complex forms, reports, navigation, etc). The sorry state is that there are no documents available from which I can derive, business processes, business rules, work-flows, validations, application state, etc. I can gather some requirements from end-users but it cannot be complete from any perspective. Maneuvering through the code would be tedious & time consuming, given the millions of lines of code. Therefore I am looking for a tool that can help me in code analysis. My googling attempt didn't help me at least for a Visual Foxpro code base. Besides, I will appreciate if someone can share processes/approaches/techniques to establish the requirements as far as possible. BTW, this link didn't quite help.

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• automated email downloading and treading similar messages

  - by Michael

  Okay here it is : I have built an c# console app that downloads email, save attachments , and stores the subject, from, to, body to a MS SQL Database. I use aspNetPOP3 Component to do this. I have build a front end ASP.NET application to search and view the messages. Works great. Next Steps (this is where I need help ): Now I want my users (of the asp.net app) to reply to this message send the email to the originator, and tread any additional replies back and forth on from that original message(like basecamp). This would allow my end user not to have to log-in to a system, they just continue using email (our users can as well). The question is what should I use to determine if messages are related? Subject line I think is a bad approach. I believe the best method i've seen so far is way basecamp does it, but I'm not sure how that is done, here is a real example of the reply to address from a basecamp email (I've changed the host name): [email protected] Basecamp obviously are prefixing the pre-pending a tracking id to the email address, however , when I try this with my mail service, it's rejected. Is this the best approach, is there a way I can accomplish this, is there a better approach, or even a better email component tool? Thanks, Mike

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• Reducing the pain writing integration and system tests

  - by mdma

  I would like to make integration tests and system tests for my applications but producing good integration and system tests have often needed so much effort that I have not bothered. The few times I tried, I wrote custom, application-specific test harnesses, which felt like re-inventing the wheel each time. I wonder if this is the wrong approach. Is there a "standard" approach to integration and full system testing? EDIT: To clarify, it's automated tests, for desktop and web applications. Ideally a complete test suite that exercises the full functionality of the application.

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• What was trickiest code you've ever written?

  - by Bhavesh.Bagadiya

  Hi, As a programmer, I know sometime all has to write some code which they think -"Thank God! It's done" or "Ohh, how did I write it?"... Do you have any such piece of code.

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• Should the PHP community start using more discriptive Exceptions?

  - by fireeyedboy

  I work with Zend Framework a lot and I just took a peek at Kohana, and it strikes me as odd that this is a typical scenario in these frameworks: throw Some_Componenents_Exception( 'invalid argument' ); Where I believe this wouldn't be mouch more useful: throw Some_Components_InvalidArgumentException( 'whatever discription' ); Because it is easier to catch. I suspect, but immediately admit it's prejudiced, that the former practice is common in the PHP community. Should we, the PHP community, start using these descriptive types of expections more?

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• Should the PHP community start using more descriptive Exceptions?

  - by fireeyedboy

  I work with Zend Framework a lot and I just took a peek at Kohana, and it strikes me as odd that this is a typical scenario in these frameworks: throw Some_Componenents_Exception( 'invalid argument' ); Where I believe this wouldn't be mouch more useful: throw Some_Components_InvalidArgumentException( 'whatever discription' ); Because it is easier to catch. I suspect, but immediately admit it's prejudiced, that the former practice is common in the PHP community. Should we, the PHP community, start using these descriptive types of expections more?

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• How do I know if I'm being truly clever and not just "clever"?

  - by Covar

  If there's one thing I've learned from programming is that there are clever solutions to problems, and then there are "clever" solutions to problems. One is an intelligent solution to a difficult problem that results in improved efficiency and a better way to to do something and the other will wind up on The Daily WTF, and result in headaches and pain for anyone else involved. My question is how do you distinguish between one and the other? How do you figure out if you've over thought the solution? How do you stop yourself from throwing away truly clever solutions, thinking they were "clever"?

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• Manually setting object's position or have the object do it all?

  - by N. Lucas

  I'm stuck thinking about the best way to go about setting a line segment's position, I have a class Line(length, angle, previous) being called from a class Polygon.. Right now I have: public function Line(length:Number, angle:Number, previous:Line = null) { if (previous != null) { this.x = previous.end.x; this.y = previous.end.y; } /**/ } Now, is this the best practice or should I be doing: Polygon.addLine(length:Number, angle:Number):void { var previous = _line[_line.length - 1]; // Array containing all Lines var line:Line = new Line(length, angle, previous); line.x = previous.end.x; line.y = previous.end.y; /**/ }

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• What is the strangest programming language you have used?

  - by Anders Sandvig

  For me I think it has to be the scripting language of an old proprietary telephony platform I used in the early 2000s. The language itself was not so bad, but the fact that it was meant to be edited with a drag-and-drop GUI, which did not expose all the functionality I needed, was quite frustrating. I also remember having to manually implement many common functions, such as calculating the length of a string. Whenever I wanted to use "custom" or "advanced" functions, I had to edit the script files in a text editor, but as soon as I opened the files in the GUI again they were reformatted and restructured, which usually resulted in broken code. And, of course, this was an interpreted language, so I would not know it was broken until I actually ran it—oh, and did I mention that it did not run the same in the simulator as in the live environment? So, what is the strangest programming language or environment you have used, and why did you use it? Note that I'm interested in languages and environments that you have actually used for "real-world" situations, so Whitespace, Brainf***k and friends are not valid—unless you have used them for something "real", of course.

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• Are these non-standard applications of rendering practical in games?

  - by maul

  I've recently got into 3D and I came up with a few different "tricky" rendering techniques. Unfortunately I don't have the time to work on this myself, but I'd like to know if these are known methods and if they can be used in practice. Hybrid rendering Now I know that ray-tracing is still not fast enough for real-time rendering, at least on home computers. I also know that hybrid rendering (a combination of rasterization and ray-tracing) is a well known theory. However I had the following idea: one could separate a scene into "important" and "not important" objects. First you render the "not important" objects using traditional rasterization. In this pass you also render the "important" objects using a special shader that simply marks these parts on the image using a special color, or some stencil/depth buffer trickery. Then in the second pass you read back the results of the first pass and start ray tracing, but only from the pixels that were marked by the "important" object's shader. This would allow you to only ray-trace exactly what you need to. Could this be fast enough for real-time effects? Rendered physics I'm specifically talking about bullet physics - intersection of a very small object (point/bullet) that travels across a straight line with other, relatively slow-moving, fairly constant objects. More specifically: hit detection. My idea is that you could render the scene from the point of view of the gun (or the bullet). Every object in the scene would draw a different color. You only need to render a 1x1 pixel window - the center of the screen (again, from the gun's point of view). Then you simply check that central pixel and the color tells you what you hit. This is pixel-perfect hit detection based on the graphical representation of objects, which is not common in games. Afaik traditional OpenGL "picking" is a similar method. This could be extended in a few ways: For larger (non-bullet) objects you render a larger portion of the screen. If you put a special-colored plane in the middle of the scene (exactly where the bullet will be after the current frame) you get a method that works as the traditional slow-moving iterative physics test as well. You could simulate objects that the bullet can pass through (with decreased velocity) using alpha blending or some similar trick. So are these techniques in use anywhere, and/or are they practical at all?

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• How practical is using a Wireless-N router together with a B and G router?

  - by Jian Lin

  I hope to use a Wireless N router to boost up the speed of wireless Internet, but there are some device that probably only supports B or G, such as iPhone, iPad, Wii, so if it is to replace the existing Wireless-B/G router, then some device won't work. Is it practical to buy a Wireless-N router, and then just plug the existing wireless router to it, or if I am using AT&T's u-verse, which has a central Wireless-B/G router, then plug in a new Wireless-N router into it?

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• Which is the most practical way to add functionality to this piece of code?

  - by Adam Arold

  I'm writing an open source library which handles hexagonal grids. It mainly revolves around the HexagonalGrid and the Hexagon class. There is a HexagonalGridBuilder class which builds the grid which contains Hexagon objects. What I'm trying to achieve is to enable the user to add arbitrary data to each Hexagon. The interface looks like this: public interface Hexagon extends Serializable { // ... other methods not important in this context <T> void setSatelliteData(T data); <T> T getSatelliteData(); } So far so good. I'm writing another class however named HexagonalGridCalculator which adds some fancy pieces of computation to the library like calculating the shortest path between two Hexagons or calculating the line of sight around a Hexagon. My problem is that for those I need the user to supply some data for the Hexagon objects like the cost of passing through a Hexagon, or a boolean flag indicating whether the object is transparent/passable or not. My question is how should I implement this? My first idea was to write an interface like this: public interface HexagonData { void setTransparent(boolean isTransparent); void setPassable(boolean isPassable); void setPassageCost(int cost); } and make the user implement it but then it came to my mind that if I add any other functionality later all code will break for those who are using the old interface. So my next idea is to add annotations like @PassageCost, @IsTransparent and @IsPassable which can be added to fields and when I'm doing the computation I can look for the annotations in the satelliteData supplied by the user. This looks flexible enough if I take into account the possibility of later changes but it uses reflection. I have no benchmark of the costs of using annotations so I'm a bit in the dark here. I think that in 90-95% of the cases the efficiency is not important since most users wont't use a grid where this is significant but I can imagine someone trying to create a grid with a size of 5.000.000.000 X 5.000.000.000. So which path should I start walking on? Or are there some better alternatives? Note: These ideas are not implemented yet so I did not pay too much attention to good names.

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