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• Is my first employer expecting too much?

  - by priyank patel

  This is my first job as a programmer. I am working using the followig technologies: ASP.NET C# HTML CSS Javascript JQuery I work for a firm which develops software for small banking firms. Currently they have their software running in 100 firms. Their software is developed in Visual Fox Pro. I was hired to develop an online version of this software. I am the only developer. My boss is another developer, the only other developer in the firm. Therefore, my employer has a total of two developers. My boss does not have any experience with .NET development. I have been working on this project for 8 months. The progress is there, but has been very slow. I try my best to do what my boss asks. But the project just seems too ambitious for me. The company has not done have any planning for the project. They just ask me to develop what their older software provides. So I have to deal with front end, back end, review code, design architecture, and more. I have decided to give my best. I try a lot. But the project sometimes just seems to be overwhelming. Question: Is it normal for a beginner programmer to be in this place? Are my employers just expecting too much of a new programmer? As a programmer, am I lacking skills one needs to deal with this? I always feel the need to work in at least a small team, if not big one. I am just not able judge my condition. Also I am paid very low salary. I do work on Saturday as well. Please, help to clarify my judgment. Any suggestions are welcome.

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• Bad style programming, am I pretending too much?

  - by Luca

  I realized to work in an office with a quite bad code base. The base library implemented in years and years is quite limited, and most of that code is, honestly, horrible. Projects developed in the office are very large. Fine. I could define me a "perfectionist" (but often I'm not), and I thought to refactor an application (really a portion), which need a new (complex) feature. But, today, I really realized that it's not possible to refactor that application modules with a reasonable time (say, 24/26 hours, respect the avaialable time for the task, which is 160 hours). I'm talking about (I am a bit ashamed to say) name collisions, large and frequent cut & paste code, horrible and misleading naming, makefiles without dependencies (!), application login is spread randomly across many different sources, dead code, variable aliasing, no assertion, no documentation, very long source files, bad/incomplete include file definition, (this is emblematic!) very frequent extern declaration of variables and functions, ... I'm sure to continue ... buffer overflows because sprintf, indentation (!), spacing, non existent const modifier usage. I would say that every source line was written quite randomly when needed, without keeping in mind some design (at least, the obvious one). (Am I in hell?) The problem arises when the application is developed by a colleague of mine. I felt very frustrated. So, I decided to expose the "situation" to my colleague; at the end, that was a bad idea. He is justified in saying that "the application was developed in haste, so it is natural that it is written vaguely; you are wasting time to think and implement an elegant implementation" .... I'm asking too much from my colleague to write readable code, which is managed and documented? I expect too much in not having to read thousands of lines of code to understand how a particular logic?

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• Integrating Twitter Into An ASP.NET Website

  Twitter is a popular social networking web service for writing and sharing short messages. These tidy text messages are referred to as tweets and are limited to 140 characters. Users can leave tweets and follow other users directly from Twitter's website or by using the Twitter API. Twitter's API makes it possible to integrate Twitter with external applications. For example, you can use the Twitter API to display your latest tweets on your blog. A mom and pop online store could integrate Twitter such that a new tweet was added each time a customer completed an order. And ELMAH, a popular open-source error logging library, can be configured to send error notifications to Twitter. Twitter's API is implemented over HTTP using the design principles of Representational State Transfer (REST). In a nutshell, inter-operating with the Twitter API involves a client - your application - sending an XML-formatted message over HTTP to the server - Twitter's website. The server responds with an XML-formatted message that contains status information and data. While you can certainly interface with this API by writing your own code to communicate with the Twitter API over HTTP along with the code that creates and parses the XML payloads exchanged between the client and server, such work is unnecessary since there are many community-created Twitter API libraries for a variety of programming frameworks. This article shows how to integrate Twitter with an ASP.NET website using the Twitterizer library, which is a free, open-source .NET library for working with the Twitter API. Specifically, this article shows how to retrieve your latest tweets and how to post a tweet using Twitterizer. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Estimating cost of labor for a controlled experiment

  - by Lorin Hochstein

  Let's say you are a software engineering researcher and you are designing a controlled experiment to compare two software technologies or techniques (e.g., TDD vs. non-TDD, Python vs. Go) with respect to some qualities of interest (e.g., quality of resulting code, programmer productivity). According to your study design, participants will work alone to implement a non-trivial software system. You estimate it should take about six months for a single programmer to complete the task. You also estimate via power analysis that you will need around sixty study participants to obtain statistically significant results, assuming the technologies actually do yield different outcomes. To maximize external validity, you want to use professional programmers as study participants. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to find professional programmers who can volunteer for several months to work full-time on implementing a software system. You decide to go the simplest route and contract with a large IT consulting firm to obtain access to programmers to participate in the study. What is a reasonable estimate of the cost range, per person-month, for the programming labor? Assume you are constrained to work with a U.S.-based firm, but it doesn't matter where in the U.S. the firm itself or the programmers or located. Note: I'm looking for a reasonable order-of-magnitude range suitable for back-of-the-envelope calculations so that when people say "Why doesn't somebody just do a study to measure X", I can say, "Because running that study properly would cost $Y", and have a reasonable argument for the value of $Y.

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• Codeigniter + JQuery + Processing.js to replace a Delphi App

  - by Peter Turner

  So, I've got a mandate to make our aged trillion lined Delphi app web based and it needs to make heavy use of the <canvas> element (HTML5 compatibility doesn't seem to be a big issue since we can just make our clients use a compatible browser the way we'd make them use a compatible version of Windows in the win32 environment). The Delphi app in question is almost completely database driven and will still pretty much continue to be developed as the main product. What I am tasked with is pretty much recreating a scaled down version of the program that performs the major functions of the whole program. I couldn't find any frameworks that simulate windows forms using the canvas element, I'm assuming this is probably by design since it is easier just to use HTML, well, be that as it may, I still think it would be cool to have a few of my cool controls on the web (TRichView and TVirtualTree, etc...) So my question is, to anyone who has tried this before, A.) What can we use for an IDE to code this web app (I just use emacs, but no one else in my company does)? B.) Is it a good idea to mix PHP and Processing.JS? It seems like I'm using a lot of AJAX to get anything to happen. 3 calls just for one dialog box to pop up, Loads the HTML for the dialog, Loads the XML to populate the database info on the form Loads the processing.js PJS file which draws the database info to the canvas. Is three a lot, do people usually combine all their gets into one?

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• What would you do to improve the working of a small Development team?

  - by Omar Kooheji

  My company is having a reshuffle and I'm applying for my boss' job as he's moved up the ladder. The new role would give me a chance to move our development team into the 21st century and I'd like to make sure that: I can provide sensible suggestions in the interview to get the job so I can fix the team If I get the job I can actually enact some changes to actually improve the lives of the developers and their output. I want to know what I can suggest to improve the way we work, because I think it's a mess but every time I've suggested a change it's been shot down because any time spend implementing the change would be time that isn't spent developing software. Here is the state of play at the moment: My team consists of 3-4 developers (Mainly Java but I do some .Net work) Each member of the team is usually works on 2-3 projects at a time We are each responsible for the entire life cycle of the project from design to testing. Usually only one person works on a project (Although we have the odd project that will have more than one person working on it.) Projects tend to be bespoke to single customer, or are really heavilly reliant on a particular customer environment. We have 2-3 "Products" which we evolve to meet customer requirements. We use SVN for source control We don't do continuous integration (I'd like to start) We use a really basic bug tracker for internal issue tracking (I'd like to move to an issue/task management system) Any changes that bring a sudden dip in revenue generation will probably be rejected, the company isn't structured for development most of the rest of the technical team's jobs can be broken down to install this piece of hardware, configure that piece of hardware and once a job is done it's done and you never have to look at it again. This mentality has crept into development team because it's part of the company culture.

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• Separation of development responsibilities in a new project

  - by dreza

  We have very recently started a new project (MVC 3.0) and some of our early discussion has been around how the work and development will be split amongst the team members to ensure we get the least amount of overlap of work and so help make it a bit easier for each developer to get on and do their work. The project is expected to take about 6 months - 1 year (although not all developers are likely to be on and might filter off towards the end), Our team is going to be small so this will help out a bit I believe. The team will essentially consist of: 3 x developers (All different levels i.e. more senior, intermediate and junior) 1 x project manager / product owner / tester An external company responsbile for doing our design work General project/development decisions so far have included: Develop in an Agile way using SCRUM techniques (We are still very much learning this approach as a company) Use MVVM archectecture Use Ninject and DI where possible Attempt to use as TDD as much as possible to drive development. Keep our controllers as skinny as possible Keep our views as simple as possible During our discussions two approaches have been broached as too how to seperate the workload given our objectives outlined above. OPTION 1: A framework seperation where each person is responsible for conceptual areas with overlap and discussion primarily in the integration areas. The integration areas would the responsibily of both developers as required. View prototypes (**Graphic designer**) | - Mockups | Views (Razor and view helpers etc) & Javascript (**Developer 1**) | - View models (Integration point) | Controllers and Application logic (**Developer 2**) | - Models (Integration point) | Domain model and persistence (**Developer 3**) OPTION 2: A more task orientated approach where each person is responsible for the completion of the entire task (story) from view - controller - model. QUESTION: For those who have worked in small teams developing MVC projects how have you managed the workload distribution in this situation. I can't imagine the junior would be responsible for building parts of the underlying architecture so would given them responsibility for the view make sense considering we are trying to keep it simple?

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• Guide to the web development ecosystem

  - by acjohnson55

  I'm a long-time software developer, and I've been thrown in the deep, deep end of developing from the ground up what will hopefully be a highly scalable and interactive web application. I've been out of the web game for about 8 years, and even when I was last in it, I wasn't exactly on the cutting edge. I think I've made judicious design decisions and I'm quite happy with the progress I've been making so far, but new, hot web technologies keep crawling out of the woodwork and into my headspace, forcing me to continually revalidate my implementation decisions. Complicating things even further is the preponderance of out-of-date information and the difficulty of knowing what is out of date in the first place. What I'm wondering is, are there any comprehensive books or guides dedicated to compiling and comparing the technologies out there, end-to-end in the web application stack? I'm happy to learn new techs on demand, but I don't like learning about them after I've already spent time going in another direction. I'm looking for the sort of executive info a CTO might read to make sure the best architectural decisions are being made. And just to be clear, this is a question about resources, not about specific technology suggestions.

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• Record management system java web framework

  - by Kamil Tomšík

  We're currently reconsidering technologies and frameworks to get more agile with "simple" RMS CRUD-based projects. In short, short-living things like this Right now we have a custom extension on top of SmartGWT but after some time it has proven not to be flexible enough. I also personally dislike the java-js compilation process and the whole GWT codebase. Not only is the design ugly, it also makes certain low-level js things very complicated if not completely impossible. So what I'm looking for is: closest to web as possible, like JSF or possibly Tapestry, it is very important to be able get "low" and weave framework if necessary. Happens more often than we thought. datagrid capable - Ext.js & PrimeFaces looks pretty good, Vaadin does too. db-schema generators (optional, no matter in which way) If it were only on me, I'd probably stick to Ext.js + custom rest-based java solution, possibly generated from database schema (not sure about concrete tooling yet). I only have experience with vanilla Ext.js, vanilla GWT and JSF 2.0 / Seam, so it hard for me to judge or even propose other frameworks. What would be your proposition? What are the problems you've faced? What was your solution and how hard do you think it was to deal with them in "big picture"?

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• Does waterfall require code complete before QA steps in?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  The process used at a certain company consists of: Create a layout according to some designs made in a web page design tool. (CSS, html) Requirements come in with "functional requirements". These consist of 100's of lines of business directions. E.G. Create a Table on page X. Column1 has numeric data. Column1 is the client code. Column2 is a string...etc. Write code to meet all functional requirements. When all code is checked in, send to QA (which is the BA that wrote the requirements) for inspection, bug finds and change requests. Punt back to developer with a list of X bugs and Y change requests. While bug finds or change requests 0 go to step 4. The agile development environments I have worked in allow, if not demand, early QA inspection and early user acceptance. So, pieces of the program can be refined and redefined before the entire application is in place. Not only that, but the process leaves little room for error or people changing their minds. Instead, those "change requests" come in at the last stage when they do the most damage. And being that a bug-fix's cost increases over time, this is a costly way to write code. I am no waterfall expert. As described, is this waterfall being mishandled in some way? How does waterfall address my concerns?

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• HTML5 game engine for a 2D or 2.5D RPG style "map walk"

  - by stargazer

  please help me to choose a HTML5 game engine or Javascript libraries I want to do the following in the game: when the game starts a part the huge map (full size of the map: about 7 screens) is shown. The map itself is completely designed in the editor mapeditor.org (or in some comparable editor - if you know a good alternative to mapeditor.org - let me know) and loaded at runtime or at design time. The game engine should support loading of isometric maps (well, in worst case only orthogonal maps will be sufficient) both "tile layer" and "object layer" from mapeditor.org should be supported. Scrolling/performance of this map should be fast enough. The map and the game should be either in 2D (orthogonal map) or in 2.5D (isometric map) The game engine should support movement of sprites with animation. Let say I have a sprite for "human" with animation sequences showing "walking" in 8 directions - it should be imported into game engine and should "walk" on the map without writing a lot of Javascript code. Automatic scrolling of the map the "human" nears the screen border. Collision detection, "solid" objects. The mapeditor.org supports properies on tiles. Let say I assign a "solid" property to some tiles in editor. It should be easy to check this "solid" property in the game engine and implement kind of "solid" behavior, so the animanted sprites do not walk through the walls. Collision detection - it should be easy to implement some custom functionality like "when sprite A is close to sprite B - call this function" Showing "dialogs" or popup windows on top of the map - should be easy to implement. Cross-browser audio support - (it is implemented quite well in construct 2 from scirra, so I'm looking for the comparable audio quality) The game itself is a king of RPG but without fighting scenes and without huge "inventory". The main character just walking on the map, discovers some things, there are dialogs and sounds. The functionality of this example from sprite.js http://batiste.dosimple.ch/sprite.js/tests/mapeditor/map_reader.html is very close to what I'm developing. But I'm not a Javascript guru (and a very lazy guy) and would like to write even less Javascript code as in the example...

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• How to Boost Your Mouse Pointing Accuracy in Windows

  - by The Geek

  Whether you are doing graphics/web design work or just taking screenshots, it’s often very difficult to move the mouse precisely enough to select pixels the way you’d like. Here’s a couple of ways to make it better. There’s a number of methods you can use, from configuring the default mouse settings, to enabling Mouse Keys to move the mouse pointer with the keyboard, or my favorite: Using the Precision Booster feature in IntelliPoint. Image by Rufus Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Ubuntu Font Family Now Available for Download Oh No! WikiLeaks Published Santa Claus’s Naughty List [Video] Remember the Milk Now Supports HTTPS Encryption for the Entire Session MTCrypt Is an Efficient Front End for Mounting TrueCrypt Volumes 10 Things You Should Do with Your New Android Phone Walking Through the Park on a Snowy Night Wallpaper

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• Notes for a NetBeans IDE 7.4 HTML5 Screencast

  - by Geertjan

  I'm making a screencast that intends to thoroughly introduce NetBeans IDE 7.4 as a tool for HTML, JavaScript, and CSS developers. Here's the current outline, additions and other suggestions are welcome. Getting Started Downloading NetBeans IDE for HTML5 and PHP Examining the NetBeans installation directory, especially netbeans.conf Examining the NetBeans user directory Command line options for starting NetBeans IDE Exploring NetBeans IDE Menus and toolbars Versioning tools Options Window Go through whole Options window Change look and feels Adding themes Syntax coloring Code templates Plugin Manager and Plugin Portal Dark Look and Feel Themes Toggle line wrap Emmet HTML Tidy NetBeans Cheat Sheets Creating HTML5 projects From scratch From online template, e.g., Twitter Bootstrap From ZIP file From folder on disk From sample Editing Useful shortcuts Alt-Enter: see the current hints Alt-Shift-DOT/COMMA: expand selection (CTRL instead of Alt on Mac) Ctrl-Shift-Up/Down: copy up/down Alt-Shift-Up/Down: move up/down Alt-Insert: generate code (Lorum Ipsum) View menu | Show Non-printable Characters Source menu Show keyboard shortcut card Useful hints Surround with Tag Remove Surrounding Tag Useful code completion Link tag for CSS, show completion Script tag for JavaScript, show completion Create code templates in Options window Useful HTML Palette items Unordered List Link Useful code navigation Navigator Navigate menu Useful project settings Project-level deployment settings CSS Preprocessors (SASS/LESS) Cordova support Useful window management Dragging, minimizing, undocking Ctrl-Shift-Enter: distraction-free mode Alt-Shift Enter: maximization Debugging JavaScript debugger Deploying Embedded browser Responsive design Inspect in NetBeans mode Chrome browser with NetBeans plugin Android and iOS browsers Cordova makes native packages On device debugging On device styling Documentation PHP and HTML5 Learning Trail: https://netbeans.org/kb/trails/php.html Contributing Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, blogs Plugin Portal Planning to complete the above screencast this week, will continue editing this page as more useful features arise in my mind or hopefully in the comments in this blog entry!

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• unit level testing, agile, and refactoring

  - by dsollen

  I'm working on a very agile development system, a small number of people with my doing the vast majority of progaming myself. I've gotten to the testing phase and find myself writing mostly functional level testing, which I should in theory be leavning for our tester (in practice I don't entirely...trust our tester to detect and identify defects enough to leave him the sole writter of functional tests). In theory what I should be writing is Unit level tests. However, I'm not sure it's worth the expense. Unit testing takes some time to do, more then functional testing since I have to set up mocks and plugs into smaller units that weren't design to run in issolation. More importantly, I find I refactor and redesign heavily-part of this is due to my inherriting code that needed heavy redesign and is still being cleaned up, but even once I've finished removing parts that need work I'm sure in the act of expanding the code I'll still do a decent amount of refactoring and redesign. It feels as if I will break my unit tests, forcing wasted time to refactor them as well, often due to unit test, by definition, having to be coupled so closely to the code structure. So.is it worth all the wasted time when functional tests, that will never break when I refactor/redesign, should find most defects? Do unit tests really provide that much extra defect detetection over through functional? and how does one create good unit tests that work with very quick and agile code that is modified rapidly? ps, I would be fine/happy with links to anything one considers an excellent resource for how to 'do' unit testing in a highly changing enviroment. edit: to clarify I am doing a bit of very unoffical TDD, I just seem to be writing tests on what would be considered a functional level rather then unit level. I think part of this is becaus I own nearly all of the project I don't feel I need to limit the scope as much; and part of it is that it's daunting to think of trying to go back and retroactively add the unit tests needed to cover enough code that I can feel comfortable testing only a unit without the full functionality and trust that unit still works with the rest of the units.

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• Is my current employer expecting too much?

  - by priyank patel

  This is my first job as a programmer.I am working on ASP.NET/C#,HTML,CSS,Javascript/Jquery. I am working for a firm which develops software for small banking firms. Currently they have their software running in 100 firms.Their software is developed in Visual Fox Pro. I was hired to develop online version of this software.I am the solo developer. My boss is another developer.So my company has two developers. My boss doesnot have any idea about .NET development.I am working on their project since 8 months.The progress is surely there but not very big. I try my best to do what my boss asks.But the project just seems too ambitious for me. The company doesnot have any planning for the project.They just ask me to develop what their older software provides.So I have to deal with front end , back end,review codes , design architecture and etc. I have decided to give my best.I try a lot.But the project sometimes just seems to be overwhelming. So my questions is , is it normal for a programmer to be in this place. I always feel the need to work in atleast a small team if not big one. Are my employers just expecting too much of a fresher.Or is that I being a programmer am lacking the skills to deal with this. I am just not able judge my condition.Also I am paid very low salary.I do work on saturday as well. Can anyone just help me judge this scenario? Any suggestions are welcome.

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• How do managers know if a person is a good or a bad programmer?

  - by Pavel Shved

  In most companies that do programming teams and divisions consist of programmers who design and write code and managers who... well, do the management stuff. Aside from just not writing code, managers usually do not even look at the code the team develops, and may even have no proper IDE installed on their work machines. Still, the managers are to judge if a person works well, if he or she should be put in charge of something, or if particular developer should be assigned to a task of the most importance and responsibility. And last, but not least: the managers usually assign the quarterly bonuses! To do the above effectively, a manager should know if a person is a good programmer—among other traits, of course. The question is, how do they do it? They don't even look at the code people write, they can't directly assess the quality of the components programmers develop... but their estimates of who is a good coder, and who is "not as good" are nevertheless correct in most cases! What is the secret?

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• Identity in .NET 4.5&ndash;Part 1: Status Quo (Beta 1)

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  .NET 4.5 is a big release for claims-based identity. WIF becomes part of the base class library and structural classes like Claim, ClaimsPrincipal and ClaimsIdentity even go straight into mscorlib. You will be able to access all WIF functionality now from prominent namespaces like ‘System.Security.Claims’ and ‘System.IdentityModel’ (yay!). But it is more than simply merging assemblies; in fact claims are now a first class citizen in the whole .NET Framework. All built-in identity classes, like FormsIdentity for ASP.NET and WindowsIdentity now derive from ClaimsIdentity. Likewise all built-in principal classes like GenericPrincipal and WindowsPrincipal derive from ClaimsPrincipal. In other words, the moment you compile your .NET application against 4.5,  you are claims-based. That’s a big (and excellent) change.   While the classes are designed in a way that you won’t “feel” a difference by default, having the power of claims under the hood (and by default) will change the way how to design security features with the new .NET framework. I am currently doing a number of proof of concepts and will write about that in the future. There are a number of nice “little” features, like FindAll(), FindFirst(), HasClaim() methods on both ClaimsIdentity and ClaimsPrincipal. This makes querying claims much more streamlined. I also had to smile when I saw ClaimsPrincipal.Current (have a look at the code yourself) ;) With all the goodness also comes a number of breaking changes. I will write about that, too. In addition Vittorio announced just today the beta availability of a new wizard/configuration tool that makes it easier to do common things like federating with an IdP or creating a test STS. Go get the Beta and the tools and start writing claims-enabled applications! Interesting times ahead!

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• Need assistance matching a general theme style as well as eCommerce capability

  - by humble_coder

  I'm in the process of acquiring a new design client. They are getting into the business of "auto parts wholesaling" and they want a storefront. My preference is/was to create something from scratch. However, here is an established trend in their particular market (similar parts, layout, etc). They insist on following the existing visual trend, as per the following: http://www.xtremediesel.com/ http://www.thoroughbreddiesel.com/ http://www.alligatorperformance.com/ My plan of attack at this point is to find a comparable WP theme and a flexible (but useful) backend/product management. Their current demo site (which their previous developer made a stab at) is using Pinnacle Cart. It is no where near what they need, nor is it intuitive to work with. I was actually considering Magento for its greater abilities but I'm still considering options. That said, my two primary dilemmas are as follows: 1) I need a theme that mimics the general style of those listed. They explicitly said they didn't want anything too clean (e.g. ThemeForest, Woothemes) as it "wasn't rugged or busy looking enough" for their field. 2) I need a WP/Magento/WP e-Commerce (or any one of a host of other) plugin that will allow for bulk import/update of nearly 200,000 products, descriptions and images. I'm not opposed to manually interfacing with the DB for import, but in the end, I need a store/system that doesn't needlessly add 50 tables to accommodate some "wet behind the ears" concept of table normalization and is easy to add to. Anyway, if anyone has any quality suggestions regarding either of these issues, it would be most appreciated. Best.

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• Getting into driver development for linux [closed]

  - by user1103966

  Right now, I've been learning about writing device-drivers for linux 3.2 kernel for about 2 months. So far I have been able program simple char drivers that only read and write to a fictitious dev structure like a file, but now I'm moving to more advance concepts. The new material I've learned about includes I/O port manipulation, memory management, and interrupts. I feel that I have a basic understanding of overall driver operation but, there is still so much that I don't know. My question is this, given that I have the basic theory of how to write a dev-driver for a piece of hardware ... how long would it take to actually develop the skills of writing actual software that companies would want to employ? I plan on getting involved in an open-source project and building a portfolio. Also what type of beginner drivers could I write for hardware that would best help me develop my skills? I was thinking that taking on a project where I design my own key logger would easy and a good assignment to help me understand how IO ports and interrupts are used. I may want to eventually specialize in writing software for video cards or network devices though these devices seem beyond my understanding at the moment. Thanks for any help

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• How best to handle ID3D11InputLayout in rendering code?

  - by JohnB

  I'm looking for an elegant way to handle input layouts in my directx11 code. The problem I have that I have an Effect class and a Element class. The effect class encapsulates shaders and similar settings, and the Element class contains something that can be drawn (3d model, lanscape etc) My drawing code sets the device shaders etc using the effect specified and then calls the draw function of the Element to draw the actual geometry contained in it. The problem is this - I need to create an D3D11InputLayout somewhere. This really belongs in the Element class as it's no business of the rest of the system how that element chooses to represent it's vertex layout. But in order to create the object the API requires the vertex shader bytecode for the vertex shader that will be used to draw the object. In directx9 it was easy, there was no dependency so my element could contain it's own input layout structures and set them without the effect being involved. But the Element shouldn't really have to know anything about the effect that it's being drawn with, that's just render settings, and the Element is there to provide geometry. So I don't really know where to store and how to select the InputLayout for each draw call. I mean, I've made something work but it seems very ugly. This makes me thing I've either missed something obvious, or else my design of having all the render settings in an Effect, the Geometry in an Element, and a 3rd party that draws it all is just flawed. Just wondering how anyone else handles their input layouts in directx11 in a elegant way?

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• Gateway ZA8 Netbook graphics Issue

  - by Hansel

  The graphics keep tearing and are barely usable anytime I try to use my Netbook. And I did a full install with Ubuntu so I'm pretty much stuck. These are the specs of the Netbook: Processor AMD Athlon™ 64 L110 Single-Core Processor (1.2GHz, 800MHz FSB, 512KB L2 Cache)6 Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic (32-bit) with SP1 Display 11.6" HD WXGA Ultrabright™ LED-backlit Display (1366 x 768 resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio)7 Memory 2048MB DDR2 533MHz SDRAM Single Channel Memory8 Hard Drive 250GB SATA hard drive2 Color Classic and Elegant Design with Cherry Red finish Wireless Network 802.11b/g Wi-Fi CERTIFIED®3 Adapter AC Adapter Application Software Microsoft® Works, Microsoft® Money Essentials, Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2007 (60-day complimentary trial period)1 Battery 6-Cell Lithium Ion (5200mAh) Chassis Chassis with ATI Radeon® X1270 Graphics and AMD RS690E Chipset8 Dimensions (Box) 3.1" (H) x 14.8" (W) x 10.1" (D) or 80mm (H) x 376mm (W) x 256mm (D) Dimensions (System) 1.03" (H) x 11.26" (W) x 7.99" (D) or 26.4mm (H) x 286mm (W) x 203mm (D) External Ports (3) USB 2.0, VGA Connector Keyboard and Mouse Keyboard with Multi-Gesture Touchpad Media Card Reader Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader (Memory Stick®, Memory Stick Pro™, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital™, xD-Picture Card™) Network 10/100 Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 port) What can I do?

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• 5 Ways Microsoft Can Improve the Windows 8 Start Screen

  - by Matt Klein

  After having used Windows 8 over the past few months, we’ve found a few ways Microsoft could immediately improve the Start Screen to make it less disorienting and more usable, not only for tablets but desktops and laptops as well. It’s safe to say that the one thing Windows 8 doesn’t lack is criticism. Since the Consumer Preview debuted in February, it has proven to be one of the most polarizing Windows releases ever. But regardless of whether you love or hate it, Windows 8 is where Microsoft’s venerable operating system is headed. Portable computing is here to stay and if the company is to survive, let alone remain relevant, it has to change, adapt, embrace, and extend. Perhaps the single most universally controversial change to Windows is Microsoft’s decision to remove the Start button (or orb, if you’ve moved beyond XP) and with it, what we know to be the Start Menu. In their place we now have a Start hot corner (a workable alternative) and the newly redesigned Metro Start Screen. The Start Screen is, if nothing else, different. Beyond a doubt, there has not been such a radical redesign of Windows’ Start functionality since it went to a two-column design with a nested “All Programs” menu in Windows XP. The Start Screen can be a little jarring because it requires users to not only relearn what they’ve known for nearly two decades but to also rethink the way they interact with Windows. However, the Start Screen maintains its core elements: a Start “menu”, a place for all installed programs (All apps), and a search pane. The Start Screen is attractive, clean, bold, and very imperfect. Here are five changes we’d like to see in the Start Screen before Windows 8 goes gold … How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless HTG Explains: What Is Two-Factor Authentication and Should I Be Using It? HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT and What Does It Mean To Me?

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• #TechEd 2010

  - by T

  It has been another fantastic year for TechEd North America.  I always love my time here.  First, I have to give a huge thank you to Ineta for giving me the opportunity to work the Ineta booth and BOF’s (birds of a feather).   I can not even begin to list how many fantastic leaders in the .Net space and Developers from all over I have met through Ineta at this event.  It has been truly amazing and great fun!! New Orlean’s has been awesome.  The night life is hoppin’.  In addition to enjoying a few (too many??) of the local hurricanes in New Orleans, I have hung out with some of the coolest people  Deepesh Mohnani, David Poll, Viresh, Alan Stephens, Shawn Wildermuth, Greg Leonardo, Doug Seven, Chris Willams, David Carley and some of our southcentral hero’s Jeffery Palermo, Todd Anglin, Shawn Weisfeld, Randy Walker, The midnight DBA’s, Zeeshan Hirani, Dennis Bottjer just to name a few. A big thanks to Microsoft and everyone that has helped to put TechEd together.  I have loved hanging out with people from the Silverlight and Expression Teams and have learned a ton.  I am ramped up and ready to take all that knowledge back to my co-workers and my community. I can not wait to see you all again next year in Atlanta!!! Here are video links to some of my fav sessions: Using MVVM Design Pattern with VS 2010 XAML Designer – Rockford Lhotka Effective RIA: Tips and Tricks for Building Effective Rich Internet Applications – Deepesh Mohani Taking Microsoft Silverlight 4 Applications Beyond the Browser – David Poll Jump into Silvelright! and become immediately effective – Tim Huckaby Prototyping Rich Microsoft Silverlight 4 Applications with MS Expression Blend + SketchFlow – David Carley Tales from the Trenches: Building a Real-World Microsoft Silvelright Line-of-Business Application – Dan Wahlin

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• Why a static main method in Java and C#, rather than a constructor?

  - by Konrad Rudolph

  Why did (notably) Java and C# decide to have a static method as their entry point – rather than representing an application instance by an instance of an Application class, with the entry point being an appropriate constructor which, at least to me, seems more natural? I’m interested in a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source, not mere speculations. This has been asked before. Unfortunately, the existing answers are merely begging the question. In particular, the following answers don’t satisfy me, as I deem them incorrect: There would be ambiguity if the constructor were overloaded. – In fact, C# (as well as C and C++) allows different signatures for Main so the same potential ambiguity exists, and is dealt with. A static method means no objects can be instantiated before so order of initialisation is clear. – This is just factually wrong, some objects are instantiated before (e.g. in a static constructor). So they can be invoked by the runtime without having to instantiate a parent object. – This is no answer at all. Just to justify further why I think this is a valid and interesting question: Many frameworks do use classes to represent applications, and constructors as entry points. For instance, the VB.NET application framework uses a dedicated main dialog (and its constructor) as the entry point1. Neither Java nor C# technically need a main method. Well, C# needs one to compile, but Java not even that. And in neither case is it needed for execution. So this doesn’t appear to be a technical restriction. And, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, for a mere convention it seems oddly unfitting with the general design principle of Java and C#. To be clear, there isn’t a specific disadvantage to having a static main method, it’s just distinctly odd, which made me wonder if there was some technical rationale behind it. I’m interested in a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source, not mere speculations. 1 Although there is a callback (Startup) which may intercept this.

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• How do I find a qualified web designer in my area?

  - by Incognito

  I just sent out emails to five local web design companies to my area asking to take drawings to HTML/CSS/jQuery. None of the ones who accepted the deal seem suitable to myself. Others rejected the offer because they wanted to 'provide an end-to-end solution' or are 'booked till June'. The local companies did not seem suitable to myself because my review process is this: goto their website, do a view-source. I'll see really weird things (contact us forms that go nowhere), really old things (mm_menu.js), and portfolios that are non-existent (aren't on the site, don't link anywhere, or otherwise). The company would like to hire as locally as they can rather than out-source to another country. Answers I'm looking for Processes you use when searching for someone How you qualify their aptitude for the project Anything that you think I'm doing wrong, or should be doing also. Answers I'm not looking for: "Hello sir please contact me we do everything for 10 dolla." My bud's great at this stuff, call him. example.com is the best for this.

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