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• Have you ever used a non mainstream language in a project? Why?

  - by EpsilonVector

  I was thinking about my academic experience with Smalltalk (well, Squeak) a while ago and whether I would like to use it for something, and it got me thinking: sure, it's as good and capable as any popular language, and it has some nice ideas, but there are certain languages that are already well entrenched in certain niches of programming (C is for systems programming, Java is for portability, and so on...), and Smalltalk and co. don't seem to have any obvious differentiating features to make them the right choice under certain circumstances, or at least not as far as I can tell, and when you add to it the fact that it's harder to find programmers who know it it adds all sorts of other problems for the organization itself. So if you ever worked on a project where a non-mainstream language (like Smalltalk) was used over a more mainstream one, what was the reason for it? To clarify: I'd like to focus this on imperative languages, since other paradigms like functional and logic programming language, while not necessarily mainstream, can still be good choices for certain projects for obvious reasons.

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• Do I really need to learn Python? [closed]

  - by Pouya

  These days, I see the name "Python" a lot. Mostly when I'm doing some programming on linux/mac, I see a trace of Python. I have a fair knowledge of C++ and I'm quite good at Java. I also know Delphi which comes handy sometimes. I've been good with these languages, however, I was wondering if learning Python could make it better. What does it offer that makes it worth learning? What are its key/unique advantages/features?

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• Is MediaTemple's (gs) really worth the hassle? [closed]

  - by Andrew

  I have been hosting my sites with Dreamhost for a while, and although none of them are high-trafic atm, I am going to a launch a Rails app this summer and a couple of other stuff, so I need a serious host. Since my plan ends in a couple of days, I have been looking at alternatives, and because MT has such a good reputation in the webdesign world, I have been seriously considering paying the ridiculous 20$/month for its shared hosting services. That was until I actually read some reviews of it, most of which indicated it is slow and overpriced. So now I'm wondering whether switching over to (gs) would really be a good idea, or if I would be better off paying less money for something like a Site5 or Hostgator shared hosting plan. What is your experience with MT, and particularly their Grid Service? Do you think I should even switch to (gs) in the first place, or should I choose something else from its competitors?

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• BPM 11g Customer Stories & Solution Catalog & Process Accelerators

  - by JuergenKress

  Stories Everyone loves a good story on planning or implementing a BPM strategy. Everyone wants to hear how it was done before?, what worked?, what was achieved? If you have achieved success with BPM, we are very keen to hear your stories and examples of how your customers use it. We receive lots of requests from people who are thinking of using BPM to solve a specific problem or in combination with a specific technology to talk to someone who has done it before. These stories are invaluable. Drop down the details of anything you think is relevant with a bit of detail and we will follow up on it. As one good deed deserves another, we will do our best to give you stories if you need them to show that where you are going, others have treaded before. Send your stories to us using this e-mail link and we will share them among other like minded people. Solution Catalogue This summer, Oracle is launching a solution catalogue specifically intended for partners. If you have delivered a successful implementation in BPM and think it could be reused and applied again in a similar scenario in the same industry or in a similar environment, then we ware keen to know about it and will add it to the solution catalogue. The solution catalogue will showcase successful BPM solutions both inside and outside Oracle. Be in touch with us on this e-mail link and we will make sure to add your solution. Process Accelerators Finally if you have specific processes that you are expert on, you have implemented at a customer and you want to work with us on getting these productised, then we would love to know about it. The process accelerator programme is explained in the most recent SOA/BPM Community Newsletter but again feel free to contact us if you want to get involved. Good luck with BPM and let us know how we can help. Barry O'Reilly Director BPM Solutions [email protected] SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: BPM,Barry O Reilly,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• What php programmer should know?

  - by emchinee

  I've dig the database here and didn't found any answer for my question. What is a standard for a php programmer to know? I mean, literally, what group of language functions, mechanisms, variables should person know to consider oneself a (good) php programmer? (I know 'being good' is beyond language syntax, still I'm considering syntax of plain php only) To give an example what I mean: functions to control http sessions, cookies functions to control connection with databases functions to control file handling functions to control xml etc.. I omit phrases like 'security' or 'patterns' or 'framework' intentionally as it applies to every programming language. Hope I made myself clear, any input appreciated :) Note: Michael J.V. is right claiming that databases are independent from language, so to put my question more precisely and emphasise differences: Practises or security, are some ideas to implement (there is no 'Pattern' object with 'Decorator()' method, is there?) while using databases means knowing a mysqli and a set of its methods.

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• Advice needed: Software Development [closed]

  - by Hunter McMillen

  I recently graduated from college with a B.S. in Computer Science, and am now currently attending the same college to get an M.S. in Computer Science. I know lots of things about Computer Science and programming but throughout all of my coursework I have never had to develop a single complete application, the projects were always relatively small (~300-500 lines of code). Basically, my overall I am about to have these two degrees and I feel like I don't know anything about software development or design; which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I am looking for ways to fill in the gaps in my knowledge, I would love people's advice on these questions: 1) How do you design good software? Where do you start? 2) What makes a good software developer? Sorry for the convoluted question, but in my mind it is a convoluted situation. Thanks Edit Thanks everyone for your advice.

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• How could we rewrite the 'No Evil' license to make it 'free'?

  - by passcod

  I did not find the lawyers' SE site, so I thought it best to post here. /* * ...subject to the following conditions: * * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all * copies or substantial portions of the Software. * * The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil. * * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS"... */ This is the 'non-free', Crockford, No-Evil, MIT-style, license. This license is considered non-free because of this phrase: "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." How could we rewrite this to become a 'free' license, while retaining the original spirit of the sentence?

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• What label of tests are BizUnit tests?

  - by charlie.mott

  BizUnit is defined as a "Framework for Automated Testing of Distributed Systems.  However, I've never seen a catchy label to describe what sort of tests we create using this framework. They are not really “Unit Tests” that's for sure. "Integration Tests" might be a good definition, but I want a label that clearly separates it from the manual "System Integration Testing" phase of a project where real instances of the integrated systems are used. Among some colleagues, we brainstormed some suggestions: Automated Integration Tests Stubbed Integration Tests Sandbox Integration Tests Localised Integration Tests All give a good view of the sorts of tests that are being done. I think "Stubbed Integration Tests" is most catchy and descriptive. So I will use that until someone comes up with a better idea.

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• Ransomware: Why This New Malware is So Dangerous and How to Protect Yourself

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Ransomware is a type of malware that tries to extort money from you. One of the nastiest examples, CryptoLocker, takes your files hostage and holds them for ransom, forcing you to pay hundreds of dollars to regain access. Most malware is no longer created by bored teenagers looking to cause some chaos. Much of the current malware is now produced by organized crime for profit and is becoming increasingly sophisticated. How Ransomware Works Not all ransomware is identical. The key thing that makes a piece of malware “ransomware” is that it attempts to extort a direct payment from you. Some ransomware may be disguised. It may function as “scareware,” displaying a pop-up that says something like “Your computer is infected, purchase this product to fix the infection” or “Your computer has been used to download illegal files, pay a fine to continue using your computer.” In other situations, ransomware may be more up-front. It may hook deep into your system, displaying a message saying that it will only go away when you pay money to the ransomware’s creators. This type of malware could be bypassed via malware removal tools or just by reinstalling Windows. Unfortunately, Ransomware is becoming more and more sophisticated. One of the latest examples, CryptoLocker, starts encrypting your personal files as soon as it gains access to your system, preventing access to the files without knowing the encryption key. CryptoLocker then displays a message informing you that your files have been locked with encryption and that you have just a few days to pay up. If you pay them $300, they’ll hand you the encryption key and you can recover your files. CryptoLocker helpfully walks you through choosing a payment method and, after paying, the criminals seem to actually give you a key that you can use to restore your files. You can never be sure that the criminals will keep their end of the deal, of course. It’s not a good idea to pay up when you’re extorted by criminals. On the other hand, businesses that lose their only copy of business-critical data may be tempted to take the risk — and it’s hard to blame them. Protecting Your Files From Ransomware This type of malware is another good example of why backups are essential. You should regularly back up files to an external hard drive or a remote file storage server. If all your copies of your files are on your computer, malware that infects your computer could encrypt them all and restrict access — or even delete them entirely. When backing up files, be sure to back up your personal files to a location where they can’t be written to or erased. For example, place them on a removable hard drive or upload them to a remote backup service like CrashPlan that would allow you to revert to previous versions of files. Don’t just store your backups on an internal hard drive or network share you have write access to. The ransomware could encrypt the files on your connected backup drive or on your network share if you have full write access. Frequent backups are also important. You wouldn’t want to lose a week’s worth of work because you only back up your files every week. This is part of the reason why automated back-up solutions are so convenient. If your files do become locked by ransomware and you don’t have the appropriate backups, you can try recovering them with ShadowExplorer. This tool accesses “Shadow Copies,” which Windows uses for System Restore — they will often contain some personal files. How to Avoid Ransomware Aside from using a proper backup strategy, you can avoid ransomware in the same way you avoid other forms of malware. CryptoLocker has been verified to arrive through email attachments, via the Java plug-in, and installed on computers that are part of the Zeus botnet. Use a good antivirus product that will attempt to stop ransomware in its tracks. Antivirus programs are never perfect and you could be infected even if you run one, but it’s an important layer of defense. Avoid running suspicious files. Ransomware can arrive in .exe files attached to emails, from illicit websites containing pirated software, or anywhere else that malware comes from. Be alert and exercise caution over the files you download and run. Keep your software updated. Using an old version of your web browser, operating system, or a browser plugin can allow malware in through open security holes. If you have Java installed, you should probably uninstall it. For more tips, read our list of important security practices you should be following. Ransomware — CryptoLocker in particular — is brutally efficient and smart. It just wants to get down to business and take your money. Holding your files hostage is an effective way to prevent removal by antivirus programs after it’s taken root, but CryptoLocker is much less scary if you have good backups. This sort of malware demonstrates the importance of backups as well as proper security practices. Unfortunately, CryptoLocker is probably a sign of things to come — it’s the kind of malware we’ll likely be seeing more of in the future.     

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• What are the safety benefits of a type system?

  - by vandros526

  In Javascript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford, he mentions in his inheritance chapter, "The other benefit of classical inheritance is that it includes the specification of a system of types. This mostly frees the programmer from having to write explicit casting operations, which is a very good thing because when casting, the safety benefits of a type system are lost." So first of all, what actually is safety? protection against data corruption, or hackers, or system malfunctions, etc? What are the safety benefits of a type system? What makes a type system different that allows it to provide these safety benefits?

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• How do you answer "Rate yourself" questions?

  - by Vinoth Kumar

  Hi , I have been frequently asked questions like "Rate yourself in java" It goes like interviewer : Rate yourself in java on the scale of 10 me: 9 interviewer : Rate yourself in J2EE me : 8 .... But really I just come up with arbitrary numbers. Sure I know Java well , but what does it mean to say "9 out of 10" . I think it is a very subjective question, that does not make sense overall. The problem is ,if I say 9 , If I am not able to answer any question , the interviewer might think , "this guy just said 9" . On the other hand If I said 6 , there is a good chance the interviewer might think "He rates himself this low...not good" How do you respond to such questions ?

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• PATH command not found

  - by joslinm

  Hi, I'm not experienced with PATH (Any good reference would be appreciated), but I made a mistake and did PATH=/google_appengine, which I'm assuming completely overrid PATH. Still, I restarted bash and echo'd PATH and found that the folders were back. mark@mark-laptop:~$ echo $PATH /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games However, when I then tried to append to it, I got an error that PATH wasn't found. I've looked around Google and couldn't find a good answer. Any help would be appreciated mark@mark-laptop:~$ PATH = $PATH:/google_appengine PATH: command not found

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• links worth clicking&hellip;

  - by Chris Williams

  Scanning my Twitter feed almost always proves to be fruitful when looking for cool/interesting links to share. Here are a few of the highlights: I read this blog post from Justin Angel today, pretty interesting stuff: Windows Phone 7 – Unlocked ROMs  Looks like there’s a lot of good stuff floating just under the surface in the latest build of the WP7 Emulator. (Courtesy of @JustinAngel) Next up is this video titled Game Design Tutorials: From Seconds to Hours of Gameplay. If you’re into Indie Game Development, or just like watching videos… this one is pretty short at 5 minutes, but contains some good information about increasing the duration of fun gameplay in your game. (Courtesy of @Kei_tchan) If you are a Firefly (or Castle, or Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog) fan, check out this Facebook campaign to get Nathan Fillion to host SNL: http://tinyurl.com/2dh5m67  It worked for Betty White, so why not, right? (Courtesy of @DGalloway42)

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• Collision Resolution

  - by CiscoIPPhone

  I know quite well how to check for collisions, but I don't know how to handle the collision in a good way. Simplified, if two objects collide I use some calculations to change the velocity direction. If I don't move the two objects they will still overlap and if the velocity is not big enough they will still collide after next update. This can cause objects to get stuck in each other. But what if I try to move the two objects so they do not overlap. This sounds like a good idea but I have realised that if there is more than two objects this becomes very complicated. What if I move the two objects and one of them collides with other objects so I have to move them too and they may collide with walls etc. I have a top down 2D game in mind but I don't think that has much to do with it. How are collisions usually handled? This question is asked on behalf of Wooh

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• I need help with algorithms, how do I improve?

  - by David Burr

  I usually do well at figuring out solutions to programming assignments but for some reason, I'm really struggling in my Algorithms class. I'm not failing but I know I can do better. When I'm confronted with problems like "Divide the array to 2 subarrays so that the sum of each subarray is equal to the other subarray," I feel like my brain won't cooperate and think and I end up not being able to solve it. Some of the things I'm doing right now to help myself: reading CLR (1st ed.) -- it takes a lot of time for stuff to sink in and I can't understand most of it solving some problems -- no matter how much I try, most of the time, I end up googling for the solution before I understand how to solve it I know that good algorithmic skills are very important because lots of good companies ask these sorts of questions in their interview process so I'm a bit worried right now. What else can can I do to improve my algorithmic/problem solving skills? Any advice on how to deal with this?

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• Gamification at OOW

  - by erikanollwebb

  Last week was Oracle OpenWorld, and for those of you not in tech or downtown San Francisco, that might not mean a whole lot.  However, if you are familiar with it, Oracle OpenWorld is our premier customer event.  This year, more than 50,000 people attended.  It's not a good week to visit San Francisco on vacation because Oracle customers take over all the hotels in town!  It was crazy, but a lot of fun and it's a great opportunity for the Apps UX group to do customer research with a range of customers.  This year, more than 100+ customers and partners took the time to team up with our UX experts and provide feedback on new designs and ideas. Over three days,  UX teams conducted 8  one-on-one user feedback sessions, 4 focus groups and 7 surveys. In addition, we conducted a voice capture activity and were able to collect close to 70 speech samples at the lab and DEMOgrounds. This was a great opportunity for us to do some testing on some specific gamification concepts with a set of business analysts.  We pulled in 8 folks for a focus group on gamification concepts and whether they thought those would work for their teams. To get ready for this, my designer extraordinaire, Andrea Cantú, flew into town and we spent almost a week locked in a room together brainstorming design ideas.  We killed a few trees trying to get all of our concepts and other examples together in the process, but in the end, we put together a whole series of examples of how you might gamify an Oracle app (in this case, CRM).  Andrea is a genius for this kind of thing and the comps she created looked great.  Here's a picture of her hard at work!  We also had the good fortune to have my boss, Laurie Pattison and my usability contractor, Shobana Subramanian there to note take and observe as well.  Here's a few shots of us, hard at work preparing for the day (or checking out something on Laurie's iPhone...) To start things off, we gave an overview of gamification and I talked about what it's used for.  Then we gave the participants a scenario about our sales person and what we were trying to get her to do. It was a great opportunity to highlight what our business goals might be and why we might want to add game mechanics.  It was also a good way to get them thinking about how that might work for them in their environments and workplaces. There were some surprises for the day.  We asked how many of them were already familiar with the concept of gamification--only two people had heard of it and only one was using game mechanics in his work.  That's in contrast to a survey we just ran internally with folks in a dev org where almost 50% of about 450 respondents had heard of gamification.  As we discussed the ways game mechanics could be used, it became clear that many of the folks had seen some game mechanics in action but didn't know that's what they were.  We also noticed that the folks in this group felt that if they were trying to sell the concept in their orgs, they wouldn't call it gamification.  That's not a huge surprise to me--they said what we've heard in the past, that gamification does not seem like a serious term for enterprise software.  They said they'd sell it with the goals--as a means to increase behaviors by rewarding users for activities.  It's a funny problem.  The word puts some folks off, but at the same time, I haven't seen another one word description that quite captures the range of things that "gamification" can cover.  My guess is that the more mainstream the term becomes, the more desensitized we'll become to the idea the it's trivializing enterprise software in some way.  Still, it was interesting to note that this group still felt that they would not take this concept to their bosses or teams and call it "gamification".  They focused on the goals, and how we could incentivize desired behaviors with game mechanics.  As I have already stated in other posts, I feel like my org is more receptive to discussing how this is just a more transparent type of usability and user experience methods than talking about gamification.  That's the argument they said they would use. All in all, it was a good session.  I love getting to talk to customers, present ideas and concepts, and get their feedback and input.  It's the type of thing that really helps drive our designs and keeps us grounded in what our customers need/want.  We're already planning where to get more feedback opportunities in the coming months. 

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• How to keep balance / Unlock items / achievement rules

  - by Mark Knol

  I'm working on an engine for a game, too learn javascript and just because its fun. I'm a flashdeveloper, I know how to build websites. Now making games is a different challenge, javascript is a challenge, but I'd love to learn how to structure code and what patterns are common. I dont mind if the game ever finish, I'm mostly interested in the programming part of it. I dont have a particular endresult in mind, so I'll see where it takes me. I currently have a system where you can buy items. The items cost a specified amount of gold, silver, diamonds etc. When you have selected and bought the item, it takes time before getting rewarded. When time is over, you are getting rewarded with other properties (gold, energy, diamonds). For example, you can buy an apple for 50gold, It takes a minute, you get rewarded with 75energy. Or if you take a run, it cost 50energy, it takes 5minutes, reward is 25gold and 25silver. These definitions is what i call actions. Currently I already have a system where this already works and I can define as much actions with as much properties as I want. The definitions I have kinda looks like this: {id:101, category:544, onInit:{gold:-75}, onComplete:{energy:75}, time:2000, name:"Apple", locked: false} {id:102, category:544, onInit:{gold:-135}, onComplete:{energy:145}, time:2000, name:"Banana", locked: false} {id:106, category:302, onInit:{energy:-50, power: -25}, onComplete:{gold:100, diamonds:2}, time:10000, name:"Run", locked: false} {id:107, category:302, onInit:{energy:-70, silver: -55}, onComplete:{gold:100}, time:10000, name:"Dance", locked: false} {id:108, category:302, onInit:{energy:-230, power: -355}, onComplete:{gold:70, silver:70}, time:10000, name:"Fitness", locked: false} Now, I would love to add a system where I can lock/unlock the actions using achievement rules. Lets say, if you buy 10 apples, you unlock a new action, like bananas which cost more, and reward more. In the future I maybe want to restrict achievements and actions to levels. I am kinda stuck how to structure this. I have 2 questions: Which patterns are used to define achievements? How/where are they defined? Should it be part of the action, or should it be a separate controller? Is it a good idea to register all completed actions to it? I think I want multiple types of achievement rules, Id love to hear some ideas how to develop it. How do you create/find a good balance, so the user does not get stuck or can cheat by repeat a pattern of actions to get too much rewards. I know there is not a simple answer and i'm lacking of a good game-concept, but I wonder if anyone created such a game and how you dealed and played with it.

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• Google I/O 2012 - Google Play: Marketing 101 for Developers

  Google I/O 2012 - Google Play: Marketing 101 for Developers Patrick Mork, Kushagra Shrivastava As soon as you hit the "Publish" button on your app, you become (partly) a marketer; you might as well try to be a good one. We'll share everything we know about promoting apps on Google play: building a strategic marketing framework, making good use of media channels, taking advantage of the assets we've built for developers, and convincing the Play team to feature your app. For all I/O 2012 sessions, go to developers.google.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 1522 15 ratings Time: 56:13 More in Science & Technology

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• What's the best version control/QA workflow for a legacy system?

  - by John Cromartie

  I am struggling to find a good balance with our development and testing process. We use Git right now, and I am convinced that ReinH's Git Workflow For Agile Teams is not just great for capital-A Agile, but for pretty much any team on DVCS. That's what I've tried to implement but it's just not catching. We have a large legacy system with a complex environment, hundreds of outstanding and undiscovered defects, and no real good way to set up a test environment with realistic data. It's also hard to release updates without disrupting users. Most of all, it's hard to do thorough QA with this process... and we need thorough testing with this legacy system. I feel like we can't really pull off anything as slick as the Git workflow outlined in the link. What's the way to do it?

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• Established coding standards for pl/pgsql code

  - by jb01

  I need to standardize coding practises for project that compromises, among others has pl/pgsql database, that has some amount of nontrivial code. I look for: Code formatting guidelines, especially inside procedures. Guidelines on what constructs are consigered unsafe (if any) Naming coventions. Code documentation conventions (if this is pracicised) Any hints to documets that define good practises in pl/pgsql code? If not i'm looking for hints to practices that you consider good. There is related question regarding TSQL: Can anyone recommend coding standards for TSQL?, which is relevant to psql as well, but I need more information on stored procedures. Other related questions: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1070275/what-indenting-style-do-you-use-in-sql-server-stored-procedures

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• What can I do to make sure my code gets maintained in a developer light environment?

  - by asjohnson

  I am a contract data analyst, so I bounce between jobs every 3-6 months, which I find to be a good fit for me, but it leads to some problems when it comes to coding. I mostly do statistics (I've asked a similar question on cross validated, but the answers there are not relevant here), but I have also found out that the business world loves excel and loves copying and pasting the same thing over and over again even more. This led me to learn how to write VBA scripts and then VB.NET programs to automate as many of these reports as I can. I am certain my programs are not the most elegant, but I put a good bit of effort into making sure they work under as many cases as I can test, I add in exceptions and try to code so the program can handle changes in the files that it processes, but there is a limit, if you remove a huge portion of the data, there is a good chance my program is going to trip up, which I accept will inevitably happen. Usually a pretty minor change in the code fixes the problem and I do try and comment my code and make it readable under the assumption that some other person will have to read it some day. My problem is that I generally get put on teams of folks with essentially no experience with programming (like VBA would be a huge stretch for anyone I work directly with). I am wondering what I should be doing as the person that wrote the code to do my best to keep it maintained. I have two approaches in mind (outlined next), but would be very happy to get any advice. Solution 1: Find the more tech savvy coworkers and run them through the programs and what basic changes can be made. Honestly automating excel is about as easy as it can get when it comes to programming, so I feel like I could teach someone the basics of maintaining it pretty quick. Solution 2: Get in touch with the IT department and show them what is going on and maybe they will be able to help. The problem here is that the IT department is constantly swamped (as I'm sure many of you know) and I feel like kind of a jerk for dumping more things on them. I do leave my personal email address with places and am willing to answer quick questions via email, but I view the need for more exhaustive maintenance as something of an inevitability and would like to make sure I do my due diligence to make sure it gets done. I imagine some combination of the two approaches outlined there, but is there any kind of heads up I should give IT? I feel like I would be annoyed if I started getting requests to fix a program that I had never seen from some random guy that is no longer there.

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• Is Haskell worth learning?

  - by Jason K

  I am looking at this question primarily from a career point of view, so I hope you answer it accordingly. I am fairly proficient with Python, can write C++ and I am a final year student of computer science engineering I am looking to learn Haskell because I have heard a lot about it. My question is: apart from learning it because of all the good I have heard about it, is it any good for my career? Is it used in the industry? I am curious to learn it but unless it helps me somehow in my career, I am not willing to make that change at this stage. Looking for some personal experiences here. Thanks!

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• Bad disks in ancient server

  - by Joel Coel

  I have a 1998-era Netware 3.12 server that runs everything on our campus: general ledger, purchasing, payroll, student information, grades, you name it. The server has an Adaptec RAID controller with two volumes: RAID 1, 2 17GB scsi disks, Seagate ST318417W RAID 5, 3 4GB scsi disks, 2 Seagate ST34573W and 1 ST34572W. We are currently in the early stages of a project to replace this system, but you don't just jump into a new system like that and so I need to keep this server running until at least November 2011. This week we had not one but two hard drives fail. Thankfully they are from different volumes and we're able to keep running for the moment, but given the close nature of these failures I have serious doubts that I'll be able to avoid catastrophic failure from this server through the November target as is without restoring the RAID redundancy — it'll only take one more drive failure anywhere and I'm completely hosed. We are fortunate enough to have exact match "spares" lying around for both drives, but the spares are in unknown condition. I tried swapping just them in, but the RAID controller isn't smart enough to handle this and it renders the system unbootable. As for the RAID controller itself, there is utility I can get into during POST via a Ctrl-A shortcut, but I can't do much useful from there. To actually manage volumes I must first boot in to Netware, at which point I can use CI/O Array Management Software Version 2.0 to actually look at volume information. I suspect that the normal way to manage things is to boot from a special floppy with the controller software on it, but that floppy is long gone. Going through the options in the RAID software, I think the only supported way to replace a disk in an existing RAID volume is to physically add the disk, boot up and configure it as a "spare" for a volume, force the volume to use the spare to replace an existing down disk (and at this point I'm only guessing) so that the down disk becomes the spare, repair the volume, remove the spare from the volume, and then shut down and remove the disk. Then start all over for the other failed disk. All this amounts to a lot of downtime, assuming I can even make it work and that my spares are any good. As for finding reliable spares, I have no clue where to even begin looking to find a new 4GB scsi drive, or even which exact scsi system I'm looking for, as it's gone through a few different iterations over time. Another option is to migrate this to a virtual machine (hyper-v), but all previous attempts we've made in this area have failed to get very far. When this machine was installed I was just graduating from high school, and so it requires lower level knowledge of netware and dos than I ever developed, or if I did have since forgotten (I'm not exactly a dos neophyte, either). Part of my problem is this is a high-use server, and taking it down for a few days to figure things out isn't gonna fly very well. As for the question, I'm looking for anything that might be helpful in this situation: a recommendation on a place to find good spares from this era, personal experience repairing RAID volumes using a similar controller or building a hyper-v vm from an old netware server, a line on a floppy with better software for the RAID controller, recommendation on a good Novell consultant in Nebraska that would be able to put things right, a whole other option I haven't considered yet, etc. Update: For backups, we have good (recently verified via restore) backups of the data only -- nothing for the software that actually runs things. Update 2: Just a progress report that I currently have a working Netware 3.12 install in VMWare Virtual Server 2.0, thanks largely to the guide I found here: http://cerbulescubogdan.blogspot.com/2010/11/novell-netware-312-on-vmware.html The next steps are preparing empty netware volumes to match the additional volumes on my existing server, taking a dump of everything on the C:\ drive and netware volumes on my existing server, and figuring out from that information what modules need added to netware, installing my licenses (we do still have that disk, if it's any good), and moving data over. I have approval to bring the server down for a week after the first of the year (sadly not before), so, aside from creating empty volumes, the rest of the work will have to wait until then. Final Update (Jan 5, 2011): I was able to get spares working in both raid arrays without data loss this week. Both are now listed by the controller as "FAULT TOLLERANT" (yay!). I was also able to build on the progress from my last update and now have a functional "spare" server in VMWare Server 2.0. The spare can run and use our erp software, but I can't put it into production because I can't (yet) print from that box (and I have no idea why). Even so, this VM will do in a pinch if I have no other choice, and between it and the repaired RAID arrays I'm comfortable pushing on until I can junk the machine in November.

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• Inspirational software for end-users written in Haskell?

  - by Lenny222

  I think great technology ist invisible. Besides the usual suspects (GHC, Xmonad, proprietary trading software) what great examples are there for end-user software written in Haskell? I think good examples are FreeArc, Hledger and "Nikki And The Robots". Do you have more examples (full blown GUI apps, small CLI tools, etc)? Edit: For example i am fascinated by Wings3D, because while written in Erlang, users can not tell that. It just works. Among Haskell's weak spots are cross-platform GUIs. There are not many GUI apps written in Haskkel in general and most of them are no easy to use, install or even compile. What are good examples to learn from how to make hard things look easy?

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• How agile methodologies can be applied in a typical " services " company?

  - by AlfaTeK

  My company is a custom software services company for external clientes, which means our typical project is one in which the contract already states the full budget of the project. Our typical project starts by defining requirements (improving the proposal high-level requirements), then we code the project, test it and ship it. We have an acceptance phase were the client tests the software and in that phase we can usually implement small changes asked by the client, or we charge extra for change requests. In some projects we have intermediate releases so the clients can check the progress of the project and give feedback on it. In summary: something like waterfall... I've followed the "agile" movement for a bit now and I always see it being a good match for a "product" company, or a company building software for an internal client. But are there good stories / advantages on using agile methods in my kind of company/projects? What are your experiences, what do you think about this?

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