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• What are some recommended video lectures for a non-CS student to prepare for the GRE CS subject test?

  - by aristos

  Well the title kinda explains all there is to explain. I'm a non-cs student and was preparing to apply PhD programs in applied mathematics. But for my senior thesis I've been reading lots of machine learning and pattern recognition literature and enjoying it a lot. I've taken lots of courses with statistics and stochastics content, which I think, would help me if I get accepted to a program with ML focus, but there are only two CS courses -introduction to programming- in my transcript and therefore I decided to take the CS subject test to increase my chances. Which courses do you think would be most essential to have a good result from CS subject test? I'm thinking of watching video lectures of them, so do you have any recommendations?

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• Browser-based MMOs (WebGL, WebSocket)

  - by Alon

  Do you think it is techniclly possible to write a fully-fledged 3D MMO client with Browser JavaScript - WebGL for graphics, and WebSocket for Networking? Do you think future MMOs (and games generally) will wrriten with WebGL? Does today's JavaScript performance allow this? Let's say your development team was you as a developer, and another model creator (artist). Would you use a library like SceneJS for the game, or write straight WebGL? If you would use a library, but not SceneJS, please specify which. Thanks!

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• Agile Executives

  - by Robert May

  Over the years, I have experienced many different styles of software development. In the early days, most of the development was Waterfall development. In the last few years, I’ve become an advocate of Scrum. As I talked about last month, many people have misconceptions about what Scrum really is. The reason why we do Scrum at Veracity is because of the difference it makes in the life of the team doing Scrum. Software is for people, and happy motivated people will build better software. However, not all executives understand Scrum and how to get the information from development teams that use Scrum. I think that these executives need a support system for managing Agile teams. Historical Software Management When Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line, I doubt he realized the impact he’d have on Management through the ages. Historically, management was about managing the process of building things. The people were just cogs in that process. Like all cogs, they were replaceable. Unfortunately, most of the software industry followed this same style of management. Many of today’s senior managers learned how to manage companies before software was a significant influence on how the company did business. Software development is a very creative process, but too many managers have treated it like an assembly line. Idea’s go in, working software comes out, and we just have to figure out how to make sure that the ideas going in are perfect, then the software will be perfect. Lean Manufacturing In the manufacturing industry, Lean manufacturing has revolutionized Henry Ford’s assembly line. Derived from the Toyota process, Lean places emphasis on always providing value for the customer. Anything the customer wouldn’t be willing to pay for is wasteful. Agile is based on similar principles. We’re building software for people, and anything that isn’t useful to them doesn’t add value. Waterfall development would have teams build reams and reams of documentation about how the software should work. Agile development dispenses with this work because excessive documentation doesn’t add value. Instead, teams focus on building documentation only when it truly adds value to the customer. Many other Agile principals are similar. Playing Catch-up Just like in the manufacturing industry, many managers in the software industry have yet to understand the value of the principles of Lean and Agile. They think they can wrap the uncertainties of software development up in a nice little package and then just execute, usually followed by failure. They spend a great deal of time and money trying to exactly predict the future. That expenditure of time and money doesn’t add value to the customer. Managers that understand that Agile know that there is a better way. They will instead focus on the priorities of the near term in detail, and leave the future to take care of itself. They have very detailed two week plans with less detailed quarterly plans. These plans are guided by a general corporate strategy that doesn’t focus on the exact implementation details. These managers also think in smaller features rather than large functionality. This adds a great deal of value to customers, since the features that matter most are the ones that the team focuses on in the near term and then are able to deliver to the customers that are paying for them. Agile managers also realize that stale software is very costly. They know that keeping the technology in their software current is much less expensive and risky than large rewrites that occur infrequently and schedule time in each release for refactoring of the existing software. Agile Executives Even though Agile is a better way, I’ve still seen failures using the Agile process. While some of these failures can be attributed to the team, most of them are caused by managers, not the team. Managers fail to understand what Agile is, how it works, and how to get the information that they need to make good business decisions. I think this is a shame. I’m very pleased that Veracity understands this problem and is trying to do something about it. Veracity is a key sponsor of Agile Executives. In fact, Galen is this year’s acting president for Agile Executives. The purpose of Agile Executives is to help managers better manage Agile teams and see better success. Agile Executives is trying to build a community of executives that range from managers interested in Agile to managers that have successfully adopted Agile. Together, these managers can form a community of support and ideas that will help make Agile teams more successful. Helping Your Team You can help too! Talk with your manager and get them involved in Agile Executives. Help Veracity build the community. If your manager understands Agile better, he’ll understand how to help his teams, which will result in software that adds more value for customers. If you have any questions about how you can be involved, please let me know. Technorati Tags: Agile,Agile Executives

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• Career guidance/advice for Junior-level Software Engineer [closed]

  - by John Do

  I have quite a few questions on my mind, so please bare with me. Please don't feel obligated to answer all of them, any as you choose will do. I'd appreciate if you could share some insight on any of these. Before I begin, some context: I currently have almost two years of professional experience as a Software Engineer, mainly developing software in Java. At this point, I feel that I have reached the peak in my career growth at the current company I am at and therefore I am looking for a new job, ideally again, as a Software Engineer. I have been interviewing for the past few months casually but have not had luck with companies I have a passion for. So, in no particular order - 1) In general, what are your thoughts on having graduate degrees in CS / Software Engineering. How much does it influence a salary increase, and do you think it's beneficial when working on real-world problems? I get the sense that a graduate degree in the field is trivial unless you really have a passion for research. 2) In general, in professional practice, how often had you have to write your own data structures and "complex" algorithms from scratch? In my own work, I have found myself relying mainly on third-party frameworks and the Java standard library to implement solutions as per business requirements. What are your thoughts on this? 3) In terms of resume, I feel the most ambivalent here. I want to be able to "blemish" my resume to a certain extent so that it stands out from others', but at the same time I do not want to over-exagerate my abilities. How do you strike a balance here? For example: I say that I am proficient in Java with data structures and algorithms. This is obviously a subjective and relative statement. I've taken the classes in my undergrad, and I've applied it in my work experience. What I feel as "prociency" can be seen as junior-level to others. How do you know what to say? Most of the time, recruiters (with no technical background) will be looking for keywords that stand out. This leads me to my next question (4). 4) Just from interviewing for the past few months (and getting plenty of rejections), I've come to realize that I may not be as proficient in data structures and algorithms as I thought I was. Do you think it's a good idea to remove the "proficient in java/data structure and algorithms"? I feel that being too hoenst on the resume will impede me from scoring opportunities to even have an interview with top-notch companies. What are your thoughts? 5) What is the absolute "must-have" knowledge going into a technical interview? I've been practicing several algorithmic and data sturcture problems now, and I feel that my abilities to solve arbitrary problems efficiently has not gotten significantly better. Do you think these abilities are something innate - it's either you have in you, or you don't? How can you teach yourself to learn, if you will? 6) How easy is it to go from industry/function to the next? I work mainly with backend technologies and I'm now interested in working with the frontend, i.e javascript,jquery,php or even mobile development. In your own experience, how did you not get pidgeon holed in your career? I feel that the choices you make now ultimately decide your future. As cliche as it sounds, I think it may be true. Here's what I mean: you've worked mainly as a backend engineer, people are interested in you doing the same thing since you've already accumulated experience in that function. How do get experience in a new function if people won't accept you because you don't already have it? It's a catch 22, you see... Are side projects the only real way to help you move from one function to another that you're truly interested in? For example: I could start writing my own mobile applications, even though I've worked mainly on the backend. Thanks so much for the long read. As a relatively new engineer to the real world, I am very humble and would like those who are experienced to shed some light. Thank you so much.

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• Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?

  - by derphil

  I had a very stimulating and interessting discussion with a colleague about ORM and it's Pros and Cons. In my opinion, an ORM is useful only in the rarest cases. At least in my experience. But I don't want to list my own arguments at this time. So I ask you, what do you think about ORM? What are the Pros and the Cons? P.S. I've posted this "question" yesterday on Stackoverflow, but some of the user think, that this should better posted here.

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• The actual difference between styesheet in the header and a seperate file

  - by David Knight

  Am wondering if someone can give me an opinion on this. I have always been taught to have all of the CSS in a separate file that is referenced from the head of the page. Reading this article http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1792 the author is talking about making the Guardian website responsive. One of the things he notes they did to make the site faster and more resilient is to add the CSS inline into the header, thus reducing HTTP requests. Now this got me thinking about the right/best/fastest way of using the CSS If you have one main CSS file, its going to be called and read by the site on every page, no mater how big it is. So with that in mind, Im actually starting to think its better to just inline the whole style sheet and remove one HTTP roundtrip. I know for the purposes of neatness and being able to edit the file a seperate file is better. But which would you recommend and which do you think is faster? Thanks!

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• What's missing in ASP.NET MVC?

  - by LukaszW.pl

  Hello programmers, I think there are not many people who don't think that ASP.NET MVC is one of the greatest technologies Microsoft gave us. It gives full control over the rendered HTML, provides separation of concerns and suits to stateless nature of web. Next versions of framework gaves us new features and tools and it's great, but... what solutions should Microsoft include in new versions of framework? What are biggest gaps in comparison with another web frameworks like PHP or Ruby? What could improve developers productivity? What's missing in ASP.NET MVC?

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• partitioning in ubuntu with gparted cant resize

  - by user288830

  I opened gparted and as i can see i have 3 partitions(or i think so) first one sda1 (236 mb) its ext2 type file and its booting point, second one is sda2(rest of the hdd 1.36 tb) extended ntfs type file and i have third one that is within the sda2 called sda5 it takes the same space as sda 2 and its file type is crypt luks, so when i try to resize the sda2 i cant resize it not for even 1 mb, i dont know if that crypt luks file is causing the problem, so i dont know what to do, by the way i can format the crypt luks(sda5) file that in inside sda 2 but i dont know if i should.Can anyone help me please? here are the pictures when i open gparted when i try to resize sda 2 i think i did use encryption i mean while it is booting i type password and its says sda5/scrypt set up succefully or something like that and then it goes to my login screen where i type username and pass that is it

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• Purple Cows, Copernicus, and Shampoo – Lessons in Customer Experience

  - by Christina McKeon

  What makes a great customer experience? And, why should you or your organization care? These are the questions that set the stage for the Oracle Customer Experience Summit, which kicked off yesterday in San Francisco. Day 1: The first day was filled with demos and insights from customer experience experts and Oracle customers sharing what it takes to deliver great customer experiences. Author Seth Godin delivered an entertaining presentation that included an in-depth exploration of the always-connected, always-sharing experience revolution that we are witnessing and yes, talked about the purple cow. It turns out that customer experience is your way to be the purple cow. Before everyone headed out to see Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon at the Oracle customer appreciation event, the day wrapped up with a discussion around building a customer-centric culture. Where do you start? Whom does it involve? What are some pitfalls to avoid? Day 2: The second day addressed the details behind all the questions brought up at the end of Day 1. Before you start on a customer experience initiative, Paul Hagen noted that you must understand you will forge a path similar to Copernicus. You will be proposing ideas and approaches that challenge current thinking in your organization. Just as Copernicus' heliocentric theory started a scientific revolution, your customer-centric efforts will start an experience revolution. If you think customer experience is like a traditional marketing approach, think again. It’s not about controlling your customers and leading them where you want them to go. It might sound like heresy to some, but your customers are already in control, whether or not your company realizes and acknowledges it. And, to survive and thrive, you'll have to focus on customers by thinking outside-in and working towards a brand that is better and more authentic. We learned how Vail Resorts takes this customer-centric approach. Employees must experience the mountain themselves and understand the experience from the guest’s standpoint. This has created a culture where employees do things for guests that are not expected. We also learned a valuable lesson in designing and innovating customer-centered experiences from Kerry Bodine. First you make the thing, and then you make the thing right. In this case, the thing is customer experience. Getting customer experience right means iterative prototyping and testing of your ideas. This is where shampoo comes in—think lather, rinse, repeat. Be prepared to keep repeating until the customer experience is right. Many of these sessions will be posted to YouTube in the coming weeks so be sure to subscribe to our CX channel.

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• Are these interview questions too complex for entry-level C++ positions?

  - by Banana

  Hi All, I recently had a few interviews for programming jobs within the financial industry. I am looking for entry-level positions as I specify in the cover letter. However I am usually asked questions such as: - all two-letters commands you know in unix - representation of float/double numbers (ieee standard) - segmentation fault memory dump, and related issues - all functions you know to convert string to integer (not just atoi) - how to avoid virtual tables - etc.. Is that the custom? Because I don't think this kind of questions make sense for someone willing to get an entry-level job. Is it totally crazy to think that they should ask more conceptual questions? This is beginning to driving me nuts, honestly. Thanks

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• How to create a good sitemap for dynamic website

  - by Saif Bechan

  I have a website with dynamic content and different kind of pages. I have some pages that rarely change, and I have pages like blogs that change often. The blog pages also have links for sorting, for example sorting on date, asc, desc. On some of the pages I also have links to different tabbed content, and links that are just anchor links. Now when I use a xml sitemap generator then all the links are thrown into the site, and so I don't think all the links are really relevant. The blogposts up until now are also taken into the sitemap. Is this really necessary? I think the links to the blogposts can be indexed just fine. Is the best way to make a sitemap just to manually assign the main menu links to the sitemap, or is indexing everything really recommended?

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• Seven Random Thoughts on JavaOne

  - by HecklerMark

  As most people reading this blog may know, last week was JavaOne. There are a lot of summary/recap articles popping up now, and while I didn't want to just "add to pile", I did want to share a few observations. Disclaimer: I am an Oracle employee, but most of these observations are either externally verifiable or based upon a collection of opinions from Oracle and non-Oracle attendees alike. Anyway, here are a few take-aways: The Java ecosystem is alive and well, with a breadth and depth that is impossible to adequately describe in a short post...or a long post, for that matter. If there is any one area within the Java language or JVM that you would like to - or need to - know more about, it's well-represented at J1. While there are several IDEs that are used to great effect by the developer community, NetBeans is on a roll. I lost count how many sessions mentioned or used NetBeans, but it was by far the dominant IDE in use at J1. As a recent re-convert to NetBeans, I wasn't surprised others liked it so well, only how many. OpenJDK, OpenJFX, etc. Many developers were understandably concerned with the change of sponsorship/leadership when Java creator and longtime steward Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle. The read I got from attendees regarding Oracle's stewardship was almost universally positive, and the push for "openness" is deep and wide within the current Java environs. Few would probably have imagined it to be this good, this soon. Someone observed that "Larry (Ellison) is competitive, and he wants to be the best...so if he wants to have a community, it will be the best community on the planet." Like any company, Oracle is bound to make missteps, but leadership seems to be striking an excellent balance between embracing open efforts and innovating in competitive paid offerings. JavaFX (2.x) isn't perfect or comprehensive, but a great many people (myself included) see great potential, are developing for it, and are really excited about where it is and where it may be headed. This is another part of the Java ecosystem that has impressive depth for being so new (JavaFX 1.x aside). If you haven't kicked the tires yet, give it a try! You'll be surprised at how capable and versatile it is, and you'll probably catch yourself smiling while coding again.  :-) JavaEE is everywhere. Not exactly a newsflash, but there is a lot of buzz around EE still/again/anew. Sessions ranged from updated component specs/technologies to Websockets/HTML5, from frameworks to profiles and application servers. Programming "server-side" Java isn't confined to the server (as you no doubt realize), and if you still consider JavaEE a cumbersome beast, you clearly haven't been using the last couple of versions. Download GlassFish or the WebLogic Zip distro (or another JavaEE 6 implementation) and treat yourself. JavaOne is not inexpensive, but to paraphrase an old saying, "If you think that's expensive, you should try ignorance." :-) I suppose it's possible to attend J1 and learn nothing, but you'd have to really work at it! Attending even a single session is bound to expand your horizons and make you approach your code, your problem domain, differently...even if it's a session about something you already know quite well. The various presenters offer vastly different perspectives and challenge you to re-think your own approach(es). And finally, if you think the scheduled sessions are great - and make no mistake, most are clearly outstanding - wait until you see what you pick up from what I like to call the "hallway sessions". Between the presentations, people freely mingle in the hallways, go to lunch and dinner together, and talk. And talk. And talk. Ideas flow freely, sparking other ideas and the "crowdsourcing" of knowledge in a way that is hard to imagine outside of a conference of this magnitude. Consider this the "GO" part of a "BOGO" (Buy One, Get One) offer: you buy the ticket to the "structured" part of JavaOne and get the hallway sessions at no additional charge. They're really that good. If you weren't able to make it to JavaOne this year, you can still watch/listen to the sessions online by visiting the JavaOne course catalog and clicking the media link(s) in the right column - another demonstration of Oracle's commitment to the Java community. But make plans to be there next year to get the full benefit! You'll be glad you did. All the best,Mark P.S. - I didn't mention several other exciting developments in areas like the embedded space and the "internet of things" (M2M), robotics, optimization, and the cloud (among others), but I think you get the idea. JavaOne == brainExpansion;  Hope to see you there next year!

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• Is it legal to ask photo ID and credit card copy in the U.S

  - by selim

  I regularly order from online shops around the world and I have not see any case where the company asks for photo ID or credit card copy. Yesterday I make an order from linode.com and my order is on hold because of their "fraud check system". Is it common to ask those info in U.S. where I have never asked such info in here (Istanbul, Turkey). And I already asked what is their motive and legal stand and the reason my order is hold by their fraud system. And I also added whether is because I live in Istanbul, Turkey. Their answer was as following: "We would not be able to disclose specific information related to our fraud system." And I'm asked repeatedly whether I want to cancel my order or not. I dont questioning reputation of linode.com if I think so, I did not make an order. I think asking for photo ID is neither legal nor provide any security.

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• Basics of drawing in 2d with OpenGL 3 shaders

  - by davidism

  I am new to OpenGL 3 and graphics programming, and want to create some basic 2d graphics. I have the following scenario of how I might go about drawing a basic (but general) 2d rectangle. I'm not sure if this is the correct way to think about it, or, if it is, how to implement it. In my head, here's how I imagine doing it: t = make_rectangle(width, height) build general VBO, centered at 0, 0 optionally: t.set_scale(2) optionally: t.set_angle(30) t.draw_at(x, y) calculates some sort of scale/rotate/translate matrix (or matrices), passes the VBO and the matrix to a shader program Something happens to clip the world to the view visible on screen. I'm really unclear on how 4 and 5 will work. The main problem is that all the tutorials I find either: use fixed function pipeline, are for 3d, or are unclear how to do something this "simple". Can someone provide me with either a better way to think of / do this, or some concrete code detailing performing the transformations in a shader and constructing and passing the data required for this shader transformation?

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• How do I get long command lines to wrap to the next line?

  - by BrianH

  Edit It was my .bashrc file. I've copied the same profile from machine to machine, and I used special characters in my $PS1 that are somehow throwing it off. I'm now sticking with the standard bash variables for my $PS1. Thanks to @ændrük for the tip on the .bashrc! ...End Edit... Something I have noticed in Ubuntu for a long time that has been frustrating to me is when I am typing a command at the command line that gets longer (wider) than the terminal width, instead of wrapping to a new line, it goes back to column 1 on the same line and starts over-writing the beginning of my command line. (It doesn't actually overwrite the actual command, but visually, it is overwriting the text that was displayed). It's hard to explain without seeing it, but let's say my terminal was 20 characters wide (Mine is more like 120 characters - but for the sake of an example), and I want to echo the English alphabet. What I type is this: echo abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz But what my terminal looks like before I hit the key is: pqrstuvwxyzghijklmno When I hit enter, it echos abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz so I know the command was received properly. It just wrapped my typing after the "o" and started over on the same line. What I would expect to happen, if I typed this command in on a terminal that was only 20 characters wide would be this: echo abcdefghijklmno pqrstuvwxyz Background: I am using bash as my shell, and I have this line in my ~/.bashrc: set -o vi to be able to navigate the command line with VI commands. I am currently using Ubuntu 10.10 server, and connecting to the server with Putty. In any other environment I have worked in, if I type a long command line, it will add a new line underneath the line I am working on when my command gets longer than the terminal width and when I keep typing I can see my command on 2 different lines. But for as long as I can remember using Ubuntu, my long commands only occupy 1 line. This also happens when I am going back to previous commands in the history (I hit Esc, then 'K' to go back to previous commands) - when I get to a previous command that was longer than the terminal width, the command line gets mangled and I cannot tell where I am at in the command. The only work-around I have found to see the entire long command is to hit "Esc-V", which opens up the current command in a VI editor. I don't think I have anything odd in my .bashrc file. I commented out the "set -o vi" line, and I still had the problem. I downloaded a fresh copy of Putty and didn't make any changes to the configuration - I just typed in my host name to connect, and I still have the problem, so I don't think it's anything with Putty (unless I need to make some config changes) Has anyone else had this problem, and can anyone think of how to fix it? Thanks in advance! Brian

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• Data structures for a 2D multi-layered and multi-region map?

  - by DevilWithin

  I am working on a 2D world editor and a world format subsequently. If I were to handle the game "world" being created just as a layered set of structures, either in top or side views, it would be considerably simple to do most things. But, since this editor is meant for 3rd parties, I have no clue how big worlds one will want to make and I need to keep in mind that eventually it will become simply too much to check, handling and comparing stuff that are happening completely away from the player position. I know the solution for this is to subdivide my world into sub regions and stream them on the fly, loading and unloading resources and other data. This way I know a virtually infinite game area is achievable. But, while I know theoretically what to do, I really have a few questions I'd hoped to get answered for some hints about the topic. The logic way to handle the regions is some kind of grid, would you pick evenly distributed blocks with equal sizes or would you let the user subdivide areas by taste with irregular sized rectangles? In case of even grids, would you use some kind of block/chunk neighbouring system to check when the player transposes the limit or just put all those in a simple array? Being a region a different data structure than its owner "game world", when streaming a region, would you deliver the objects to the parent structures and track them for unloading later, or retain the objects in each region for a more "hard-limit" approach? Introducing the subdivision approach to the project, and already having a multi layered scene graph structure on place, how would i make it support the new concept? Would you have the parent node have the layers as children, and replicate in each layer node, a node per region? Or the opposite, parent node owns all the regions possible, and each region has multiple layers as children? Or would you just put the region logic outside the graph completely(compatible with the first suggestion in Q.3) When I say virtually infinite worlds, I mean it of course under the contraints of the variable sizes and so on. Using float positions, a HUGE world can already be made. Do you think its sane to think beyond that? Because I think its ok to stick to this limit since it will never be reached so easily.. As for when to stream a region, I'm implementing it as a collection of watcher cameras, which the streaming system works with to know what to load/unload. The problem here is, i will be needing some kind of warps/teleports built in for my game, and there is a chance i will be teleporting a player to a unloaded region far away. How would you approach something like this? Is it sane to load any region to memory which can be teleported to by a warp within a radius from the player? Sorry for the huge question, any answers are helpful!

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• How to deal with project managers who micromanage?

  - by entens

  Perhaps I'm just naive, but when I try to decipher the wall of tasks I'm targeted to do over the course of a week, I just can't help but think whoever builds the project schedule needs to get some remedial training on basic project management. For example, I am assigned 13 tasks today, the shortest lasting .13 days (default time metric in Microsoft Project), and the longest lasting .75 days. I can't help but think that it is blatant micromanagement scheduling projects in sub 10 minute intervals. The effects of management are becoming evident in slipped tasks, resource assignment exceeding capacity by a factor of two at some points in time, and spending more time clearing tasks and figuring out what comes next than actually doing work. How can I convince the project manager to create tasks with larger duration and to see the larger picture?

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• Stop trying to be perfect

  - by Kyle Burns

  Yes, Bob is my uncle too.  I also think the points in the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship (manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org) are all great.  What amazes me is that tend to confuse the term “well crafted” with “perfect”.  I'm about to say something that will make Quality Assurance managers and many development types as well until you think about it as a craftsman – “Stop trying to be perfect”. Now let me explain what I mean.  Building software, as with building almost anything, often involves a series of trade-offs where either one undesired characteristic is accepted as necessary to achieve another desired one (or maybe stave off one that is even less desirable) or a desirable characteristic is sacrificed for the same reasons.  This implies that perfection itself is unattainable.  What is attainable is “sufficient” and I think that this really goes to the heart both of what people are trying to do with Agile and with the craftsmanship movement.  Simply put, sufficient software drives the greatest business value.   I've been in many meetings where “how can we keep anything from ever going wrong” has become the thing that holds us in analysis paralysis.  I've also been the guy trying way too hard to perfect some function to make sure that every edge case is accounted for.  Somewhere in there, something a drill instructor said while I was in boot camp occurred to me.  In response to being asked a question by another recruit having to do with some edge case (I can barely remember the context), he said “What if grasshoppers had machine guns?  Would the birds still **** with them?”  It sounds funny, but there's a lot of wisdom in those words.   “Sufficient” is different for every situation and it’s important to understand what sufficient means in the context of the work you’re doing.  If I’m writing a timesheet application (and please shoot me if I am), I’m going to have a much higher tolerance for imperfection than if you’re writing software to control life support systems on spacecraft.  I’m also likely to have less need for high volume performance than if you’re writing software to control stock trading transactions.   I’d encourage anyone who has read this far to instead of trying to be perfect, try to create software that is sufficient in every way.  If you’re working to make a component that is sufficient “better”, ask yourself if there is any component left that is not yet sufficient.  If the answer is “yes” you’re working on the wrong thing and need to adjust.  If the answer is “no”, why aren’t you shipping and delivering business value?

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• Aren't there compilers better at telling the programmer what's wrong in a code ?

  - by jokoon

  I have worked a little while with the Microsoft compiler from Visual C++ but I worked a long time with G++, and I remember often having bad times understanding what was wrong in my code with the former. Beside binary code generation and optimisation, I think this is a very important feature of a C++ compiler: giving the programmer a clue that makes him understand as fast as possible what is wrong with his/her code. I can understand some programmers understand programming as some sort of "competition" to make less errors, but to me that's a counter productive opinion. I once tried Clang compiler for C from the LLVM thingie, I didn't use it for a long time, but I was impressed on how explicit and easy to understand the error messages were. What are your experiences, and how do you think this matters ? Some WIP of C++ Clang: http://clang.llvm.org/cxx_status.html

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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 do i clean up my harddrive?

  - by acidzombie24

  Not to long ago i was using only 35% of my HD. Just recently it shot up to 54% and my diskspace is 16gb so thats more then 3gigs that have been taken. From what i remember i failed to build mysql, i install gitolite which required me to build git from source which had a tons of dependencies (i think it was for building docs, i think i saw latex and other packages but i was drozy when i was installing). I suspect that is what is taking the diskspace. Anyways so far i deleted source folders i know i had and ran these commands. What else can i do? (3gigs is mighty) sudo apt-get autoclean sudo deborphan | xargs sudo apt-get -y remove --purge

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• Does anyone prefer proportional fonts?

  - by Jason Baker

  I was reading the wikipedia article on programming style and noticed something in an argument against vertically aligned code: Reliance on mono-spaced font; tabular formatting assumes that the editor uses a fixed-width font. Most modern code editors support proportional fonts, and the programmer may prefer to use a proportional font for readability. To be honest, I don't think I've ever met a programmer who preferred a proportional font. Nor can I think of any really good reasons for using them. Why would someone prefer a proportional font?

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• How to create a reasonably sized urban area manually but efficiently

  - by Overv

  I have a game concept that only really works in an urban area that is of reasonable scale and diversity. In terms of what it should look like, think GTA, in terms of the size think more like a small neighbourhood with residents and a few local shops, perhaps a supermarket. I'm mostly experienced in programming and not at all with modelling, texturing or drawing, but I've found that SketchUp allows me to design interesting looking buildings that I model after real world buildings in my own neighbourhood. Designing these buildings and other objects can take from a few tens of minutes to a few hours. My question is: what is the best approach for a one man army like me who does manage to model buildings to create an interesting city environment in a reasonable amount of time? My game will not be based on procedural generation, the environment will actually be modelled like GTA cities.

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• What are some concepts people should understand before programming "big" projects?

  - by Abafei

  A person new to programming may be able to make a good small program. However, when starting to work on anything bigger than a small (think 1 C source file or Python module) program, there are some general concepts which become much more important when working on "big" (think many Python modules or C files) programs; one example is modularity, another is having a set aim. Some of these may be obvious to people who went to school to learn programming; however, people like me who did not go to programming classes sometimes have to learn these things from experience, possibly creating failed projects in the meantime. ================================================== Please explain what the concept is, and why the concept becomes more important for big programs than by small programs. Please give only 1 concept per answer.

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• Do you believe it's a good idea for Software Engineers to have to work as Quality Assurance Engineers for some period of time?

  - by Macy Abbey

  I believe it is. Why? I've encountered many Software Engineers who believe they are somehow superior to QA engineers. I think it may help quench this belief if they do the job of a QA engineer for some time, and realize that it is a unique and valuable skill-set of its own. The better a Software Engineer is at testing their own programs, the less cost in time their code incurs when making its way through the rest of the software development life-cycle. The more time a Software Engineer spends thinking about how a program can break, the more often they are to consider these cases as they are developing them, thus reducing bugs in the end product. A Software Engineer's definition of "complete" is always interesting...if they have spent time as a QA engineer maybe this definition will more closely match the designer of the software's. What do you all think?

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