Search Results

Search found 3618 results on 145 pages for 'huge'.

Page 66/145 | < Previous Page | 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73  | Next Page >

• Should I use an interface when methods are only similar?

  - by Joshua Harris

  I was posed with the idea of creating an object that checks if a point will collide with a line: public class PointAndLineSegmentCollisionDetector { public void Collides(Point p, LineSegment s) { // ... } } This made me think that if I decided to create a Box object, then I would need a PointAndBoxCollisionDetector and a LineSegmentAndBoxCollisionDetector. I might even realize that I should have a BoxAndBoxCollisionDetector and a LineSegmentAndLineSegmentCollisionDetector. And, when I add new objects that can collide I would need to add even more of these. But, they all have a Collides method, so everything I learned about abstraction is telling me, "Make an interface." public interface CollisionDetector { public void Collides(Spatial s1, Spatial s2); } But now I have a function that only detects some abstract class or interface that is used by Point, LineSegment, Box, etc.. So if I did this then each implementation would have to to a type check to make sure that the types are the appropriate type because the collision algorithm is different for each different type match up. Another solution could be this: public class CollisionDetector { public void Collides(Point p, LineSegment s) { ... } public void Collides(LineSegment s, Box b) { ... } public void Collides(Point p, Box b) { ... } // ... } But, this could end up being a huge class that seems unwieldy, although it would have simplicity in that it is only a bunch of Collide methods. This is similar to C#'s Convert class. Which is nice because it is large, but it is simple to understand how it works. This seems to be the better solution, but I thought I should open it for discussion as a wiki to get other opinions.

  Read the article

• Videos: Getting Started with Java Embedded

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Are you a Java developer? That means you can write applications for embedded processors! There are new six new videos up on the YouTube/Java channel that you can watch to get more information. To get an overview, watch James Allen of Oracle Global Business Development give OTN a tour of the Oracle booth at ARM Techcon. He also explains the huge opportunity for Java in the embedded space. These videos from Oracle Engineering show you how to leverage your knowledge to seamlessly develop in a space that is really taking off. Java SE Embedded Development Made Easy, Part 1 This video demonstrates how developers already familiar with the Java SE development paradigm can leverage their knowledge to seamlessly develop on very capable embedded processors. Part one of a two-part series. Java SE Embedded Development Made Easy, Part 2 This video demonstrates how developers already familiar with the Java SE development paradigm can leverage their knowledge to seamlessly develop on very capable embedded processors. Part two of a two-part series. Mobile Database Synchronization - Healthcare Demonstration This video demonstrates how a good portion of Oracle's embedded technologies (Java SE-Embedded, Berkeley DB, Database Mobile Server) can be applied to a medical application. Tomcat Micro Cluster See how multiple embedded devices installed with Java Standard Edition HotSpot for Armv5/Linux and Apache Tomcat can be configured as a micro cluster. Java Embedded Partnerships Kevin Smith of Oracle Technical Business Development explains what's new for partners and Java developers in the embedded space. Learn how you can start prototyping for Qualcomm's new Orion board before it's available. (Sorry about the video quality, the booth lights were weird.)   Visit the YouTube/Java channel for other great Java videos. <fade to black>

  Read the article

• I know how to program, and how to learn how to program, but how/where do you learn how to make systems properly?

  - by Ryan

  There are many things that need to be considered when making a system, let's take for example a web based system where users log in and interact with each other, creating and editing content. Now I have to think about security, validation (I don't even think I am 100% sure what that entails), "making sure users don't step on each others feet" (term for this?), preventing errors in many cases, making sure database data doesn't become problematic through unexpected... situations? All these things I don't know how or where to learn, is there a book on this kind of stuff? Like I said there seems to be a huge difference between writing code and actually writing the right code, know what I mean? I feel like my current programming work lacks much of what I have described and I can see the problems it causes later, and then the problems are much harder to solve because data exists and people are using it. So can anyone point me to books or resources or the proper subset of programming(?) for this type of learning? PS: feel free to correct my tags, I don't know what I am talking about. Edit: I assume some of the examples I wrote apply to other types of systems too, I just don't know any other good examples because I've been mostly involved in web work.

  Read the article

• Very Cool &ndash; Miami 311 System for tracking citizen service requests (Windows Azure, Silverlight

  - by Jim Duffy

  Having grown up in South Florida this short, but very enlightening, video explaining how the City of Miami has implemented a 311 citizen service request system using Windows Azure, Silverlight and Bing Maps definitely caught my attention. Miami311 The Miami311 System is a Windows Azure/Silverlight-based solution which enables City of Miami citizens report and track issues reported to city management. The system uses Bing Maps to plot the location and relevant information about each issue reported. Citizens now have the ability to easily see the status of the issue without having to call the city office. What I found interesting were a couple of benefits that a metropolitan area such as Miami can take advantage of in Windows Azure cloud-based solution. For the city of Miami, both benefits center around the weather. Of course the threat of a hurricane is a real issue in South Florida and what better way to make sure your site stays up during a hurricane then to have the site hosted far away from the eye of the storm. Using a Windows Azure cloud-based architecture the City of Miami is able to host the application within the Microsoft data centers safely away from any hurricane passing through South Florida. The second benefit is the inherent scalability of a Windows Azure based solution. During a severe weather event like thunderstorms or even worse, a hurricane, downed trees and power lines are a commonly reported problem. Being able to quickly scale up the computing resources required to handle the spike in citizens reporting these types of problems on the site is a huge benefit. Once the weather event has passed and downed tree reports begin to subside they can quickly reverse the process and scale the system back down to pre-storm levels. It’s kind of day-to-day kind of stuff but very cool stuff nonetheless. Have a day. :-|

  Read the article

• Are your personal insecurities screwing up your internal communications?

  - by Lucy Boyes

  I do some internal comms as part of my job. Quite a lot of it involves talking to people about stuff. I’m spending the next couple of weeks talking to lots of people about internal comms itself, because we haven’t done a lot of audience/user feedback gathering, and it turns out that if you talk to people about how they feel and what they think, you get some pretty interesting insights (and an idea of what to do next that isn’t just based on guesswork and generalising from self). Three things keep coming up from talking to people about what we suck at  in terms of internal comms. And, as far as I can tell, they’re all examples where personal insecurity on the part of the person doing the communicating makes the experience much worse for the people on the receiving end. 1. Spending time telling people how you’re going to do something, not what you’re doing and why Imagine you’ve got to give an update to a lot of people who don’t work in your area or department but do have an interest in what you’re doing (either because they want to know because they’re curious or because they need to know because it’s going to affect their work too). You don’t want to look bad at your job. You want to make them think you’ve got it covered – ideally because you do*. And you want to reassure them that there’s lots of exciting work going on in your area to make [insert thing of choice] happen to [insert thing of choice] so that [insert group of people] will be happy. That’s great! You’re doing a good job and you want to tell people about it. This is good comms stuff right here. However, you’re slightly afraid you might secretly be stupid or lazy or incompetent. And you’re exponentially more afraid that the people you’re talking to might think you’re stupid or lazy or incompetent. Or pointless. Or not-adding-value. Or whatever the thing that’s the worst possible thing to be in your company is. So you open by mentioning all the stuff you’re going to do, spending five minutes or so making sure that everyone knows that you’re DOING lots of STUFF. And the you talk for the rest of the time about HOW you’re going to do the stuff, because that way everyone will know that you’ve thought about this really hard and done tons of planning and had lots of great ideas about process and that you’ve got this one down. That’s the stuff you’ve got to say, right? To prove you’re not fundamentally worthless as a human being? Well, maybe. But probably not. See, the people who need to know how you’re going to do the stuff are the people doing the stuff. And those are the people in your area who you’ve (hopefully-please-for-the-love-of-everything-holy) already talked to in depth about how you’re going to do the thing (because else how could they help do it?). They are the only people who need to know the how**. It’s the difference between strategy and tactics. The people outside of your bubble of stuff-doing need to know the strategy – what it is that you’re doing, why, where you’re going with it, etc. The people on the ground with you need the strategy and the tactics, because else they won’t know how to do the stuff. But the outside people don’t really need the tactics at all. Don’t bother with the how unless your audience needs it. They probably don’t. It might make you feel better about yourself, but it’s much more likely that Bob and Jane are thinking about how long this meeting has gone on for already than how personally impressive and definitely-not-an-idiot you are for knowing how you’re going to do some work. Feeling marginally better about yourself (but, let’s face it, still insecure as heck) is not worth the cost, which in this case is the alienation of your audience. 2. Talking for too long about stuff This is kinda the same problem as the previous problem, only much less specific, and I’ve more or less covered why it’s bad already. Basic motivation: to make people think you’re not an idiot. What you do: talk for a very long time about what you’re doing so as to make it sound like you know what you’re doing and lots about it. What your audience wants: the shortest meaningful update. Some of this is a kill your darlings problem – the stuff you’re doing that seems really nifty to you seems really nifty to you, and thus you want to share it with everyone to show that you’re a smart person who thinks up nifty things to do. The downside to this is that it’s mostly only interesting to you – if other people don’t need to know, they likely also don’t care. Think about how you feel when someone is talking a lot to you about a lot of stuff that they’re doing which is at best tangentially interesting and/or relevant. You’re probably not thinking that they’re really smart and clearly know what they’re doing (unless they’re talking a lot and being really engaging about it, which is not the same as talking a lot). You’re probably thinking about something totally unrelated to the thing they’re talking about. Or the fact that you’re bored. You might even – and this is the opposite of what they’re hoping to achieve by talking a lot about stuff – be thinking they’re kind of an idiot. There’s another huge advantage to paring down what you’re trying to say to the barest possible points – it clarifies your thinking. The lightning talk format, as well as other formats which limit the time and/or number of slides you have to say a thing, are really good for doing this. It’s incredibly likely that your audience in this case (the people who need to know some things about your thing but not all the things about your thing) will get everything they need to know from five minutes of you talking about it, especially if trying to condense ALL THE THINGS into a five-minute talk has helped you get clear in your own mind what you’re doing, what you’re trying to say about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The bonus of this is that by being clear in your thoughts and in what you say, and in not taking up lots of people’s time to tell them stuff they don’t really need to know, you actually come across as much, much smarter than the person who talks for half an hour or more about things that are semi-relevant at best. 3. Waiting until you’ve got every detail sorted before announcing a big change to the people affected by it This is the worst crime on the list. It’s also human nature. Announcing uncertainty – that something important is going to happen (big reorganisation, product getting canned, etc.) but you’re not quite sure what or when or how yet – is scary. There are risks to it. Uncertainty makes people anxious. It might even paralyse them. You can’t run a business while you’re figuring out what to do if you’ve paralysed everyone with fear over what the future might bring. And you’re scared that they might think you’re not the right person to be in charge of [thing] if you don’t even know what you’re doing with it. Best not to say anything until you know exactly what’s going to happen and you can reassure them all, right? Nope. The people who are going to be affected by whatever it is that you don’t quite know all the details of yet aren’t stupid***. You wouldn’t have hired them if they were. They know something’s up because you’ve got your guilty face on and you keep pulling people into meeting rooms and looking vaguely worried. Here’s the deal: it’s a lot less stressful for everyone (including you) if you’re up front from the beginning. We took this approach during a recent company-wide reorganisation and got really positive feedback. People would much, much rather be told that something is going to happen but you’re not entirely sure what it is yet than have you wait until it’s all fixed up and then fait accompli the heck out of them. They will tell you this themselves if you ask them. And here’s why: by waiting until you know exactly what’s going on to communicate, you remove any agency that the people that the thing is going to happen to might otherwise have had. I know you’re scared that they might get scared – and that’s natural and kind of admirable – but it’s also patronising and infantilising. Ask someone whether they’d rather work on a project which has an openly uncertain future from the beginning, or one where everything’s great until it gets shut down with no forewarning, and very few people are going to tell you they’d prefer the latter. Uncertainty is humanising. It’s you admitting that you don’t have all the answers, which is great, because no one does. It allows you to be consultative – you can actually ask other people what they think and how they feel and what they’d like to do and what they think you should do, and they’ll thank you for it and feel listened to and respected as people and colleagues. Which is a really good reason to start talking to them about what’s going on as soon as you know something’s going on yourself. All of the above assumes you actually care about talking to the people who work with you and for you, and that you’d like to do the right thing by them. If that’s not the case, you can cheerfully disregard the advice here, but if it is, you might want to think about the ways above – and the inevitable countless other ways – that making internal communication about you and not about your audience could actually be doing the people you’re trying to communicate with a huge disservice. So take a deep breath and talk. For five minutes or so. About the important things. Not the other things. As soon as you possibly can. And you’ll be fine.   *Of course you do. You’re good at your job. Don’t worry. **This might not always be true, but it is most of the time. Other people who need to know the how will either be people who you’ve already identified as needing-to-know and thus part of the same set as the people in you’re area you’ve already discussed this with, or else they’ll ask you. But don’t bring this stuff up unless someone asks for it, because most of the people in the audience really don’t care and you’re wasting their time. ***I mean, they might be. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re not.

  Read the article

• Very large log files, what should I do?

  - by Masroor

  (This question deals with a similar issue, but it talks about a rotated log file.) Today I got a system message regarding very low /var space. As usual I executed the commands in the line of sudo apt-get clean which improved the scenario only slightly. Then I deleted the rotated log files which again provided very little improvement. Upon examination I find that some log files in the /var/log has grown up to be very huge ones. To be specific, ls -lSh /var/log gives, total 28G -rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 14G Aug 23 21:56 kern.log -rw-r----- 1 syslog adm 14G Aug 23 21:56 syslog -rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 390K Aug 23 21:47 wtmp -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 287K Aug 23 21:42 dpkg.log -rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 287K Aug 23 20:43 lastlog As we can see, the first two are the offending ones. I am mildly surprised why such large files have not been rotated. So, what should I do? Simply delete these files and then reboot? Or go for some more prudent steps? I am using Ubuntu 14.04.

  Read the article

• What is logical cohesion, and why is it bad or undesirable?

  - by Matt Fenwick

  From the c2wiki page on coupling & cohesion: Cohesion (interdependency within module) strength/level names : (from worse to better, high cohesion is good) Coincidental Cohesion : (Worst) Module elements are unrelated Logical Cohesion : Elements perform similar activities as selected from outside module, i.e. by a flag that selects operation to perform (see also CommandObject). i.e. body of function is one huge if-else/switch on operation flag Temporal Cohesion : operations related only by general time performed (i.e. initialization() or FatalErrorShutdown?()) Procedural Cohesion : Elements involved in different but sequential activities, each on different data (usually could be trivially split into multiple modules along linear sequence boundaries) Communicational Cohesion : unrelated operations except need same data or input Sequential Cohesion : operations on same data in significant order; output from one function is input to next (pipeline) Informational Cohesion: a module performs a number of actions, each with its own entry point, with independent code for each action, all performed on the same data structure. Essentially an implementation of an abstract data type. i.e. define structure of sales_region_table and its operators: init_table(), update_table(), print_table() Functional Cohesion : all elements contribute to a single, well-defined task, i.e. a function that performs exactly one operation get_engine_temperature(), add_sales_tax() (emphasis mine). I don't fully understand the definition of logical cohesion. My questions are: what is logical cohesion? Why does it get such a bad rap (2nd worst kind of cohesion)?

  Read the article

• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part I

  - by Tara Kizer

  What an amazing week I had at PASS Summit 2011 in Seattle, WA!  I hadn’t attended a PASS conference since September of 2005 when it was in Grapevine, Texas.  It has grown so much since then.  I am not sure how many people attended back then, but I’d guesstimate about 1500.  They announced that at this year’s conference there were 4000 attendees.  WOW! Here are my favorite aspects of this conference: Networking! – Not only did I meet a lot of new people, but I also got to meet people in person that I’ve known on the Internet for years like Mladen Prajdic (blog|twitter) and Rob Volk (blog|twitter).  I even met someone that I’d recently helped out in the SQLTeam forums.  Learning – I took a lot of notes during the sessions I attended and plan on blogging very soon about them.  It is amazing the amount of things you learn and the things that you unlearn.  Yes I said unlearn.  Some of the stuff that I thought I knew was either out-dated or just plain wrong.  Fun, fun, fun – To say that this conference was fun would be an understatement.  I had a blast!  I attended the “Welcome Reception and Quizbowl” on Tuesday night, the “Exhibitor Reception” on Wednesday night, and the “Community Appreciation Party” at GameWorks on Thursday night.  There were many other after-hours events to attend, but I had to make my kids a priority at night so I had to get back to my hotel room before 9pm so that I could Skype with them.   It was very entertaining reading and posting with #sqlpass on Twitter.  Twitter has changed the conference experience for the better.  I will definitely be able to do my job better due to attending this conference.  The return on investment is HUGE!

  Read the article

• Ubuntu won't suspend anymore, but it did upon install.

  - by Bruce Connor

  I fresh installed Ubuntu 10.10 back when it came out, and my laptop was suspending fine. All of a sudden, I can't get my laptop to suspend anymore. It's an HP Pavilion dv2-1110, but I don't think it's a hardware issue, here's why: It suspended fine upon first install. I haven't installed any new kernels since then, but I have installed tons of packages, so it's probably a package. The suspend and hibernate options disappeared from the shutdown menu. If I press my keyboard's suspend button (or if I close the lid) I get the following message: If I try the command pmi action suspend, I get the error message: Error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.Hal was not provided by any .service files. If I try the command echo -n mem > sudo /sys/power/state I get absolutely no output and no visible effect. What might be causing this behavior? I thought a list of installed packages might be useful, but it's huge and I don't know how to post it here in collapse/expand mode or something. EDIT:Just in case someone asks, none of the installed packages are kdm or anything like that (which would justify the lack of options in gnome's shutdown menu).

  Read the article

• XNA for life!

  - by George Clingerman

  Or until my arm falls off at least…. I’ve been meaning to get a new tattoo for quite a while. And I wanted it to be geeky and to represent some memorable milestone in my life. So I was thinking, mulling over some various ideas, sketching some things out. And then it hit me. XNA. Specifically the XNA logo. It’s super geeky (so geeky I’ll probably have to explain to 90% of the people that say it what it even means) and I’m not sure that anything has been so memorable and made such a change in my life as XNA. Cheesy but true. When the XNA framework came out, thing started happening quickly. I stumbled into a geek community and started going to code camps, MSDN events, code-a-thons. I got an XNA MVP award. Met huge geek idols in my life (like Rory Blyth and Scott Hanselman) and just really started getting integrated into this fantastic development community. Then to add to all of that I became part of this fantastic XNA community. It’s really just been one of the best things to ever happen to me and I’m having the time of my life right now. So sure, it’s permanent. Sure Microsoft could cancel XNA, rebrand it to Flimmer Flammer or some other name. Sure my arms are going to be wrinkly and flabby when I’m older and for sure I’m going to have to explain to people over and over again just what in the world “xna” means. But you know what, every time I look at that tattoo and every time I’m telling somebody what xna means, I’m going to remember all these awesome things that have happened to me. All the tremendous things I’m seeing people do with the XNA framework and more importantly all the stories and friendships I’ve formed in the XNA community. And I think that deserves a little permanent recognition.

  Read the article

• Is individual code ownership important?

  - by Jim Puls

  I'm in the midst of an argument with some coworkers over whether team ownership of the entire codebase is better than individual ownership of components of it. I'm a huge proponent of assigning every member of the team a roughly equal share of the codebase. It lets people take pride in their creation, gives the bug screeners an obvious first place to assign incoming tickets, and helps to alleviate "broken window syndrome". It also concentrates knowledge of specific functionality with one (or two) team members making bug fixes much easier. Most of all, it puts the final say on major decisions with one person who has a lot of input instead of with a committee. I'm not advocating for requiring permission if somebody else wants to change your code; maybe have the code review always be to the owner, sure. Nor am I suggesting building knowledge silos: there should be nothing exclusive about this ownership. But when suggesting this to my coworkers, I got a ton of pushback, certainly much more than I expected. So I ask the community: what are your opinions on working with a team on a large codebase? Is there something I'm missing about vigilantly maintaining collective ownership?

  Read the article

• Contract Work - Lessons Learned

  - by samerpaul

  I thought I would write a post of a different nature today, but still relevant to the tech world. I do a lot of contract jobs myself and really enjoy it. It's nice to keep jumping from project to project, and not having to go to an office or keep regular hours, etc. I really enjoy it. I have learned a lot in the past few years of doing it (both from experience and from help given to me from others, and the internet) so I thought I'd share some of that knowledge/experience today.So here's my own personal "lesson's learned" that hopefully will help you if you find yourself doing contract work:Should I take the job?Ok, so this is the first step. Assuming you were given sufficient information about what they want, then you should really think about what you're capable of doing and whether or not you should take this job. Personally, my rule is, if I know it's possible, I'll say yes, even if I don't yet know how to do it. That's because the internet is such a great help, it would be rare to run into an issue that you can't figure out with some help. So if your clients are asking for something that you don't yet know how to program, but you know you can do it on the platform then go for it. How else are you going to learn?Use this rule with some limitation, however. If you're really lacking the expertise or foundation in something, then unless you have tons of time to complete the project, then I wouldn't say yes. For example, I haven't personally done any 3d/openGL programming yet so I wouldn't say yes to a project that extensively uses it. OK, so I want the job, but how much do I charge?This part can be tricky. There is no set formula really, but I have some tips for pricing that will hopefully give you a better idea on how to confidently ask your price and have them accept. Here are some personal guidelinesHow much time do you have to complete the project? If it's shorter than average, then charge more. You can even make a subtle note about this (or not so subtle if they still don't get it.) If it seems too short of a time (i.e. near impossible to complete), be sure to say that. It looks bad to promise a time that you can't keep--and it makes it less likely for them to return to you for work.Your Hourly rate: How long have you been working in that language? Do you have existing projects to back you up? Or previous contacts that can vouch for your work? Are there very few people with your particular skill set? All of these things will lend themselves to setting an hourly rate. I'd also try out a quick google search of what your line of work is, to see what the industry standard is at that point in time.I wouldn't price too low, because you want to make your time worth it. You also want them to feel like they're paying for quality work (assuming you can deliver it :) ). Finally, think about your client. If it's a small business, then don't price it too high if you want the job. If it's an enterprise (like a Fortune company), then don't be afraid to price higher. They have the budget for it.Fixed price: If they want a fixed price project, then you need to think about how many hours it will take you to complete it and multiply it by the hourly rate you set for yourself. Then, honestly, I would add 10-20% on top of that. Why? Because nothing ever works exactly how you want it to. There are lots of times that something "trivial" is way harder than it should be, or something that "should work" doesn't for hours and it eats away at your hourly rate. I can't count the number of times I encountered a logical bug that took away an entire's day work because debuggers don't help in those cases. By adding that padding in, it's still OK to have those days where you don't get as much done as you want. And another useful tip: Depending on your client, and the scope, you most likely want to set that you both sign off on a specification sheet before doing any work, and that any changes will result in a re-evaulation of the price. This is to help protect you from being handed a huge new addition to the project half-way in, without any extra payment.Scope of project: Finally, is it a huge project? Is it really small/fast? This affects how much your client will be willing to pay. If it sounds big, they will be willing to pay more for it. If it seems really small, then you won't be able to get away with a large asking price (as easily).Ok, I priced it, now what?So now that you have the price, you want to make sure it feels justified to your client. I never set a price before I can really think about everything. For example, if you're still in your introduction phase, and they want a price, don't give one! Just comment that you will send them a proposal sheet with all the features outlined, and a price for everything. You don't want to shout out a low number and then deliver something that is way higher. You also don't want to shock them with a big number before they feel like they are getting a great product.Make up a proposal document in a word editor. Personally, I leave the price till the very end. Why? Because by the time they reach the end, you've already discussed all the great features you plan to implement, and how it's the best product they'll ever use, etc etc...so your price comes off as a steal! If you hit them up front with a price, they will read through the document with a negative bias. Think about those commercials on TV. They always go on about their product, then at the end, ask "What would you pay for something like this? $100? $50? How about $20!!". This is not by accident.Scenario: I finished the job way earlier than expectedYou have two options then. You can either polish the hell out of the application, and even throw in a few bonus features (assuming they are in-line with the customer's needs) or you can sit and wait on it until you near your deadline. Why don't you want to turn it in too early? Because you should treat that extra time as a surplus. If you said it is going to take you 3 weeks, and it took you only 1, you have a surplus of 2 weeks. I personally don't want to let them know that I can do a 3 week project in 1 week. Why not? Because that may not always be the case! I may later have a 3 week project that takes all 3 weeks, but if I set a precedent of delivering super early, then the pressure is on for that longer project. It also makes it harder to quote longer times if you keep delivering too early.Feel free to deliver early, but again, don't do it too early. They may also wonder why they paid you for 3 weeks of work if you're done in 1. They may further wonder if the product sucks, or what is wrong with it, if it's done so early, etc.I would just polish the application. Everyone loves polish in their applications. The smallest details are what make an application go from "functional" to "fantastic". And since you are still delivering on time, then they are still going to be very happy with you.Scenario: It's taking way too long to finish this, and the deadline is nearing/here!So this is not a fun scenario to be in, but it'll happen. Sometimes the scope of the project gets out of hand. The best policy here is OPENNESS/HONESTY. Tell them that the project is taking longer than expected, and give a reasonable time for when you think you'll have it done. I typically explain it in a way that makes it sound like it isn't something that I did wrong, but it's just something about the nature of the project. This really goes for any scenario, to be honest. Just continue to stay open and communicative about your progress. This doesn't mean that you should email them every five minutes (unless they want you to), but it does mean that maybe every few days or once a week, give them an update on where you're at, and what's next. They'll be happy to know they are paying for progress, and it'll make it easier to ask for an extension when something goes wrong, because they know that you've been working on it all along.Final tips and thoughts:In general, contract work is really fun and rewarding. It's nice to learn new things all the time, as mandated by the project ,and to challenge yourself to do things you may not have done before. The key is to build a great relationship with your clients for future work, and for recommendations. I am always very honest with them and I never promise something I can't deliver. Again, under promise, over deliver!I hope this has proved helpful!Cheers,samerpaul

  Read the article

• Http handler for classic ASP application for introducing a layer between client and server

  - by JPReddy

  I've a huge classic ASP application where in thousands of users manage their company/business data. Currently this is not multi-user so that application users can create users and authorize them to access certain areas in the system. I'm thinking of writing a handler which will act as middle man between client and server and go through every request and find out who the user is and whether he is authorized to access the data he is trying to. For the moment ignore about the part how I'm going to check the authorization and all that stuff. Just want to know whether I can implement a ASP.net handler and use it as middle man for the requests coming for a asp website? I just want to read the url and see what is the page user is trying to access and what are the parameters he is passing in the url the posted data. Is this possible? I read that Asp.net handler cannot be used with asp website and I need to use isapi filter or extensions for that and that can be developed only c/c++. Can anybody through some light on this and guide me whether I'm in the right direction or not?

  Read the article

• How can Agile methodologies be adapted to High Volume processing system development?

  - by luckyluke

  I am developing high volume processing systems. Like mathematical models that calculate various parameters based on millions of records, calculated derived fields over milions of records, process huge files having transactions etc... I am well aware of unit testing methodologies and if my code is in C# I have no problem in unit testing it. Problem is I often have code in T-SQL, C# code that is a SQL stored assembly, and SSIS workflow with a good amount of logic (and outcomes etc) or some SAS process. What is the approach YOu use when developing such systems. I usually develop several tests as Stored procedures in a designed schema(TEST) and then automatically run them overnight and check out the results. But this is only for T-SQL. And Continous integration IS hard. But the problem is with testing SSIS packages. How do You test it? What is Your preferred approach for stubbing data into tables (especially if You need a lot data initialization). I have some approach derived over the years but maybe I am just not reading enough articles. So Banking, Telecom, Risk developers out there. How do You test your mission critical apps that process milions of records at end day, month end etc? What frameworks do You use? How do You validate that Your ssis package is Correct (as You develop it)/ How do You achieve continous integration in such an environment (Personally I never got there)? I hope this is not to open-ended question. How do You test Your map-reduce jobs for example (i do not use hadoop but this is quite similar). luke Hope that this is not too open ended

  Read the article

• Anyone been successful changing their career without having to start over from scratch?

  - by Awaken

  I posted a similar question on careeroverflow, but stackoverflow is just way more active and has way more users, so hopefully someone out there can help answer. I am currently an embedded developer in the defense/aerospace world for a big company. While I like the benefits and the pay, it just isn't keeping me happy. The Paul Graham article: How To Do What You Love really struck home. The problem I face are my golden handcuffs. When I look at jobs out there, they all want 5+ years experience in that language with expertise in framework/tool/server A,B,C, etc... I have worked in C and C++ on the job (in a real-time embedded environment) with some small things in C# and Java. I'm learning Ruby now to expand my knowledge, but I don't consider myself an expert in anything right now. I'd love to work on desktop applications or web apps. Is it possible for someone like me to make the switch without going back to the start line? I'd love to leave the huge bureaucracy and work with some great developers. I'd be willing to work late and take a modest pay cut, but that isn't so clear just from a resume. For those that have altered their career path, how did you do it? For those people who are in charge of hiring, what can I do to help myself?

  Read the article

• How to effectively design a piece of software

  - by ti83plus

  Im a compsci student and ive got some experience in various languages and paradigms c/java/python/ruby/html/css/scheme/sql/asp(classic). I realise that i want to have some software in my portfolio for future job hunting even tho i still have 2 years left of my education. Ive got a pretty good idea of what i want to make, its a webapp. Most shops around here are either .net or java and since i know java best and dont have access to ms developer tools im thinking i should go with java. Even tho i feel i know the principles of OOP pretty good ive got no clue how to go from my idea to a working solution. Where can i access information about designing the underlying architechture of my solution? Also i would like to know what other technologies i should train on, my current list includes javascript(and possibly a javascript library) some sort of java web framework tips are appreciated. I would like to add support for android/iphone apps in the future and this is something i have to take into account when designing the app. I have done a course on software engineering but i found this to be more centered around project management ideas then the actual design and implementation. So i would like tips on technologies i should focus on to get the most out of my time without the massive overhead of huge config processes but at the same time keep my project viable in a business sense, so that i use technologies that are relevant for business (java developer jobs). And i would also like tips on where i can learn more about the design process around a software project, i will be working mostly alone. But i find the approach ive used up until now (start coding and figure it out as you go) wont suffice.

  Read the article

• PeopleSoft and PeopleTools at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by PeopleTools Strategy

  From Jeff Robbins PeopleTools 8.52 Gregory Sawyer October 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Oracle Open World is once again just around the corner.  This is a huge event for Oracle with thousands of individual sessions that cover all sorts of topics.  Here’s a link to a note from Paco Aubrejuan about PeopleSoft’s plans for this year’s conference: [link: http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/utilities/pfst-oow12-letter-1841052.pdf] Each year, PeopleTools sessions prove to be among the highest rated and best attended sessions of the conference. Once again we’ve put together a broad program of sessions and a great Hands on Lab, so be sure to use the Open World Schedule Builder to pre-register for the sessions you think will be of greatest value to you: [link: https://www.oracle.com/webapps/token/scheduler] Highlights of our program include: · Customer success with PeopleTools 8.52 · Great new features of the upcoming PeopleTools 8.53 · PeopleSoft’s new mobile solutions · Innovative technologies for your PeopleSoft system: Integration, User Experience, Lifecycle Management and more We’re excited about all that we have planned and look forward to seeing you there.  Stop by the DEMOGrounds to ask questions, see new features or just say hello. See you all there Jeff

  Read the article

• Too many heap subpools might break the upgrade

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Recently one of our new upcoming Oracle Database 11.2 reference customers did upgrade their production database - a huge EBS system - from Oracle 9.2.0.8 to Oracle Database 11.2.0.2. They've tested very well, we've optimized the upgrade process, the recompilation timings etc.  But once the live upgrade was done it did fail in the JAVA component piece with this error: begin if initjvmaux.startstep('CREATE_JAVA_SYSTEM') then * ORA-29553: classw in use: SYS.javax/mail/folder ORA-06512: at "SYS.INITJVMAUX", line 23 ORA-06512: at line 5 Support diagnosis was pretty quick - and refered to:Bug 10165223 - ORA-29553: class in use: sys.javax/mail/folder during database upgrade But how could this happen? Actually I don't know as we have used the same init.ora setup on test and production. The only difference: the prod system has more CPUs and RAM. Anyway, the bug names as workarounds to either decrease the SGA to less than 1GB or decrease the number of heap subpools to 1. Finally this query did help to diagnose the number of heap subpools: select count(distinct kghluidx) num_subpools from x$kghlu where kghlushrpool = 1; The result was 2 - so we did run the upgrade now with this parameter set: _kghdsidx_count=1 And finally it did work well. One sad thing:After the upgrade did fail Support did recommend to restore the whole database - which took an additional 3-4 hours. As the ORACLE SERVER component has been already upgraded successfully at the stage where the error did happen it would have been fine to go on with the manual upgrade and start catupgrd.sql script. It would have been detected that the ORACLE SERVER is upgraded already and just picked up the non-upgraded components. The good news:Finally I had one extra slide to add to our workshop presentation

  Read the article

• Usual Suspects: Typical 3rd Party Entities in E-Commerce [closed]

  - by zharvey

  I am doing some requirements/analysis for a web app that I'd like to build (Ruby/Java developer here). This web app would have a store front, shopping cart and would need to be totally compliant with all e-com best practices. It's amazing how much non-technical info comes up when you search for phrases like "how does e-commerce work", but very little comes up in the way of technical details. As such, I'm having extreme frustration finding answers to what I consider pretty straight-forward questions. I came here because I believe this question is not off-topic; if it is, please leave a comment as to why this question does not belong here and I will happily remove it myself (upvotes if your comment can point me to the correct place for this question!). So then: What 3rd parties will I need to work with to have a modern, web-compliant e-com site? So far I can account for a payment gateway provider like Authorize.net and an SSL certificate provider like Trustwave. Any others? What other standards besides PCI compliance will I be held to (besides governing laws, of course!)? Vulnerability scans: PCI compliance requires quarterly scans: if I'm a "Level 4" (low volume) Merchant does that still apply to me? Irregardless, my backend architecture is quite huge, with web servers, app servers, database, message brokers and more. Do each of these servers need to be scanned?!? If not what servers do need to get these quarterly scans? I usually hate to ask micro-questions inside of one large one, but these are so closely-related I just felt like asking them all separately would be spamming the site with too many petty questions. Thanks in advance!

  Read the article

• Ubuntu 12, chromium/chrome facebook not loading

  - by Grant

  this problem started with chrome, tried chromium to fix it. both have this problem, and after installed firefox no longer works with facebook. I found a threas with two fixes that work and what I need to know is how to make these fixes permanent. one is a cache permissions workaround. launching chromium from terminal with a redirect to a new self created cache in the home folder works. how can i repair the permissions issue with the cache or make a permanent change to the cache chromium uses? two, the ifconfig wlan0 mtu set to 1492, this setting doesnt seem to be perpetual after a reboot. this set of issues is I believe specific to my particular install as there isnt a huge issue from anyone else out there, i'm on a toshiba satellite laptop with a 50/50 HDD partition split with windows. This is likely causing the issue or contributing in some way but I wont run linux full time on this machine until I get these kinks a more permanent fix. Thanks in advance for any advice/answers.

  Read the article

• Removing ocurrances of characters in a string

  - by DmainEvent

  I am reading this book, programming Interviews exposed by John Wiley and sons and in chapter 6 they are discussing removing all instances of characters in a src string using a removal string... so removeChars(string str, string remove) In there writeup they sey the steps to accomplish this are to have a boolean lookup array with all values initially set to false, then loop through each character in remove setting the corresponding value in the lookup array to true (note: this could also be a hash if the possible character set where huge like Unicode-16 or something like that or if str and remove are both relatively small... < 100 characters I suppose). You then iterate through the str with a source and destination index, copying each character only if its corresponding value in the lookup array is false... Which makes sense... I don't understand the code that they use however... They have for(src = 0; src < len; ++src){ flags[r[src]] == true; } which is turning the flag value at the remove string indexed at src to true... so if you start out with PLEASE HELP as your str and LEA as your remove you will be setting in your flag table at 0,1,2... t|t|t but after that you will get an out of bounds exception because r doesn't have have anything greater than 2 in it... even using there example you get an out of bounds exception... Am is there code example unworkable?

  Read the article

• Stuff you learned in school, that you have never used again?

  - by Mercfh

  Obviously we learn plenty of things in our University/College/Whatever that probably don't apply to everyday use, but is there anything that stands out particularly? Maybe something that was concentrated ALOT on? For me it was def. 2 things: OO Concepts and Pointers I still use OO, but not nearly to the amount people made it out to be, i can see where it'd be useful but in my line of work we don't have huge amounts of classes, maybe a couple at most. And there certainly isn't much OO reuse (i finally figured out what that means lol) Pointers are another thing, again I can see where they'd be useful...however I barely barely ever touch them, nor do the others I work with. I guess language choice has alot to do with that but still. What about you guys? edit: For those who are asking I work for a Large Printer company, and most of the Applications we work on are Java+XML and Actionscript for "Printer Apps". But we are moving towards other languages (think like webkits and stuff). So the Code amounts per parts are quite small. I never say OO wasn't useful I just said I personally havent seen it used in my workplace much.

  Read the article

• NoSQL

  - by NoReasoning

  Last night, (Tuesday, June 28), at the KC .NET User group meeting, George Westwater gave a terrific presentation on NoSQL. The best way to define it (the best way is to see George explain it, and he says he will record his presentation and make it available through his blog – link above)  is databases  that does not use relational technology. And his point, and this is true – I have been around awhile – is that non-relational databases have been used for over 50 years in the business. He points out that Wall Street firms have been using non-relational technology ever since they started using computers. IBM still fully supports IMS, now in version 11 (12 is in beta), because these firms are still using this product and will continue to do so for a long time. Of course, like a lot of computer business technology, there are a lot of new NoSQL products available these days, simply as a reaction to the problems of scaling relational databases for internet use. As a result, it almost looks as though NoSQL is something new. And there are a lot, I mean a LOT, I mean a L-O-T , of new products out there for this technology. The best resource to cover all of these products is http://nosql-database.org/, which has a huge listing of what is available. My interest in the subject is primarily due to my interest in Windows Azure and the fact that Windows Azure storage is all non-relational, even the table storage. It is very fascinating and most of all, far cheaper than using SQL Azure for storage in the “cloud."

  Read the article

• Searching for entity awareness in 3D space algorithm and data structure

  - by Khanser

  I'm trying to do some huge AI system just for the fun and I've come to this problem. How can I let the AI entities know about each other without getting the CPU to perform redundant and costly work? Every entity has a spatial awareness zone and it has to know what's inside when it has to decide what to do. First thoughts, for every entity test if the other entities are inside the first's reach. Ok, so it was the first try and yep, that is redundant and costly. We are working with real time AI over 10000+ entities so this is not a solution. Second try, calculate some grid over the awareness zone of every entity and test whether in this zones are entities (we are working with 3D entities with float x,y,z location coordinates) testing every point in the grid with the indexed-by-coordinate entities. Well, I don't like this because is also costly, but not as the first one. Third, create some multi linked lists over the x's and y's indexed positions of the entities so when we search for an interval between x,y and z,w positions (this interval defines the square over the spatial awareness zone) over the multi linked list, we won't have 'voids'. This has the problem of finding the nearest proximity value if there isn't one at the position where we start the search. I'm not convinced with any of the ideas so I'm searching for some enlightening. Do you people have any better ideas?

  Read the article

• Does Agile force developers to work more?

  - by Shooshpanchick

  Looking at common Agile practices it seems to me that they (intentionally or unintentionally?) force developer to spend more time actually working as opposed to reading blogs/articles, chatting, coffee breaks and just plain procrastinating. In particular: 1) Pair programming - the biggest work-forcer, just because it is inconvenient to do all that procrastination when there are two of you sitting together. 2) Short stories - when you have a HUGE chunk of work that must be done in e.g. a month, it is pretty common to slack off in the first three weeks and switch to OMG DEADLINE mode for the last one. And with the little chunks (that must be done in a day or less) it is exact opposite - you feel that time is tight, there is no space for maneuvering, and you will be held accountable for the task pretty soon, so you start working immediately. 3) Team communication and cohesion - when you underperform in a slow, distanced and silent environment it may feel ok, but when at the end of the day at Scrum meeting everyone boasts what they have accomplished and you have nothing to say you may actually feel ashamed. 4) Testing and feedback - again, it prevents you from keeping tasks "99% ready" (when it's actually around 20%) until the deadline suddenly happens. Do you feel that under Agile you work more than under "conventional" methodologies? Is this pressure compensated by the more comfortable environment and by the feeling of actually getting right things done quickly?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73  | Next Page >