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• Do we need to adopt a black-box asset our project is inheriting from its predecessor?

  - by Tom Anderson

  Our client has an eCommerce site which was developed by an in-house team, and is now showing its age. I work for a firm brought in as external contractors to build a replacement. Part of the current site is a Flash viewer applet which displays media about the product - zoom-able images, 360-degree views, movies, and so on. We need to show the same media the current site does, so we are simply reusing the viewer. The viewer is embedded on a page in the usual way, and told what media to show by means of an XML file it loads from our server, which is pretty simple for us to generate. We've got this working; it was pretty straightforward. But what else do we need to do? The thing is, as far as we're concerned, the viewer is a binary blob which is served from the client's content-distribution network. We embed it, feed it some XML, and it does its job, but we have no power over its internals. It's completely opaque to us - a black box. We can use it to do what it does, but we can't change it, so if we ever need to do something different, we're stuffed. We're building this site for the client, and when we're done, we'll hand it over for them to maintain. We won't be doing the maintenance ourselves. There's a small team within the client who are working as part of our team, and who will be the ones doing the maintenance. That team only includes one person from the team that built the old site, and it's not someone who knows the image viewer. The people who do know the image viewer are not slated to join our team when our system replaces theirs - they'll be moved to other projects. The documentation on the viewer is extremely thin, and as far as i know doesn't cover the internals at all. My worry is that if someone doesn't take some positive action, all knowledge of the internal workings of the viewer - even down to where the source code for it is - will be lost. It's possible it already has been. Is this something to worry about? If so, whose job is it to worry about it? What should they do about it once they've got worried?

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• Data migration - dangerous or essential?

  - by MRalwasser

  The software development department of my company is facing with the problem that data migrations are considered as potentially dangerous, especially for my managers. The background is that our customers are using a large amount of data with poor quality. The reasons for this is only partially related to our software quality, but rather to the history of the data: Most of them have been migrated from predecessor systems, some bugs caused (mostly business) inconsistencies in the data records or misentries by accident on the customer's side (which our software allowed by error). The most important counter-arguments from my managers are that faulty data may turn into even worse data, the data troubles may awake some managers at the customer and some processes on the customer's side may not work anymore because their processes somewhat adapted to our system. Personally, I consider data migrations as an integral part of the software development and that data migration can been seen to data what refactoring is to code. I think that data migration is an essential for creating software that evolves. Without it, we would have to create painful software which somewhat works around a bad data structure. I am asking you: What are your thoughts to data migration, especially for the real life cases and not only from a developer's perspecticve? Do you have any arguments against my managers opinions? How does your company deal with data migrations and the difficulties caused by them? Any other interesting thoughts which belongs to this topics?

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• Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed?

  - by jt0dd

  On SuperUser, I asked a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts and would like to have a look at the possibility at the software application of that concept. I'd like to write a simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to try this. My Question: I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all. This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start? The answer to this question isn't required to determine whether or not the experiment will succeed, but rather whether or not it's logically possible for such a thing to occur in any program, using this concept as an example. My theory is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. If, in the multiplication of numbers of any immense size, the shortcut were to calculate the result via less instructions (or faster) than traditional ALU multiplication, I would consider the experiment a success.

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• Possible for one developer to work on a site thats on another developer's server?

  - by cire4

  Sorry for the confusing title. Let me explain: I am currently trying to get a site developed. My current developer has taken the site about as far as I think they are capable of and I am planning on hiring another developer to put the finishing touches on it, debug it and upgrade some of the more technical details. The site is hosted on my current developer's server. They are scheduled to work on it until mid-April, at which point they will transfer the site to my server. I would like the new developer to get started on the upgrades to the site as soon as possible. So my question is this: Is it possible for the new developer to start working on upgrades to the site while it is still on the old developer's server (and without the old developer knowing about it)? Would the new developer have to create a mirror site and work on it that way? I'm having trouble imagining if this is possible so any advice you can offer would be much appreciated!

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• Named output parameters vs return values

  - by Abyx

  Which code is better: // C++ void handle_message(...some input parameters..., bool& wasHandled) void set_some_value(int newValue, int* oldValue = nullptr) // C# void handle_message(...some input parameters..., out bool wasHandled) void set_some_value(int newValue, out int oldValue) or bool handle_message(...some input parameters...) ///< Returns -1 if message was handled //(sorry, this documentation was broken a year ago and we're too busy to fix it) int set_some_value(T newValue) // (well, it's obvious what this function returns, so I didn't write any documentation for it) The first one doesn't have and need any documentation. It's a self-documenting code. Output value clearly says what it means, and it's really hard to make a change like this: - void handle_message(Message msg, bool& wasHandled) { - wasHandled = false; - if (...) { wasHandled = true; ... + void handle_message(Message msg, int& wasHandled) { + wasHandled = -1; + if (...) { wasHandled = ...; With return values such change could be done easily /// Return true if message was handled - bool handle_message(Message msg) { + int handle_message(Message msg) { ... - return true; + return -1; Most of compilers don't (and can't) check documentation written in comments. Programmers also tend to ignore comments while editing code. So, again, the question is: if subroutine has single output value, should it be a procedure with well-named self-documenting output parameter, or should it be a function which returns an unnamed value and have a comment describing it?

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• How do I make the jump from developing for Android to Windows Phone 7?

  - by Rob S.

  I'm planning on making the jump over from developing apps for Android to developing apps for Windows Phone 7 as well. For starters, I figured I would port over my simplest app. The code itself isn't much of a problem as the transition from Java to C# isn't that bad. If anything, this transition is actually easier than I expected. What is troublesome is switching SDKs. I've already compiled some basic Windows Phone 7 apps and ran through some tutorials but I'm still feeling a bit lost. For example, I'm not sure what the equivalent of a ScrollView on Android would be on Windows Phone 7. So does anyone have any advice or any resources they can offer me to help me make this transition? Additionally, any comments on the Windows Phone 7 app market (especially in comparison to the Android market) would also be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance for your time.

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• Pattern for a class that does only one thing

  - by Heinzi

  Let's say I have a procedure that does stuff: void doStuff(initalParams) { ... } Now I discover that "doing stuff" is quite a compex operation. The procedure becomes large, I split it up into multiple smaller procedures and soon I realize that having some kind of state would be useful while doing stuff, so that I need to pass less parameters between the small procedures. So, I factor it out into its own class: class StuffDoer { private someInternalState; public Start(initalParams) { ... } // some private helper procedures here ... } And then I call it like this: new StuffDoer().Start(initialParams); or like this: new StuffDoer(initialParams).Start(); And this is what feels wrong. When using the .NET or Java API, I always never call new SomeApiClass().Start(...);, which makes me suspect that I'm doing it wrong. Sure, I could make StuffDoer's constructor private and add a static helper method: public static DoStuff(initalParams) { new StuffDoer().Start(initialParams); } But then I'd have a class whose external interface consists of only one static method, which also feels weird. Hence my question: Is there a well-established pattern for this type of classes that have only one entry point and have no "externally recognizable" state, i.e., instance state is only required during execution of that one entry point?

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• The cost of longer delay between development and QA

  - by Neil N

  At my current position, QA has become a bottleneck. We have had the unfortunate occurence of features being held out of the current build so that QA could finish testing. This means features that are done being developed may not get tested for 2-3 weeks after the developer has already moved on. With dev moving faster thean QA, this time gap is only going to get bigger. I keep flipping through my copy of Code Compelte, looking for a "Hard Data" snippet that shows the cost of fixing defects grows exponentially the longer it exists. Can someone point me to some studies that back up this concept? I am trying to convince the powers that be that the QA bottleneck is a lot more costly than they think.

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• What should happen at the start of a software project startup?

  - by Willem

  A quick introduction My college semesters include a 8 week project working for an actual company with a software need in order to get some much needed practical experience. I have just started such a project with 5 other students. We're required to spend roughly 40 hours a week per student on this project. We're working with SCRUM as the software development method, this was assigned by our teachers. The question Day one of the project just ended which has created some questions for me as to how to start a project in the 'real world'. Our first day included working on a project planning document (not sure what the English term is), creating a appointment with the company for an introduction and the opportunity to start specifying the requirements and setting up some standards for the behavior within the group. However these items didn't take that long to finish. We've made some concrete plans for tomorrow and the day after we'll meet the company. This still leaves several hours of 'work-time' unspent. Is it usual not being able to fill every hour of a day for work at the start of a project or are we simply too inexperienced to see what work needs to be done at this stage of a project, or are we, perhaps, going through the above list too fast? How does this work in the 'real world'? Do you spend your time wondering 'what should I do now', or do you have a clear view of what you're supposed to do at that moment?

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• What does mathematics have to do with programming?

  - by Rory

  I just started a diploma in software development. Right now we're starting out with basic Java and such (so right from the bottom you might say) - which is fine, I have no programming experience apart from knowing how to do "Hello World" in Java. I keep hearing that mathematics is pertinent to coding, but how is it so? What general examples would show how mathematics and programming go together, or are reliant on one another? I apologize of my question is vague, I'm barely starting to get a rough idea of the kind of world I'm stepping into as a code monkey student...

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• What can programmers learn from the construction industry?

  - by Renesis

  When talking with colleagues about software design and development principles, I've noticed one of the most common sources for analogies is the construction industry. We build software and we consider the design and structure to be the architecture. One of the best ways to learn (or teach) are through analyzing analogies - what other analogies can be drawn from construction? (whether already in common use in software or not). Please provide a description, or your personal experience, regarding how the programming concept is similar to the construction concept. [Credit to Programming concepts taken from the arts and humanities for the idea]

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• Comparison of languages by usage type?

  - by Tom

  Does anyone know of a good place to go find comparisons of programming languages by the intended platform/usage? Basically, what I want to know, is of the more popular languages, which ones are meant for high level application development, low level system development, mobile development, web, etc. If there's a good listing out there already, I'm not finding it so far. Does anyone know of a place that would have this? Thanks.

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• Are XML Comments Necessary Documentation?

  - by Bob Horn

  I used to be a fan of requiring XML comments for documentation. I've since changed my mind for two main reasons: Like good code, methods should be self-explanatory. In practice, most XML comments are useless noise that provide no additional value. Many times we simply use GhostDoc to generate generic comments, and this is what I mean by useless noise: /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the unit of measure. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The unit of measure. /// </value> public string UnitOfMeasure { get; set; } To me, that's obvious. Having said that, if there were special instructions to include, then we should absolutely use XML comments. I like this excerpt from this article: Sometimes, you will need to write comments. But, it should be the exception not the rule. Comments should only be used when they are expressing something that cannot be expressed in code. If you want to write elegant code, strive to eliminate comments and instead write self-documenting code. Am I wrong to think we should only be using XML comments when the code isn't enough to explain itself on its own? I believe this is a good example where XML comments make pretty code look ugly. It takes a class like this... public class RawMaterialLabel : EntityBase { public long Id { get; set; } public string ManufacturerId { get; set; } public string PartNumber { get; set; } public string Quantity { get; set; } public string UnitOfMeasure { get; set; } public string LotNumber { get; set; } public string SublotNumber { get; set; } public int LabelSerialNumber { get; set; } public string PurchaseOrderNumber { get; set; } public string PurchaseOrderLineNumber { get; set; } public DateTime ManufacturingDate { get; set; } public string LastModifiedUser { get; set; } public DateTime LastModifiedTime { get; set; } public Binary VersionNumber { get; set; } public ICollection<LotEquipmentScan> LotEquipmentScans { get; private set; } } ... And turns it into this: /// <summary> /// Container for properties of a raw material label /// </summary> public class RawMaterialLabel : EntityBase { /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the id. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The id. /// </value> public long Id { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the manufacturer id. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The manufacturer id. /// </value> public string ManufacturerId { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the part number. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The part number. /// </value> public string PartNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the quantity. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The quantity. /// </value> public string Quantity { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the unit of measure. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The unit of measure. /// </value> public string UnitOfMeasure { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the lot number. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The lot number. /// </value> public string LotNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the sublot number. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The sublot number. /// </value> public string SublotNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the label serial number. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The label serial number. /// </value> public int LabelSerialNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the purchase order number. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The purchase order number. /// </value> public string PurchaseOrderNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the purchase order line number. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The purchase order line number. /// </value> public string PurchaseOrderLineNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the manufacturing date. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The manufacturing date. /// </value> public DateTime ManufacturingDate { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the last modified user. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The last modified user. /// </value> public string LastModifiedUser { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the last modified time. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The last modified time. /// </value> public DateTime LastModifiedTime { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the version number. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The version number. /// </value> public Binary VersionNumber { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the lot equipment scans. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The lot equipment scans. /// </value> public ICollection<LotEquipmentScan> LotEquipmentScans { get; private set; } }

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• How do I make the jump from Android to Windows Phone 7?

  - by Rob S.

  I'm planning on making the jump over from developing apps for Android to developing apps for Windows Phone 7 as well. For starters, I figured I would port over my simplest app. The code itself isn't much of a problem. The transition from Java to C# isn't that bad. It's actually easier than I expected. What is troublesome is switching SDKs. I've already compiled some basic Windows Phone 7 apps and ran through some tutorials but I'm still feeling a bit lost. For example, I'm not sure what the equivalent of a ScrollView on Android would be on Windows Phone 7. So does anyone have any advice or any resources they can offer me to help me make this transition? Additionally, any comments on the Windows Phone 7 app market (especially in comparison to the Android market) would be greatly appreciated as well. Thank you very much in advance for your time.

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• Plug-in based software design

  - by gekod

  I'm a software developer who is willing to improve his software design skills. I think software should not only work but have a solid and elegant design too to be reusable and extensive to later purposes. Now I'm in search of some help figuring out good practices for specific problems. Actually, I'm trying to find out how to design a piece of software that would be extensible via plug-ins. The questions I have are the following: Should plug-ins be able to access each others functionality? This would bring dependencies I guess. What should the main application offer to the plug-ins if I want to let's say develop a multimedia software which would play videos and music but which could later on get functionality added over plug-ins that would let's say be able to read video status (time, bps, ...) and display it. Would this mean that the player itself would have to be part of the main program and offer services to plug-ins to get such information or would there be a way to develop the player as a plug-in also but offer in some way the possibility to other plug-ins to interact with it? As you see, my questions are mainly for learning purposes as I strive to improve my software development skills. I hope to find help here and apologize if something is wrong with my question.

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• Is Cygwin or Windows Command Prompt preferable for getting a consistent terminal experience for development?

  - by Paul Hazen

  The question: Which is better, installing cygwin or one of its cousins on all my windows machines to have a consistent terminal experience across all my development machines, or becoming well trained in the skill of mentally switching from linux terminal to windows command prompt? Systems I use: OSX Lion on a Macbook Air Windows 8 on a desktop Windows 7 on the same desktop Fedora 16 on the same desktop What I'm trying to accomplish Configure an entirely consistent (or consistent enough) terminal experience across all my machines. "enough" in this context is clearly subjective. Please be clear in your answer why the configuration you suggest is consistent enough. One more thing to keep in mind: While I do write a lot of code intended to run on Windows (actually code that runs on Windows Phone which necessitates a windows machine), I also write a lot of Java code, and prefer to do so in vim. I test a local repo in Java on my windows machine, and push to another test machine running ubuntu later in the development stage. When I push to the ubuntu machine, I'm exclusively in terminal, since I'm accessing it via SSH. Summary, with more accurate question: Is there a good way to accomplish what I'm trying to do, or is it better to get accustomed to remembering different commands based on the system I'm on? Which (if either) is considered "best practice" by the development community? Alternatively, for a consistent development experience, would it be better to write all my code SSHed into another machine, and move things to windows for compile / build only when I needed to? That seems like too much work... but could be a solution. Update: While there are insightful responses below, I have yet to hear an answer that talks about why any given solution is superior. Cygwin/GnuWin32 is certainly a way to accomplish a similar experience on all platforms, but since I'm just learning all things command line, I don't want to set myself up to do a lot of relearning/unlearning in the future. Cygwin/GnuWin32 has its peculiarities I would imagine, and being aware of how that set up works on Windows is a learning curve. Additionally, using Cygwin/GnuWin32 robs me of learning the benefits of PowerShell. As a newcomer to working in a command line, which path should I choose to minimize having to relearn/unlearn things in the future? or as my first paragraph poses: [is it better to use Cygwin] ...or [become] well trained in the skill of mentally switching from linux terminal to windows command prompt?

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• Client-Server connection response timeout issues

  - by Srikar

  User creates a folder in client and in the client-side code I hit an API to the server to make this persistent for that user. But in some cases, my server is so busy that the request timesout. The server has executed my request but timedout before sending a response back to client. The timeout set is 10 seconds in client. At this point the client thinks that server has not executed its request (of creating a folder) and ends up sending it again. Now I have 2 folders on the server but the user has created only 1 folder in the client. How to prevent this? One of the ways to solve this is to use a unique ID with each new request. So the ID acts as a distinguisher between old and new requests from client. But this leads to storing these IDs on my server and do a lookup for each API call which I want to avoid. Other way is to increase the timeout duration. But I dont want to change this from 10 seconds. Something tells me that there are better solutions. I have posted this question in stackoverflow but I think its better suited here. UPDATE: I will make my problem even more explicit. The client is a webbrowser and the server is running nginx+django+mysql (standard stack). The user creates a folder in webbrowser. As a result I need to hit a server API. The API call responds back, thereby client knows API call was success. This is normal scenario. Sometimes though, server successfully completes the API request but the client-side (webbrowser) connection timesout before server can respond back. The client has no clue at this point. The user thinks the request was a fail & clicks again. This time it was a success but when the UI refreshes he sees 2 folders. I want to remedy this situation.

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• Finding most Important Node(s) in a Directed Graph

  - by Srikar Appal

  I have a large (˜ 20 million nodes) directed Graph with in-edges & out-edges. I want to figure out which parts of of the graph deserve the most attention. Often most of the graph is boring, or at least it is already well understood. The way I am defining "attention" is by the concept of "connectedness" i.e. How can i find the most connected node(s) in the graph? In what follows, One can assume that nodes by themselves have no score, the edges have no weight & they are either connected or not. This website suggest some pretty complicated procedures like n-dimensional space, Eigen Vectors, graph centrality concepts, pageRank etc. Is this problem that complex? Can I not do a simple Breadth-First Traversal of the entire graph where at each node I figure out a way to find the number of in-edges. The node with most in-edges is the most important node in the graph. Am I missing something here?

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• How can we reduce downtime at the end of an iteration?

  - by Anna Lear

  Where I work we practice scrum-driven agile with 3-week iterations. Yes, it'd be nice if the iterations were shorter, but changing that isn't an option at the moment. At the end of the iteration, I usually find that the last day goes very slowly. The actual work has already been completed and accepted. There are a couple meetings (the retrospective and the next iteration planning), but other than that not much is going on. What sort of techniques can we as a team use to maintain momentum through the last day? Should we address defects? Get an early start on the next iteration's work anyway? Something else?

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• Methodology for Documenting Existing Code Base

  - by George Stocker

  I work as part of a team on an existing application that has no inline documentation, nor does it have technical documentation. As I've been working on various bug reports on the application, I've written a sort of breadcrumb trail for myself - bug numbers in various places so that the next developer can refer to that bug number to see what was going on. My question is thus: What is the most effecient method for documenting this code? Should I document as I touch the area (the virus method, if you will), or should I document from each section on its own, and not follow paths that branch out into other areas of the application? Should I insert inline comments where none previously existed (with the fear that I may end up incorrectly identifying what the code does)? What method would you use to accurately and quickly document a rather large application that has no existing inline documentation, nor inline references to external documentation?

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• Software design for non object oriented paradigm

  - by Dean

  I'm currently working on a project where I'm writing the firmware for an electronic system in C, and have been asked to produce documentation on the development/evolution of the software for the embedded devices. Having developed software in the object oriented paradigm I know to use UML to document the software such as class diagrams with objects, however this does not work for documenting the development of my embedded system. So what should I produce to document the development of my firmware?

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• Techniques and methods to improve and speedup development

  - by Jlouro

  I just got a new project. It’s a WinForm app. And it’s interesting because I will have the possibility to learn how fish farms work and are managed. I will have to develop touch interfaces, and use datasnap to communicate and sync data between farm and office. The development will be done in DELPHI win32, still not sure about the database, but maybe SQLlite. So now comes the difficult part of the project, building it. I am just finishing one. It took me a lot of time to do it and I am a bit “burned out”. I will have time to relax, not much, but a few days. What I am looking is some tips and tricks and possibly tools to be able to speed up the development. It must be up and running in 2 months. So what tricks do you use to speed up things?

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• Comparison of languages by usage type? [closed]

  - by Tom

  Does anyone know of a good place to go find comparisons of programming languages by the intended platform/usage? Basically, what I want to know, is of the more popular languages, which ones are meant for high level application development, low level system development, mobile development, web, etc. If there's a good listing out there already, I'm not finding it so far. Does anyone know of a place that would have this? Thanks.

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• How to stop getting too focused on a train of thought when programming?

  - by LDM91

  I often find myself getting too focused on a train of thought when programming, which results in me having what I guess could be described as "tunnel vision". As a result of this I miss important details/clues, which means I waste a fair amount of time before finally deciding the path I'm taking to solve the task is wrong. Afterwards, I take a step back which almost always results in me discovering what I've missed in a lot less time.. It's becoming really frustrating as it feels like I'm wasting a lot of time and effort, so I was wondering if anyone else had experienced similar issues, and had some suggestions to stop going down dead ends and programming "blindly" as it were!

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• Why do programming languages allow shadowing/hiding of variables and functions?

  - by Simon

  Many of the most popular programming languges (such as C++, Java, Python etc.) have the concept of hiding / shadowing of variables or functions. When I've encountered hiding or shadowing they have been the cause of hard to find bugs and I've never seen a case where I found it necessary to use these features of the languages. To me it would seem better to disallow hiding and shadowing. Does anybody know of a good use of these concepts?

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