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A coworker of mine believes that any use of in-code comments (ie, not javadoc style method or class comments) is a code smell. What do you think?
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When starting a project for a company that's not primarily a programming company, one of the expectations is that there's a finished product at the end free of all bugs and does everything needed right away. However, that's rarely the case.
What are some ways to manage expectations and explain to non-programmers how s... |
Sometimes, the things I have to do for my job are interesting and engaging. Sometimes, they aren't. Occasionally, they really aren't.
Do you have any particular strategies or tricks for dealing with those dull stretches when your brain would rather be doing anything other than what you're supposed to be doing, partic... |
I have read a few articles on Internet about programming language choice in the enterprise. Recently many dynamic typed languages have been popular, i.e. Ruby, Python, PHP and Erlang. But many enterprises still stay with static typed languages like C, C++, C# and Java.
And yes, one of the benefits of static typed langu... |
At first glance, I'd say a good programming team needs to understand the following matters:
The details of the core language / framework
HTML, (asynchronous) javascript
SQL / data model
Usability / UI design
Security
Project management.
If this team is not complete: what is needed?
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Where waterfall commonly includes:
Requirements
Functional design
Technical design
Build
Test
Review
(Deploy)
And iterations across this list. If I forgot a step, let me know.
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What's your favourite quote about programming?
One quote per answer, and please check for duplicates before posting!
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We've all had them, managers who have either come from sales or last looked at code 10 or more years ago but think they know how to write code.
What can I do to give the impression that I'm grateful for their intervention, but keep it as short as possible so I can get on with my work?
Or, should I be engaging more with... |
I am finishing my college degree in programming soon and I'm exploring the next steps to take to further my career. One option I've been considering is getting a certification or a series of certifications in the area of development I want to work in.
Are these certifications worth the time and money? Do employers plac... |
During my four years at university we have been using much functional programming in several functional programming languages. But I have also used much object oriented programming to, and in fact I use object oriented languages more when doing my own small project to prepare for my first job. But I often wish that I w... |
The coding standards for the code hosted in drupal.org suggest to use two spaces to indent the code; other sites suggest to use tabs to indent the code.
What is the proper indentation character for everything, and in every situation? Please explain the answer you give.
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We often receive last minute requests from the business asking for an extra feature to be implemented. The project manager is usually responsible for filtering out these requests as "must haves" or "nice to have", but there are cases where the business wants to squeeze all these features into a release. Is there a g... |
I realize there have been lots of discussions about this type of thing and they often devolve into dogma around whether you ask the "100 logical pirates" type of questions or whether you get them to write "fizz buzz".
I'm interested in what techniques and questions have been effective for you when interviewing potenti... |
We've often run across scenarios where the business will promise a client a new feature. The business will promise that the feature be implemented in a specific way. These technical details promised by the business are usually poor. Unfortunately, client is now set and want this feature to be implemented in the way ... |
How do you bill your programming projects? Do you do it per hour? Per job?
Please include what kind of project you are doing in the answer. (Mobile, Web, Desktop, etc... You can be more specific if you want.)
BONUS:
If you'd like to give specific amounts in your answer, you may. ;-)
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Who in the software engineering and software development fields uses Twitter to tweet about relevant happenings in the field?
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Are there any great programming or software development books that are language agnostic? Why should I read it?
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The Actor Model which is used by Erlang seems to be a very different way to do concurrent programming. What are your thoughts about the Actor Model? Will it be a popular solution for concurrency?
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For the longest time in places like Java's IRC channel, SO, and other places I've been told something along the lines of "Worry about how the code looks and its readability/understandability now, and performance later if absolutely necessary". So for the longest time, I haven't really been OCD about performance for my ... |
If I have some code that has 80% test coverage (all tests pass), is it fair to say that it's of higher quality than code with no test coverage?
Or is it fair to say it's more maintainable?
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Test driven development. I get it, like it.
But writing tests does require overhead. So should TDD be used universally throughout the code base, or are there areas where TDD provides a high ROI and other areas where the ROI is so low that it is not worth following.
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Having taken a course in Operating Systems I'm interested in expanding my knowledge of the Linux kernel and practice working with a big system. What are some interesting but not overly difficult projects I can try my hand at?
EDIT: a bit of background on what I did do with the kernel.
Implemented a new scheduling po... |
How would someone implement Agile process concepts as a solo developer? Agile seems useful for getting applications developed at a faster pace, but it also seems very team oriented...
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Possible Duplicate:
Using “Foo” and “Bar” in examples
I know AT&T labs used them in their Unix days, but do they have even deeper histories?
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Does learning COBOL still make sense?
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There is a widely accepted opinion that Singleton is an anti-pattern. As usual, there are always exceptions to the rule. Can you explain why Singleton is a bad choice in general and give an example of some valid use cases for it?
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Will Java have the same importance it had in the past, or it will be less relevant than nowadays?
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I just started working a year ago, and I want to join an open source project for the same reasons as anyone else: help create something useful and develop my skills further.
My problem is, I don't know how to find a project where I'll fit in.
How can I find a beginner-friendly project? What attributes should I be sear... |
Elite developers can be 10x more productive than an average developer.
Clearly it's easier to find an elite developer around the whole world than in a company's backyard.
If a company is not located in a programming hot spot, should they consider hiring people who work from home?
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For a long time in SO and in other places Java has the reputation of being slow. From jokes to many comments in questions and answers, people still believe Java is slow based solely on experience with it in the 90s.
This is my issue: we have disproved (most) of the reasons that people believe Java is slow. Outside of s... |
I've been told that to be taken seriously as a job applicant, I should drop years of relevant experience off my résumé, remove the year I got my degree, or both. Or not even bother applying, because no one wants to hire programmers older than them.1
Or that I should found a company, not because I want to, or because I ... |
Joel Spolsky wrote a famous blog post "Human Task Switches considered harmful".
While I agree with the premise and it seems like common sense, I'm wondering if there are any studies or white papers on this to calculate the overhead on task switches, or is the evidence merely anecdotal?
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"Regular" golf vs. code golf:
Both are competitions. Both have a well-defined set of rules, which I'll leave out for simplicity. Both have well-defined goals; in short, "use fewer hits/characters than your competitors."
To win matches, athletic golfers rely on
equipment
Some situations call for a sand wedge; others... |
If you were to design a programming language, how would you do it? What features would you put in? What would you leave out? Statically or dynamically typed? Strongly or weakly typed? Compiled or interpreted? Justify your answers.
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Did you learn to touch-type when you were already working as a programmer? If so how did it affect your productivity? Or are you still unable to touch type and do you think it holds you back?
According to Steve Yegge it is essential,
Personally I did not notice much difference, possibly because I was spending less th... |
Rather than slavishly pair program all the time, we use pair programming selectively on our team. I think it works best in the following circumstances:
Ramping up brand new team members on a project (instead of letting them wade through documentation or code on their own).
Having junior and senior people work together... |
No matter how much you love a programming language, there are always a few details in it that aren’t quite as nice as they could be.
In this question, I would like to specifically focus on syntax elements. In a programming language that you use frequently (perhaps your favourite programming language, or perhaps the one... |
I think everyone has their own program or set of features beyond "Hello World!", that they use when trying out a new language.
Mine is a guessing game:
I'm thinking of a number 1-10, guess what it is!
Guess: 3
Nope, too low!
Guess: 7
Nope, too high!
Guess: 5
Yes, You win!
Play again (Y/N)? N
What do you write?
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I have seen this on the SO on many times. Whenever a question is vague and the question is asking some magical answer somebody or the other leaves a comment saying answer is 42. Even a book I am reading right now uses '42' as the number whenever it wants demonstrate some basic concept using an integer. So is there any ... |
I am a moderately capable web developer. I can put stuff where I want it to go and put some JQuery stuff in there if I need to. However, if I am making my own website (which I am starting to do) I have no idea how to design it. If someone was to sit next to me a point to the screen and say "put this picture there, text... |
goto is almost universally discouraged. Is using this statement ever worthwhile?
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Managed OSes like Microsoft Singularity and JNode are quite an interesting concept. Essentially, the OS is bootstrapped with code written in a low-level language (C/C++/Assembly), which essentially implements a virtual machine. The rest of the OS (and all userland apps) run on the virtual machine. There are some great ... |
All but the most trivial programs are filled with bugs and so anything that promises to remove them is extremely alluring. At the moment, correctness proofs are code are extremely esoteric, mainly because of the difficultly of learning this and the extra effort it takes to prove a program correct. Do you think that cod... |
on a widescreen monitor one can easily see more than 80 characters at a time, without scrollbars. even linus torvalds sees the 80 character limit as outdated.
so, is the 80 character limit still relevant in times of widescreen monitors?
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When I am in a code or design rut, I tend to find a non-dev coworker to discuss the problem with. It forces me to explain the problem in great detail and I'll usually find something I missed in the process.
What are your "unsticking" methods?
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We, as programmers, are constantly being asked 'How long will it take'?
And you know, the situation is almost always like this:
The requirements are unclear. Nobody has done an in depth analysis of all the implications.
The new feature will probably break some assumptions you made in your code and you start thinking i... |
I know some people are massive proponents of test driven development. I have used unit tests in the past, but only to test operations that can be tested easily or which I believe will quite possibly be correct. Complete or near complete code coverage sounds like it would take a lot of time.
What projects do you use te... |
When learning a new programming language you sometimes come across a language feature which
makes you wish you had it in your other programming languages that you know.
What are some language feature which were at the time of learning very new to you and that you wish your other programming languages had.
An example... |
As programmers we have a lot of inputs:
Ebooks
Code snippets
Interesting emails
Documents
Web articles
Blog posts
StackOverflow questions
Podcasts
...
Which tools do you use to store, organize, search and consult all of this stuff?
Is there a silver bullet solution to handle this huge amount of data?
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What is the recommended User Account Control (UAC) setting when developing on Windows?
Even on Win7 I find it annoying enough to turn it off (because it makes me more productive with it off) but sometimes I feel bad because I know I'll find more problems in my code if I leave it on.
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What methods do you use to stay awake and alert while working?
Personally I drink coffee non stop throughout the day. But I've also heard of this thing called exercise that should help too. Does anyone else have tips and tricks to stay more awake and alert while working? Redbull? Maybe a magic pill that won't requir... |
I'm freshly out of college, and starting university somewhere next week. We've seen unit tests, but we kinda not used them much; and everyone talks about them, so I figured maybe I should do some.
The problem is, I don't know what to test. Should I test the common case? The edge case? How do I know that a function is a... |
I'm trying to find places where I can hone my craft outside the context of school or work. Are there places online, or books available, where I can access lists of programming puzzles or challenges?
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On any team, you are going to have the need for more grizzled and grey developers and some young pups. Some reasons include:
Money. There are often tasks that don't require the same level of experience to deliver, so it makes sense not to pay top dollar to have those tasks fulfilled.
Energy. There's an energy and enth... |
What question have you found especially valuable in interviewing software developers? What is it about the question that has made it particularly useful?
I'm looking for a particular question you like to ask, not just an interviewing approach like "make them write code".
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It doesn't have to be programming or software development related, but just asked during an interview for an IT related job.
I know some "left field" questions are meant to see how the candidate copes with unexpected and novel situations, but here I'm looking for a question that appeared to be completely unrelated to t... |
Literate programming has good ideals. Why do you think that this isn't mainstream? It is because it has failed to deliver?
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I originally tried asking this on StackOverflow, but it was too subjective :-(. I am interested in methods of defining the power of programming languages. Turing completeness is one, but it is almost universally satisfied. What would be nice is to define a measure of power that discriminates among programming languages... |
For decades, the accepted degree to get to become a software developer was "Compter Science."
We've had a few questions already about whether that degree really prepares students to develop software.
Some schools have, in the last 8 years or so, started offering multiple distinct majors in programming. Using the curri... |
I was instructed by my project manager that frequent deployment in PROD or to test server should be avoided. But I don't understand why? We roll our testing copy to PROD on every sprint end but suddenly client would ask a simple change to the existing application which would require a re-deployment. When every thing wa... |
I know this is obviously not true for some games, minesweeper, card games, etc. But what about any game involving simulating the real world environment. Obviously these games have some form of a physics engineer powering the graphics.
For someone like me who personally did not enjoy physics but loves video games, do... |
One per answer please. I'll add my favourite as an answer.
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In my current job it feels like we have a lot requirement changes. We are an "Agile" shop, so I get that we are supposed to adjust and what not, but sometime the change is large and nothing trivial.
My question is, how do you effectively communicate the cost of the change? Because of being agile, if a change is big en... |
I know that they are implemented extremely unsafely in C/C++. Can't they be implemented in a safer way? Are the disadvantages of macros really bad enough to outweigh the massive power they provide?
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This is more a discussion question than an actual attempt to determine the "best", since that clearly varies by the needs of the organization. I'm more curious about the arguments in favor of different systems across categories (centralized vs distributed, open vs proprietary, etc).
So, what do you think is the best ve... |
There are a lot of questions about what programming books should be on the programmer's bookshelf. How about non-programming related books that can help you become a better programmer or developer? It would also be interesting to know why they would help.
My first choice would be Sun Tzu's "Art of War" (however cliché)... |
What are the first 5 things you do before starting a new project?
Do you always spend a day researching new frameworks? Or, using similar or competing products?
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Tester and blogger Lanette Creamer recently posted this question on Twitter:
If you are a professional software developer who works with testers, think of the best testers you know. What traits do they have in common?
I thought it would make an excellent question for here.
My thoughts are:
They want to remove ambigu... |
I'd like to sell my software on the 'net but am not sure how to do the whole Merchant setup. I have access to Commerce Server 2009, and I want to seem professional so a plain old PayPal account is out.
What do I need to know/do to sell a few things using ASP.NET, accept credit cards, and what not?
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I'm considering learning iPhone development and Objective C but don't want to avoid developing something for the most saturated markets and app categories.
What categories should I avoid? Are there too many dating applications, or should I just stick to coming up with a creative game or two?
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I'm not exactly sure when to use Enterprise Library, and when not to... and that is making me not learn it at all. I feel that I have enough of a reason to start learning then perhaps one day I'll use it.
Are there times when I should use EntLib?
When shouldn't I use it?
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I have often heard it said that objects have not delivered in terms of code reuse. Do you agree? If you believe that they haven't, why not?
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Aspect oriented programming promises to deal with cross cutting concerns, but I'm not completely sold on it yet. Have there been any other attempts to deal with this problem?
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I have often wondered if it would be possible to write a programming language that would work as a conversation. I would tell the computer that I want to store coordinates and it would ask what representation I would use. I would then ask to find the shortest path between points and it would ask if I want to use Djkstr... |
I'm comparing different STS's for claims based authentication and am trying when it's appropriate to use each one.
It appears that ADFSv2 should be used in all Windows Environments. Ping and Siteminder are more for the Unix side... although a sales rep said Ping was better for Windows, I didn't really understand "wh... |
Dcpromo.exe is famous among MCSEs for being they only way to create a Windows Domain Controller (in other words an Active Directory Domain) ... which in turn is often used by the ASP.NET Membership system.
I'm trying to determine if I should put content on "www.dcpromo.com" geared for developers or more towards sysadmi... |
Language shortcuts can often be used to make code more concise.
For example, ternary and null coalescing operators can reduce the amount of code, but arguably to the detriment of readability:
In C#:
Person newGuy = new Person();
if (boss == null) {
newGuy.Boss = GetDefaultBoss();
} else {
newGuy.Boss = boss;
}
... |
I used ad-hoc MUML (made-up modeling language) to design and explain system fairly frequently. It looks similar to UML and tends to be pretty well understood.
However, I've had a professor or two that harped on the use of strict, formal UML, as close to the spec as possible. I always suspected that strict UML wasn't ... |
This goes back to a conversation I've had with my girlfriend. I tried to tell her that I simply don't feel adequate enough in my programming language (C++) to call myself good. She then asked me, "Well, when do you consider yourself good enough?"
That's an interesting question. I didn't know what to tell her. So I'm as... |
Planning Poker
Summary, in case you don't want to read the wiki article:
Get a list of tasks you want to do for the upcoming iteration
For each task:
2.1 Discuss with the group what it entails
2.2 Everyone writes down / selects an estimation of how much effort is required for the task
2.3 Everyone reveals their estima... |
I've been in workplaces where, at the start of a project, the "Should we use VB.Net or C#" question has been raised.
Granted, it's probably less common to have to make that decision now than it was in the early days of .Net, particularly given the trend towards language convergence, but it can still be a heated debate.... |
By now I work with asp.net and C#. I have done a decent work in Java as well. I am planning my career in such a way I should be language-agnostic someday. What are the things that I need to learn?
First would OOP paradigms as its speaks about the Class design. Are there any others?
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Coming from a procedural/OO programming background, I tend to write Scheme programs in a procedural fashion. I would be intersted in learning Scheme or Lisp in a functional way from the ground up, to kind of reset my programmer's mind.
Is there a tutorial or book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing be... |
I think we’ve all seen this. Beginners ask questions on Stack Overflow that follow the basic outline...
I’m trying to do (very vague description of the goal) but it doesn’t work/I get an error/exception. Please help!
Isn’t it bizarre that so many of them seem to consider it unnecessary to paste the error message?
I w... |
I've never found the ideal way to perform code reviews and yet often my customers require them. Each customer seems to do them in a different way and I've never felt satisfied in any of them.
What has been the most effective way for you to perform code reviews?
For example:
Is one person regarded as the gatekeeper fo... |
I'm considering whether I should start using VIM again instead of an IDE. What are the most useful features of VIM that aren't standard in an IDE?
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What best practices should be undertaken for a website that needs to "scale out" to handle capacity? This is especially relevant now that people are considering the cloud, but may be missing out on the fundamentals.
I'm interested in hearing about anything you consider a best practice from development-level tasks, to ... |
I recently saw that Microsoft released a coding standards document (All-In-One Code Framework Coding Standards) and it got me thinking... The company that I work for has no formal coding standards at all. There are only a few developers and we have been together long enough to have evolved into similar styles and its... |
Have you ever had to work to coding standards that:
Greatly decreased your productivity?
Were originally included for good reasons but were kept long after the original concern became irrelevant?
Were in a list so long that it was impossible to remember them all?
Made you think the author was just trying to leave thei... |
Having worked on a failed project is one of the few things that most programmers have in common, regardless of language used, industry or experience.
These projects can be great learning experiences, soul-crushing disasters (or both!), and can occur for a multitude of reasons:
upper management change of heart
under-sk... |
I have a tester that while testing will have an error occur (ok so far), but then he frequently reports it right away. We (the developers) then later find that the tester has not tried to reproduce the issue and (when asked) cannot find a way to make it happen again.
Now these are still bugs, I don't want to ignore th... |
We are starting a push for code coverage here at my work, and it has got me to thinking.... How much code coverage is enough?
When do you get to the point of diminishing returns on code coverage? What is the sweet spot between good coverage and not enough? Does it vary by the type of project your are making (ie WPF, ... |
Sometimes I feel like a musician who can't play live shows. Programming is a pretty cool skill, and a very broad world, but a lot of it happens "off camera"- in your head, in your office, away from spectators.
You can of course talk about programming with other programmers, and there is peer programming, and you do ge... |
I've read Peopleware in 2009. It was one of the best book I ever read.
But this book is a little old. I'd like to know, in your opinion, what is and what is not relevant in this book?
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I've heard it said (by coworkers) that everyone "codes in English" regardless of where they're from. I find that difficult to believe, however I wouldn't be surprised if, for most programming languages, the supported character set is relatively narrow.
Have you ever worked in a country where English is not the primary ... |
A few years ago I considered myself somewhat of a web developer, knowing the basic 3 languages (HTML, CSS, JS) and lots of PHP. Moving on from simple text to actual websites was a pain because of the so called "standards" out there, which at the time were ridiculously complicated for me. It pretty much boiled down to t... |
If you're developer (Senior or Lead Developer) and you'd rather stay with code/design than pursue a management career, what are the available career paths at your company, or any you've heard of? How far can you go?
Is it possible to continue being a geek until you bite the dust or is that too naive?
Are people like Un... |
Use of desktops are decreasing day by day in daily life but for coding purpose are there any reasons for using desktop over laptop?
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I am excited about the changes in PHP 6 previewed in PHP 5.3+. However, I wonder why it takes so long to release PHP 6? Books about it have been published since 2008, and announcements on it since 2007, but I am yet to hear about an alpha or a beta. Why does it take so long to release it? Or is that the way it goes wit... |
i wonder apart from those very simple hello world apps, what other programs should i try developing for learning. i am entering uni next year and wonder what kind of programs will be developed in that environment.
this is not really a language specific thing, but if you want to know what i use currently mainly
window... |
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