I'm working on a number of different software ideas culminating in our product release later this year. Some of our ideas appear unique (nothing on Google, in the books etc), but I don't want the hassle or expense of a patent. In fact the opposite I'd like to make sure anyone else (large corporation name here) can't take my idea, reverse...
I'm an ICT student. Currently, the only languages I've ever programmed in are Java and C#. Java can be run anywhere and C# is done via Visual Studio in school. Still, there are somany other languages, somany sites having FAQs and tutorails, somany books and stuff to learn from, I wonder where to start. I don't want to be limited to C# ...
Many years ago when I was a programmer I found that I enjoyed my job far more when I was familiar with my customer's business (how they made money; what was important to their profitability, their survival; what was happening in their industry). As well as enjoying my job more I think I did a better job. But that was me, I've worked wi...
I know there has been a fair amount of discussion on here about outsourcing/offshoring, and the general opinion seems to be that at best it is difficult, and at worst it fails. I have direct experience of offshoring myself; a previous company where I was a dev manager wanted to send some development offshore, and we ran a pilot scheme t...
A lot of the talk around quality code and quality software seems to revolve around the needs of "The Market" Can the quality of code and the quality of the resulting software be judged outside of this business context? If so, should it? If not, why not? ...
G'day All. First time question-asker. A recent question (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/505404/what-are-good-programming-competitions) asked about good programming competitions. This got me thinking. My question is, What competitions exist for the Solving of Business Problems? Yeah, I know Real Life is the actual competition, but...
Does anyone have any idea how it would be possible to transition from business to game programming? How would anyone get a start in game programming? It seems much more exciting and rewarding (better paying too?). But it seems like most of the jobs out of school are for business programming. Any advice or insight on how to do it or if it...
In my project I need to create a business object validation layer that will take my object and run it against a set of rules and return either pass or fail and it's list of failure reasons. I know there are quite a few options out there for accomplishing this. From Microsoft: Enterprise Library Validation Application Block Windows Wor...
I am throwing puzzle of my mind towards community leaders for some answers. We friends decided to build products which already have some big names in the industry. Our motto is not to beat all those players (As we can't), but to develop basic product which is cost effective for some segment a customers. What we are trying to achieve in...
I tend to believe that Flash and other proprietary, browser-based runtimes are not a good idea. But, people seem to love them because they are pretty and offer developers a lot of power as long as they get on board with buying the tools, etc. Does anyone see a future where such a business model doesn't exist? I think there is a great o...
Update: So, how did thing go? We notified them of the existing problem, included background information, a detailed error report and tried to explain in plain human language what the problem was and why it is serious. They thanked us, passed the information to their website developer who has since fixed it. We are not quite sure of t...
We're a small web development business and we eventually want to release web applications as well. Right now, we're doing some risk assessment and would like to know what other companies do for security and risk management. What are your risk management strategies and practices, technical and otherwise? Here's what I have so far (and I'...
I started a new job and we have a small IT department working for an insurance benefit. I was hired to help ensure the success of their conversion from a mainframe flat file system to a relational database with a client server setup. I want to get more involved in our decision making process. My question is how do you get yourself inclu...
Any recommends here? I need something that can take a set of processes and batch them together. For example, I need to: 1) execute some sql 2) run C# snippets 3) have checkpoint steps with human interaction (i.e. send off an email at step X and wait for a user to review a result and click continue etc...) ...
I think it's best if I ask this question with an example scenario. Let's say your mom-and-pop local hardware store has never had a website, and they want you, a freelance developer, to build them a website. You have all the skills to run a LAMP setup and admin a system, so the difficult question you ask yourself is where will I host i...
What, if any, are the most popular ways to get some money from a FOSS-project? I see that many projects ask for donations, and some of the larger ones do get a decent amount of donations. But how about the smaller ones? Is it really realistic that, assuming you have a small userbase, once you put a "please donate" badge somewhere, the c...
When selling a software package that requires hardware, typically dedicated hardware (could be a VM), the buyer typically has to buy the server it will run on. So the total cost of ownership (focusing on the capital expense) includes the hardware in addition to the software. For example, a $3000 bug tracking package might need a $1500 ...
How has the current economic downturn affected the way you/your team works ? I am tending to do more enhancements, compared to brand new development a year or so ago. This question came about during another pub conversation where we were discussing if it's good to work on supporting applications or working on new projects - which is ...
When I walk to work (in London) I see loads of redevelopment on commercial buildings. One of the first this I notice is they knock down the old building and build from scratch. They end up building some of the most advanced and stunning to look at buildings. Bearing this in mind, when I look at old legacy code, in existing application...
I have written a small laptop battery meter utility for Windows that I have been selling for a low price ($7.50). I recently was contacted by a company that wants to purchase a very large number of licenses (nearly 1,000). They would like an unlimited site license to avoid having to manage the number of licenses. My questions is, what...