I currently maintain 3 websites all revolving around the same concept. 2 of them are WinForms applications where the website gives a few basic details, and download links. The third is a web application to query data. I also have a forum (SMF/TinyPortal) that has been serving as a tech support/news hub for the three sites. The download t...
Besides pay and benefits, what would you consider the pros and cons of these non-contractor jobs: Working for a company that creates commercial (shipping) software. Working for a company on software used internally. Working on software for the government. ...
I have 2 strings that I'd like to compare, and return the positions of the different characters in the second string. For instance, if I have 1. "The brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and 2. "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog", I want it to highlight "quick" and "ed". What's the best way to go about this in PHP? ...
I've been wondering about the performance improvements touted in Java SE 6 - is it in the compiler or the runtime? Put another way, would a Java 5 application compiled by JDK 6 see an improvement run under JSE 5 (indicating improved compiler optimization)? Would a Java 5 application compiled by JDK 5 see an improvement run under JSE 6 (i...
I've been using Subversion for a while now. I love it. And the feature I use the most is diff. But sometimes it is really frustrating when your comparison windows is filled with changes like: block inserted here, block deleted here. Just because you moved some methods around in your last refactoring session. All the tools I've see (Tort...
I've worked on a variety of systems as a programmer, some with Oracle, some with MySQL. I keep hearing people say that Oracle is more stable, more robust, and more secure. Is this the case? If so in what ways and why? For the purposes of this question, consider a small-medium sized production DB, perhaps 500,000 records or so. ...
I'm debating whether to use Silverlight 2.0 vs ASP.NET MVC for a web application. The web application will be a subscription free service marketing all age groups. It's important the source is highly testable, but also with the Web 2.0 movement a graphical web application is important as well for competitive reasons. I'm assuming silv...
I came across this recently, up until now I have been happily overriding the equality operator (==) and/or Equals method in order to see if two references types actually contained the same data (i.e. two different instances that look the same). I have been using this even more since I have been getting more in to automated testing (comp...
I need to write a Java Comparator class that compares Strings, however with one twist. If the two strings it is comparing are the same at the beginning and end of the string are the same, and the middle part that differs is an integer, then compare based on the numeric values of those integers. For example, I want the following strings...
Are there any good database schema comparison tools out there that support Sybase SQL Anywhere version 10? I've seen a litany of them for SQL Server, a few for MySQL and Oracle, but nothing that supports SQL Anywhere correctly. I tried using DB Solo, but it turned all my non-unique indexes into unique ones, and I didn't see any optio...
Which would you recommend learning, CL or Scheme? What are the pros and cons of each, compared to eachother? ...
I've worked with Cruise Control as the CI framework in my last project. Any recommendations on some other tools? (Not that i found CruiseControl lacking, just wanted to know if someone did some comparisons) ...
What are the benefits and drawbacks with using Centralized versus Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS)? Have you run into any problems in DVCS and how did you safeguard against these problems? Keep the discussion tool agnostic and flaming to minimum. For those wondering what DVCS tools are available, here is a list of the best kno...
I've been involved in embedded operating systems of one flavor or another, and have generally had to work with whatever the legacy system had. Now I have the chance to start from scratch on a new embedded project. The primary constraints on the system are: It needs a web-based interface. Inputs are required to be processed in real-ti...
Coming from a Perl 5 background, what are the advantages of moving to Perl 6 or Python? Edit: If you downvoted this because you think it's just flamebait, read the answers below. They're not raving arguments; they're well-written discussions of the pros and cons of each language. Give the Stack Overflow community some credit. ...
In Java, I use a class in which some fields can be null. For example: class Foo { String bar; //.... } I want to write a BarComparator for this class, private static class BarComparator implements Comparator<Foo> { public int compare( final Foo o1, final Foo o2 ) { // Implementation...
I'm trying to write an automated test of an application that basically translates a custom message format into an XML message and sends it out the other end. I've got a good set of input/output message pairs so all I need to do is send the input messages in and listen for the XML message to come out the other end. When it comes time to...
There are lots of web application frameworks available these days, for pretty much every language out there. In your experience, what are their strengths, weaknesses, and unique features? Assuming the luxury of choice, what factors would lead you to consider one over another other? I'm most interested in people's direct experience wit...
I think title should be good enough. ...
The situation: I want to play around with IRC bots as general communications interfaces to other code I am investigating. The server hardware would be old and low-memory, but running on a relatively up-to-date Debian GNU/Linux install. I don't expect more than a hundred users at a time, tops, and probably in the single-digits most of ...