What is 'Currying'?
I've seen references to curried functions in several articles and blogs but I can't find a good explanation (or at least one that makes sense!) ...
definition
What is the Liskov Substitution Principle?
I have heard that the Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP) is a fundamental principle of object oriented design. What is it and what are some examples of its use? ...
Service Oriented Architecture: How would you define it
Service Oriented Architecture seems to be more and more of a hot quote these days, but after asking around the office I have found that I seem to get many different definitions for it. How would you guys define SOA? What would you consider the official definition? ...
What is a y-combinator?
A y-combinator is a comp-sci concept from the "functional" side of things. Most programmers don't know much at all about them, if they've even heard about them. What is a y-combinator? How do they work? What are they good for? Are they useful in procedural languages? ...
What is the meaning of "programmer"?
I wish to know what a programmer is, or what skills are necessary for someone to call himself a programmer. I have talked with my colleague; he told me someone who writes javascript or html isn't a programmer. I wonder why I would need to use specific programming languages, frameworks, vendor to consider myself a programmer. So often, ...
Define "production-ready"
I have been curious about this for a while. What exactly is meant by "production-ready" or its variants? Most recently I was looking for information about sqlite and found this thread, where many people suggest sqlite isn't ready for production. I know the difference between development/testing and production; my definition of productio...
Is this a reasonable "Application entry point"?
I have recently come across a situation where code is dynamically loading some libraries, wiring them up, then calling what is termed the "application entry point" (one of the libraries must implement IApplication.Run()). Is this a valid "Appliation entry point"? I would always have considered the application entry point to be before ...
How to find where a ruby method is defined (at runtime)?
We recently had a problem where, after a series of commits had occurred, a backend process failed to run. Now, we were good little boys and girls and ran rake test after every check-in but due to some oddities in Rails' library loading, it only occurred when you ran it directly from mongrel in production mode. Tracked the bug down and i...
What is the difference between currying and partial application.
I'm not exactly sure how to word this question. I learnt what currying was in the first year of university, and have been using it where applicable ever since. However, I quite often see on the Internet various complaints that other peoples examples of currying are not currying, but are actually just partial application. I've not foun...
What's a 'pervasive database'?
I'm sorry, but this keyword doesn't mean anything to me... Can someone give me a definition? Thanks in advance... ...
Why can't I use static members, for example static structures, in my classes in VS2008?
When I write code like this in VS 2008: .h struct Patterns { string ptCreate; string ptDelete; string ptDrop; string ptUpdate; string ptInsert; string ptSelect; }; class QueryValidate { string query; string pattern; static Patterns pts; public: friend class Query; QueryValidate...
What is the difference between a schema and a table and a database?
This is probably a n00blike (or worse) question. But I've always viewed a schema as a table definition in a database. This is wrong or not entirely correct. I don't remember much from my database courses. ...
Declarations, definitions, initializations in C, C++, C#, Java and Python
What do the terms mean in each of the above languages? Why do the languages differ (wherever they do, if at all they do) in this respect? ...
The Best Memory Leak Definition
I feel like developers talk about memory leaks but when you ask them what that means many have no idea. To prevent these situations, let's decide on one. Please no Wikipedia definitions... What is your best definition of a memory leak and what is the best way to prevent them? ...
What is managed/unmanaged code in C#?
I am using Assembly.GetEntryAssembly()... in my C# code to get the version of the application. It runs fine but when I try it in NUnit it returns NULL. In the MSDN it states that it can return NULL when called from unmanaged code. What is managed or unmanaged code? I do not get it. ...
What's the difference between faking, mocking, and stubbing?
I know how I use these terms, but I'm wondering if there are accepted definitions for faking, mocking, and stubbing for unit tests? How do you define these for your tests? Describe situations where you might use each. Here is how I use them: Fake: a class that implements an interface but contains fixed data and no logic. Simply retu...
difference between baseline and benchmark in performance of an application
what is a baseline and what is a benchmark? what is the best definition for these and how do you baseline a set of numbers and benchmark another set? ...
What does 'Monkey Patching' exactly Mean in Ruby?
According to Wikipedia, a monkey patch is: a way to extend or modify the runtime code of dynamic languages [...] without altering the original source code. The following statement from the same entry confused me: In Ruby, the term monkey patch was misunderstood to mean any dynamic modification to a class and is often ...
What is fuzzy logic?
I'm working with a couple of AI algorithms at school and I find people use the words Fuzzy Logic to explain any situation that they can solve with a couple of cases. When I go back to the books I just read about how instead of a state going from On to Off it's a diagonal line and something can be in both states but in different "levels"....
What is ultimately a time_t typedef to?
I searched in linux box and saw it being typedef to typedef __time_t time_t; But could not find the __time_t definition. ...