I'm not brand new to the concept of unit testing but at the same time I've not yet mastered them either. The one question that has been going through my head recently as I've been writing unit tests while writing my code using the TDD methodology is: to what level should I be testing? Sometimes I wonder if I'm being excessive in the us...
I realize there's no definitely "right" answer to this question, but when people talk about lines of code, what do they mean? In C++ for example, do you count blank lines? comments? lines with just an open or close brace? I know some people use LoC as a productivity measure, and I'm wondering if there is a standard convention here. Al...
Please comment if you are a UK-based freelance PHP developer. Are there just less contracts around because its December or will PHP developers feel the crunch? ...
Certainly there are valuable programming techniques yet to be discovered, or that have been discovered but are not well-known. I'm interested in hearing about techniques that may be counterintuitive or seem strange, but have real benefit. Edit: It was suggested that I give an example. Just to show what I mean, my personal favorite i...
I just started a new project, and have found myself having to force myself into not researching/coding after I leave work, in order to spend time with my wife and kid. Is this common among the SO community? ...
I know a lot of developers that struggle to fluently write multi threaded code. They have to spend a lot of time just thinking about the parallelism and what not. It really racks their brains. And even then they don't usually choose the correct lock for the given situation. I.e. a simple Monitor instead of a Reader-Writer... Is it just ...
Today as I booted up Visual Studio 2008 to do my work, I saw on the Start page a new blog post about Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. I can't help but feel a little overwhelmed. I am just starting to come to grip with all the stuff Microsoft added in .NET 3.0 & 3.5 (LINQ, WPF, lambda functions, etc, etc).... I know these things are no ...
Joel and Jeff have been a great source of enlightenment and learning for me. However, they are a bit Microsoft-centric. In order to widen my horizon... Are there less Microsoft-centric people out there who: Write about software development in an entertaining way Are interesting to read/listen to Have a friendly voice (metaphorically) ...
I picked CodeIgniter as the first PHP MVC framework to learn. I've used it for a few projects and feel quite comfortable with it. I now have the opportunity to work on a project that uses Cake. My question is, how long do you think it will take to transition to this framework if I have a good grasp on CodeIgnitor? I don't want to be ov...
In the U.S should programmers be licensed to practice much like electricians must be licensed to practice in the state they are in? Personally I would be opposed to such an idea due to feasibility and political issues but I am curious what others think. Thoughts... I could see some merit to the concept and with software being a missio...
Howdy all, I see there are just 506 questions tagged SharePoint, out of 63,057 total questions. (as of 12/22/08 9:48am cdt.) Who developes against SharePoint and is there anyone out there who would be called an Expert? (I think SP experts are like unicorns, mythical creatures that don't exist, but the world would be more beautiful i...
As I'm programming I haven't seen an instance where an array is better for storing information than another form thereof. I had indeed figured the added "features" in programming languages had improved upon this and by that replaced them. I see now that they aren't replaced but rather given new life, so to speak. So, basically, what's ...
I got into Perl years ago and always found it a fun and expressive language to work with. I found that programming in Perl makes me quite productive thanks to its low overhead and the outstanding amount of ready-made solutions to common problems on CPAN. If you're new to Perl, what got you into it? ...
Do you plan on using Factor? Have you looked at it? Checked it out. Do you understand stack oriented programming? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g ...
A question asked here recently reminded me of a debate I had not long ago with a fellow programmer. Basically he argued that zero-based arrays should be replaced by one-based arrays since arrays being zero based is an implementation detail that originates from the way arrays and pointers and computer hardware work, but these sort of stuf...
This question is about the rare case of software that is neither in active development nor moribund. First, why is it so rare for software to ever be finished? It seems "no longer in active development" is often synonymous with "moribund". Second, what are exceptions to this? Donald Knuth's TeX is a famous example. It's been untouch...
Here's an interesting editorial from the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/opinion/27warner.html?hp I don't think I've ever heard of a coder that uses Provigil or Adderall, but I'd be interested in stories if anyone has them. ...
For those of you who have had the opportunity of writing web applications in PHP and then as an application server (eg. Python-based solutions like CherryPy or Pylons), in what context are application servers a better alternative to PHP? I tend to favor PHP simply because it's available on just about any web server (especially shared ho...
Firstly, I want to state for the record that I am not attempting to be a troll, and I do not intend this question to be flamebait. I asked an earlier question in an attempt to discover what other modal editors existed besides Vi/Vim. I was fully expecting that there would be at least a couple of other general-purpose editors that were s...
Every programmer is taught a basic set of rules for writing good, maintainable code early in their career. These include not using gotos, avoiding copying and pasting, avoiding globals, etc. However, sometimes rules that are only intended to be guidelines or rules of thumb get applied religiously by the more anal-retentive types, to th...