Hi all - I'm working with the Java Sound API, and it turns out if I want to adjust recording volumes I need to model the hardware that the OS exposes to Java. Turns out there's a lot of variety in what's presented. Because of this I'm humbly asking that anyone able to help me run the following on their computer and post back the resul...
I'm writing a plug-in for Eclipse that decorates things in a Java source editor. I have to decide whether to make the extra effort (and pay a performance/memory cost) to place the annotations on every visible source file in the editor, or just support one active file at a time. I know that in my experience, I rarely ever have two sour...
I'm planning to add some vote up/vote down buttons to a website I run. This seems easy enough but I want to stop people voting multiple times. One solution would be to make them register before allowing them to vote but I'd prefer not to have to force them to register. Is there are a reasonably straightforward way of doing this? Checki...
I found this question on SO, and then went to look at my university, and found the average number of languages that software engineering students speak is two to three. I know this is not directly related to programming, but with the amount of companies employing persons from different countries (especially here in Europe, I don't know ...
What python-specific antipatterns do you know? Could you also give an example, please. ...
Have you ever played the "tech card" towards your project manager to gain more time for something which isn't relevant for your actual task at all? My Task will need x more Days because [insert random tech stuff here which sounds great and believeable]. I recently did this "for the good" (imo), refactoring some core parts of th...
Most contract roles I have gone for, target developers with excellent business knowledge, especially in investment banking. Their reasoning is that they are a better, well rounded developer, that can come up with better design solutions, with added value - which I tend to agree with. Also I have been turned down for roles because I d...
I'm interested in studying how an interpreter works, and LOLCODE makes me laugh, so: What's the best OpenSource LOLCODE interpeter? Bonus points for providing a decent REPL. ...
What website or product do you wish had an API? ...
I made what I believe to be a pushdown automaton to read some blob data, but as far as actually using computability IN your code, not just to analyze it. Is there any good application of that? ...
I'm been trying to poll from a set of named-pipes for a little while now and i keep getting an immediate response of POLLNVAL on any named pipe file descriptor. After finding this blog post about broken polling in OS X I'm pretty certain that this is a b-u-g bug in OS X. I'm already planning on switching my code to using UDP sockets, b...
In Peter Alfred's article on multivariative scattered data interpolation he mentioned, that from a variety of schemes only few are really popular among practitioners. He named for instance Shepard's method and Hardy Multiquadrics. But that article is almost 20 years old by now, and what is really interesting, is what methods are widely u...
I was curious how often other software developers reevaluated their development environments and tools. I used to work at a large corporation with rigid toolsets that everyone hated, but could do nothing about. So nobody ever really updated their development environments because we couldn't in that environment. Now that I'm in my own ...
What are most important things you know about generics: hidden features, common mistakes, best and most useful practices, tips... I am starting to implement most of my library/API using generics and would like to collect most common patterns, tips, etc., found in practice. Let me formalize the question: What is the most important thing...
Are there any sites where one can get sections of programming done for really reasonable rates? I'm looking for a "software" market. Somewhere where you can get someone to take over your code (and, in some cases, entire project) for a while to get a certain section coded for a pre-decided amount of money. Hopefully the developer and r...
If someone were to say something happens in the first or last week of some month, how would you define that span? Background I'm working on a library that needs to handle this kind of thing in an intuitive way, but my intuition doesn't claim one case or the other. I can make it select different behavior but still need a good default...
What programming language do you prefer for code examples? I want to provide clarity to the most people possible when asking a question (while only using one language). While a specific language may provide clarity (for people who know it), it may not be clear to the largest audience. Edit: Another consideration, does syntax highlight...
I put my two weeks in to find greener pastures. Yeehaw! Question though - What do I do with these two weeks? My users are still clamoring for new features, There are still bugs lurking around, production could be cleaner, and my bosses are politicking to figure out who, in a time of hiring freezes, is going to to maintain my project. I'...
What convention do you use, or what conventions have you seen in other programs? (It's for a research project) ...
What is the most efficient Java Collections library? A few years ago, I did a lot of Java and had the impression back then that trove is the best (most efficient) Java Collections implementation. But when I read the answers to the question "Most useful free Java libraries?" I noticed that trove is hardly mentioned. So which Java Collect...