This is my one solitary (forgivable?) poll. To prove that I'm not being a rep !@&#&!!@(#*, I'm making this comm owned. What I want SO users to do is to upvote or create an answer that represents the technology they use at work that pays for their bills. Also if you're particularly co-operative, tag on a comment stating your work org...
Naming things well is arguably Job 1 for professional programmers. Yet we have all suffered from some bad naming choices from time to time. So just to vent a little, what are some doozies that you may have run across? Just to get things started: One of our original developers wasn't sure what to call a secondary key - on what turned ...
Folks, I'm working on a little piece of rich client software that I'd like to distribute for free. That is, I'd still like to make money on it, but I'd like the revenue to come from advertising. Do you know of an advertising platform that works well for client apps? I'd like the ads to be completely unobtrusive (like Google AdSense is...
What languages feature (1 per answer please) should be added to VB.NET in future versions? Update: where possible provide links to examples of language feature as used elsewhere. ...
I'm interested in finding out what people would consider the most useful data structures to know in programming. What data structure do you find yourself using all the time? Answers to this post should help new programmers interested in finding a useful data structure for their problem. Answers should probably include the data structur...
In our code, we currently use the following tags that can in turn be listed in the visual studio's tasklist: TODO to mark tasks inside the code the need to be done // TODO: optimize this loop HACK to mark code that is only there to make something work for the moment, for instance for a presentation // HACK: assume we know the users ...
What was one of the first or earliest things that got you really excited about programming? How old were you at the time? If it's been a long time since that fateful event, what has maintained you interest - or what new things strengthened your interest? I remember doing writing really simple programs on my T1-99/4A when I was in 2nd ...
It seems that many of the developers on SO are really satisfied with Visual Studio 08. This make me curious, what features separate VS08 from the other IDEs that you have used? Are there features within VS that can't be found elsewhere? Is it ease-of-use? Speed of development? Anything else? ...
What are ways to draw animations in C++? GDI+? OpenGL? Would you recommend a class pattern in particular to get the drawing and redrawing done? Do you know of any open source project where animations are made so I can take a peek at the code? Where would you start if you wanted to code geometrical animations? Do you know of any good l...
Someone asked this for C++ blogs and got a lot of great answers but I am much more interested in Python blogs. So, what Python blogs do you subscribe to? One URL per answer please? ...
What are the most common browser compatibility issues across the major desktop browsers? No dups please. Up-vote problems you've run into. I'm hoping for the list to self-sort. "IE sux" is not a pitfall, but a call for down-vote. [Edit] Yes, I know it's a poll - I'm not posting answers in this to gather points - I'm actually interested...
As a rule, How many function chains per line is too complicated? By Function chaining I mean: Obj.Display().Show().Result() What does your team use a guideline? ...
There are a ton of questions on this site about interview questions for programmers, but what about QA engineers? How can I make sure I'm getting somebody who really knows how to put test plans together and execute them? How much in the way of technical skills should I demand? I've worked with a few testers before who knew basic SQL, ...
We've all been there (usually when we are young and inexperienced). Fixing it properly is too difficult, too risky or too time-consuming. So you go down the hack path. Which hack from your past are you most ashamed of, and why? I'm talking about the ones where you would be really embarrassed if someone could attribute the hack to you...
I have an iterable of entries on which I would like to gather some simple statistics, say the count of all numbers divisible by two and the count of all numbers divisible by three. My first alternative, While only iterating through the list once and avoiding the list expansion (and keeping the split loop refactoring in mind), looks rath...
Do you have your own hobby development project, that you like to work on your own? If "yes", could you please tell a bit more about it (links are welcome)? What kind of project is it? Did it help you professionally? How? Is it open-source? Do other people use it? If "no" - Do you want to start one? PS: This question came up after t...
What types of JavaScript scripts do find most useful in your work? What tasks do you use JavaScript for the most? Are there scripts that you wished were out there but just haven't been able to find? I'm trying to create a library of MooTools plugins and so I'm always looking for inspiration and advice. I'm trying to concentrate on utilit...
One of the known problems with //TODO comments is that they tend to get "lost in the code" and are often never returned to. One usually finds them when searching the source code, or when actually going through the IDE task list (e.g., in Eclipse). Of course, bug reports are easier to find, but research shows that developers aren't rea...
I've had a go at solving the Eternity puzzle (1,000,000 GBP prize) and Netflix Prize ($1,000,000) in the past. I didn't win either, but they motivated me to find out about a new area. What other contests with prizes do you know about / have competed in yourself? ...
What .NET issue have you run into that wasted hours and hours of your time, was nearly impossible to debug, and could have been easily avoided if you had known just one quirk of the framework? ...