What is the difference between Project Leader and Project Manager?
Are they different terms for the same thing or do they have different roles and responsabilities? ...
terminology
'method' vs. 'message' vs. 'function' vs. '???'
I recently asked a question about what I called "method calls". The answer referred to "messages". As a self-taught hobby programmer trying to phrase questions that don't make me look like an idiot, I'm realizing that the terminology that I use reveals a lot about how I learned to program. Is there a distinction between the various term...
Is "performant" a valid word? What's the alternative?
Given that performant isn't officially a real word, what is an appropriate alternative term for expressing "something that performs well"? So, instead of saying something like, This iteration of the SQL query is particularly performant. What would you say instead? Or how about: We're going to go with the most performant, yet u...
What is a monad?
Having briefly looked at Haskell recently I wondered whether anybody could give a brief, succinct, practical explanation as to what a monad essentially is? I have found most explanations I've come across to be fairly inaccessible and lacking in practical detail, so could somebody here help me? ...
Where does the term "escaping" originate from?
Does anyone know where the term escaping -- as in "escaping a character in a string" -- originates from? Update: Paul Tomblin's answer, although rather brief, lead to the most compelling evidence. Within the paper he linked to there is the following citation: "4. Expansion of Set Future expansion to a set larger than 120 may ta...
How do you pronounce the following computer/programming terms:
wiki boolean Dijkstra Knuth daemon yes [nevermind this one] wav file gif file any more common misprouncement clarifications welcome. ...
What's the difference between a "script" and an "application"?
I'm referring to distinctions such as in this answer. As programmer who's worked in many languages, this seems to be C, Java and other compiled language snobbery. I'm not looking for reenforcement of my opinion or hand-wavy answers. Rather, I'm genuinely want to what technical differences is being referred to. (And I use C in my day ...
When is a language considered a scripting language?
What makes a language a scripting language? I've heard some people say "when it gets interpreted instead of compiled". That would make PHP (for example) a scripting language. Is that the only criterion? Or are there other criteria? See also: What’s the difference between a “script” and an “application”? ...
What is Cloud computing?
Could anybody explain in plain words how Cloud computing works? I have read the Wikipedia article, but still not sure that I understand how cloud actually works. ...
Interrupts and exceptions
I've seen several question on here about exceptions, and some of them hint at interrupts as exceptions, but none make the connection clear. What is an interrupt? What is an exception? (please explain what exceptions are for each language you know, as there are some differences) When is an exception an interrupt and vice-versa? ...
What's the difference between an argument and a parameter?
When verbally talking about methods in C# during a code review or in pairing I'm never sure whether to use the word argument or parameter or something else. Either way the other people know what I mean but what's correct and what's the history of the terms? Would people use different terms in different languages? For the record I'm sel...
What is the correct term for the documentation that we put just above a method declaration?
I'm writing a whitepaper and realized that I am not sure what the official term is for the kind of internal documentation that we put as a comment block before a declaration of definition. The same thing that eventually becomes JavaDoc member documentation. It's not simply internal documentation, and I'm not sure "header documentation"...
Using "Foo" and "Bar" in examples
Why do code examples (mostly tutorials) use the names "Foo" and "Bar" so often? It is almost a standard. For example: void foo(char* bar) { printf("%s", bar); } ...
What does WISC (stack) mean?
LAMP is a well-known acronym for the software/technology bundle/stack representing Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. There are a few passing references on the Web that use the acronym WISC to speak of the other (supposedly Microsoft-centric) software/technology bundle/stack in contrast to LAMP. There is, however, no Wikipedia entry on WISC at t...
What is the name of this data structure or technique of using relative difference between sequence members
Let's say I have a sequence of values (e.g., 3, 5, 8, 12, 15) and I want to occasionally decrease all of them by a certain value. If I store them as the sequence (0, 2, 3, 4, 3) and keep a variable as a base of 3, I now only have to change the base (and check the first items) whenever I want to decrease them instead of actually going ov...
What is spaghetti code?
Can you post a short example of real, overdone spaghetti code, possibly saying what it does? Can you show me a little debugger's nightmare? I don't mean IOCCC code, that is science fiction. I mean real life examples that happened to you... Update The focus has changed from "post some spaghetti code" to "what is exactly spaghetti code?...
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...
Computer Science for the elderly
I learned C++ when it was C with classes. I find myself increasingly disliking new technologies like XML and Garbage collection. On the other hand, I have discovered scripting languages like Lua and Python. And I find myself rather liking a hybrid environment of C++, with deterministic memory control, with an embedded script language, wi...
Capturing system command output as a string
Perl and PHP do this with backticks. For example: $output = `ls`; This code returns a directory listing into the variable $output. A similar function, system("ls"), returns the operating system return code for the given command. I'm talking about a variant that returns whatever the command prints to stdout. (There are better ways ...
What does "beta" mean for an evolving web application?
I used to understand "beta" as "feature-complete". Web applications rarely are ever feature-complete and rather evolve slowly with time. So does "beta" have any specific meaning with them or is it just a gimmick? ...