I'm currently learning Haskell, largely for my own entertainment. It seems like some of the programs I develop at work could benefit from being written in a FP language. However, I'm very aware that if I were to deliver a unit of Haskell code, I'd be presenting my employers with a maintenance challenge: I'd be the only person in the org...
The UK is completely under snow. What tips can help programmers who don't usually work from home survive the next few days.??? I can think of remote desktop to your work desktop? What other things will make our days easier? ...
I currently am an 'intern' with a managed services company (much more IT/hosting than development, to my woe) that pays the bills and puts experience on my résumé. The issue I am having is really with what defines the "core" of an internship - learning. I personally have always thought that an internship is an opportunity to receive a k...
I have found myself in a team lead position having to manage/guide recent CS grads. I myself do not have a degree in Computer Science, rather I was working as a programmer to put myself through school while studying linguistics. I'm finding that using my own background to set expectations for junior developers quite problematic. I would ...
Similar to: How do I convince my boss that The Joel Test is credible and should be followed? and possibly: Effective Ways to Introduce Agile into the Workplace? I'm intentionally asking this question anonymously. Summary: How can I improve the workplace? I'm about to accept a job offer for a company that has failed The Joel Test wi...
Duplicate: Daily Motivation Tips How do you keep focused and reduce interruptions at the workplace? What keeps you motivated at your job? Tricks to avoid productivity rabbit holes What time of day are you most proficient at programming? I've definitely noticed that I am much more productive in the morning and my...
Let's say, hypothetically, you have been chosen to give a presentation to your coworkers on the language about which you are most knowledgeable. How do you make it interesting? It seems easy enough to write a basic overview: This is what it is used for, and here is some background info on it. You make a slideshow of that material and mi...
Recently due to organizational change, the management is inducting a senior engineer from another group who has no experience in programming. Obviously the work is nothing but programming. There is no time for mentoring, how do one politely explain that experience is a must and programming is hard, without hurting anybody. ...
I ask this for deployable reasons. As in, if I write a solution in python, I feel bound to write to 2.x due to the lack of adoption of python 3. This is a major daily concern of mine, and I want to figure out what's going on. For many of the python-based questions here, people are giving solutions that simply do not work in python 3.x. ...
What does your workplace* look like? How is it set up? Is it in a home attic (burning the midnight oil), or in your home basement (underground movement), or do you spend most of your time at the company diligently working? Cubicle? A private office maybe, or did they put you in the boiler room? How does your "precious one" look like (n...
Better programmers than me can write in essays about walking around with a coffee mug and call it programming. And it's perfectly accepted at a place that knows the business. Or see what Gregory House (TV show "House M.D.") does when he is thinking. But what about the other places where you are the only programmer? If you don't stare a...
The company I work for (large manufacturing/engineering) has subscribed to a Muzak service and plays a mixture of soft rock, pop, and country music all day long in our building. While the music selection is designed to be as inane as possible, I still find it distracting. Neither am I unique from the other developers on my team: we all f...
If a programmer wants a second or bigger monitor, a better keyboard or stuff like that and his company doesn't buy, should the programmer buy? What would you do? ...
I have started working recently in driver verification for a hardware company. The work is writing short software tests that verify known issues, bugs and possible faults anyone can think of. Now, in the course of my basic training for the role here I have come across an ugly practice of version control usage. The company uses SVN for h...
I recently just started my first gig as a professional programmer as part of small development team. At my work developers have two machines, a "web machine" for internet access and a "dev machine" for programming tasks. Our dev machines are completely sand-boxed to the point of not even having a CD drive access. At first this was not a...
I'm not familiar with Filnet P8. My assumptions from reading some online docs is that it has a central web-based user interface called Workplace which is implemented on the Java web stack and communicates with the core parts of Filenet through Java APIs. Also it seems you can extend the Workplace trough JSR 186 compliant portlets. - fr...
One of my favorite topics to discuss with my boss is the need for maintenance work, doing code updates and refining existing code with new techniques. Especially things like: a new Telerik controls update (got to love breaking changes). How do you convince your boss? ...
What's the most unreasonable (programming) task you've ever been given as a developer? I think everyone at some point get's a variation of a travelling salesman assignment, but is there worse? For instance, I was once asked as a contractor to make a system that would take in marketing data and use it to predict the outcome of any futur...
Has anyone found good ways to deal with a situation where a senior developer solely responsible for a particular component seems to be "doing a favor" by letting QA test his code, and refuses to invest in making the component more testable, answering questions, etc.? The person is very senior, and there's no option of letting bugs in t...
Possible Duplicate: How to convince my boss to provide quiet working conditions? I work in a noisy office. I'm forced to listen to music, and I find this hampers my concentration. My best solution so far is to come to work at 6am, but I still have to work until 5:30 so it is a long day, but the first hours are bliss. Does the...