Where is a good place to find a talented web designer?
I am looking for a talented web designer to contribute to an new open source project. Can anybody recommend a good way to find one. ...
design
Non Public Members for C# Interfaces
In C#, when you implement an interface all members are public by default. Do you think it's better if we can specify the accessibility modifier (protected, internal, except private of course) or better use an abstract class instead? ...
Best Way to Begin Learning Web Application Design
I'm a long time hobbyist programmer interested in getting into web application development. I have a fair amount of personal experience with various non-web languages, but have never really branched over to web applications. I don't usually have any issues learning new languages or technologies, so I'm not worried about which is the "be...
Is "RTFM" counter-productive?
I'm reading the very excellent The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. In it, he describes a common problem: The reason [that nobody reported a problem with the system] was simple: when the system stopped working or did something strange, the secretaries dutifully reported it as a problem. But when they made the "return" ve...
What considerations should be made before reinventing the wheel?
All too often I see other people reinventing the wheel, and when I do, I wonder what factors played into their decision to do so. There are times I reinvent the wheel consciously, merely because I am interested in the mental exercise, and other times without realizing it because of a lack of research. What are considerations you use b...
Generic design for packaging of user changes for deployment
Hi all, OK a real question - I'd like to add the ability for users of a system I developed to make package a set of changes together so that they can deploy their package of changes to an acceptance testing environment, do their testing, and then at a later point (if testing was successful) deploy that package of changes to a live envir...
When to (notionally) "Build your own compiler"
What is your decision procedure for "roll my own" versus "introduce a new dependency"? The value of code reuse is widely touted, and for good reason, but it does not come for free. Joel's In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome makes the point that you don't always want to be at the mercy of outside entities. I work in big science. Mo...
Where to put your code - Database vs. Application?
Hello, I have been developing web/desktop applications for about 6 years now. During the course of my career, I have come across application that were heavily written in the database using stored procedures whereas a lot of application just had only a few basic stored procedures (to read, insert, edit and delete entity records) for each...
Why is String.Format static?
Compare String.Format("Hello {0}", "World"); with "Hello {0}".Format("World"); Why did the .Net designers choose a static method over an instance method? What do you think? ...
Does Design By Contract Work For You?
Do you use Design by Contract professionally? Is it something you have to do from the beginning of a project, or can you change gears and start to incorporate it into your software development lifecycle? What have you found to be the pros/cons of the design approach? I came across the Design by Contract approach in a grad school course....
How to represent cross-model information in MVC?
I have an application, built using MVC, that produces a view which delivers summary information across a number of models. Further to that, some calculations are performed across the different sets of data. There's no clear single model (that maps to a table at least) that seems to make sense as the starting point for this, so the vario...
NHibernate 1.2 to 2.0 migration
What kinds of considerations are there for migrating an application from NHibernate 1.2 to 2.0? What are breaking changes vs. recommended changes? Are there mapping issues? ...
should websites expand on window resize?
I'm asking this question purely from a usability standpoint: Should a website expand/stretch to fill the viewing area when you resize a browser window? I know for sure there are the obvious cons: Wide columns of text are hard to read Writing html/css using percents can be a pain It makes you vulnerable to having your design stretched ...
Web 2.0 Color Combinations
What are the most user-friendly color combinations for Web 2.0 websites, such as background, button colors, etc.? ...
Design: Java and returning self-reference in setter methods
I have already proposed this in my blog, but I find this place the most appropriate. For classes that have a long list of setters that are used frequently, I found this way very useful (although I have recently read about the Builder pattern in Effective Java that is kinda the same). Basically, all setter methods return the object itsel...
Overcoming Programmers' UI
I am decidedly a programmer, and not a UI designer, so when I am working on internal tools, I really struggle with laying out controls in a useful manner. For example, all those questions I've been asking for the last two days have been for building this tool: http://www.gfilter.net/junk/taskmanager.jpg And while I am pretty happy wit...
Advice on how to be graphically creative
I've always felt that my graphic design skills have lacked, but I do have a desire to improve them. Even though I'm not the worlds worst artist, it's discouraging to see the results from a professional designer, who can do an amazing mockup from a simple spec in just a few hours. I always wonder how they came up with their design and m...
Which CMS or other framework should I use to develop a stackoverflow-like site?
I want to develop a Q/A site with features substantially similar to stackoverflow, but targeted to a different niche (electrical/hardware engineering as opposed to software engineering). The code that runs stackoverflow is not opensource, and from a previous mention of it on the podcast I believe I can assume it never will be. (Though u...
How do I recover from an unchecked exception?
Unchecked exceptions are alright if you want to handle every failure the same way, for example by logging it and skipping to the next request, displaying a message to the user and handling the next event, etc. If this is my use case, all I have to do is catch some general exception type at a high level in my system, and handle everything...
Diagramming Software for a Developer/Designer
For a long time I've been looking for a good diagramming/vector-based drawing program that meets my needs as a developer. I'd like to: Draw database diagrams Draw flow charts Draw object-modeling diagrams (UML being the standard) Draw other free-form diagrams (basically boxes & arrows with the occasional clipart) Draw mockups of user i...