On the SO blog and podcast Joel and Jeff have been discussing the, often ignored, times when unit testing a particular feature simply isn't worth the effort. Those times when unit testing a simple feature is so complicated, unpredictable, or impractical that the cost of the test doesn't reflect the value of the feature. In Joel's case,...
VSS is much maligned and perhaps justifiably so. Please don't confuse me as an apologist for it, as I gave up on it a while back in favor of Vault. However, despite using VSS for over 10 years on numerous projects with development teams between 3 and 10 developers, I never experienced (or to be fair, noticed) any data loss. I will admi...
I've seen these in real code: #define SCREEN_DIMENSIONS 2 #define THREE_THOUSAND_FIVE_HUNDRED_TWENTY_TWO 3522 What is the weirdest constant you've ever seen? P.S. And of course my favorite in JScript: bool b; switch (b.ToString().length) { case 4: // true ... break; case 5: // false ... break; ) ...
I'm trying to make a ASP.NET (C#) poll that will ask a user a Yes/No question and log that vote to the database. To prevent spam I would like to be able to make sure users can only vote once. I've thought about logging the users IP address. If this is the answer can someone give me a tutorial that shows how this can be accomplished. If t...
There are opposing views about whether managers (especially front-line managers) should be expected to actively program or not. Once a manager has 4 or more reports, some say it is negligent for them to code. There is too much other work to be done. Others say that if a manager doesn't code, he or she will lose their understanding of ...
I know it is a broad topic but I'm interested in any of .NET's so-called best practices, though I'm looking for less obvious ones, unlike "use as instead of casting". Let's see what interesting things I can learn from Stack Overflow users. ...
What type of applications did you use this TDD, unit testing approaching (web app, compiler, rails, etc?). What language was your application written in? Did you use a preexisting unit testing frameworking like junit or nunit or did you you rollo your own. Did you use automatically code generate your test cases or was most of the work t...
Hi, Does anyone (out of choice or forced) develop on a computer that they have to remote desktop into? How has your experiences been with it? I can see the advantages as you can basically code from anyplace in the world so long as you have a fast enough connection. Duplicate http://stackoverflow.com/questions/424869/reasons-to-us...
Your code is of course checked into a repository somewhere, but where do you keep your working copy/copies? C:\Program Files isn't right, as it's for installed packages. My Documents somehow doesn't seem right, eithera My Code folder next to My Music and My Pictures? Dumping in C:\ is messy, but seems to be "working" for other people ...
What are the most useful JSF tag libraries? Initially, I'd like one recommendation per answer, if you also use that library then just vote up the previous answer. My goal is to get to know what's out there apart from the most obvious ones: xmlns:h = http://java.sun.com/jsf/html xmlns:f = http://java.sun.com/jsf/core xmlns:ui = http...
Having a good team that works well together is one of the most important things when developing software. If your team does not work well together the product will suffer. What team-building activities can be used to help build and promote a better software team? Personal experience would be great, but all suggestions welcome. ...
I'm interested in learning about tools that operate like this: Given a database schema and some data, suggest whether the schema is likely structured in any particular normal form, and then tell how the schema might be factored to produce further normalization. Basically, a static analysis tool for database schema design. Like other s...
I am sure most programmers out there know how its like to code under the hood of redhot deadlines and seemingly almost impossible requirements. How do you deal with such pressure? Spent sleepless nights? ...
What bugs did you find in your / others programs that taught you much about programming? Did you find bugs that opened surprising insights for you? Was there a bug that changed the way you think about programming? ...
My manager said to me recently he thinks a developer can write 1 line of code every 6 minutes. Jeff Atwood said in the podcast as he has gotten older he writes less lines, but thinks about what is writing so it is done better. My question to the community is how long does it take you to write a line of code? Do you find more often th...
Inspired by this question: Are people with certain Myers Briggs personality types drawn to careers in programming/development? I certainly belong with this group. By the way, anyone knows the English (psycho-)terms for this personality type and its opposite - "wake up early, go to bed early"? Edit: Thanks to DrJokepu, we figured out t...
Are you satisfied with the current state of web programming? What fundamental changes or improvements would you suggest to vastly improve the state of the art of web programming? What problems do these developments address? In other words: What are the Grand Challenges of Web Programming Technology? ...
Hello, I'd like to poll this question: What application do you use to synchronize the working directory at local PC and remote directory (via FTP)? I'm kind of bored of using FTP client to transfer each file I edit all the time. ...
Currently I'm prototyping search with Lucene.Net-2.0-004 on a web application. It's working very well, but it's quite an old version of Lucene.net Is it "safe" to use the trunk version ? Are you doing it ? ...
Duplicate of this question. I'm learning C++ at the moment, and I'm coming across a lot of null-terminated strings. This has got me thinking, what makes more sense when declaring pointers: char* string or char *string ? To me, the char* format makes more sense, because the type of "string" is a pointer to a char, rather than a cha...