Most Popular
1500 questions
129
votes
17 answers
How should I charge for programming things which take two minutes to fix?
I am really confused with this. I believe that the more I am getting experience, the more I am becoming an expert at finding mistakes and fixing them quickly.
Now my boss got website from a programmer who does very very bad coding.
Now he sends the…
user824981
- 815
129
votes
6 answers
"Standard" format for using a timestamp as part of a filename
I searched for a standard format for using a date/time as part of a file name and was unable to come up with anything.
My question is two parts:
Is using time stamps to enforce unique in file names a poor practice?
I could get the time from the…
dting
- 1,559
129
votes
14 answers
Is there any technical reason why, in programming, the default date format is YYYYMMDD and not something else?
Is there any engineering reason why is it like that? I was wondering in the case of a RDBMS that it had something to do with performance, since a "YEAR" is more specific than a "MONTH", for instance: you only have one year 2000, but every year have…
lucaswxp
- 1,397
129
votes
13 answers
What "version naming convention" do you use?
Are different version naming conventions suited to different projects? What do you use and why?
Personally, I prefer a build number in hexadecimal (e.g 11BCF), this should be incremented very regularly. And then for customers a simple 3 digit…
Richard Stelling
- 2,071
129
votes
12 answers
One-line functions that are called only once
Consider a parameterless (edit: not necessarily) function that performs a single line of code, and is called only once in the program (though it is not impossible that it'll be needed again in the future).
It could perform a query, check some…
deprecated
- 3,297
128
votes
11 answers
Why use Optional in Java 8+ instead of traditional null pointer checks?
We have recently moved to Java 8. Now, I see applications flooded with Optional objects.
Before Java 8 (Style 1)
Employee employee = employeeServive.getEmployee();
if(employee!=null){
System.out.println(employee.getId());
}
After Java 8 (Style…
user3198603
- 1,896
128
votes
15 answers
When does bugfixing become overkill, if ever?
Imagine you are creating a video player in JavaScript. This video player loops the user's video repeatedly. Each time a new loop begins the player runs a recursive function that calls itself N times, N being the number of times the video has looped,…
Tiago Marinho
- 1,081
128
votes
16 answers
Team constantly fails to meet sprint goals
We are a small software company with one product.
We use scrum, and our developers choose the features they want to include in each sprint. Unfortunately over the past 18 month period, the team haven't once delivered the features they committed to…
Orca
- 1,109
128
votes
11 answers
Is it appropriate for interviewers to ask candidates for their Stack Exchange user name?
Would you consider it appropriate if you were asked for your Stack Exchange username in a software job interview (or as a pre-interview screening question)?
To me, it seems like a very reasonable request, and one that would be extremely informative…
kmote
- 3,322
128
votes
6 answers
Method vs Function vs Procedure
Simple question, but I often hear these three terms defined with such ferocity, but which have been known to me to mean different things over the years.
What are the "correct" definitions of "Procedures", "Methods", "Function", "Subroutines", etc?
Django Reinhardt
- 1,520
128
votes
10 answers
Don't Use "Static" in C#?
I submitted an application I wrote to some other architects for code review. One of them almost immediately wrote me back and said "Don't use static. You can't write automated tests with static classes and methods. static is to be avoided."
I…
Infin8Loop
- 1,469
128
votes
11 answers
The modern way to perform error handling...
I've been pondering this problem for a while now and find myself continually finding caveats and contradictions, so I'm hoping someone can produce a conclusion to the following:
Favour exceptions over error codes
As far as I'm aware, from working in…
RichK
- 1,457
128
votes
2 answers
What are the difference between an edge case, a corner case, a base case and a boundary case?
I'm not a native English speaker. In my native language I'm aware of some terms used to refer to the condition checked to stop a recursion, and to the condition checked for extreme, unlikely or super-simple cases. In English, I've encountered the…
Oak
- 5,245
128
votes
4 answers
Can I use MIT licence plugins in my commercial web site?
If yes, what precautions should I take?
Harry Joy
- 2,197
127
votes
15 answers
How is a "Software Developer" different from a "Software Consultant"? What makes a consultant?
I have seen a lot of people claiming themselves to be a "software consultant". These consultants do what a normal software developer does, write code, estimate tasks, fix bugs and attend meetings etc. The only difference being the financials,…
Kumar
- 723