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1500 questions
88
votes
63 answers
What features would you like to have in PHP?
Since it's the holiday season now and everybody's making wishes, I wonder - which language features you would wish PHP would have added? I am interested in some practical suggestions/wishes for the language. By practical I mean:
Something that can…
StasM
- 3,377
88
votes
6 answers
Why was Python's popularity so sudden?
Python first appeared in 1991, but it was somewhat unknown until 2004, if the TIOBE rankings quantify anything meaningful.
What happened? What caused the interest in this 13 year old language to go through the roof? Is there a reason that Python…
Eric Wilson
- 12,071
88
votes
1 answer
How are Rust Traits different from Go Interfaces?
I am relatively familiar with Go, having written a number of small programs in it. Rust, of course, I am less familiar with but keeping an eye on.
Having recently read http://yager.io/programming/go.html, I thought I'd personally examine the two…
Logan
- 983
88
votes
7 answers
What is early and late binding?
I keep hearing about early and late binding, but I do not understand what they are. I found the following explanation which I do not understand:
Early binding refers to assignment of values to variables during design time whereas late binding…
SAMIR RATHOD
- 1,015
88
votes
11 answers
Is it a bad practice to modify code strictly for testing purposes
I have a debate with a programmer colleague about whether it is a good or bad practice to modify a working piece of code only to make it testable (via unit tests for example).
My opinion is that it is OK, within the limits of maintaining good object…
liortal
- 1,175
88
votes
5 answers
Copyright notices/disclaimers in source files
It's a common practice to place copyright notices, various legal disclaimers and sometimes even full license agreements in each source file of an open-source project. Is this really necessary for a (1) open-source project and (2) closed-source…
mojuba
- 5,623
88
votes
21 answers
How would you react if someone told you your code is a mess?
I am a good programmer, or so I thought before. I always love to program. And I want to learn many things about programming to make me a better programmer. I studied programming for 1 year and now I am working as a programmer for almost 2 years. So…
newbie
- 781
88
votes
17 answers
Are my negative internship experiences representative of the real world?
I'm curious if my current experiences as an intern are representative of actual industry.
As background, I'm through the better part of two computing majors and a math major at a major university; I've aced every class and adored all of them, so I'd…
88
votes
9 answers
I can write code... but can't design well. Any suggestions?
I feel that I am good at writing code in bits and pieces, but my designs really suck. The question is, how do I improve my designs - and in turn become a better designer?
I think schools and colleges do a good job of teaching people how to become…
user396089
- 1,211
88
votes
11 answers
Did the developers of Java consciously abandon RAII?
As a long-time C# programmer, I have recently come to learn more about the advantages of Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII). In particular, I have discovered that the C# idiom:
using (var dbConn = new DbConnection(connStr)) {
// do…
JoelFan
- 7,091
87
votes
7 answers
EAV - is it really bad in all scenarios?
I'm thinking to use an entity-attribute-value (EAV) model for some of the stuff in one of the projects, but all questions about it in Stack Overflow end up to answers calling EAV an anti-pattern.
But I'm wondering if it is that wrong in all…
Giedrius
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- 1
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87
votes
33 answers
When deciding on whether or not to work for a new company, what are your dealbreakers?
I know we've covered what questions you should ask about a company before you would decide to work there. But what do you do with the answers?
In other words, what would you consider a dealbreaker? I.e. what would scare you so much about a company…
Jaco Pretorius
- 4,057
87
votes
6 answers
How does garbage collection work in languages which are natively compiled?
After browsing several answers an Stack Overflow, it is clear that some natively compiled languages have garbage collection. But it is unclear to me how exactly this would work.
I understand how garbage collection could work with an interpreted…
Christian Dean
- 2,830
87
votes
14 answers
Why do most log files use plain text rather than a binary format?
Logging is something that is necessary but is (relatively) rarely used. As such it can be made much more compact in terms of storage.
For example the data most commonly logged like ip, date, time and other data that can be represented as an integer…
php_nub_qq
- 2,224
87
votes
6 answers
HTTP Status Code for "Still Processing"
I'm building a RESTful API that supports queuing long-running tasks for eventual handling.
The typical workflow for this API would be:
User fills in form
Client posts data to API
API returns 202 Accepted
Client redirects user to a unique URL for…
Matthew Haugen
- 1,075