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1500 questions
64
votes
22 answers
Why do some programmers think there is a contrast between theory and practice?
Comparing software engineering with civil engineering, I was surprised
to observe a different way of thinking: any civil engineer knows that
if you want to build a small hut in the garden you can just get the
materials and go build it whereas if you…
Giorgio
- 19,646
64
votes
17 answers
Completion time on a company where the supervisors don't know programming
We are in a small company with around 10 developers. I am the team leader and responsible for the development process.
Supervisors and salesmen are close to us since we are a small team, but have no clue on how software is developed.
When they ask…
Odys
- 559
- 4
- 11
64
votes
15 answers
When do you drop old technologies from your resume?
I have been reviewing several resumes we have for a new position. I noticed that a few of them had many old programming language versions and old applications on their resume (e.g. SQL 4.2, VB5, Lotus 123, Novell). This left their list of computer…
Scott Wylie
- 771
- 8
- 15
64
votes
1 answer
What task did Dijkstra give volunteers, which was mentioned in his paper "The Humble Programmer"?
In Dijkstra's paper "Humble Programmer", he mentions that he gave some volunteers a problem to solve:
“I have run a little programming experiment with really experienced volunteers, but something quite unintended and quite unexpected turned up.…
user712092
- 1,412
64
votes
8 answers
Prefer class members or passing arguments between internal methods?
Suppose within the private portion of a class there is a value which is utilized by multiple private methods. Do people prefer having this defined as a member variable for the class or passing it as an argument to each of the methods - and why?
On…
geoffjentry
- 880
64
votes
10 answers
Where to look for challenging jobs with a relaxed atmosphere?
I'm a dev at one of the big-name tech companies. I like the job for many reasons:
I do interesting work on a cool product
I solve challenging problems and use a lot of high-level skills (quantitative, creative, writing, presenting)
It pays…
RBTree
- 489
- 5
- 7
63
votes
13 answers
Philosophy behind Undefined Behavior
C\C++ specifications leave out a large number of behaviors open for compilers to implement in their own way. There are a number of questions that always keep getting asked here about the same and we have some excellent posts about…
Alok Save
- 1,138
63
votes
14 answers
How long do programmers generally stay in industry?
One thing that I've heard a lot over the years is that those working in the IT world generally don't make life time careers out of it, but tend to "burn out" and start a new career doing something else unrelated (e.g. going from software development…
rjzii
- 11,274
63
votes
15 answers
Co-worker renamed all of my queries
I don't know if I should be very irritated or what. I single handedly built over 300 queries for a large database, and developed a naming convention so I could find them later. No one else in my office even knows how to build a query, but I came in…
anon
63
votes
3 answers
What exactly do I need to do if I use a LGPL licensed library?
I have read this questions and answers, but I still don't understand what exactly do I need to do if I dynamically link with a library that uses a LGPL license (the SDL library in my case).
If I understand LGPL text correctly, I need to somehow…
BЈовић
- 14,031
- 8
- 62
- 82
63
votes
11 answers
Have you dealt with space hardening?
I am very eager to study best practices when it comes to space hardening. For instance, I've read (though I can't find the article any longer) that some core parts of the Mars rovers did not use dynamic memory allocation, in fact it was forbidden.…
user131
63
votes
11 answers
How do you stay productive when dealing with extremely badly written code?
I don't have much experience in working in software industry, being self-taught and having participated in open source before deciding to take a job. Now that I work for money, I also have to deal with some unpleasant stuff, which is normal of…
Dan
- 2,892
63
votes
10 answers
If null is a billion dollar mistake, what is the solution to represent a non-initialized object?
This comes with a debate with my colleague that I'm using null as an object initial state.
type Value = Node | null
const [value, setValue] = React.useState(null)
function test(v: Value) {
if (value === null) // Do something
else // Do…
Mengo
- 609
63
votes
9 answers
Novice programmer(s) frustrated by lack of a glossary of compiler errors
A friend of my family asked me for a bit of help as he learns to program (in the C language). As we were talking, he expressed frustration about having a hard time understanding the error messages his compiler (GCC) is giving him when he makes…
einpoklum
- 2,506
63
votes
10 answers
Readability versus maintainability, special case of writing nested function calls
My coding style for nested function calls is the following:
var result_h1 = H1(b1);
var result_h2 = H2(b2);
var result_g1 = G1(result_h1, result_h2);
var result_g2 = G2(c1);
var a = F(result_g1, result_g2);
I have recently changed to a department…
Dominique
- 1,766
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