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1500 questions
62
votes
7 answers

I'm the .1x programmer at my company. How can I best contribute?

I work at a newly-minted startup of five people. We have a Ph. D in machine learning, a former member of the RSpec core team, and the guy who compiles the Git binary for OS X. That's just the employees; the founder has a Ph. D and was CTO for a…
invaliduser
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62
votes
16 answers

Is the creation of brand new software generally a major part of most programming jobs?

I have worked in software development for over 10 years now, and it's dawning on me that I rarely get to create anything "new". I realize that "new" is a vague term, but I would define it as anything from an obvious new large-scale project to a new…
Jer
  • 2,576
62
votes
2 answers

Best practice/Patterns for two way data synchronisation

Quite often in my work the idea of 2-way data synchronisation between database systems crops up. The classic example is two slightly different CRM systems (say, Raiser's Edge and Salesforce) and the need to have a two-way sync of Contact data…
codeulike
  • 801
62
votes
12 answers

Should I reuse variables?

Should I reuse variables? I know that many best practices say you should not do it, however, later, when different developer is debugging the code and have 3 variables that look alike and the only difference is that they are created in different…
IAdapter
  • 1,345
62
votes
6 answers

Is this a ridiculous way to structure a DB schema, or am I completely missing something?

I have done a fair bit of work with relational databases, and think I understand the basic concepts of good schema design pretty well. I recently was tasked with taking over a project where the DB was designed by a highly-paid consultant. Please let…
Jim
  • 1,997
61
votes
5 answers

Why doesn't Python allow multi-line lambdas?

Can someone explain the concrete reasons why BDFL choose to make Python lambdas single line? This is good: lambda x: x**x This results in an error: lambda x: x**x I understand that making lambda multi-line would somehow "disturb" the normal…
treecoder
  • 9,495
61
votes
21 answers

Is "Hiring only the Best" a really practical advice for normal desktop application programming?

For background, we are doing desktop engineering applications, with an AutoCAD like UI, something similar to etabs. One thing that really bugs me is, is there any need to hire the very best developers? For starters, we are experiencing great…
Graviton
  • 4,005
61
votes
13 answers

Have you ever been involved in a BIG Rewrite?

Joel Spolsky said in one of his famous posts: The single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: rewrite the code from scratch. Chad Fowler wrote: You’ve seen the videos, the weblog posts and the hype, and you’ve…
systempuntoout
  • 3,553
61
votes
11 answers

Does anyone prefer proportional fonts?

I was reading the wikipedia article on programming style and noticed something in an argument against vertically aligned code: Reliance on mono-spaced font; tabular formatting assumes that the editor uses a fixed-width font. Most modern code…
Jason Baker
  • 9,615
61
votes
15 answers

Does TDD really work for complex projects?

I’m asking this question regarding problems I have experienced during TDD projects. I have noticed the following challenges when creating unit tests. Generating and maintaining mock data It’s hard and unrealistic to maintain large mock data. It’s…
Amir Rezaei
  • 11,018
61
votes
10 answers

Is it typical for there to be no real design prior to someone being assigned a task?

I'm a junior engineer, but I've worked at two companies now. In both cases I've found that my colleagues and I are assigned tasks with no thought put into the design before being told to do it. Typically I spend about 90% of my time writing down on…
Countingstuff
  • 761
61
votes
18 answers

Why do people still say Java is slow?

For a long time in SO and in other places Java has the reputation of being slow. From jokes to many comments in questions and answers, people still believe Java is slow based solely on experience with it in the 90s. This is my issue: we have…
TheLQ
  • 13,580
61
votes
2 answers

Writing tests for code whose purpose I don't understand

I recently completed a black-box refactoring. I am unable to check it in, because I can't work out how to test it. At a high level, I have a class whose initialization involves grabbing values from some class B. If class B is "empty", it generates…
user214290
61
votes
14 answers

Can we make general statements about the performance of interpreted code vs compiled code?

I'm comparing two technologies in order to reach a recommendation for which one should be used by a company. Technology A's code is interpreted while technology B's code is compiled to machine code. In my comparison I state that tech B in general…
EpicSam
  • 870
61
votes
4 answers

DDD repositories in application or domain service

I m studying DDD these days, and I m having some questions concerning how to manage repositories with DDD. Actually, I have met two possibilies : First one The first way of manage services I've read is to inject a repository and a domain model in an…
mfrachet
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