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1500 questions
2183
votes
1 answer
What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?
What things should a programmer implementing the technical details of a web application consider before making the site public? If Jeff Atwood can forget about HttpOnly cookies, sitemaps, and cross-site request forgeries all in the same site, what…
Joel Coehoorn
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1635
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11 answers
Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed?
Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed? Example (good) uses include hash dictionaries.
I know there are things like SHA-256 and such, but these algorithms are designed to be secure, which usually means they are slower than…
Earlz
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1330
votes
14 answers
Where did the notion of "one return only" come from?
I often talk to programmers who say "Don't put multiple return statements in the same method." When I ask them to tell me the reasons why, all I get is "The coding standard says so." or "It's confusing." When they show me solutions with a single…
fredoverflow
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1050
votes
130 answers
I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I know how to program
I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I see websites like Stack Overflow and search engines like Google and don't know where I'd even begin to write something like that. During one summer I did have the opportunity to work as a iPhone…
wp123
876
votes
357 answers
What is the single most effective thing you did to improve your programming skills?
Looking back at my career and life as a programmer, there were plenty of different ways I improved my programming skills - reading code, writing code, reading books, listening to podcasts, watching screencasts and more.
My question is: What is the…
Oded
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717
votes
29 answers
My boss decided to add a "person to blame" field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?
In one of the latest "WTF" moves, my boss decided that adding a "Person To Blame" field to our bug tracking template will increase accountability (although we already have a way of tying bugs to features/stories). My arguments that this will…
MK_Dev
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707
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17 answers
How to respond when you are asked for an estimate?
We, as programmers, are constantly being asked 'How long will it take'?
And you know, the situation is almost always like this:
The requirements are unclear. Nobody has done an in depth analysis of all the implications.
The new feature will…
Sergio Acosta
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670
votes
9 answers
Why is 80 characters the 'standard' limit for code width?
Why is 80 characters the "standard" limit for code width? Why 80 and not 79, 81 or 100? What is the origin of this particular value?
fredley
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610
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13 answers
So Singletons are bad, then what?
There has been a lot of discussion lately about the problems with using (and overusing) Singletons. I've been one of those people earlier in my career too. I can see what the problem is now, and yet, there are still many cases where I can't see a…
Bobby Tables
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580
votes
1 answer
Is the use of "utf8=✓" preferable to "utf8=true"?
I have recently seen a few URIs containing the query parameter "utf8=✓". My first impression (after thinking "mmm, looks cool") was that this could be used to detect a broken character encoding.
So, is this a better way to resolve potential…
Gary
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577
votes
2 answers
What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?
The Mars Curiosity rover has landed successfully, and one of the promo videos "7 minutes of terror" brags about there being 500,000 lines of code. It's a complicated problem, no doubt. But that is a lot of code, surely there was a pretty big…
InfinitiesLoop
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545
votes
6 answers
Pros and Cons of Facebook's React vs. Web Components (Polymer)
What are the main benefits of Facebook's React over the upcoming Web Components spec and vice versa (or perhaps a more apples-to-apples comparison would be to Google's Polymer library)?
According to this JSConf EU talk and the React homepage, the…
CletusW
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540
votes
31 answers
Why can't the IT industry deliver large, faultless projects quickly as in other industries?
After watching National Geographic's MegaStructures series, I was surprised how fast large projects are completed. Once the preliminary work (design, specifications, etc.) is done on paper, the realization itself of huge projects takes just a few…
Arseni Mourzenko
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530
votes
18 answers
Is it OK to have multiple asserts in a single unit test?
In the comment to this great post, Roy Osherove mentioned the OAPT project that is designed to run each assert in a single test.
The following is written on the project's home page:
Proper unit tests should fail for
exactly one reason, that’s…
Restuta
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468
votes
21 answers
Overcoming slow problem solving due to increased knowledge of what might go wrong
This has been troubling me for some time, and I'd really appreciate the input of other professionals.
Short background: I started programming when my parents bought me my first computer in 1988 (at age 14, I'm 39 now). I followed a couple of other…
Zilk
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