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Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [development-process]

For questions relating to the process of developing software.

731 questions
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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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540
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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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466
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I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?

I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice. I am newly employed as the sole "SW Engineer" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 years cobbling together a vast code base. (It was…
kmote
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12 answers

Strategy for keeping secret info such as API keys out of source control?

I'm working on a website that will allow users to log in using OAuth credentials from the likes of Twitter, Google, etc. To do this, I have to register with these various providers and get a super-secret API key that I have to protect with pledges…
Ripped Off
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171
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11 answers

What happened to the "Surgical Team" pattern from "The Mythical Man-Month"?

Years ago, when I read The Mythical Man-Month, I found lots of stuff which I already knew from other sources. However, there were also new things in there, despite the book being from 1975. One of them was: The Surgical Team Mills proposes that…
vog
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151
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16 answers

What do you do when code review is just too hard?

OK so a lot of code review is fairly routine. But occasionally there are changes that broadly impact existing complex, fragile code. In this situation, the amount of time it would take to verify the safety of the changes, absence of regression, etc.…
Bradley Thomas
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149
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14 answers

Why does Uncle Bob suggest that coding standards shouldn't be written down if you can avoid it?

While I was reading this question, the top voted answer quoted Uncle Bob on coding standards, but I was confused by this tip: Don't write them down if you can avoid it. Rather, let the code be the way the standards are captured. This bounced in…
Nolan Akash
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132
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10 answers

What is the opposite of initialize (or init)?

The term will be used as a method name. The method is called when a part of the user interface is hidden (or removed), and it is used to reset values to default and dispose objects that will not be used any more. Possible names are: release, remove,…
Gabriel Diaconescu
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128
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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
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128
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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
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127
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14 answers

Why isn't TDD more popular in universities?

Recently, a person here asked a basic question about how to compute in Python all permutations of elements from a list. As for most questions asked by students, I haven't provided the actual source code in my answer, but rather explained how to…
Arseni Mourzenko
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120
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7 answers

My office wants infinite branch merges as policy; what other options do we have?

My office is trying to figure out how we handle branch splits and merges, and we've run into a big problem. Our issue is with long-term sidebranches -- the kind where you've got a few people working a sidebranch that splits from master, we develop…
Standback
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119
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When should I make the first commit to source control?

I'm never sure when a project is far enough along to first commit to source control. I tend to put off committing until the project is 'framework-complete,' and I primarily commit features from then on. (I haven't done any personal projects large…
Kendall Frey
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10 answers

My coworker commits and pushes without testing

When my coworker thinks that there is no need for a test on his PC, he makes changes, commits and then pushes. Then he tests on the production server and realizes that he made a mistake. It happens once in a week. Now I see that he made 3 commits…
ilhan
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Why are many programmers moving their code to github?

For the past 6 months or more, I've been seeing many codes hosted at sourceforge.net as well as other hosting sites "Move to GitHub". A mere Google Search with the phrase "Moved to Github" returns several results containing the text moved to github.…
Chibueze Opata
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