Standards are rules and customs that the software industry considers to be important and are codified in some way, either as a formal specification like an ISO standard or a language specification or as a more informal document like rules for behavior at a workplace.
Questions tagged [standards]
165 questions
150
votes
17 answers
Coding standard for clarity: comment every line of code?
I've worked in shops that produce life critical software and I've dealt with commenting rules that were meant to keep the code readable and potentially save lives. In my experience though the requirement becomes a brain dead chore to be ticked off…
candied_orange
- 102,279
- 24
- 197
- 315
136
votes
3 answers
What's the phone number equivalent of example.org?
RFC 2606 standard reserves the domain names example.org, example.net and example.com for the purpose of being used as examples in documentation.
What is an equivalent for a phone number (including country code) that can be used as an example, e.g.…
Florian
- 1,089
- 2
- 8
- 7
97
votes
2 answers
Why have hardware-accelerated vector graphics not taken off?
I'm working on an app that involves real-time manipulation of vector paths at 60fps, and I'm very surprised by how little information there is on the subject. At first, I tried to implement my idea using CoreGraphics, but it didn't perform…
Archagon
- 1,187
- 1
- 7
- 15
52
votes
4 answers
Has Little Endian won?
When teaching recently about the Big vs. Little Endian battle, a student asked whether it had been settled, and I realized I didn't know. Looking at the Wikipedia article, it seems that the most popular current OS/architecture pairs use Little…
Ellen Spertus
- 728
- 1
- 6
- 13
46
votes
2 answers
Should UTF-8 CSV files contain a BOM (byte order mark)?
Our line-of-business software allows the user to save certain data as CSV. Since there are a lot of different formats (all called "CSV") in use in the wild, we are tying to decide what the "default format" should look like.
Regarding line/field…
Heinzi
- 9,646
- 3
- 46
- 59
45
votes
10 answers
What defines robust code?
My professor keeps referring to this Java example when he speaks of "robust" code:
if (var == true) {
...
} else if (var == false) {
...
} else {
...
}
He claims that "robust code" means that your program takes into account all…
Lotus Notes
- 553
- 1
- 5
- 7
43
votes
7 answers
Does it make sense to standardize including a created date and last updated date field on all DB tables?
My boss is currently attempting to apply some development standards to our team, so we had a meeting yesterday to discuss the standards which was mostly going well until she brought up:
All DB tables will have a CreatedDate and LastUpdatedDate…
Ed James
- 3,489
- 3
- 22
- 33
36
votes
3 answers
Why do programming language (open) standards cost money?
Isn't it counter-productive to ask for 384 Swiss franks for C11 or 352 Swiss franks for C++11, if the aim is to make the standards widely adopted?
Please note, I'm not ranting at all, and I'm not against paying; I would like to understand the…
Tamás Szelei
- 7,737
- 7
- 38
- 42
31
votes
1 answer
How does the C++ standards committee test their design ideas?
Does the C++ committee test their new design specifications with some sort of prototype compiler before releasing a new standard? Or do they release a standard which is, in effect, only theoretical until the big compilers implement it?
Matthew James Briggs
- 1,757
- 3
- 15
- 23
28
votes
11 answers
Why are there so many competing filesystem designs?
Just a quick question, but why are there so many file systems still competing and in use today? (ntfs, fat32, ext3(ffs), etc)
It seems that file system designers could agree upon the best aspects of each type of system and implement a "best"…
Dark Templar
- 6,223
- 16
- 46
- 46
27
votes
3 answers
Should I use WADL to describe my RESTful API?
I'm about to embark on a project that makes extensive use of a properly RESTful approach. That is, it uses HATEOAS and serves up resources in a manner that allows for general exploration by a client.
I would like to ensure that I provide a…
Gary
- 24,420
- 9
- 63
- 108
21
votes
2 answers
What is the current status of software support for JPEG-2000?
The general recommendation to record original scanned images used to be "use TIFF". But programmers need evolution of format for "evolution of software", and I need to evolve my system to change from TIFF to JP2.
I have a big image storage…
Peter Krauss
- 747
- 1
- 9
- 23
18
votes
13 answers
Why would programmers ignore ISO standards?
One of the things I run into often is problems caused by programs which don't conform to ISO standardss.
One example would be not using the ISO country tables but making up their own shorthands, which goes okay for the United States (US), or the…
Pieter B
- 12,867
- 1
- 40
- 65
18
votes
4 answers
Is it necessary to follow the standard, take the C standard for that matter?
There are some very experienced folks on Stack Overflow who always talk about the C standard. People seem to not like non-portable solutions, even if they work for me. Ok, I understand that the standard needs to be followed, but doesn't it put…
0decimal0
- 306
- 1
- 10
18
votes
1 answer
What are the problems python 3 new features solve?
Python 3 new features say:
we’re mostly fixing well-known annoyances and warts, and removing a
lot of old cruft
It mentions what is different (the fix) but not why (the problems). I have have not found what were the problems. What were the…
user712092
- 1,412
- 10
- 18