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1500 questions
351
votes
20 answers
How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure?
I am a developer in a 5-member team and I believe our project is headed for disaster. I'll describe why in a moment, but my question is: how should I behave?
The deadline is in 1.5 months, and I feel no matter what we do, this project will fail.…
Louis Rhys
- 6,042
- 11
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- 59
350
votes
6 answers
What is negative code?
I was reading the Wikipedia article on Douglas McIlroy and found a quote that mentions
"The real hero of programming is the one who writes negative code."
What does that mean?
Anonymous
342
votes
7 answers
Why are there no PUT and DELETE methods on HTML forms?
HTML4 / XHTML1 allows only GET and POST in forms, now it seems like HTML5 will do the same. There is a proposal to add these two but it doesn't seem to be gaining traction.
What were the technical or political reasons for not including PUT and…
FilipK
- 3,523
- 3
- 15
- 7
339
votes
14 answers
Should you write your back-end as an API?
I had a heated discussion today about our MVC application. We have a website written in MVC (ASP.NET), and it usually follows the pattern of do something in the view -> hit the controller -> controller builds a model (calls a Manager that gets the…
NibblyPig
- 2,995
- 3
- 16
- 19
333
votes
19 answers
When should you call yourself a senior developer?
Possible Duplicate:
Whats the difference between Entry Level/Jr/Sr developers?
I'm curious what senior developer means because apparently the definition doesn't mean what I thought it would. I keep seeing these teens at 22-23 years old who call…
Kev
- 479
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330
votes
63 answers
Is 4-5 years the “Midlife Crisis” for a programming career?
I’ve been programming C# professionally for a bit over 4 years now. For the past 4 years I’ve worked for a few small/medium companies ranging from “web/ads agencies”, small industry specific software shops to a small startup. I've been mainly doing…
Jeff
- 301
- 3
- 4
- 6
326
votes
15 answers
Do I need to use an interface when only one class will ever implement it?
Isn't the whole point of an interface that multiple classes adhere to a set of rules and implementations?
Lamin Sanneh
- 3,975
- 3
- 19
- 19
324
votes
52 answers
Why do business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?
We have to admit that programming is much more difficult than creating documentation or even creating Gantt chart and asking progress to programmers. So for us that are naives, knowing that programming is generally more difficult, why do business…
Joshua Partogi
- 3,845
- 11
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323
votes
25 answers
When is a BIG Rewrite the answer?
Just read the question about the Big Rewrites and I remembered a question that I've been wanting answered myself.
I have a horrible project passed down to me, written in old Java, using Struts 1.0, tables with inconsistent relationships, or no…
Jonn
- 2,038
- 4
- 18
- 24
322
votes
36 answers
Should curly braces appear on their own line?
Should curly braces be on their own line or not? What do you think about it?
if (you.hasAnswer()) {
you.postAnswer();
} else {
you.doSomething();
}
or should it be
if (you.hasAnswer())
{
you.postAnswer();
}
else
{
…
Tamara Wijsman
- 8,259
- 14
- 58
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320
votes
4 answers
Should package names be singular or plural?
Often, in libraries especially, packages contains classes that are organized around a single concept. Examples: xml, sql, user, config, db. I think we all feel pretty naturally that these packages are correct in the…
Nicole
- 28,111
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311
votes
4 answers
What software programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program?
I got interested in the Soviet space program and was interested to discover that the software on the Buran spacecraft circa 1988 was written in Prolog.
Does anyone know what languages might have been used in earlier missions, especially the Mars…
shamp00
- 2,759
- 3
- 18
- 14
311
votes
16 answers
Why are shortcuts like x += y considered good practice?
I have no idea what these are actually called, but I see them all the time. The Python implementation is something like:
x += 5 as a shorthand notation for x = x + 5.
But why is this considered good practice? I've run across it in nearly every book…
Fomite
- 2,616
- 6
- 18
- 20
308
votes
16 answers
Why does everyone use Git in a centralized manner?
I have used Git at my past two companies for version control. It seems from what I've heard that about 90% of companies use Git over other version control systems.
One of the biggest selling points of Git is that it is decentralized, i.e. all…
gardenhead
- 4,719
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307
votes
10 answers
I'm a Subversion geek, why should I consider or not consider Mercurial or Git or any other DVCS?
I try to understand the benefits of distributed version control system (DVCS).
I found Subversion Re-education and this article by Martin Fowler very useful.
Mercurial and others DVCS promote a new way of working on code with changesets and local…
user2567