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1500 questions
65
votes
5 answers

Is backing up a MySQL database in Git a good idea?

I am trying to improve the backup situation for my application. I have a Django application and MySQL database. I read an article suggesting backing up the database in Git. On the one hand I like it, as it will keep a copy of the data and the code…
wobbily_col
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2 answers

Should I always use "is" as prefix for boolean variables?

Should I always use is as prefix for boolean variables? What about booleans that indicate something in past? Should I write isInitialized or wasInitialized? Should I write for properties IsManyMembers or HasManyMembers? Is there any best practices?…
Mark Twain
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65
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6 answers

Is an event loop just a for/while loop with optimized polling?

I'm trying to understand what an event loop is. Often the explanation is that in an event loop, you do something until you're notified that an event has occurred. You then handle the event and continue doing what you were doing before. To map the…
TheMeaningfulEngineer
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8 answers

How do I deal with a difficult programmmer joining an open source project?

I have an open source script for a specific site (I'm trying not to call anything by name here) that I and a few other developers recently moved to GitHub. We've gotten several new developers since we moved to the new system, including one very…
Nathan2055
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65
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6 answers

How does a non-technical manager add value to team of self-motivated software developers?

I am seeing a lot of programmers turning away from management and administration roles. They want to build stuff. And as a result, a lot of these positions are filled by non-technical people. I fail to see how they add value. Is scheduling meetings,…
Senthil Kumaran
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65
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13 answers

My boss has a bad case of "Not Invented Here"

My department specializes in converting customer data into our database schema so that they can use our software. Right now, we have C# applications that take an IDataReader (99% of the time it is a SqlDataReader), perform some cleaning and mapping,…
Scott Chamberlain
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65
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9 answers

How do you debug without an IDE?

Every time I look for an IDE (currently i'm tinkering with Go), I find a thread full of people recommending Vi, Emacs, Notepad++ etc. I've never done any development outside of an IDE; I guess I've been spoiled. How do you debug without an IDE? Are…
ConditionRacer
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65
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8 answers

Why is NoSQL faster than SQL?

Recently I was asked: Why is NoSQL faster than SQL? I didn't agree with the premise of the question... it's just nonsense for me personally. I can't see any performance boost by using NoSQL instead of SQL. Maybe SQL over NoSQL, yes but not in that…
cnd
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65
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11 answers

Why is it good to split a program into multiple classes?

I'm still a student in high school (entering 10th grade), and I have yet to take an actual computer course in school. Everything I've done so far is through books. Those books have taught me concepts such as inheritance, but how does splitting a…
kullalok
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65
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8 answers

Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?

I had a very stimulating and interessting discussion with a colleague about ORM and its pros and cons. In my opinion, an ORM is useful only in the rarest cases. At least in my experience. But I don't want to list my own arguments at this time. So I…
derphil
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65
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4 answers

what is the purpose of arrows?

I am learning functionnal programming with Haskell, and I try to grab concepts by first understanding why do I need them. I would like to know the goal of arrows in functional programming languages. What problem do they solve? I checked…
Simon Bergot
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65
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14 answers

What is best practice on ordering parameters in a function?

Sometimes (rarely), it seems that creating a function that takes a decent amount of parameters is the best route. However, when I do, I feel like I'm often choosing the ordering of the parameters at random. I usually go by "order of importance",…
Casey Patton
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64
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13 answers

Philosophy behind Undefined Behavior

C\C++ specifications leave out a large number of behaviors open for compilers to implement in their own way. There are a number of questions that always keep getting asked here about the same and we have some excellent posts about…
Alok Save
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64
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10 answers

When is code "legacy"?

We've all done it, we've labelled some code (often stuff we've inherited) as "legacy"? But it's still used in the production systems - so is it really legacy? And what makes it legacy? Should we shy away from this unwarranted labelling of perfectly…
Nim
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64
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16 answers

Are first person comments distracting and unprofessional?

I just found myself writing the following comment in some (archaic Visual Basic 6.0) code I was writing: If WindowState <> 1 Then 'The form's not minimized, so we can resize it safely '... End if I'm not sure why I subconsciously use "we"…
dlras2
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