Is C++ development still alive in the Philippines?

2009-12-09T12:20:22Z

How many of you still use C++ (either professionally or as a hobby)? And to what extent? That is, are you using C++ as "C but with classes" or have you been up-to-date with the more modern techniques (generic programming, STL, Boost, etc.).

Also, what are your thoughts about the C++ community's movement away from the object-oriented approach and into generic programming? Anybody excited about the upcoming new standard (i.e. C++0x)?

Would you prefer an IDE or a classic hardcore scripting for developing applications?

2010-03-07T14:03:46Z

Nowadays, many of us had already taken hands on IBM, Sun and many other big time companies' IDEs, so do you think that the autocompletion, wizard-like tools really help vs classic build, debug and deployment strategies through scripts and a handy editor?

What's your "programming" new year's resolution?

2010-01-05T03:21:11Z

Planning to take up a new language? Learn Git? Update or create a new blog? What do you intend to do (or not to do) this year to better your programming related skills?

Web Service C# and PHP

2010-03-10T03:25:01Z

I am trying to use web service in incorporating my C# application to a php based web site. can anyone suggests some possible ways how to do it?.

thanks!.

Convincing Management to go from VB6 to .NET

2010-02-23T01:07:05Z

I am working for a couple of months in a small company where the developers are limited to using Visual Studio 6.0 and Visual Basic 6.0 in doing software development. Kindly give some pointers on how I would be able to persuade management or make a case that we NEED to start moving and embracing the .NET framework. Coding using VB6 is so PAINFUL and at the same time quite hard to maintain. I would appreciate your suggestions and advice.

On the other hand, would it be better to start migrating some VB6 apps to VB.Net or do we go to use C#? The learning curve with VB6 to VB.Net may not be as daunting as it would be in C# which is one reason why we might choose VB.Net in case the management gives in.

Thanks a lot.

What "NoSQL" database are you using, and why?

2010-03-08T05:35:10Z

This one's related to another question but I'd like to know: what document-centric or "NoSQL" database are you using, and why? I've heard a lot about MongoDB and CouchDB, but it seems there's this other package called Cassandra that's getting popular. What are the factors that one must consider in choosing a particular database?

jQueryUI ContentSlider Question

2010-03-08T06:07:34Z

Hi,

I'm pretty new to jQuery and jQueryUI and I'm eager to try out things. This time, I want to create a content slider than has auto play and can jump to a specific slide. I was able to sort things out for those two rules, but then I want to add a bullet indicator which also replicates the "jump to slide" functionality of #slideNav.

I have tried repeating the same code and attaching a different id (#bullet) but I couldn't get it to work. (I know this would violate web standards- ID uniqueness).

Here's my code:

   <div id="teaseContent">
        <div id="slide-1" class="slide ui-tabs-panel">...</div>
        <div id="slide-2" class="slide ui-tabs-panel">...</div>
        <div id="slide-3" class="slide ui-tabs-panel">...</div>

     <ul id="slideNav" class="ui-tabs-nav clearFix">
        <li id="nav-slide-1" class="alpha ui-tabs-nav-item ui-tabs-selected"><a title="..." href="#slide-1">Nav 1</a></li>
        <li id="nav-slide-2" class="alpha ui-tabs-nav-item"><a title="..." href="#slide-2>Nav 2</a></li>
        <li id="nav-slide-3" class="alpha ui-tabs-nav-item"><a title="..." href="#slide-3">Nav 3</a></li>
     </ul> 

     <ul id="bullet" class="ui-tabs-nav clearFix">
        <li id="nav-slide-1" class="alpha ui-tabs-nav-item ui-tabs-selected"><a title="..." href="#slide-1">#1</a></li>
        <li id="nav-slide-2" class="alpha ui-tabs-nav-item"><a title="..." href="#slide-2>#2</a></li>
        <li id="nav-slide-3" class="alpha ui-tabs-nav-item"><a title="..." href="#slide-3">#3</a></li>
     </ul> 

    </div>

Here's the head code: (Using jQuery 1.4.2, jQueryUI 1.7.2)

  <script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function(){   
       //service slide
       $("#teaseContent").tabs({fx:{opacity: "toggle"}}).tabs("rotate", 3000, true); 
    });      
  </script>

Any ideas on how to make this work? Hope someone could lend a hand and point out some advice :) thanks!

Is the Composite Application Guidance for WPF/Silverlight overkill?

2010-03-09T11:05:27Z

Is the Composite Application Guidance for WPF/Silverlight (I think it used to be called Prism) overkill? I'd like to make use of it for WPF and Silverlight development but it seems quite complicated and insists on coming with other stuff like Unity (for IoC). I am looking for a lighter-weight framework for WPF/Silverlight that uses patterns like Model-View-ViewModel. (That way I can also choose a different IoC framework) What's your input on this?

Data Transfer Objects VS Domain/ActiveRecord Entities in the View in RoR

2010-02-24T09:25:09Z

I'm coming from a .NET background, where it is a practice to not bind domain/entity models directly to the view in not-so-basic CRUD-ish applications where the view does not directly project entity fields as-is.

I'm wondering what's the practice in RoR, where the default persistence mechanism is ActiveRecord. I would assert that presentation-related info should not be leaked to the entities, not sure though if this is how real RoR heads would do it.

If DTOs/model per view is the approach, how will you do it in Rails?

Your thoughts?

Some examples: - A view shows a list of invoices, with the number of unique items in one column. - A view shows a list of credit card accounts, where possibly fraudulent transactions are executed. For that, the UI needs to show accounts that have more than one transaction in red.

For both scenarios, The lists don't show all of the fields of the entities, just a few to show in the list (like invoice #, transaction date, name of the account, the amount of the transaction)

For the invoice example, The invoice entity doesn't have a field "No. of line items" mapped on it. The database has not been denormalized for perf reasons and it will be computed during query time using aggregate functions.

For the credit card accounts example, surely the card transaction entity doesn't have a "Show-in-red" or "IsFraudulent" invariant. Yes it may be a business rule, but for this example, that is a presentation concern, so I would like to keep it out of my domain model.

EDIT: A new example:

    //The persistent/Domain model, can be implemented as AR in RoR

public class Bus : Entity
{   
    //to represent a one-to-many association mapping    
    public IList<Person> passengers {get; set;};

    //to represent many-to-one association mapping
    public Person driver {get; set;}
    public LtfrbFranchise permit {get; set;};
    public Location currentLocation {get; set;};

    //other data fields/association mappings

    public void AddPassenger(Person pax){
        pax.Ride(this);
        passengers.Add(pax);        
    }

    public bool IsColorum(){  
        return !permit.AllowsTripOn(currentLocation);                       
    }  

    public bool IsOverloading(){
        return (passengers.Count() > permit.SeatingCapacity);
    }
}  

//The UI only requires the following:
[Serializable]
public class BusListDTO
{  
    public int BusNo {get; set;}  
    public string DriverName {get; set;} //from Bus.driver.LastName + "," + Bus.driver.FirstName
    public bool ShouldBeDisciplined {get; set;}  //this is TRUE when both IsColorum() and IsOverloading() of Bus are TRUE. If TRUE. a grid row should show 3 buttons.
}

BusListDTO can be used to show information to the UI, or serialize it as JSON/XML should the need arises.

Without a DTO, the entity/AR will have a lot of members that are not really persisted since the entity evaluates them for every call. Some examples:

You can add a DriverName attribute to the Bus entity but the attribute DriverName is a presentation concern.
You can add ShouldBeDisciplined to the Bus entity, perhaps persist it to save up on DB roundtrips.

Should the Bus entity be involved in a lot of views that does not directly show its shape, you end up with a monolithic AR class. In a large team scenario, this is a maintenance nightmare, where you spend a lot of time communicating what attributes do in specific use-cases and you have devs who use attributes indiscriminately.

Which programming Language should I start first?

2009-10-08T05:53:30Z

I am a fresh graduate of Bachelor of Science in Nursing. As you can see it's very different from Programming. :D

Anyway, I want to try my hand at programming. I have some experience with html and css because I run a few sites of mine (www.pinoyhon.com)

Which programming language should I be learning first? I heard that python is good, ruby may also be a choice.. But, which one can you guys recommend as a complete newbie with no strong programming background?

Edit: Added Nursing

A PHP dev wanting to switch to C# as a career, help

2010-03-07T15:17:48Z

Hi, I've been a PHP dev for about 3 years now and it seems that being a C# programmer is more lucrative. I consider myself a capable programmer with passion for learning. I know Java Web programming (with Struts) but has no professional experience with it.

What would you guys suggest? How do I switch on becoming a C# programmer?What companies would you recommend?

This is possibly a life altering question (of sorts) so I'd value your advice greatly. Thank you very much in advance.

Why do you think Ruby or Python isn't as pervasive as PHP?

2009-12-03T04:05:13Z

Ruby and Python are both maturing as scripting languages, with Ruby 1.9 closing the gap with PHP in terms of performance. Why do you think these two aren't as pervasive as PHP in terms of production use, developer availability, and jobs?

What 3rd Party GWT Library extensions will you recommend?

2009-12-09T08:27:42Z

I have been trying to find an extension that I can use for Google Web toolkit since the default UI library provided by GWT is not that diverse.

I have seen the EXT-GWT, GWT-EXT, and Smartgwt libraries but I cant decide which one of them that I'll be using.

Thank you for the advice that you guys can share. :)

Custom ActiveRecord finder invoking named scopes?

2010-02-03T07:09:47Z

I have a custom finder defined below:

class ContainerGateIn << ActiveRecord::Base
  ...
  def self.search(text)
    result = if text
      text.split(' ').inject(self) do |result, criteria|
        case criteria
          when /^[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}$/
            result.search_by_date(criteria.to_date)
          else
            result.search_by_text(criteria)
        end
      end
    else
      self
    end
  end
  ...
end

Where search_by_date and search_by_text are named scopes, and eager is an eager-loading named scope defined as:

named_scope :eager, :include => [{:container_inventory => {:container => [:size_type, :grade]}}, :company, :truck, :hauler]

The association is setup via a HMT (has_many :through):

class ContainerDepot << ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :container_inventories
  has_many :container_gate_ins, :through => :container_inventories do
end

The problem is if the finder is invoked via association nesting from ContainerDepot, it fails with an ActiveRecord::Statement::Invalid, saying that the table has been specified more than once.

ContainerDepot.first.container_gate_ins.eager.search(text)
=> ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PGError: ERROR:  table name "container_inventories" specified more than once

I could correct it by copying the whole custom finder as an association extension:

class ContainerDepot << ActiveRecord::Base
  ...
  has_many :container_gate_ins, :through => :container_inventories do
    def search(text)
      ... custom finder code from ContainerGateIn ...
    end
  end
  ...
end

It is not very DRY though and introduces a very unnecessary and potentially problematic redundancy, as the custom finder will have to be changed from time to time to accomodate additional search logic.

Any ideas on how this could be done better?

blogging tool in Python

2010-01-08T10:49:58Z

Is there a free or open source tool or website for publishing blogs like Wordpress in Python? Tnx!

Is there a way to do a FAIR coin toss over e-mail using verifiable methods with both participants being the only parties?

2010-02-05T03:00:37Z

Is there a way to do a FAIR coin toss over e-mail using verifiable methods with both participants being the only parties?

Shared host that supports PostgreSQL and Ruby on Rails?

2010-03-03T11:42:40Z

Are there any shared hosts that support PostgreSQL and Ruby on Rails? Dreamhost, my current host, doesn't.

Or maybe a VPS host. I kinda have a limited budget so prefer shared for now.

Wordpress-mu subdomain

2009-12-04T11:15:57Z

I installed wordpress-mu on a Windows machine and set it up so that i can addresses like myblog1.blog.ph. I have confogured the DNS settings for such. blog.ph works fine, but the sub-blogs like myblog.blog.ph show the following screen:

http://yfrog.com/0jerrvxj

So what do I do now?

GWT Developer, anyone working with this framework?

2010-02-25T06:06:31Z

GWT Developer, anyone working with this framework? Or any company that currently use this framework?

C#: Determining if there is a drawing(graphics) at a given point

2009-12-31T05:43:13Z

I have a panel in C# with 50 (or more) small rectangles in it drawn using Graphics. Given a Point in the panel, is there a way to determine if there is a rectangle in that point?

I can only think of looping through the rectangles[] but that might not be practical in terms of running time. Know of any method/object in C# that can help?

Thanks!

Edit: The shapes are objects.

Edit: The real problem here is that I'll be checking for collisions between rectangles, meaning I'll be checking for intersections of two or more unknown rectangles per timer-tick.

Comment by lurker: Why do you need to do that? If you only need to check if a point is contained within a rectangle, then a simple iteration should suffice. Maybe the problem needs more clarification.

Edit: This is the algorithm that I thought of in order to avoid collision:

moveRectangle() {
  do {
    choose target place // choose a Point in the panel
  } while (there is a rectangle at target place) // if there is a rectangle at chosen Point
  go to target place
}

Which Country would you go to, to work as a Programmer?

2009-10-26T04:25:04Z

I know most people in the IT industry in the Philippines would like to migrate or just work abroad. If you were one of those who want to, which country would you pick, and why that country?

What Company Provides a Good Deal for Buying SSL Certificates?

2010-03-01T08:52:00Z

Im finding the need to purchase SSL certificates and i was wondering if any one of you has prior experience in purchasing SSL certificates.

And also, I would like to ask if lets say, I have an Active Directory server, web server and another IIS web server for another system, can I just use 1 certificate for all? Will all of my subdomains inherit the certificate?

Lets say, my website is www.shalala.com and i have an AD server at ad.shalala.com and an IIS server at anothersite.shalala.com will I need 3 certificates or just one for the shalala.com ..

Sorry ang baduy ng example ko wala akong maisip na matinong domain name. Haha.

On using INterface as return type

2010-02-24T01:45:55Z

I was just wondering if there's a significant performance difference when using interface as the return type as compared to using the derived class.

public static IMessageTemplate GetTemplate(string templateId, IValidParameters parameters) {...}

vs.

public static MessageTemplateClass GetTemplate(string templateId, IValidParameters parameters) {...}

public static IEnumerable<IMessageTemplate> GetTemplates(eTemplateType ttype){...}

vs.

public static IEnumerable<MessageTemplateClass> GetTemplates(eTemplateType ttype){...}

My hunch is that using interface is much lightweight but I'm not sure what happens underneath. Also, when is it appropriate to use interface as return type?

How to install PHP5 on Snow Leopard

2010-01-28T00:06:33Z

Hello I was a happy Ubuntu Linux user until I decided to get a Mac because of a dying laptop. It turned out Snow Leopard isn't as great as it's advertised. Anyway it's ok because I found open source solutions like Adium, Open Office, Songbird as iTunes and last.fm don't play well together.

I have this same question over Stackoverflow and they told me to use MAMP. Although MAMP would work for basic CMS development, I would prefer a better solution.

The thing is I have MySQL, Ruby (RVM), Apache2 working except for PHP5.

See my post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2146945/php5-for-snow-leopard-is-not-working-even-with-the-module-enabled

So this doesn't work: LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

because when I browser to any php file, it reads PHP as text.

I also tried installing Apache2 using macports and it didn't work.

http://y-draw.com/blog/articles/2009/11/30/install-apache2-and-php5-on-mac-os-x-snow-leopard/

Katherine-Pes-iMac:~ katz$  sudo port install apache2
--->  Computing dependencies for apache2
Error: Requested variants "" do not match original selection "+universal".
Please use the same variants again, perform 'port clean zlib' or specify the force option (-f).
Error: The following dependencies failed to build: openssl zlib pcre bzip2
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
Before reporting a bug, first run the command again with the -d flag to get complete output.

I also tried this:

sh-3.2# port -d install zlib
DEBUG: Found port in file:///opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/archivers/zlib
DEBUG: Changing to port directory: /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/archivers/zlib
DEBUG: OS Platform: darwin
DEBUG: OS Version: 10.1.2
DEBUG: Mac OS X Version: 10.6
DEBUG: System Arch: i386
DEBUG: setting option os.universal_supported to yes
DEBUG: org.macports.load registered provides 'load', a pre-existing procedure. Target override will not be provided
DEBUG: org.macports.unload registered provides 'unload', a pre-existing procedure. Target override will not be provided
DEBUG: org.macports.distfiles registered provides 'distfiles', a pre-existing procedure. Target override will not be provided
DEBUG: adding the default universal variant
DEBUG: Reading variant descriptions from /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/_resources/port1.0/variant_descriptions.conf
DEBUG: Requested variant darwin is not provided by port zlib.
DEBUG: Requested variant i386 is not provided by port zlib.
DEBUG: Requested variant macosx is not provided by port zlib.
Error: Requested variants "" do not match original selection "+universal".
Please use the same variants again, perform 'port clean zlib' or specify the force option (-f).
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
To report a bug, see <http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets>

Tsk tsk. Nothing working.

If there's anyone who PHP5 working and could advice me regarding setup on Leopard, it would be a great help.

What are the best books/resources for Android development?

2010-02-19T10:46:35Z

I saw from Manning site that the MEAP for Unlocking Android 2nd edition + Print is on sale (today only) for 25 USD. This also includes an ebook copy of the previous version. Would you recommend that book for beginning Android devs? If not, which resources do you find most useful?

Thanks.

How do I show a sum of a Field's value in the Display view in Simple Groupware?

2009-10-16T03:02:54Z

My requirement is to add a numeric field to a module, and create a view to show a summary of that new field. Is this possible?

Specific example: I add a field "Hours Spent" to Tasks. Can I create a view with "Total Hours Spent" for all Tasks under a Project?

Is it possible to create a simple workflow for Tasks in Simple Groupware?

2009-10-13T03:54:29Z

Out of the box, a Task can be set to any status, regardless of the current status.

The objective is to have a predetermined flow similar to:

New -> Assigned -> Fixed -> Tested -> Closed
          ^                   |
          |                   |
          +-------------------+

What is the MAXIMUM file size a PHP upload facility can handle?

2010-01-27T03:15:18Z

Background: the application (running in Apache/PHP) already has a file upload facility. However, the allowed file size is just 2MB. The user is uploading an 'important' file but the size is beyond 2MB.

Sure the file upload facility can be increased to accommodate the need. Nevertheless,

(1) Up to how much MB does a regular HTML/PHP file upload can handle? (2) Can it be increased further? Up to how much? (3) What are the impacts of increasing the file size to the server's performance, if there are any? if the server is on the cloud, will these impacts be still noticeable?

Many thanks!

Simple PHP RSS Parser

2010-01-30T14:10:52Z

Im currently doing a small module for a page which needs the latest feed from both a blogger page and a twitter page. I only want to add the latest feeds in a small area of the page and im looking at modifying the code to add 'click here to read more..' if ever the blog entries are long.

long story short, i need an rss parser for php and im eyeing on magpie, simplepie, lastrss, rssphp. I would like to ask personal experiences in using these and what would be your recommendation.

How can I setup a web application solution that sends (close to) real-time email notifications?

2010-02-10T08:02:32Z

Objective: Real-time sending of email notifications

Current Problem: The third party email hosting service restricts an email account to sending 5000 emails only on a daily basis. The web application hosted on a different server (running Linux) of another third party hosting service provider. Build up of notification queue outruns the 5K daily limit, i.e, the number of "to-be-emailed" exceeds the restriction.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

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