I am using the Haxe multi-platform programming tool (http://haxe.org) which, among other things, can generate JavaScript output. I would like to know if anyone has already done a "wrapper" library to interface Haxe with SlickGrid.
Doesn't look like one exists yet... sorry!
Unless someone has made one but just not shared it. Could be worth asking on the haxe mailing list / google group? You'll get a wider audience than on stack overflow.
If it looks like no one has done it, you can write your own... it's probably quite do-able. And not too hard either. I'd be happy to help you figure it out as you go... cause I might want to use it one day too :)
If you do decide to take that route I think the best option is to post on the mailing list, and we can help you out from there. There's also a document on the wiki with some instructions:
http://haxe.org/doc/js/extern_libraries
This stuff is always a bit daunting when you first get started, but don't be afraid to ask for help and hopefully you'll be up and running in no time.
How does one issue span queries in SOLR (Span, SpanNear, etc)? I've
done a bit of research and I can't tell of a straightforward way to do it.
It would seem that I need to implement a QueryParserPlugin to accomplish
what I want to do. Is this the correct path? Surely this has been done before. Does
anybody have links to examples? I had trouble finding anything.
Span queries aren't currently supported (JIRA issue here).
Judging by this mail thread, it seems that you're on the correct path by implementing a QueryParserPlugin.
If you do implement this, consider submitting a patch!
I maintain in-house business software for a living. Technologies included here are Java, Struts, Spring MVC, jsp, wicket, and a few others. I think it's time to branch out and learn something new.
I am hoping to show myself with a side project that writing code can, in fact, be fun (in some plane of the universe), and that I haven't wasted the past few years of my life doing something I can never love or have fun doing.
I'm thinking of having a fantasy-sport style web site - obviously much, much smaller with regards to features and all that. I was hoping I could get some recommendations for the newest or cleanest frameworks that will allow me to accomplish such a project. My goals are to work on following a real development process instead of just hacking a bunch of crap into an already crappy application on a daily basis. Also I will strive to follow best practices and create good, clean, understandable code that I don't shudder at the thought of having to modify. It's hard to do this at work, because the software I work on has already been developed by 50 guys from various continents that never took the time to design anything before jumping into coding.
I would need a simple database to store users and their picks for each event. Also at my job, the login security is all handled by another group completely. Do people usually write their own login systems from scratch, or are there open source utilities for that as well? I'd be interested in those, as my site will need to have a user login system, and be secure.
I had ruby and rails installed on my computer the last time I conjured up the motivation for this idea, but that was nixed by a hard drive crash. I figured before I just jumped straight to rails for this idea, that I would get a few other opinions off stack overflow to see if people liked something else that I didn't know about.
Also, if anyone has any good resources for how to think about OO design, I could brush up on that as well. I'm looking for anything that will help me to just think about the design from the start and how to get my thoughts into a diagram. I'd like it not to focus so much on patterns and other principles as much as just how to get started and actually put my thoughts in a professional document that I can use to build my project from. I tried to practice this prior to a card game that I wrote, and it got way too complicated way too fast, and the results ended up being not so great.
I’m more familiar with Django, although like you, the only frameworks I’ve really used are the Java/Struts/Spring/JSP, etc. The automatically generated administration interface in Django is amazing coming from these, and it comes with its own authentication system too.
Unless you’re especially predisposed against Python, I think you should give it a go.
Ruby on Rails, Python on Django, PHP on (not sure -- maybe Zend? or CakePHP?), are probably the most popular frameworks if I understand correctly that you want to learn a new language. If I misunderstood you, and you'd rather stick with Java, GWT seems pretty cool -- it's the only real way to avoid "explicitly" writing Javascript (if you DO want to learn and use some Javascript, I personally am in love with Dojo, but jQuery is substantially more popular: those are two good popular frameworks you should consider, though there are others of course, like for all languages I mentioned so far).
One advantage of picking Python and Django is that they work particularly well with Google App Engine (and with Dojo, too, thanks to the cool dojango project!) -- GAE supports JVM too, now, but it's supported Python for a much longer time and the Python side of it is more solid and complete at this time. So, if that's the technology stack you choose, you get to develop and deploy for free, on highly scalable infrastructure, at least until your app gets more than a few million page views per month -- and you really minimize your system adminsitration hassles, all you do is basically to code and write one simple configuration file.
Can one learn programming in VB.net using Visual Studio (Winforms stuff) and never learn what a console "hello world" looks like or how, in code, to change which part of the program starts at execution (and other basic things like that) and still be a successful VB.net programmer? Or are there roadblocks just waiting there to be hit?
Successful? Probably.
Good? No.
I'm sure you can, but I don't think it's a good idea. You'd probably pick up the core ideas through trial and error - but you may well end up with plenty of misconceptions, and you'll probably waste a lot of time in that trial and error phase.
I'd thoroughly recommend learning core concepts first. Apart from anything else, UI development is full of its own little foibles - if you don't know the core stuff to start with, you won't know whether you've hit a UI gotcha or whether your core knowledge is lacking.
Depends on what you are doing with the programs. If you are just programming little tools for yourself to use, then there is probably no harm. For hobby projects you can know as little as you want. However, if you are programming as a job, you should have a much better grasp at what is going on. You may be able to fake your way through for a while, but eventually somebody is going to ask you to do something that should be simple, but because of your limited knowledge of programming is utterly impossible. Then you will know why you have to know the basics.
That being said, there's a lot of programmers out there in the real world with exactly that level of knowledge who do have jobs. Personally, I think it's a bad idea, but you can't argue with the market. If these people have jobs, there must be a real market need for this type of programmer. Kind of goes along with what Welbog said. You can be successful in that you can hold down a job. But you still won't be a good programmer.
It depends what you mean by success really.
It's entirely possible to write a decent winforms application without writing console apps and without changing the starting form from the default.
When it comes to crafting well written applications in a professional way, you're likely to find requirements that mean using a boot strapper (which will control the initial flow) so at that point you'll definitely need to do some research.
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During hiring a .NET web developer I give the candidate a coding test.
I tend to limit the candidate to MSDN installed on the test server - I think it holds everything the candidate needs to complete the task.
I admit, this is not the normal case as I don't expect the candidate to do his work without use of the web.
On the other hand I don't want the candidate to google for a complete example and copy-paste it, i want to evaluate his skills.
The question is do I need to allow free use of the web during the test?
If you think the whole coding test is wrong - I would like to hear alternatives you may have for me.
As you say, 'I don't expect the candidate to do his work without use of the web' why not allow it too during the test? And what if he does copy and paste? I do that too. Surely the key is to know where to look, be discerning with what you find and apply it intelligently. Do you want to hire someone with a terrific memory or someone who can develop software for you?
When I was at school, calculators were just becoming affordable. As their use was seen as unavoidable, the exams were changed. Simple number-crunching was no longer tested in the way it was before (it was important then). Rather problem-solving techniques were to be tested.
I usually allow candidates to use whatever resources they want. After they're done, I sit down with them and go through their code together, ask questions like why they chose that particular approach etc.
If a couple of minutes of Googling was enough to not just copypaste some code but to learn enough about it to be able to defend the decisions within, then he's intelligent enough!
There are tests, where web access can be given, and there are where it doesn't really make sense.
Case where its fine to allow web access
When its unlikely to find even 60 percent of the code over the net
When you will ask to explain the code after he/she completed the code
A very specific solution using SQL query, which is unlikely to be found on the web
Case where its fine to not allow web access
Some basic programs like, recurssion, fibonacci, factorial, string manipulation, small trick programs, etc. There is no need of computer even in some of these cases
I'm very sceptical about coding tests during interviews. I think that a lot of the test I have seen, represent very specific (artificial, non real-world) problems where you would use the internet to solve them.
I think it's not really important to know how to solve such problems by heart - often time it is much more important that you know how and where to search for answers.
If you want to test the persons during the interview, I think it is better to ask them some conceptual questions instead of a specific programming problem. E.g: questions about object orientation, polymorphism, design of n-tier application, etc. etc.
Or as an example from the ASP.NET world, ask the interviewed person question such as: what is ViewState, what is a postback, what is session-/application-state, etc.
If you want to get an idea of how a candidate will perform in a job, I think it's best to try and make the conditions of the test as close as possible to the actual working conditions.
It should be pretty easy to prevent copy-and-pasters from slipping through the cracks by asking the candidate to explain his/her code.
Well, one thing you want to be aware of is that the developer you hire might not know everything that he will be thrown during the time he is working for you. If you ask him a question that he doesn't know off the top of his head you would want and expect him to research it and come back to you with proof that he understood the concepts that he just learned.
I say let them use the web - but ask them to explain in their own words how their code works. Most of my knowledge comes from online resources. However, I make sure that every line of code I write I understand.
There is a baseline knowledge that developers in a particular field should know; but you also want to figure out how quickly he can learn new things. A good test IMO is to throw a question you know he doesn't know and see how long he can figure it out using the resources he would have if he were an employee of your company.
Is your goal to see what basic knowledge the candidate has and if he can code without copying solutions from the web, then don't allow internet access. If you want to see what strategies he employs to get to a solution, let him use the web if he wants to.
I personally find it more interesting if a candidate can solve problems on a larger scale than just solving a simple programming problem. So I tend to ask him about the methods he uses when programming (Unit testing? Ever worked with it? What do you think of it?). This gives me a better picture than coding in an interview situation.
Sometimes it helps if you ask the candidates beforehand to bring a one-page coding sample to take a look at their coding style. This also saves you time during the interview.
It's important to make sure a candidate is resourceful - you don't want your programmer sitting there when they get stuck, not moving forward; you want them to use whatever resources are at hand - be it MSDN, picking someone else's brains, using the web, etc - to get the job done. Cut-n-paste from the web does seem like cheating, but (a) if you design your task carefully then it will be unique enough for there not to be a standard answer they can copy from the web, and (b) isn't re-using existing code a key part of building software? It's not much different from using 3rd-party libraries, to avoid reinventing the wheel. On the downside, of course, you also want them to show they can develop algorithms, so the unique task needs to include some element that requires that without the solution already being on the web. Trouble is, forums are the achilles heel to all of that since they can simply ask for the solution and someone, somewhere, is going to hand over the answer unwittingly!
Allow the candidate to use the web but tell him beforehand that if he used the web, you will have to evaluate HOW he solved the problem.
If he used the web for something simple such as finding the syntax or parameters which he forgot, don't mark him down. This is normal.
If he used the web for something like look at how a specific function is used, don't mark him down. This is normal.
If he searched for a specific code and then copy-paste it, then ask him about how the code works. If he can explain how the code works, then there's no reason to mark him down. If he can't explain it without looking at the site where he got the code, you have to mark him down.
If he used stackoverflow.com, check his profile for questions, answers and badges. From there, you can check how good a programmer he is.
It all depends what you want out of your successful candidate. I contest the view that knowing how to google makes you a good programmer because the simple fact is that the internet is full of bad examples as well as good ones. You don't really want your codebase to reflect how lucky your googler was on the day he cut and pasted all his code off the web. You want it to demonstrate sound practices, proven methodologies & elegant, efficient solutions that your team understand and are enthusiastic about. Not a jumble of styles that don't resemble each other. There's a wealth of good to be gotten from knowing how to get help from the interweb but real knowledge and ancient wisdom is being lost every day that people who don't really understand what they are doing are given jobs because they appear to solve problems with their ability to "google it".
If you really want to give your candidates access to the web then by all means do, but make the questions hard and scrutinise the results to see if they've picked the first solution they found or if they've picked the best solution to the problem.
As do many other respondents, I'd rather employ a resourceful developer who know how to use the web to the fullest to draw on other's experiences and previous work, than a developer who limits himself and his applications to the MSDN way of doing things.
I copy other peoples code all the time - daily in fact. The knack of it depends on finding the right solution quickly and integrating it into your existing work.
So let your candidate use the web and ask him how he came to his solutions. You might learn more about him from his methods than from how will he can remember previous solutions.
Three things I'd do.
Let applicants send in a coding example along with their cv.
Let applicants produce some real-life code (maybe even pair-program with a developer on your team) this will show you if they can actually use the tools. Internet is a tool too so they should be able to use internet.
Let applicants solve a problem in pseudo code on a blackboard during the interview. In this case you can be their "internet" by helping them.
These three approaches will show you different things. The first is a good early warning mechanism but can easily be faked (they could just download oss code from the web somewhere). The second is good to see if they can actually code but they might score badly if they're unfamiliar with the tools you use. The third will show you if they can solve theoretical problems but won't show you if they actually are good team players or if they write maintainable code.
I recently had a friend start talking to me on IM, he was in a coding test job interview. He had a couple SQL questions. At first i thought, hell you've got to do this yourself. I'm not going to help you cheat during an interview.
Then i thought about it again. I've been answering questions and talking to him about various technical issues for years on IM as part of his work. So when he encounters problems in the real world with the job if he gets hired, he'll do the same thing.
We don't talk about it much, but having a good network of friends to ask questions, and knowing how to search out relevant answers on the net are a big part of being an effective programmer or sysadmin. I've met people who were super smart programmers, but didn't really know how to find information online. They missed a lot, were kind of out of the loop. Knowing how to use resources should be important.
When i do interviews i often ask people what websites they read, what development tools they use, and why. It's a similar thing. Sure it's not about how they write x line of code, but it's about how they work.
No how to get around somebody just copy and pasting "answers". Well first, don't ask questions which have pat answers. Secondly when i'm interviewing i like to give people some code, ask them to refactor it, have them talk through what they are thinking. Then ask them to write some new code which implements a feature. Pair program with them. It's hard to hide inability to code when pair programming. While they are pairing, it totally makes sense to say, "let's go look up the api on the date time library."