Top new questions this week:

Why isn't testing a language a supported feature at the syntax level?

You can find an endless list of blogs, articles and websites promoting the benefits of unit testing your source code. It's almost guaranteed that the developers who programmed the compilers for Java, …

programming-languages unit-testing syntax

asked by Mathew Foscarini 21 votes answered by Robert Harvey 19 votes

How bad is it calling println() often than concatenating strings together and calling it once?

I know output to the console is a costly operation. In the interest of code readability sometimes it is nice to call a function to output text twice, rather than having a long string of text as an …

java c++ performance c io

asked by Celeritas 16 votes answered by rolfl 23 votes

How does the "Fourth Dimension" work with arrays?

Abstract: So, as I understand it (although I have a very limited understanding), there are three dimensions that we (usually) work with: The 1st could be represented by a line. The 2nd could be …

theory array

asked by Questionmark 14 votes answered by Greg Hewgill 45 votes

Why is a private member accessible in a static method?

The following is pseudo code, I tried it in Java and PHP and both worked: class Test { private int a = 5; public static function do_test(){ var t = new Test(); t.a = 1; …

object-oriented language-features static-methods

asked by Benedictus 14 votes answered by Philipp 14 votes

Early attempt to remove Python GIL resulted in bad performance: Why?

This post from Python creator, Guido Van Rossum, mentions an early attempt to remove the GIL from Python: This has been tried before, with disappointing results, which is why I'm reluctant to …

python

asked by Siler 6 votes answered by Sahib -1 votes

Why does F# Core define generic array types?

I just noticed that the FSharp.Core namespace includes generic array types of up to 4 dimensions, i.e. Core.[]<'T>, Core.[,]<'T>, etc. C# and VB seem to be doing just fine with System.Array - …

c# .net f#

asked by Asik 6 votes answered by scrwtp 5 votes

Git branches avoided by the office where I work

The place I work at does the following: They manage a dev version of an app They manage another replicate version of that app, they call this the rep version The live version of the app that is …

git branching

asked by Wasim 5 votes answered by Ӎσᶎ 6 votes

Greatest hits from previous weeks:

Why isn't Java more widely used for game development?

I'm not a game developer or anything, but I know that Java is not very widely used for game development. Java should be fast enough for most games, so where's the catch? I can think of some reasons: …

java game-development

asked by Anto 54 votes answered by Uri 75 votes

Should UTF-16 be considered harmful?

I'm going to ask what is probably quite a controversial question: "Should one of the most popular encodings, UTF-16, be considered harmful?" Why do I ask this question? How many programmers are …

unicode

asked by Artyom 386 votes answered by Pavel Radzivilovsky 305 votes

Can you answer these?

How to backup data and images in this project?

I have MS C# and MS SQL 2008 database project. It can capture employees' records with pictures of more than 1000 records. Presently, I'm able to capture say 150 records on PC1 using my installed C# …

c# sql-server

asked by user213 1 vote

What is a good practice to push notifications in a "near real-time" delay in this case?

I want to enable some real-time notifications about friend's activities (social network). Technical context is: Webapp calling backend (REST API's). Scenario is: Kevin follows Bob. When Bob …

design architecture domain-driven-design real-time redis

asked by Mik378 1 vote

Why is mixing plural with singular and camel case with underscores in cake php naming convention better than a simpler convention?

I have been using cake php for over a year and generally I like it but I struggle to understand the advantages of the complex naming conventions over something simpler. Cake uses plural here and …

variables conventions cakephp

asked by ColinSharpe 1 vote