The efficiency tag has no wiki summary.
115
votes
27answers
5k views
What are the worst false economies in software development?
What are the worst false economies (that is ways of saving money that ultimately cost more than they save) prevalent in the software industry and how do you combat them?
38
votes
11answers
3k views
Metric by which to hold developers accountable [duplicate]
I asked a question on lines of code per hour and got torn a new one. So my matured follow-up question is this:
If not lines of code, then what is a good metric by which to measure (by the ...
34
votes
9answers
1k views
Is there any hard data on the (dis-)advantages of working from home?
Is there any hard data (studies, comparisons, not-just-gut-feel analysis) on the advantages and disadvantages of working from home?
My devs asked about e.g. working from home one day per week, the ...
28
votes
18answers
1k views
Why companies don't buy developers entertaining instruments? [closed]
Many times when I get tired of development and my mind doesn't really help me any more (at home), I simply do something entertaining and my mind gets free for more hours of work with higher ...
27
votes
7answers
727 views
What arguments are there against easter eggs? Are there any arguments to even support easter eggs?
I'm a bit of a jester so the idea of an easter egg still appeals to me. I have added them in my code before but my group of friends has a running joke of using CTRL-FU to trigger the egg.
Now I'm ...
16
votes
5answers
4k views
How to slow down your computer (for testing purposes)?
As most people agree, encouraging developers to make fast code by giving them slow machines is not a good idea. But there's a point in that question. My dev machine is fast, and so I occasionally ...
15
votes
6answers
930 views
Importance of learning to google efficiently for a programmer?
This is not a debate on usage of Google being good or bad for programmers.
Kindly refrain from doing so in your answers.
Most people (a vast majority of who use the Internet) use Google these days. ...
15
votes
6answers
383 views
Educational, well-written FOSS projects to read, study or discuss
Before you say it: yes, this "question" has been asked other times. However, I could not fine many of such questions and not that easily, and those I found had similar results. What I'm trying to say ...
14
votes
6answers
502 views
How do you manage projects left over by other employees? [closed]
It happens that some one just leaves the company all of sudden. Now his work needs to be completed and you are being assigned it. Having no idea what was he up to (was it 90% done or 9%), how do you ...
14
votes
5answers
830 views
At what point is asynchronous reading of disk I/O more efficient than synchronous?
Assuming there is some bit of code that reads files for multiple consumers, and the files are of any arbitrary size: At what size does it become more efficient to read the file asynchronously? Or to ...
13
votes
7answers
819 views
How do you program effectively when it takes a long time to simply test your code?
My workflow has always been to write one logical step and then run the program and inspect the output. This process have served me incredibly well for assignments in university. However, as I do more ...
10
votes
5answers
649 views
Is it ever too early to learn a new language? [closed]
Personal context: I've been learning C++ formally the last 6 months at university. Prior to this I dabbled in JavaScript for a year. Now I am considering learning Python during a month off school.
By ...
9
votes
4answers
6k views
Is Python Interpreted or Compiled?
This is just a wondering I had while reading about interpreted and compiled languages.
Ruby is no doubt an interpreted language, since source code is compiled by an interpreter at the point of ...
8
votes
6answers
944 views
What is the biggest support a boss can give to his/her developers?
Buying the best hardware, paying the most precious bonus or reward, treating them politely, provide the opportunity for improvement, etc.?
We want to improve the productivity of our development team. ...
8
votes
5answers
1k views
Are There Any Programming Focused Notebooks?
I know that engineering paper exists, but are there any companies that make programmer-specific notebooks for notes/pseudo-code/designs?
Paper is my preferred way of outlining things, so the addition ...
8
votes
3answers
262 views
Books about work (environment) efficiency
From my personal experience I would describe the most productive team as one where members treat each other with mutual respect and where management acts as a facilitator instead of micro managing the ...
8
votes
1answer
498 views
Subset sum problem is NP-complete?
If I know correctly, subset sum problem is NP-complete. Here you have an array of n integers and you are given a target sum t, you have to return the numbers from the array which can sum up to the ...
7
votes
9answers
669 views
What's Your Method of not forgetting the end brackets, parentheses
disclaimer: for simplicity sake, brackets will refer to brackets, braces, quotes, and parentheses in the couse of this question. Carry on.
When writing code, I usually type the beginning and end ...
7
votes
13answers
491 views
When do you think of efficiency? Before/During/After actually coding?
I've been programming in Java for quite some time and I always find myself doing very little "planning" (I haven't worked on anything HUGE yet, but im no stranger to big projects) and develop ideas ...
7
votes
11answers
405 views
How to program something with the expectation that it will work the first time?
I had a friend in college who programmed something that worked the first time, that was pretty amazing. But as for me, I just fire up the debugger as soon as I finally get whatever I'm working on to ...
7
votes
4answers
1k views
Is it a good idea to use something like the Twitter Bootstrap in production?
I'm interning at a new startup, and I've been tasked with designing the front-end of the site.
I really, really want to use the new Twitter Bootstrap (http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/). It's all ...
7
votes
5answers
231 views
Programming principles with regard to software (computational) efficiency and the use of variables
I'm classically trained psychologist, not a programmer, so sometimes the more advanced aspects of programming escape me, in particular regarding program efficiency and/or certain best practices, in ...
7
votes
2answers
253 views
How can I estimate the lifespan of a line of code?
I'm trying to figure out a way to analyze code longevity in open source projects: that is, how long a specific line of code is active and in use.
My current thinking is that a line of code's lifespan ...
6
votes
11answers
620 views
Effective versus efficient code
TL;DR: Quick and dirty code, or "correct" (insert your definition of this term) code?
There is often a tension between "efficient" and "effective" in software development.
"Efficient" often means ...
6
votes
4answers
407 views
regular, average programmer - scared of geeks and their skills [closed]
Just like in any other field, 90% of workers do trivial routine things and only less than 10% actually do the most difficult things.
Most programmers in the industry are average, and so am I.
There ...
6
votes
3answers
212 views
NP hard/complete
I have never been very clear on this concept. Please help:
At the end of the day, we should want to identify useful problems for which we don't have polynomial solution so far and only have ...
6
votes
2answers
177 views
What is an efficient algorithm for randomly assigning a pool of objects to a parent using specific rules
I need some expert answers to help me determine the most efficient algorithm in this scenario.
Consider the following data structures:
type B { A parent; }
type A {
set<B> children;
...
6
votes
6answers
478 views
Interrupting Work Productivity: The Name?
Certainly it is a productivity killer when a developer is constantly interrupted by other workers, bosses, etc - but it is even worse when the developer is constantly interrupted by his or her own ...
5
votes
6answers
529 views
Why are marketing employees, product managers, etc. deserving of their own office, yet programmers are jammed in a room as many as possible?
I don't understand why many (many) companies treat software developers like they are assembly line workers making widgets. Joel Spolsky has a great example of the problems this creates:
With ...
5
votes
6answers
1k views
Programming languages differences and efficiency, does it matter?
I am fairly new to programming, I have studied in computer science for 3 years at college, but as you know, school is only 2% of what really makes one a fully-fledged programmer.
I have a lot of ...
5
votes
6answers
1k views
Is there any reason to use varchar over text columns in a database?
Is varchar just a remnant from before text came around, or are there use cases where you would want to use a varchar? (Or char for that matter..)
(I use Postgres and MySQL (MyISAM) daily, so those ...
5
votes
3answers
278 views
Starting on a large project, should I split it into more concise parts?
Background: Currently an intern at a company and working on repurposing older programs (still in use, but for different departments) for use in testing new hardware. The new hardware is different in ...
5
votes
5answers
223 views
Alternatives for comparing data from different databases
I have two huge tables on separate databases. One of them has the information of all the SMS that passed through the company's servers while the other one has the information of the actual billing of ...
5
votes
3answers
195 views
Computed Values and Simple Reads - A nagging pain for my Domain Driven Designs!
The problem I continually face is how to deal with computed values driven by domain logic while still working efficiently against the data store.
Example:
I'm returning a list of Products from my ...
4
votes
7answers
1k views
Efficient coding in Visual Studio (or another IDE), with touch typing
Moving the cursor to another position in code is one of the most frequent actions when coding. I don't write my programs from the beginning to the end, like a letter. However, moving the cursor ...
4
votes
5answers
238 views
What is a good measure of testing/tester efficiency?
I am about to participate in a discussion with management regarding measuring our testing efficiency as a QA organization. The main reason behind this is that half of our team is contracted out and ...
4
votes
2answers
387 views
Developing With Ruby/Rails Easier, Faster Than Developing With PHP/CakePHP?
What is your experience when developing web applications using one of these two languages/frameworks? Which have you found to be more convenient and faster to develop with?
4
votes
3answers
1k views
URL Encryption vs. Encoding
At the moment non/semi sensitive information is sent from one page to another via GET on our web application. Such as user ID or page number requested etc. Sometimes slightly more sensitive ...
4
votes
2answers
297 views
How to measure time lost due to environment problems?
I'm trying to determine how we can measure how much time the developers are loosing to poorly managed environment and inefficient ways-of-working.
The goals are:
Show managment how big the problem ...
3
votes
7answers
681 views
Source of (programmer) inefficiency
I am interested to gain a better insight about the possible reasons of personal inefficiency as programmers (and only in programming) due to – simply - our own errors (because we are humans – well, ...
3
votes
8answers
361 views
Wrapping simple statement in a function in java?
I was working on neo4j graph database in java. To get the reference node of this db:
GraphDatabaseService graphDb=new EmbeddedGraphDatabase(DB_PATH);
Node Root=graphDb.getReferenceNode()
I ...
3
votes
3answers
400 views
Combining multiple events into one action/ Defer refreshing
So in a GUI program I have multiple events that trigger a update of a workspace. This update call is costly so I would want it to not happen very often.
A user might pick something from a dropdown ( ...
3
votes
3answers
390 views
Is case after case in a switch efficient?
Just a random question regarding switch case efficiency in case after case; is the following code (assume pseudo code):
function bool isValid(String myString){
switch(myString){
case "stringA":
...
3
votes
7answers
2k views
What is the best way to INSERT a large dataset into a MySQL database (or any database in general)
As part of a PHP project, I have to insert a row into a MySQL database. I'm obviously used to doing this, but this required inserting into 90 columns in one query. The resulting query looks horrible ...
3
votes
6answers
492 views
Best way to get programmers to ask for help when they get stuck
What is the best way to ensure that programmers ask for help when they get stuck on a problem, rather than spending too much time trying to figure something out when they've hit a wall?
I'm ...
3
votes
5answers
756 views
How to test a program in an efficient way?
I know that a writing test case is one of the way to do some programming level testing, but how to test some careless mistake? or how to reduce? For example, a buttonA, should perform ActionA, but ...
3
votes
2answers
860 views
Fast extraction to text file from oracle database
I have to extract around 3 million records from two different databases for further processing. Currently, I execute the queries via SQL*Plus and spool the results to a plain text file.
This queries ...
3
votes
1answer
125 views
Aggregate Root and Lots of Data Efficiency
It's more of a scenario, but it isn't far fetched at all. Let's say I have an Aggregate Root (AR) Warehouse which it's used to manage product stock. The Product itself is an AR in a different bounded ...
2
votes
1answer
216 views
How to communicate inefficiency before it's implemented?
This is a problem I come across pretty often. Basically we are using an application to make art content. Often times this requires writing custom tools for it.
Sometimes you run into parts of the ...
2
votes
3answers
342 views
Designing a large database with multiple sources
I have been tasked with redesigning, or at worst optimising the structure of a database for a data warehouse.
Currently, the database has 4 other source databases (which is due to expand to X ...
