Tag Archives: learning

Today’s tip is the ultimate how to guide on being a programmer. It seems to explain almost everything. If, once you’ve read it and want more it also suggests 4 excellent books to read in chapter 1.

For personal reasons I’ve not been very active in the last week or so. Therefore the solution I promised has been a bit late in coming.

Here is the “reference solution” for the simple challenge that I set last week. It is by no means the only solution, nor is it necessarily the best solution (depending on how you define “best”)

class Program
{
    private static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.Write("Width:");
        int width = Convert.ToInt32(Console.ReadLine());
        Console.Write("Height:");
        int height = Convert.ToInt32(Console.ReadLine());

        DrawBox(width, height);

        Console.ReadLine();
    }

    private static void DrawBox(int width, int height)
    {
        // Work out the interior width and height (i.e. the width
        // and height of the space inside the box)
        int interiorWidth = width - 2;
        int interiorHeight = height - 2;

        // Work out what the top and bottom of the box should look like
        string topAndBottom = new string('*', width);

        // Work out what the interior rows should look like
        string interiorRow = string.Concat(
            "*", new string(' ', interiorWidth), "*", Environment.NewLine);

        // Work out the entire interior using the "trick" of defining
        // a string with a repeating character for as many rows as the
        // interior needs to be, then replacing each of those characters
        // with the pattern for a row of the interior.
        string interior = new string('-', interiorHeight);
        interior = interior.Replace("-", interiorRow);

        // Write the box to the console.
        Console.WriteLine(topAndBottom);
        Console.Write(interior);
        Console.WriteLine(topAndBottom);
    }
}

A homework question was posted on a forum recently. As usual it was met with the cries of “We won’t do your homework for you” (We will, of course, help if you get stuck. But don’t expect any assistance without at least trying first)

The assignment was to write a console application that accepted a width and a height from the user and then created a rectangle using asterisks. e.g. This might be the result of the program

Width:8
Height:5
********
*      *
*      *
*      *
********

Now the query was asked how to complete this using loops (or conditional statements, we weren’t really sure – he said loops, but proceeded to talk about if/else statements)

One of the responses was along the lines of “I can do this without loops”, modified to add “Or conditional statements”, and modified again to add “Or recursion”

So, my challenge to you is to write a small program above without loops, conditional statements or recursion. It sounds difficult, but it isn’t really. I have a solution (from which the example output above has been taken) which I’ll post this evening.

An interesting question. One that seems to have an obvious answer. But there have been a couple of people in the last week that seem to have asked a forum full of random software developers a question they should be asking their client/customer.

I’m not exactly sure why that might be, however, I can possibly guess.

A few weeks ago I asked the question Why is it so hard to hire good software developers? and my colleague also commented on the types of developer that pass through our recruitment process. After that experience I can understand that some developers might have been hired on being able to talk smooth throughout the interview process. Then they get the job and realise that they can’t actually do it. For fear of being fired they jump onto internet forums and seek any type of help they can.

Their lack of ability means that they have some difficulty in working out questions that they should already know the answer to versus questions that they really ought to be asking their client.

Lets take an example. One person was writing a tourist reservation system. He asked what should happen if a person makes a booking without going through a travel agent. This question can’t be answered on a forum for SQL Server. It can only be answered by the client or the business analyst that is liaising with the client.

The question I have to ask these people is: How would a random developer know what your business requirements are?

Another person was a bit more wide ranging in their request. They wanted to know how to develop a “real estate site”. Since the basic principle isn’t any different to any other interactive website surely they should have been asking their client what they wanted in the website.

Maybe I’m wrong in all of this, it is only my idle speculation. If you have a better idea of why some people are asking questions on forums that they should be asking their client or customer I’d like to know.

Tags: software development forum question business requirements client customer analysis

Recently a post was put up on Code Project that was basically a direct copy of a homework assignment. I don’t answer questions for people’s homework. I have enough trouble trying to hire a good developer as it is without contributing to another generation of useless code monkeys.

Anyway, the question was in two parts. The first part, in summary, was to write some code that calculates powers. e.g. 2³=8; 7⁴=2401; etc. by just using simple multiplication. The second part was to solve the same problem but without using a multiplication operator.

This has got me thinking for most of the afternoon, even after watching an episode of Judge John Deed (I’m on holiday). What I was thinking about was the different ways in which I’d tackle the problem. They way I would have tackled the problem when I was a student, and the way I’d do it now.

Then (15 years ago as a student) I’d have created a console application, read in a couple of integers from the keyboard and performed the calculation all in one horrible Main function. Then I would have thrown a few random integers at the command line to satisfy myself that it would work. If it didn’t I’d hack away at it until it did. There wouldn’t be any consistency in the testing as I’d be throwing different integers at it.

Now, because I was curious what the answer was, I did the following: I created a test assembly and wrote some unit tests so that each time I ran the tests it would be the same tests. Then I created a method that performed the calculation. It took two integers, x and y, and calculates x^y using the multiplication technique. Then I ran my tests to see if it worked. Once that was working, I re-wrote the method to use the addition only technique. Then I ran the tests again to ensure that I still got the same results.

Tags: software development unit testing problem solving puzzle homework assignment