Date: 04/19/06 (C Sharp)    Keywords: programming, software, asp, sql, web, yahoo, microsoft

They are hiring developers like crazy! Email your resume to myspacejobs@yahoo.com.

Job description: .Net Developer-ASP.Net and C# (1.1 and 2.0)

Social Networking is one of the hottest sectors on the web in recent years. MySpace.com has emerged as the definitive leader in this space and is the 2nd highest trafficked site on the Internet. MySpace has 210 employees and is in rapid growth mode.

The .NET Team at MySpace.com focuses on performance and scalability to a degree that most developers have never had a chance to experience.

Required Skills/Experience:
- 2+ years of solid C# experience
- 2+ years of ASP.NET (and the .NET 1.1 Framework) experience
- 2+ years of experience developing with SQL Server 2000 (including stored procedures)
- Strong knowledge of .NET Remoting (including HTTP and TCP/IP) and UDP
- a solid foundation in n-tier, Business Objects, Design Patterns, and general OOP
- Strong knowledge (and wisdom) of IIS6 and it's internals
- Experience on sites under heavy loads that require meticulous attention to coding practices as they relate to performance and scalability

Preferred but not required Experience:
- Microsoft Pattern and Practice Team's Enterprise Application Blocks
- Agile Software Development (including Extreme Programming)
- Microsoft Application Center Test
- LLBLGen
- NUnit
- nANT
- Visual Studio 2005 (including Team System)
- ASP.NET 2.0, ADO.NET 2.0, AJAX (Atlas), and the .NET 2.0 Framework
- SQL Server 2005 feature set, enhancements, and changes that effect developers
- ReSharper & dotTrace (from JetBrains)

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/csharp/59216.html

Date: 04/19/06 (Asp Dot Net)    Keywords: programming, software, asp, sql, web, yahoo, microsoft

They are hiring developers like crazy! Email your resume to myspacejobs@yahoo.com.

Job description: .Net Developer-ASP.Net and C# (1.1 and 2.0)

Social Networking is one of the hottest sectors on the web in recent years. MySpace.com has emerged as the definitive leader in this space and is the 2nd highest trafficked site on the Internet. MySpace has 210 employees and is in rapid growth mode.

The .NET Team at MySpace.com focuses on performance and scalability to a degree that most developers have never had a chance to experience.

Required Skills/Experience:
- 2+ years of solid C# experience
- 2+ years of ASP.NET (and the .NET 1.1 Framework) experience
- 2+ years of experience developing with SQL Server 2000 (including stored procedures)
- Strong knowledge of .NET Remoting (including HTTP and TCP/IP) and UDP
- a solid foundation in n-tier, Business Objects, Design Patterns, and general OOP
- Strong knowledge (and wisdom) of IIS6 and it's internals
- Experience on sites under heavy loads that require meticulous attention to coding practices as they relate to performance and scalability

Preferred but not required Experience:
- Microsoft Pattern and Practice Team's Enterprise Application Blocks
- Agile Software Development (including Extreme Programming)
- Microsoft Application Center Test
- LLBLGen
- NUnit
- nANT
- Visual Studio 2005 (including Team System)
- ASP.NET 2.0, ADO.NET 2.0, AJAX (Atlas), and the .NET 2.0 Framework
- SQL Server 2005 feature set, enhancements, and changes that effect developers
- ReSharper & dotTrace (from JetBrains)

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/aspdotnet/62694.html

Date: 04/20/06 (WebDesign)    Keywords: php, programming

I just finished my second semester as a Comp. Sci major, completing a course on basic Programming. We also learned some C++.
During the C++ portions of the program, we occasionally used *.DAT files to store information wihich could be called by the main program.
I was wondering if there was any equivalent for PHP, which I've just started learning. To spell it out; is there any way to store information in non-PHP files which PHP can call from and write to? If so, what are these files?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdesign/1098673.html

Date: 05/04/06 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: programming, web

Does anyone here have any experience doing CNC programming? I'm looking for advice on whether or not to invest the time and money into learning CNC programming. I live in northeast Tennessee and it seems the only industry bigger than medicine here is manufacturing. I have experience programming (VB,some C++, and assorted web based languages) and was wondering if it would be difficult to learn whatever language is used in CNC programming. I'm under the impression that programming one language isn't too different from another once you know the syntax and such, the fundamentals of programming stay the same. Any advice? Thanks!


If there is another comm better suited for this, please let me know.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/920558.html

Date: 05/14/06 (Java Web)    Keywords: programming

Memo to SAJAX team: sajax_init() serves no useful purpose. It is an empty method. Why not just take it out from the examples? Think Extreme Programming - YAGNI.

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/sajax-why-sajax_init/

Date: 05/16/06 (Application Development)    Keywords: programming, java

Sun execs say the question is no longer whether the Java programming language will be open-sourced, but how it should be done.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9593_22-6072760.html

Date: 05/24/06 (WebDesign)    Keywords: programming, database, web

Are any of you familiar with Mason?

I've been given a task at work to build something basic, displaying items from a database and whatnot... and I have no idea where the hell to start! I'm just a designer who's never touched much programming...

Any tips would be helpful, or other web developper communities whether it's on LJ or a message board.

Thank you in advance.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdesign/1114204.html

Date: 05/25/06 (C Sharp)    Keywords: programming, web

Hi all,

I'm 3 days into a 5 day "essential .net 2.0" class and I'm looking for a book that covers the language a) well b) with simple examples and c) explains some of the .net weirdness.  I've got a few years of C++ and other OOP, web programming, etc.  It's not that I'm new to programming, but some of the things we're discussing in class seem bass-ackwards to me, in terms of how they're implemented.

I'd love a C#/.NET book similar to the "head first design patterns" style of writing.  is there anything like that, that you'd recommend?

thanks

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/csharp/63223.html

Date: 05/28/06 (C Sharp)    Keywords: programming, browser

I'm kind of new at the whole C#/Windows GUI programming thing, so sorry if this is a dumb question.

I'm working on a program and I want it to be able to launch links in an external browser. I found that you can use the Process class to do this, and if you even just hand the URL to the Process's "filename", it opens with whatever the user's default HTTP-handling application is. So I've got links launching in Firefox and everything, which is great. But I'd like it to send the link to be opened in Firefox without losing focus on my application.
I tried setting some of the Process.StartInfo members (like WindowStyle as minimized, even though that's not what I want) and then tried going about it the other way around, by just calling this.Activate() from the form that's calling the Process.Start() method, but that doesn't work either. Is there anything I can do to keep my application focused when launching a different process?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/csharp/63983.html

Date: 06/06/06 (Java Web)    Keywords: programming, java, yahoo, google

Java continues as the leading programming language according to TIOBE index updated on June 2006. Java is rated at 21.128%, an increase of 2.56% from June, 2005. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/java-continues-as-leading-programming-language/

Date: 06/07/06 (PHP Community)    Keywords: php, programming, mysql, sql, linux, apache

Hello Friends

I am a programmer in a Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP shop. I also do some Windows programming in Delphi and have done lots of other stuff academically.

I'm looking for a book on PHP that will help me with "bigger picture" and "higher level" design considerations. I'm looking for a book that contains complete solutions and ideas for solving medium to large problems. Object-oriented designs are a big plus.

I'm also looking for a great reference manual.

I've been poking around looking at reviews, but I would like to have the opinions of some serious PHP programmers first.

Thank you!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/php/458470.html

Date: 01/20/05 (Offshore Programming)    Keywords: programming, offshore

Ce blog sur l'offshore programming passe dйfinitivement sur

http://tubbydev.typepad.com/offshore_programming/

Source: http://www.ublog.com/offshore/note/146

Date: 12/14/04 (Offshore Programming)    Keywords: programming, software, offshore, technology, microsoft

Can Offshore Programming Thrive in Russia?

By Alexander Osipovich, Russia Profile

Every weekday morning, Tatyana Burtseva flashes her ID to the guards at the entrance of the Kurchatov Institute, where the Soviet Union developed its first nuclear bomb. But after walking through the institute's wooded grounds and entering the modern, corporate office building where she works, what she does is not top-secret. Burtseva is currently working on a project for a U.S. client - Boeing, America's largest maker of commercial aircraft. The 26-year-old software tester is one of over 850 employees at Luxoft, one of Russia's leading companies in the field of offshore programming. Besides Boeing, Luxoft has tackled software projects for major corporations like IBM, Microsoft and Deutsche Bank.

In 2003, the Russian offshore programming industry earned total revenues of $546 million, according to figures compiled by CNews Analytics and Fort-Ross, an association of Russian software companies. The same report projected growth rates of 30 to 40 percent for the next few years, meaning that the industry could cross the $1 billion mark by 2006.

These rapid growth rates, and the prestigious nature of the industry, have not gone unnoticed. President Vladimir Putin has mentioned offshore programming as a promising agent of economic diversification, while Leonid Reiman, the minister of information technologies and communications, has touted the industry in public appearances. "We have a tremendous number of highly qualified professionals," he said during a recent address to the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. "Our task is to convert this human potential into a new source of national income."

But the Russian offshore programming industry faces some daunting challenges. Above all, it pales in comparison to its better-developed cousin in India. According to NASSCOM, an association of Indian software companies, India now earns $12.5 billion a year by exporting high-tech services. This represents close to one-fifth of the developing nation's total exports. For many Western executives, the term "offshore programming" is virtually synonymous with outsourcing work to India, while Russia remains an obscure, second-tier competitor. This has led to a great deal of soul-searching in the Russian press about whether Russia can catch up to India.

Can Russia Catch Up?

In the eyes of many experts, the greatest asset of the Russian offshore programming industry is the high quality of its technical specialists. The Soviet Union left behind a world-class system of science education. As a result, Russia now has up to 40 percent more scientists per capita than Germany, France or the United Kingdom, and 20 times more scientists per capita than India, according to Forrester Research. Russians have won numerous gold medals at international programming competitions. At this year's ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, the best-known event of its kind, the winning team was from the St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics.

This pool of scientific talent has led several Western companies to open wholly-owned offshore development centers in Russia. Such companies include technology leaders like Intel, Sun, Motorola and Siemens. Intel alone has over 800 Russian employees, mostly based in Nizhny Novgorod and the former closed city of Sarov. According to Alexander Palladin, a spokesman for Intel in Russia, they solve difficult problems for the company's research and development wing. "In the eyes of Intel's management, Russian specialists are very highly regarded for their scientific knowledge," he said.

Unfortunately, Russia is not so blessed when it comes to business skills. A frequent complaint is the lack of English, although this has improved in recent years. When it comes to project management, Russian firms have a reputation for letting their programmers' creativity take precedence over good business sense. In some cases, programmers have been known to delay a project until they can achieve technical perfection. Other problems stem from a culture clash between Russian firms and their Western clients. "The biggest difference is that Americans devote more time to communication," said Alexander Sambuk, quality director at Luxoft. "Russian project managers need to learn to communicate more with clients, and not just stew in their own juices."

Another obstacle to acquiring new clients is the small size of Russian firms. Russia's largest offshore programming companies, Epam Systems and Luxoft, have less than 1,000 employees each. This is small potatoes compared to the largest Indian firms, such as IT giant Wipro, which employs over 27,000 people worldwide and has annual revenues of $1.2 billion. Smaller companies have a hard time marketing themselves and are less attractive to large corporate clients. Given this situation, it might seem that the market is ripe for consolidation. But firms have been reluctant to merge, says Kirill Dmitriev, managing director of Delta Private Equity Partners. "Each one hopes to develop by itself, but economic logic mandates that they need to consolidate," he said.

Perhaps a more intractable problem is Russia's negative image in the West. Russia's reputation as an unstable, crime-ridden society makes it a hard sell to wary customers. "This is a country where there's a war going on, where [former Yukos CEO Mikhail] Khodorkovsky is in prison, where terrorists are killing children in Beslan," said Dmitry Loschinin, CEO of Luxoft. "Obviously, this affects us negatively."

Loschinin also believes that Russia's education system could be better suited to today's IT market. Although it churns out an impressive number of physicists and mathematicians, it rarely teaches them the most up-to-date technology skills. "What we receive is a half-finished product that we need to spend some time finishing," said Loschinin.

Another problem is that Russia's education system produces programmers in all the wrong places. Thanks to the legacy of Soviet central planning, some of the nation's top scientific talent resides in far-flung cities like Tomsk and Novosibirsk. Less than a quarter of Russia's programmers live in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the offshore programming industry is concentrated. The result is that wages are high and jobs are plentiful in the two capitals, while out in the regions, programmers are underpaid or jobless. The logical conclusion is that programmers should move to where the jobs are. But Russians - for a variety of legal, economic and cultural reasons - are often reluctant to move.

A City Of Programmers

The offshore programming industry is taking steps to attract them. IBS, the holding company which owns Luxoft, is planning to open a "technopark" in the town of Dubna, a one-hour drive from Moscow. According to Loschinin, programmers will be enticed to move to Dubna by a package that includes jobs, mortgages and a pleasant, academic living environment. "We want to create a city of programmers," he said.

The Dubna technopark will not be alone. The IT and Communications Ministry will soon launch technoparks in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk, with tax breaks and an up-to-date communications infrastructure, says Reiman. These ideas are not new. A decade ago, India used similar policies to stimulate the IT industry in Bangalore. Today Bangalore is the center of India's offshore programming industry; the city is often called the "Silicon Valley of India."

The Russian offshore programming industry is emulating India in other ways. It recently formed an analogue to NASSCOM, the Indian software association founded in 1988 to promote the nation's IT industry. RUSSOFT, which recently merged with Fort-Ross to become the predominant association of Russian software companies, has been following a path blazed by NASSCOM in the 1990s. It puts on "road shows" in the West to promote Russian firms, holds training events and lobbies for improvements in government policy.

There is clearly a need for lobbying, because government policy is unfriendly - if not hostile - to offshore programming companies. Valentin Makarov, president of RUSSOFT, says that companies face a crippling burden from taxes and regulations. For example, to export $50 worth of software, companies spend an additional $30 on paperwork and taxes. This drives up their prices, making them less competitive, and keeps many in the "gray" zone. Makarov argues that this is bad for everyone. "Our task is to make companies go white," he said. "Companies want this, because you can't live under the constant threat of tax investigations. This prevents you from signing deals with foreign corporations."

Yet Makarov insists that he is not looking for tax breaks, which are controversial due to their widespread misuse in the 1990s. Instead, he wants the government to adopt a more streamlined and rational tax structure. So far, however, RUSSOFT's lobbying efforts have produced few results. "Our government isn't used to dealing with associations - just with oligarchs and individual companies," he said. Nonetheless, Makarov is optimistic. He believes that the industry will gain more influence as it grows in size. In terms of the total value of its exports, it has already surpassed the Russian automobile industry. Soon, Russia will earn more money by exporting software than by exporting nuclear technology.

Makarov predicts that the Russian offshore programming industry will grow until it reaches annual revenues of $2 billion but, from then on, growth will level off unless the government provides substantial support. He points out that the governments of India and China (another up-and-coming offshore service provider) are extremely proactive in boosting their nations' IT sectors. For example, they pay for companies to participate in international trade shows - something that the Russian government has never done.

So can Russia catch up to India?

Most experts doubt that Russia can beat India in terms of volume. But in terms of quality, Russia already presents a strong competitor. According to a 2001 report from the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, Russian programmers are well suited for complex projects. "Indian programmers... do not have such wide experience with different technologies," said the report. "Their experience is typically limited to working in large software development factories." Makarov thinks that Russia cannot compete with India or China on cost, but in the niche of high-end solutions, it could become a world leader - as long as the industry gets government support.

"We can't do it ourselves," he said.

Oct 27, 2004

Source: http://www.ublog.com/offshore/note/145

Date: 12/13/04 (Offshore Programming)    Keywords: programming, offshore

Aprиs l'йtude de Tubbydev sur l'offshore programing en France, 2 nouvelles йtudes sur l'offshore programming dont parle le journal du net:

2 йtudes se penchent sur l'offshore programming et les motivations des DSI

Source: http://www.ublog.com/offshore/note/144

Date: 12/07/04 (Offshore Programming)    Keywords: programming, offshore

L'йtude sur l'offshore programming en France rйalisйe par Tubbydev pour Eurostaf-Les Echos est prйsentйe sur le site d'Eurostaf а cet endroit.

Vous pouvez aussi tйlйcharger la plaquette de l'йtude sur l'offshore programming en France ici

Source: http://www.ublog.com/offshore/note/143

Date: 11/08/04 (Offshore Programming)    Keywords: programming, offshore, technology

Calculated Risk

As corporate interest in the cost savings and benefits grows, CIOs prepare to manage the risks and pitfalls of offshore outsourcing.

Several years ago, a CIO from a large financial-services institution began outsourcing a hefty portion of his legacy-programming resources to an overseas provider. And with expected savings of 40% to 50%, who could blame him? But strangely, this early adopter's savings never fully materialized. After replacing his onshore programmers with an offshore staff, he had to hire managers to maintain the engagement, adding costs. Then the CIO realized he'd need a larger percentage of onshore programmers than originally projected, further reducing his expected savings. In fact, after he accounted for the turnover from the offshore teams, his anticipated windfall of 40% to 50% had shrunk to less than 20% in all.

This CIO is in good company. Corporate interest in offshore outsourcing is huge, as the size of the market attests. But the reality doesn't always live up to the hype. Many companies that have embraced the practice haven't realized the promised savings; they're now wondering if and when they'll see the real value from their offshore investments.

For some companies, offshore outsourcing's initial appeal lies purely in the numbers. Success is measured by the ability to reduce costs as much as possible. It's not hard to see that by paying $20-plus per hour in India versus $80-plus in the United States a company's savings can be at least $60 per hour for every position outsourced. That math can be misleading, however. Instead of the 80% cost savings that those hourly rates suggest, companies are reporting far lower numbers. According to a recent AMR Research report, companies using offshore resources for development projects can see no savings at all or up to 50% savings. The majority report savings in the neighborhood of 25% to 30%.

What happened to the rest of the anticipated savings? As many CIOs are beginning to realize, outsourcing decisions based solely on hourly rates don't necessarily result in real cost savings. Hidden costs arise when a company doesn't first build a strong engagement-management experience, outsourcing industry expertise, technical knowledge, and a method for overcoming cultural and communication barriers.

By all accounts, outsourcing is a long-term investment, and it requires a serious commitment in order to reap the maximum benefits.

A December 2003 report from Forrester Research said most companies go through a four-stage migration period that can last from 24 to 60 months. Those expecting a quick, six-month project with few to no challenges would do well to rethink their strategy.

In their search for savings, many companies mistakenly assume that a single offshore provider can be successfully deployed on any and all IT projects. Instead, CIOs need to first analyze their IT-application portfolio based on business criticality, user interaction, complexity, and maturity. Only then will they have the knowledge to outsource their projects to a provider with the right skills and expertise to deliver successful results.

There are several types of offshore-outsourcing companies (see Indian Market Booms, But Changes Loom). The most prominent are the traditional offshore providers, such as Indian companies Infosys Technologies, Tata, and Wipro Technologies. Many offshore pure-play companies have narrow portfolios of services.

Then there are the large global integrators, such as IBM and Accenture, which recently developed offshore capabilities. These companies don't yet have large presences offshore, but they've developed experience managing engagements between U.S. companies and the offshore businesses and are quickly hiring staff offshore. Other consultancies have gone for a more hybrid approach, creating large divisions offshore.

Matching the right segments of work to the appropriate provider is the best approach to realizing the maximum savings from offshore outsourcing. We recommend that companies choose at least one provider from each category.

Managing IT projects successfully has always been a struggle for IT organizations, as the alarming rate of IT-project failure attests. A 2003 Standish Group survey found that 66% of outsourced projects are either canceled or materially off-target due to poor program execution, leading to additional costs in areas such as lost-opportunity costs, unrealized benefits, increased labor costs, and increased vendor costs. Unfortunately, outsourcing your IT initiatives doesn't make these problems go away. Using offshore programmers--who may lack business acumen and methodologies to extract accurate and detailed requirements--possibly can result in significant costs downstream. The repercussions can range from adding more--and expensive--local management to overcome the offshore team's lack of business experience, to late delivery, lost functionality, and fewer benefits realized from the investment.

Offshore outsourcing sometimes creates additional requirements and program-management challenges. Effective management is critical to improving the odds of success and overcoming the risks associated with IT-project failure. These risks--lack of clear business objectives, executive support, user involvement, and scope management--become exacerbated when the users and programmers are up to 8,000 miles and multiple time zones apart. Poor program management costs 25% to 35% in the concept-to-design phases, and 15% during the implementation phase. These costs reflect the additional management resources required to fix the problems.

Calculated Risk 

There has always been an inherent conflict between the IT-services provider and the company contracting for services. This conflict stems from how the client pays for services--whether the contract is time and materials (T&M) or fixed price.

The issue is risk as one side tries to push most of the risk to the other. The vast majority of the revenue for major Indian offshore providers and integrators is derived from T&M contracts. These companies prefer a T&M contract because the risk shifts to the client, on which any project-overrun costs fall.

On the other hand, a fixed-price delivery model puts the onus on the service provider to get the right requirements, manage scope, and estimate and manage the project. This helps to insulate the client against the risks that can erode savings.

The fixed-price model also makes the service provider a better partner, as it's in the provider's best interest to get the project done--and done right. The provider's methodology and experience are critical.

Sophisticated clients look for providers that not only offer fixed-price contracts, but also attach results to fees. Measurable business results are replacing metrics such as service levels as a way to ensure that companies achieve real business value.

Defining measurable business results isn't easy. However, the benefits of defining them up front are high. Consider this example: If a company ties some portion of the contract to a 20% reduction in the cost of servicing customers using online channels, the provider will be motivated to achieve that result, as long as both risks and rewards are tied to the objective. The client wins because the provider is aligned with its business goals and hires the best people who can bring the greatest level of industry knowledge and business processes, as well as creativity and innovation--something clients have complained that many offshore businesses lack.

Don't bank on immediate payoff, however, and do bank on some heavy lifting when switching to offshore. CIOs must factor in significant ramp-up time for offshore projects, during which costs can actually increase. According to Meta Group, lags in productivity can add as much as 20% in costs to the offshore contract.

Part of that lag lies in the need for staffing overlap as the home team hands off to the offshore programmers. But there's more: All offshore providers have two rate schedules: offshore, which is the rate charged for work done overseas, and onshore, meaning the rates charged for the consultants that must come on-site during the transition period. The onshore rates are significantly higher and usually rival internal IT costs.

We've found that clients invariably underestimate the number of onshore staff required to make a project successful. This leads to inflated expectations of savings at the onset of a project. More than half of the revenue generated by the large Indian offshore companies is derived from onshore-staff augmentation.

Managing The Contract

To ensure the outsourcing engagement's success, companies must build an oversight organization to manage the process, a reality that's bound to add money to the mix. The oversight organization can account for as much as 5% to 16% of the overall engagement costs. Why so much? Typically, the oversight staff earns higher salaries. Managers often serve as business liaisons to the offshore provider and as quality-assurance officers to the overall engagement. In addition, somebody has to be in charge of sourcing and contracting personnel and managing the project from the client side. This facet of outsourcing is lucrative enough to generate a new business niche.

While moving specific functions and departments offshore can help save money on labor, the cost of reducing onshore staff must also be considered. It costs money to move displaced personnel to other departments. However, the most significant costs spring from layoffs. Companies must factor in the cost of severance and job-search support for its displaced workers.

Furthermore, your intellectual property goes out the door, too, when you replace in-house staff with an offshore provider. With offshore outsourcing, some of your go-to people may now be gone and any survivors will probably need time to adjust to the changed landscape.

What's more, outsourcing an application can have enormous impact on a multitude of supporting systems, hindering a company's ability to adhere to certain standards of customer service and regulatory compliance. Other hidden costs are generated as a result of compensating people with higher salaries--key IT-management staff, for example--as they oversee the transition.

Offshore outsourcing is the wave of the future for IT. Done right, it can result in tremendous savings and add significant business value. However, a bit of due diligence up front and a better understanding of how to avoid common obstacles can make a huge difference. Understanding the true total cost of ownership, segmenting your IT-application portfolio, and sourcing appropriately against those needs will let CIOs achieve real savings and help further business goals. And that, after all, is the true bottom line.

Sheeroy Desai is executive VP and chief operating officer at Sapient, a business-consulting and technology-services company based in Cambridge, Mass.

Source: http://www.ublog.com/offshore/note/138

Date: 10/19/04 (Offshore Programming)    Keywords: programming, software, offshore

Russian software exports may reach $2 bln in 2006

MOSCOW. Sept 24 (Interfax) - Russian software exports may amount to $2 billion in 2006, Russian Information Technologies and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman said.

Speaking at a press breakfast at the American Chamber of Commerce on Friday, Reiman said that at the moment there are different estimates of the volume of IT exports from Russia. According to official estimates, they currently amount to $300-$350 per year. "However, including the gray market this figure is estimated at $500 million per year and higher," the minister said.

He said that according to the experts, annual growth in the Russian market for offshore programming amounts to about 70%. As a result, given this growth dynamic, exports of software from Russia in 2005 may amount to $1 billion, and in another year - $2 billion," the minister said. "This may become an important contribution to the task of doubling GDP," he said.

Source: http://www.ublog.com/offshore/note/133

Date: 06/20/06 (C Sharp)    Keywords: programming

Hi!

I'm not *totally* new to Visual Studio, but I stopped concentrating on programming a long time ago, and now it's time to start again as I need things for my Uni course.

So... I've just installed Visual Studio 2005 for the first time.
And... I've got a nice book about C#.
And it tells me to open up Visual Studio and select Visual C# Development Settings from the list it shows on the first time of opening VS.
But... I opened it up earlier and wasn't sure about that list, so I just closed it. And that list isn't available anymore.
But I followed the book's instructions, and it's definitely not a C# project.
It seems to be in VB.

So my question is, how do I get that list back to choose C#?

I'm really sorry for the total newbie question. Hopefully I'll be asking more serious coding questions soon!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/csharp/66237.html

Date: 06/20/06 (C Sharp)    Keywords: programming, database, sql, web

I'm writing a program in C# 1.1 that extracts documents from our current database to be then transferred into our new content manager/collaborator or whatever. Anyways I have basically written the program and it successfully extracts the documents that I tell it to, but the problem is that its a major memory hog, and when I monitor the memory and the heap size it is just staggering. The problem is that I basically have loops that are going and grabbing sometimes hundreds of documents at a time, and when the documents are over 1mb in size it almost starts to get scary. I should also point out that I've never written a program like this before and I have learned more about programming and memory management than I ever cared to know. I don't know if there's anything I'm programming wrong, or if I'm not releasing resources correctly. My "expertise" is more in Web development than this, and it doesn't help that not alot of people at my company know C#. Anyways below is the code I have for grabbing multiple documents.

{
con.Open();

SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter("Select * FROM tblMics_Docs_Versions WHERE mvItemID = " + number + " ORDER BY mvVersionedDate DESC", con);

int i = 0;
int j = 1;

byte[] MyData = new byte[0];

da.Fill(ds.Tables[1]);
da.Dispose();

DataRow myRow;

for (i = 0; i <= ds.Tables[1].Rows.Count - 1; i++)
{

myRow=ds.Tables[1].Rows[i];
MyData = (byte[])myRow["mvContent"];

string thefile;

string theid;

thefile = myRow["mvFileName"].ToString();

theid = myRow["mvItemID"].ToString();

int ArraySize = new int();
ArraySize = MyData.GetUpperBound(0);

string s=System.IO.Path.Combine(dept, "ID " + theid + " Version " + j + " " + thefile);
DirectoryInfo di = Directory.CreateDirectory(@"c:\BMS Old\" + dept);
FileStream fs = new FileStream(@"C:\BMS Old\"+ s, FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Write);
fs.Write(MyData, 0,ArraySize);

fs.Close();



myRow = null;
MyData = null;
j++;
s = null;
di = null;
thefile = null;
theid = null;

}
ds.Dispose();
ds.Tables[1].Dispose();
ds.Tables[1].Clear();

con.Close();

//con.Dispose();
//con = null;
}

I'm sure this code isn't great, but at the very least it WORKS. Now I need to clean it up so we can run this in a production environment. Thank you.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/csharp/65808.html

Date: 06/29/06 (PHP Community)    Keywords: php, programming, database

I love how whenever I run into a problem and I post it here, it's always something that I know I should already know how to do.

Seriously, this should be something really easy, right?

The project that I'm working on, and really haven't had much time to deal with lately due to other stuff, is the same one that I'm always working on when I post here: A document tracking system for my mom's work.

A whilie ago I ran into problems converting the system to an older version of PHP (it works fine now, in that regard), and now this.

It works just fine, and does everything I want. I'm now trying to clean it up from slow and clunky code that was only used for the purpose of making sure the hard stuff worked (ironically, i had little to no problems doing the complicated logic stuff).


So when bringing up the application, the user is given a form to fill out that essentially sends an e-mail, and has a vague e-mail feel to it anyway. The user has 10 drop-down menus for a maximum of 10 users. In the database, there is a table with all the users available. As a quick and dirty way of populating the list of names, I just wrote a small function that queries the database and plugs the names into the drop-down box. Well, right now, since there are 10 boxes, it does that 10 times. And it's SLOOOOOOW. My mom and I both knew that this wasn't how it was going to stay, it was just an easy way of testing the stuff that would.

So, now that I'm backtracking slightly, I'm running into problems. What I want to do is pop the results of the query into an aray that mimics the structure of the table. Many rows, two columns. I set up a 2-d array, or tried to at least. The book I have isn't exactly clear on that topic, so I used what I thought I knew from regular programming languages and tried to apply that to this. Apparently it didn't work.

I'm not sure why this doesn't work, so I'm just going to post the code used in here. Unfortunately, when I try and access the array with:

$users = array(get_users());
$num_of_users = count($users);
for ($i=0; $i<$num_of_users; $i++)
{
echo " ";
echo $users[$i][1] . "\n";
}

It doesn't do anything. So I don't really know what I'm doing wrong. I may be going about this way too hard. I wanted to just use the explode() function, but i couldn't think of how to get it to differentiate between what would go in one column versus another, and figured it would just plug it all into a 1-d array. So yeah, any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.



//This function pulls the users from the webusers table for use in choosing a recipient
function get_users()
{
**Database Connect Information Removed**

if (!$users_connect || !$db_select)
{
die("Problem connecting or selecting a database.");
} //end if

$query = "SELECT ename, eaddr FROM webusers ORDER BY ename";
$result = mysql_db_query("test", $query);
$num_of_users = mysql_num_rows($result);
$users[$num_of_users][2] = array();
$i = 0;
while (list($ename, $eaddr) = mysql_fetch_row($result))
{
$users[$i][0] = $eaddr;
$users[$i][1] = $ename;
$i++;
} //end while

mysql_close();

return($users);
} //end get_users()


Thanks so much!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/php/464906.html