Computer programming is the process of creating computer software. Use this tag if you have any questions relating to this area.
11
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1answer
465 views
Was Alan Bradley named after Alan Kay?
Alan Bradley is a character in the 1982 film Tron, the software developer who wrote Tron, a security program and the eponymous protagonist of the film. Alan Kay, on the other hand, is a pioneer of ...
4
votes
1answer
211 views
Is XML one of the most widely-used formats for sharing structured information?
W3C claims that
XML is one of the most widely-used formats for sharing structured information today
Does anyone know if there is any corroborating evidence (studies, reviews, etc.) for this ...
4
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0answers
370 views
Is this “adoption of best practices” anecdote true?
I've been forwarded this by a colleague:
There’s a great story of a manager of a Coca-cola plant who’s numbers were far better than his peers. When asked what his “secret” was, he said simply that ...
15
votes
1answer
636 views
Does using headphones to drown out ambient noise reduce the quality of work?
There has been some fierce discussion about this subject in blogosphere and on Programmers.SE. It all started with Joel Spolsky's claim:
[...] putting on headphones to drown out the ambient noise ...
12
votes
3answers
1k views
Are there reliable metrics for measuring the productivity of a programmer?
This is really a followup question to Is programming in Python faster than in C, C++ or Java? that I also posted on programmers.SE. The first comment seem to challenge the very idea that programmer ...
13
votes
1answer
821 views
Is programming in Python faster than in C, C++ or Java?
There's a widespread belief among programmers that the more dynamic and loosely typed the language, the more productive the programmer will be in it. Guido van Rossum wrote about programming ...
