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Comment Orphan drugs - a lot of good work out there (Score 2) 372

Some companies (Genzyme is one example) do a lot of work in the orphan-drug area. Diseases that inflict small portions of the world population. Indeed, rare conditions.

These are often very expensive drugs, since the market is small, they often cost a patient tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for the rest of their lives. These drugs often get extra patent protections and fast-tracking to the market.

These drugs are not created by accident.

Comment I thought these were pretty much known already (Score 1) 414

I did not know that the two problems described were unsolved. I thought that "how to calculate exactly the path of a projectile under gravity and subject to air resistance" was already figured out. I guess "exact path" is the trick here. An the other about an "object striking a wall"...

Should make for even better gaming physics...

Comment design document vs. documenting source code? (Score 3, Interesting) 545

I've found two camps at my company. Both camps document their code with comments and meaningful commentary. It is more a matter of the "design document" that describes the product or project that is a problem. The document that is perhaps supposed to guide the overall architecture of the product, and thus, the architecture of the classes, methods, interfaces, etc., aka. "the code".

The first camp of developers just wants to get in and start coding. They often say "I need to code to figure it out." The actual web site works well, but new developers have a tough time maintaining that same site. The original developers are pretty much the only ones that can change the critical aspects of the site, and even then, as time goes by, that becomes difficult. But, they got the site up and live in the time allotted. And they wrote a 2 page "design document" when they were done - the doc was useless.

The second camp of developers writes a 50 page design, then starts coding. The actual web site works well, but the overall time to get the site up and live took 5 times longer (that includes the time to document.) The documentation evolved with the changes that were made along the way. Maintaining this same site went well at first, since the documentation was great. But, the docs slowly get neglected, and in a couple years, this site is difficult to maintain.

In the end, perhaps there is a happy medium. A "good enough" design document, and get started coding relatively soon. I used to lean toward the second camp, but now I lean toward the first camp :)

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I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.

Working...