Information about the study is here (as in listed in summary):
Documentation usage of Android Developers
Lethbridge's study about rarely consulting and updating general software documentation is available here:
How Software Engineers
Use Documentation: The State of the Practice
Robillard's study about problems with API documentation can be found here:
What Makes APIs Hard to Learn? Answers from Developers
-Do we ask questions because of difficulty or because the underlying technology is more popular?
-Are javascript developers more likely to use sites like stackoverflow vs traditional means (books, mailing list, forums, etc).
-Do we underestimate javascript usage? Does javascript span more projects, i.e. I have a C# based web-project, but still use javascript for the UI.
These are the underlying questions that would have to be answered before we could derive anything from this sort of analysis. That said, in our recent study of stackoverflow questions (publication pending), we found that there was a strong correlation between the frequency of using a particular API class (as defined by google code search), and the numbers of questions asking about those classes. This could suggest questions have a large popularity component, or it could mean people are more likely to run into difficulty with popular components!
Nice!
Already taken by the javascript "extJS" framework.
CNN uses this for comments on many of their stories.
The quality of discussion tends to be better, people self-regulate more crazy responses, and the comments are longer (rather than one sentence rants).
Blog sites use comment hosting systems such as disqus.
In my experience, a blog post will receive much more comments when hosted in this manner, rather than just the site's internal comment system.
Dogs have communication hands down. I've seen many dogs understand numerous commands and engage with humans well (we don't have bomb-sniffing cats).
On the other hands, I think dogs lack more "frontal" intelligence. The type of top-down intelligence that involves planning, top-down control. Perfect illustration: one of my stupid dogs trying to get to a squeaky toy with a fairly see-through blanket would try running through a blanket barrier to get to a squeaky toy. This was non-stop aggressive behavior lasting for many minutes with no top-down consideration. This would even continue if there was an opening in the blanket.
Wrong. A earlier study in 2006 used fMRI. This study used a simple classical conditioning test where they played a tune before blowing in the patients eyelid.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
As we've seen countless times, the temptation to cheat on tests using various gadgets and wireless technology is often too great for students to overcome -- even chess players have occasionally given themselves an unfair advantage. While much of the test cheating involves nothing more than hidden iPods or cellphones, it can sometimes raise to the level of elaborate test cheating crimes rings, with students forking over big bucks for a little assistance. As Reuters reports, that appears to be what has gone down during China's recent national college entrance exam, where three men were arrested for relaying answers to a student from a van parked outside the school. Apparently, the student (who paid $1,500 for the "service") wore a wireless microphone to read out the questions, with the men in the van using a pair of computers to look up the answers. That's not all the police had to deal with, however, with them also reportedly turning up 42 pairs of so-called "cheating shoes" with "transmitting and reception ability" prior to the exam, as well as some "cheating wallets" and hats.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Pop along to Sourceforge and you’ll find many different programmers’ editors, many of which have been abandoned long before they’re ready for use. There’s not really any point developing an editor, when toolkits like Scite exist. The same is true of IDEs, when there’s the extensible Eclipse IDE to use. As a result it’s been gaining more and more market- and mindshare with development tools vendors around the world.
It appears that PL/I (and its dialects) is, or will be, the most widely used higher level language for systems programming. -- J. Sammet
