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The Anatomy of LuaJIT Tables and What’s Special About Them

Reading time 10 min
Views 3K
I don't know about you, but I really like to get inside all sorts of systems. In this article, I’m going to tell you about the internals of Lua tables and special considerations for their use. Lua is my primary professional programming language, and if one wants to write good code, one needs at least to peek behind the curtain. If you are curious, follow me.


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Total votes 28: ↑28 and ↓0 +28
Comments 0

What does «clean code» mean in 2020?

Reading time 9 min
Views 6.5K

«Clean Code» and a clean cat

There is nothing developers enjoy better than arguing about clean code: Dan Abramov, for example, has recently fueled the hype with his blog post, «Goodbye, Clean Code».

However, “clean code” per se doesn’t even have a clear definition. The main book on the subject is Clean Code, where Robert «Uncle Bob» Martin states that there are perhaps as many definitions as there are programmers. But he doesn’t walk away from the fact with a conclusion that there’s no reason to discuss clean code, rather — compare several definitions and highlight general ideas. Therefore he cites the views of several outstanding programmers on what clean code is.

So we have also become interested in what people in 2020 think of clean code. Have the views changed since the publication of the book? Do opinions vary in different IT fields (maybe backend developers perceive the idea of clean code differently from testers)?

This spring, Uncle Bob comes to St. Petersburg to give talks at our three conferences: they are about .NET development, testing and JavaScript. Therefore, we’ve asked speakers from each of those conferences to share their opinion on clean code so we could compare the opinions of the industry experts in 2020.

We've already published the results in Russian, and here's the English version. Since the topic is known to provoke discussions, feel free to give your own definition or argue about those already given!

UPD: When we posted this article, Uncle Bob had our conferences in his schedule. Unfortunately, the situation has changed. We updated this post on March 12, to avoid any misunderstanding.

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Total votes 10: ↑10 and ↓0 +10
Comments 0

For professors' note: use PVS-Studio to get students familiar with code analysis tools

Reading time 4 min
Views 1.6K

Picture 1

Our support chats and some other indirect signs showed that there are many students among our free users. Here's the reason: PVS-Studio is now more often used by professors in courses related to software development. We are very pleased with this, and we decided to write this small article to fall under notice of other teachers. We are pleased that students become acquainted with the methodology of static code analysis in general and the PVS-Studio tool in particular. Our team will try to contribute to this trend.
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Total votes 24: ↑23 and ↓1 +22
Comments 0

Detecting in C++ whether a type is defined: Predeclaring things you want to probe

Reading time 4 min
Views 2.2K
Last time, we used SFINAE to detect whether a type had a definition, and we used that in combination with if constexpr and generic lambdas so that code could use the type if it is defined, while still being accepted by the compiler (and being discarded) if the type is not defined.

However, our usage had a few issues, some minor annoyance, some more frustrating.

  • You had to say struct all the time.
  • If the type didn’t exist, the act of naming it caused the type to be injected into the current namespace, not the namespace you expected the type to be in.
  • You must use the struct technique with an unqualified name. You can’t use it to probe a type that you didn’t import into the current namespace.

We can fix all three of the problems with a single solution: Predeclare the type in the desired namespace.

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Total votes 13: ↑12 and ↓1 +11
Comments 0

What is a coding bootcamp?

Reading time 3 min
Views 2.7K
A coding bootcamp is a program of technical training teaching the programming skills that employers are looking for. Coding bootcamps allow students with low skills to concentrate on the most significant coding aspects and apply their new coding skills to solve real-world problems.

The goal of many bootcamp coding attendants is to move into a web development career. They do this by learning to build applications at a professional level – providing the foundation they need to build applications that are ready for production and demonstrating the skills they have to add real value to a potential employer.
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Total votes 10: ↑10 and ↓0 +10
Comments 2

I lost faith in the industry, burned out, but the cult of the tool saved me

Reading time 6 min
Views 35K


I often rail at technologies I find inadequate, and in response I receive (along with arguments) sheer anger and pain. Sometimes physical.

Developers take critique of their favorite technologies very personally for some reason. This “cult of the tool” is such a strange phenomenon I can’t explain it logically. Some say everyone’s prone to it, because a coder’s thinking processes intertwine very deeply with his programming language. Some say it’s a junior’s fallacy — you write something for the first time, it works, and you start treating your language like something divine.

Whatever it is, I never understood it.

I always considered cultists as imbeciles. But I always try to understand why imbeciles became them, why I’ve avoided that fate. I start thinking and bam! — it turned out I’m also an imbecile. I’m a cultist who worships F#. And, of course, there’s a story behind it.
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Total votes 28: ↑26 and ↓2 +24
Comments 2

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