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143 lookup tables in EF CORE [closed]

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Currently I'm redesigning an existing program which uses a master table which contains multiple values. (C# .net core 3.0 & EF) (One big lookup table)
Much of these values are rarely changing and I would put them in a c# enum.
Some examples: Language, Sex, ReceiptStatus, RiskType, RelationType, SignatureStatus, CommunicationType, PartKind, LegalStatute, ...
The list goes on and on and currently has 143 different categories, each having their own values with 2 translations in it.
My company wants the values to be in the database, so a non programmer can change them when they have to.
However it doesn't feel good at all. I would love to separate the table but creating 143 tables seem a bit of an overkill. If it was only 5-10 lookup tables it would have been fine..
Any advice? Stick to 1 lookup table? Feels wrong to my eyes. Multiple tables?
Convince my company we should just use C# enums which work perfectly fine, ruling out the possibility that a non programmer can edit them?

Based on your inclination to use enums, I'm going to assume that these lookup values do not change often.
Buckle up because a lot of hard-fought knowledge about maintainability is embedded in the analysis below. Let me break down the approaches you are considering:
Pure enums: This is the least flexible approach because it closes a lot of doors. As you said, changing values requires a developer and a deployment. What's your strategy if you eventually have other tables that need to relate to one of your many, many values? To me this is far too restrictive, especially since with either of the other approaches, you could create a .t4 template that generates
enums based on the data. Then if the data changes, you just
re-generate. I do this a lot.
One giant lookup table: Not as flexible as it may seem! This trades complexity, single responsibility principal, and referential integrity against repetition/table spam and is probably an expression of the Big Ball of Mud anti-pattern. You could add a column to this table that controls where a given value can be used, and that will allow you to have sane drop down lists, but that isn't as good as referential integrity. If other tables need to relate to a lookup, you have to relate against this entire table, which is much less clear. You will have to be careful to enforce your own layer of referential integrity since the database can't help you. Finally, and this is a big deal, if any if your 143 values has or will ever have extra complexity and could really benefit from an additional column, cognitive load begins to escalate. If five of the 143 need their own columns, you now have to hold all five columns in your mind to understand any one column... That is agony. Here's a thought experiment for you if I'm not getting my point across: why not build your entire project as one giant table?
143 tables: The most flexible approach, and all things considered, the easiest to maintain by a massive margin. It does not close any doors; down the road you can still create a UI for editing any value you want. If you want to relate other tables to a lookup value, that relationship will be easy to understand because you can relate to LegalStatus instead of GiantEverythingTable, and enjoy the benefits of referential integrity, never having to worry about corrupting your own data. You can also script table and index creation with something like NimbleText (a great tool and a hidden gem). There will be a huge number of tables, which is itself a minor maintenance problem, but it's one that doesn't actually break anything and doesn't lead to cognitive load. This is an acceptable trade-off. I would go this way and generate enums using t4.
The thing about most software projects of any size is that you may look at my objections and say they don't apply, and you might be right. But if this thing is going to be in active development, you have to ask: are you sure? Do you really know what's going to happen in a year?
When considering trade-offs, I've learned to assign a lot of weight to the most flexible/simple decision. Maintainability problems are what kill software projects. They are the enemy.
Hope that helps!

Difficulty of switching from HTML only e-mail to Text only e-mail in .net C#? [closed]

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I am working with a consulting group on a program which currently uses a .net C# script to send e-mails in HTML format at regular intervals.
The e-mail itself aside from being in HTML format although the content is text with some tags and contains less then a page of text.
I would like the consultant to change this to text format replacing the tags with line feed/carriage returns. I have been told that this is a four hour job but that seems excessive to me.
When I look online at a page such as this http://www.mattvanandel.com/771/c-sending-an-email/ it would seem the change could be completed in less than 4 hours including recompiling the .net code into a DLL, testing and uploading the code to a server.
Not all developers are created equal, but assuming that the .Net developer is experienced enough to warrant a $250 per hour salary does this seem reasonable? If it is something less than 4 hours (i.e. more like 4 min) can someone tell me what might have to be done to make the modification. From what I can see its likely 2 lines of code that need to be modified (i.e. the body string and the IsBodyHtml statement). What else may I be missing?

Dependant upon what kind testing would be required to verify that the system is stable after the change, then perhaps 4 hours may or may not be excessive.
For a simple looking change in a tightly coupled system may have massive implications and risk. On the other hand in a loosely coupled system, the risk should be minimal.
So the question is, why 4 hours. If it was me. I'd request a breakdown of what the 4 hours represents. You are after all the customer and if you need a cost breakdown I'd suggest you're within your purview to request it.
However I'd suggest that you ask in a non confrontational way (i.e. don't jump in with all guns blazing) as the there may well be serious implications that the developer knows about but you don't. Maybe just ask for a simple - 'what is involved in implementing this change'.
And don't feel you have to accept the first answer given, you should if you are dissatified, request further clarification from the developer.

It all depends on how the code is written - and on that we can only speculate currently. It may be that they use a really complex 3rd party tool - in which case it might take four hours.
However, if it is done using System.Net.Mail then it could be as simple as setting the IsBodyHtmlproperty on a MailMessage to true, which is a four-second job.

Changing that 'IsBodyHtml' property would make it send text, but you would also need to modify the text to insert the line feeds - on static text this is not totally difficult, but you need to consider when a line feed is proper (what in the html has "block" layout and what is simple in-line styled). Also you do not mention if the text is dynamic or static which adds complications if it IS dynamicly generated.
Time you pay for, but also knowlege. I get someone else to fix things on my car, not because I can't, but because they are better and have the tools I might not have.
Just from a time spent perspective:
Get knowlege/use knowlege already present
Estimate time to communicate with you
Design the change
Code the change
Deploy the change
Test the change/functional test
Solicit feedback on the change/acceptance test (from you?)

There is only one property "IsBodyHtml" of MailMessage Class in .net to switch between Html/Text mail message type.
So you can check yourself, how big is the job excepting removing html tags and pumblishing the updated dll on server.

The mechanics of switching the code itself is as simple as you say above, replacing the HTML body string with the new string and changing the IsBodyHtml property. (Assuming the code uses the built in .NET Framework mailing components).
Remember though, that text based emails will remove all formatting, so you won't be able to have font colours, images, hyperlinks or anything else in the content except as plain text.
If you really want to cut the estimate down, get someone internal to edit the text and all the developer will have to do is switch 2 lines of code and then test/deploy.
I can't comment on the time required to test/deploy as that's entirely dependent on your system.

Looking for a few good C# interview problems [closed]

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I do not want to ask candidates questions, but rather give them several problems to resolve. The reason for this is that I've seen people be excellent with theory, but when confronted by a real world c# issue, just couldn't hack it.
These c# problems should be simple enough that it won't take more than 1-20 minutes to resolve, yet complicated enough that I'd be able to weed out candidates that can't code.
Right now, I typically ask the applicants to reverse a string and remove duplicates from a List. This alone weeds out a large number of people.
Any other examples I could use?
Edit: I should have mentioned that this is for a standard c# gig, where they'll be writing business code rather than finding the most optimal way to implement a linked list.

I like picking simple problems that I actually had to solve at some point; it doesn't get more relevant to the job than that.
When I worked on VBScript I'd ask college candidates how to write a simplified version of DateDiff, since doing so was what I did my first real day of work at Microsoft. More advanced candidates I would ask how to build a device which tracks the relationship between 32 bit handles and an associated 64 bit pointer, which again I actually had to do when working on VBScript.
More recently I tend to ask questions about tree manipulation algorithms, since the compiler is all about tree manipulation. Or about how to codegen new operators using monads, since that's how LINQ works.
My point is not that you should use questions in these areas, my point is that surely you must have had problems that you had to solve in your day-to-day work. Ask the candidates about those problems -- then you'll learn how they solve a realistic problem, and they'll learn what sorts of problems they'd be solving if they came to work with you.

dont ask for knowledge of class libraries or obscure corners of the language (unsafe, dynamic, ..); smart people can pick these up or look them up.
I would ask to design a class hierarchy to represent something real world (vehicles, animals, ...). This usually flushes out the people who dont get objects. Make them do it with interfaces too. Also make them reverse a string - no harm in oldies but goldies

I agree with you, it is surprising how many people claim to be experienced and you find out that all that they did was read the box…
I don’t know if testing for C# is as valuable as it first seems… sure you could ask them to describe an example of when they needed to use inheritance, or why casting might have a performance problem, etc. But these are easy to study for. You would be surprised at how many interviewees give the example using “car” or “color” when giving their real world example of inheritance…. Guess they are in a book somewhere.
When looking at this problem it helps me when I compare experience in development to learning Spanish. A short time into the class everyone is conjugating verbs and can pass a test on this… but nobody speaks Spanish yet. You want the guy that claims to speak Spanish and can actually do it.
So I like to be more specific with the other technologies that will tell me if they have traveled the well-worn path of development. If they say they are an ASP.Net developer I ask them simple questions, but ones that are on the path
EXAMPLES: Give me an example of where the connection string could live? If you need to pass an ID from one page to another, what are your options? If a page takes 5 minutes to load, tell me how you would go about troubleshooting it. If I had a web page that had a single button on it, how would I center that button? Tell me the difference between storing variables in the viewstate verses session state?
You don’t have to know everything, but eighty percent of the people interviewing for a senior level position will get 10% of these types of questions right. (And on 70% of the phone interviews you will hear them Googling for the answers – good thing these aren’t the types of questions you can easily Google for.)
SQL Server is about the same. They say they would rate themselves an 8 or 9 in SQL Sever development, but then get 10% of questions. The questions again are to see if you have been on the well-worn path.
EXAMPLES: If you had a table of customers and a table of orders, how would you find the customers that had no orders? What is a clustered index? If I had a table of developers and a table of projects, how would I set it up so that projects could have multiple developers on it and developers could be on multiple projects?
How could you develop in SQL Server for “years” and not have hit these concepts? A high percentage of candidates get almost none of these answers right!! (I guess the SQL Server box isn’t as informative.)
So if you say you are a senior level guy and you can say “Soy un revelador de software” (I am a software developer), but can’t say “He hecho eso antes” (I have done that before), I don’t think you are the senior level person you are claiming to be.
Now this tells you if they have been on the well-worn path, but not if they are smart and have good problem solving skills. Having gone thru a ton of these types of interviews I can tell you that by the time the process is done you will be satisfied with having enough information to have a strong opinion on both of these issues. You might also see that by then giving them a problem set to solve is unnecessary.

Show them a small section of code or architecture diagram from one of your own projects and ask them to suggest how they would refactor it. Even if you don't wind up hiring them, you might get some interesting suggestions on ways to improve your code.

Building Eric's and other answers here, but answering as an only-ever-so-far-interviewee, what I would like in an interview is a kind of pair-programming 'test', where you sit down together facing the screen, and talk through a real-world problem.
I think there would be many advantages:
For the interviewee, being in front of a screen instead of facing the interviewer makes it easier to think about the problem rather than the interview.
For the interviewer, being with the interviewee while they look through the code and ask questions about the problem space would give a much greater insight into how the interviewee thinks, how they approach problems, and how they communicate and interact with others.
I would expect that it's more important and interesting to see a candidate thinking round the edges of your real-world problem, even if they don't completely solve it, than to have them get 10 out of 10 on come algorithmic test.

Something mildly algorithmic.
Write a method that returns true if a string is a palindrome, and false otherwise.
Re-implement the String.Substring(int, int) method.
Something about object-oriented design too.
Design a checkers game (ie, define the classes and some of the methods).

One question I was asked, and subsequently ask interviewees, is"Describe how you would make this phone into an application". Have them describe the classes, their properties, methods, interfaces, etc. Then question them on why they chose to implement them in that specific way. It gives you a good idea if they understand how to code, and gives you some insight into how they approach and solve problems.
Also, if you offer a suggestion of how they could have implemented it a different way, it may show you whether they are open to new ideas, criticism, or if they are a team player or not.

Fizz Buzz

How do I print a check? [closed]

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I need to write a .NET library for printing checks. Nothing fancy: you pass in the data, out comes the printed check. What's the best way to do this?
Constraints: The format of the check.

A lot of people are using report generators for this. It's a bit overkill, but crystal reports will certainly do the job.
Other than that, this is a basic question about formatting printed output. Is that your intention?
Check out the printdocument class and you can do this yourself:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc188767.aspx
If you're printing checks remotely (ie, you need to provide a check on the website that the user can print out) then using PDF is the easiest and most certain way to accomplish that, but be careful of the security implications.
-Adam

Wow... that takes me back! In the old days printers where dot matrix and cheques where a continous feed. I suppose nowadays cheques are preprinted single sheets and are printed with lasers/inkjets. Back then we'd just write plain ascii to the printer and send printer specific control/escape sequences for any specific formatting needs (picking the font size, line spacing, and page sizes).
Now I would like try generating a PDF and then submitting that file for printing. It out to be possible to do this with a plain text file too... though that's getting pretty close to old school. The report generator suggestion by Adam is pretty good idea too.
Generally with cheque printing it is a lot of trial and error to get the formatting right. Printing on plain paper and holding it and a preprinted cheque up to the window is an easy way to check positioning without burning through tons of cheques.
One thing to note though is whether or not there is a requirement to track the control numbers preprinted on the cheques (aka cheque number). Auditors sometimes require this and it is also a reasonable guard against fraud (accounting for every preprinted cheque is not a terrible idea). To do this you need to handle reprinting, and markng individual cheques/cheque runs as "spoiled". You also need a manual process to collect and store spoiled cheques (for the auditors). On whole it's a giant pain to get this right and can take more time than you might imagine.

Unless you're really ambitious, you order pre-printed checks and look at the check template. Fill in the blanks and there you are.

Since the format would be fairly fixed, I but you could create a Word doc that holds the format and then programmatically insert the correct information and print it
EDIT
Wow, pretty anti MS eh? You can use the full power of Words to visually set the format for the cheque and there are libraries to modify Word docs in .net, so I don't see why this isn't a slick solution

What is the best way to represent a large field of objects while using minimal resources? [closed]

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all I am looking to develop a project in unity, it is for android! I was wondering if I could get some clarity on a few things. My problem involves me trying to creating a universe of stars, 150,000 individual stars to be exact, granted there would only be a certain percentage in view at any one time. What is the most efficient structure for being able to convince the user of a realistic environment while keeping the overhead to a minimum since it will be on a phone?
What type of objects do I want to use to represent the masses of stars vs. the likes of stars in close proximity that require finer details?
What sort of threading structures should I consider while planning this project?
How easily does a project port from unity to android, in such scenarios?
Any help is much appreciated as I am looking to better develop with unity, cheers

I would suggest not tracking all 150,000 stars, but only the ones that are in view. When the field of view changes, use a random number generator to define the stars that have just entered it, and drop from memory the ones that have left. To preserve consistency, you might want to retain the stars for a short period around the current field of view, if the user can do rapid switches in direction.
As for threading, that's less a function of the number of stars you are tracking, and more a function of what it is that you are doing with them - something you didn't mention.

1) This question is mainly a game development question and not unity regarding. I just point you in the direction, as a complete answer would be to much. Normally if you need to know where you are in a 3D scene with infinite objects or close (150k is close), you would use a octree for orientation. Constructed like a map, each node of the tree points a direction (West, South, Nord, East, NNW, ...) Then you each of your stars gets 1 node, and you can calculate what is where and how much do you want to see. More information can be found on google. (Quite complicated topic jfyi)
2) Dedicated to 1) with a mix of entity/component design. You will know what I mean after 1) is clear to you.
3) Absolutly Multithreaded Asynchron. 1 Thread Update, 1 Thread Draw, Few Worker Threads (position, ...)
4) The port of Unity Engine is actually working really good. Of course you should have an android peripherial to test and debug on, but most of the time, it will work for you.