Top "Language-agnostic" questions

Use this tag for PROGRAMMING QUESTIONS that are independent of any particular programming language.

File I/O in Every Programming Language

This has to be a common question that all programmers have from time to time. How do I read a …

file-io language-agnostic programming-languages
Why are variables "i" and "j" used for counters?

I know this might seem like an absolutely silly question to ask, yet I am too curious not to ask... …

variables language-agnostic
Is it OK to use DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH on Mac OS X? And, what's the dynamic library search algorithm with it?

I read some articles discouraging of the use of DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, as the the path of dynamic library should …

language-agnostic macos dynamic-linking dll
Algorithm to generate a crossword

Given a list of words, how would you go about arranging them into a crossword grid? It wouldn't have to …

algorithm crossword language-agnostic
Can every recursion be converted into iteration?

A reddit thread brought up an apparently interesting question: Tail recursive functions can trivially be converted into iterative functions. Other …

language-agnostic recursion iteration
What is the cause of "This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way"?

There's a common error that gets thrown by the Visual C Runtime: This application has requested the Runtime to terminate …

windows language-agnostic msvcrt
Performance optimization strategies of last resort

There are plenty of performance questions on this site already, but it occurs to me that almost all are very …

performance optimization language-agnostic
GOTO still considered harmful?

Everyone is aware of Dijkstra's Letters to the editor: go to statement considered harmful (also here .html transcript and here .…

language-agnostic goto
What are five things you hate about your favorite language?

There's been a cluster of Perl-hate on Stack Overflow lately, so I thought I'd bring my "Five things you hate …

programming-languages language-agnostic
Practical non-image based CAPTCHA approaches?

It looks like we'll be adding CAPTCHA support to Stack Overflow. This is necessary to prevent bots, spammers, and other …

security language-agnostic captcha