On StackOverflow I wrote : It often comes that a XML API reorder tags without our will. (API : Application Program Interface) Is &quot;a XML API&quot; the correct sentence or &quot;an XML API&quot; ?
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99% of the time, I'm clear on when I should use "a" versus "an." There's one case, though, where people &amp; references I respect disagree.  Which of the following would you precede with "a" or "an," and why?   FAQ FUBAR SCUBA   [Note: I've read the questions  and , but the rules given there don't necessarily apply here.]    [Edited to add]  Here's a shorter (and hopefully clearer) version of the question…  In written English, which is correct (and why): "a FAQ" or "an FAQ"?  Some references with differing opinions:   an: the  and  a: the Microsoft Manual of Style for Tech Publications, 3e either: the  and
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It happens to me rather often that I look at a question such as "How to do whatever with Collections" and while that's what I'm looking for in Java, it's useless if the question refers to, for instance, C#.  So, this is purely a UI thing: how about putting the tags right under the question title, rather than arbitrarily far under the question text itself?  EDIT: here's what I mean
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I recently  and someone edited my message, but all they did was reorder the tags I had already used.   (Edit: they did actually correct one, I just noticed)  Is there any benefits to the order in which you add tags? personally I thought there wasn't any weighting?
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I know about , but in my case I need something that implements List, and not Set. So is there an implementation out there, in the API or elsewhere?  It shouldn't be hard to implement myself, but I figured why not ask people here first?
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Using AMPScript to parse an XML feed. Client is switching to JSON. Is there something similar to  for JSON in AMPScript? I am confined to using the members login area and not an external API application.
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Is this sentence a question or a statement (or other). It ends with a question, so I used a question mark. (Just ignore the tech jargon.)     I get that this should show me the PID of the SIGTERMing process and I successfully   compiled it, but how do I use it?   Edit: Another question, should it be written as (which is correct and which is clearer?)     I get that this should show me the PID of the SIGTERMing process and successfully   compiled it, but how do I use it?
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I have used the XML Parser before, and even though it worked OK, I wasn't happy with it in general, it felt like I was using workarounds for things that should be basic functionality.  I recently saw SimpleXML but I haven't tried it yet. Is it any simpler? What advantages and disadvantages do both have? Any other parsers you've used?
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I wonder if there is a counterpart to java.util.LinkedHashMap in .NET? (ie. the elements are (re)ordered automatically if I access an element. (boolean accessOrder) ).
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I have many tags marked as "interesting" and others as "ignored". (I use Java at work, I'm a Cocoa guy by night, any anything dealing with Windows/.NET/C# simply doesn't apply to me.) When tags are added to the list in the right navbar, they appear in the order in which they were added. There are several problems with this:   It can be difficult to visually locate a tag quickly, unless you have memorized its location. The tags appear as the same gray boxes like everywhere on SO, but with a small "x" afterward, and they wrap based on size. This tends to leave a ragged right margin and wasted space. Ordering based on when the tag was added is not always the most intuitive default. Various users might prefer to view them alphabetically, by popularity, recent activity, etc.   It would be nice to introduce a tabbed interface to switch between various orderings, and remember the value in the cookie, profile, etc. Coupled with this, perhaps users could specify a custom ordering that works best for them? (Currently the workaround is to copy all the tag names, remove them all, and re-add them in the desired order, but this is obviously annoying.)  Thoughts?
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A colleague asked me which of these sentences is correct, or if they are both correct which is better to use.   Are you using the current template version? Do you use the current template version?   I recommended using the first sentence but only because it sounds better to me.  Is there anything grammatically wrong with the second sentence or does it convey a different meaning to the first sentence?
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Are there any known how-tos or best practices for web service REST API versioning?  I have noticed that . Is this the only way or are there other ways to accomplish the same goal? If there are multiple ways, what are the merits of each way?
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I've always been one to simply use:  List&lt;String&gt; names = new ArrayList&lt;&gt;();   I use the interface as the type name for portability, so that when I ask questions such as these I can rework my code.    When should  be used over  and vice-versa?
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In C++ I can't use a method if I declare it after the calling method.    Does this order matter in other languages like Java or C#?
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When I say "get", what does it mean to you? A GET request? To retrieve something? To query a database? To call the get method on a C# property?  appears to encompass all of those and more. We should either burn it or split it up.  However, splitting it up would just result it . For the SQL query, we already have . Ultimately, most should questions should be retagged .  Its tag wiki suggests that it is for the HTTP GET protocol, however, there are quesions tagged with  that don't fit that description. A manual retag might be the only solution with ~375 questions tagged with it. There are also some that have both the  tags. The fact that you need two to describe the question shows that they really should be changed to .  As suggested by RiaD, maybe use . We could maybe burn  and replace it with ?
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would report a violation for:  ArrayList&lt;Object&gt; list = new ArrayList&lt;Object&gt;();   The violation was "Avoid using implementation types like 'ArrayList'; use the interface instead".  The following line would correct the violation:  List&lt;Object&gt; list = new ArrayList&lt;Object&gt;();   Why should the latter with List be used instead of ArrayList?
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It might be a stupid question, but I always wondered (and was afraid to ask :)) why tags are written in lowercase whereas sometimes it's confusing and not really correct?  For example, IMHO, JComboBox is a better name than . The same about  and Java.  Is there any specific reason why all tags are lower-cased? It might confuse some users, as I always correct people who write ArrayIndexOutOfBounds instead of ..
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When one wants to refer to some part of a webpage with the "http://example.com/#foo" method, should one use  &lt;h1&gt;&lt;a name="foo"/&gt;Foo Title&lt;/h1&gt;   or  &lt;h1 id="foo"&gt;Foo Title&lt;/h1&gt;   They both work, but are they equal, or do they have semantic differences?