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  • Variable-step update() in game loop is falling behind, how can I get around this?

    - by ThatsGobbles
    I'm working on a minimal game engine for my next game. I'm using the delta update method like shown: void update(double delta) { // Update code that uses `delta` goes here } I have a deep hierarchy of updatable objects, with a root updatable that contains several updatables, each of which contains more updatables, etc. Normally I'd just iterate through each of the root's children and update each one, which would then do the same for its children, and so on. However, passing a fixed value of delta to the root means that by the time the leaf updatables are reached, it's been longer since delta seconds that have elapsed. This is causing noticable desyncing in my game, and time synchronization is very important in my case (I'm working on a rhythm game). Any ideas on how I should tackle this? I've considered using StopWatches and a global readable timer, but any advice would be helpful. I'm also open to moving to fixed timesteps as opposed to variable.

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  • Should I read Kochan's "Programming in C" (10 years old) [on hold]

    - by notypist
    I plan on learning Obj-C and so I decided to do it by the book and learn C first. The problem: S.G. Kochan's highly acclaimed book "Programming in C" (3rd edition) is almost ten years old now1. I really want to get started and everywhere I looked this seemed like the book for beginners with an assumed zero-knowledge in programming2. So, should I buy it or not? 1: A 4th edition is available to preorder but it's only due in March, 2014! 2: I know some HTML, CSS, and a tiny bit of PHP.

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  • How many people should be involved in a game startup? [on hold]

    - by Elemecca
    I want to start an indie game company, and I understand that you need a designer, an engineer, and an artist at the very least. I also know that professional game companies like Bethesda http://bgs.bethsoft.com/ have around 40 people. I want to have a good start, and many of you have been in the industry for a good while. What is a good number of employees to start with for an independent game company? Reasons?

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  • how to enrich my programming background? [on hold]

    - by city
    I am not sure whether I post my question in right place. I am a master student in computer science and I will graduate next year.Recently, I failed in an interview. Because (at least I think) the interviewer did not think my background strong enough although I finished 5 courses projects and currently working on other 2 projects in graduate school. It seems that nowadays, recruiters like these candidates who finish some projects out of school/work. So I wanna enrich my background. So, I hope you guys recommend some java/C++ projects to me, which I can finish in two or three months. And it would be better if concurrency programming or other fancy skills are needed.

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  • iPhone game reading plist file and looping through multi dimensional array.

    - by Fulvio
    I have a question regarding an iPhone game I'm developing. At the moment, below is the code I'm using to currently I loop through my multidimensional array and position bricks accordingly on my scene. Instead of having multiple two dimensional arrays within my code as per the following (gameLevel1). Ideally, I'd like to read from a .plist file within my project and loop through the values in that instead. Please take into account that I'd like to have more than one level within my game (possibly 20) so my .plist file would have to have some sort of separator line item to determine what level I want to render. I was then thinking of having some sort of method that I call and that method would take the level number I'm interested in rendering. e.g. Method? +(void)renderLevel:(NSString levelNumber); e.g. .plist file? #LEVEL_ONE# 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 #LEVEL_TWO# 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 Code that I'm currently using: int gameLevel[17][9] = { { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 } }; for (int row=0; row < 17; row++) { for (int col=0; col < 9; col++) { thisBrickValue = gameLevel[row][col]; xOffset = 35 * floor(col); yOffset = 22 * floor(row); switch (thisBrickValue) { case 0: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block0.png"] autorelease]; break; case 1: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block1.png"] autorelease]; break; } brick.position = ccp(xOffset, yOffset); [self addChild:brick]; } }

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  • iPhone game and reading plist file and looping through multidimensional array.

    - by Fulvio
    I have a question regarding an iPhone game I'm developing. At the moment, below is the code I'm using to currently I loop through my multidimensional array and position bricks accordingly on my scene. Instead of having multiple two dimensional arrays within my code as per the following (gameLevel1). Ideally, I'd like to read from a .plist file within my project and loop through the values in that instead. Please take into account that I'd like to have more than one level within my game (possibly 20) so my .plist file would have to have some sort of separator line item to determine what level I want to render. I was then thinking of having some sort of method that I call and that method would take the level number I'm interested in rendering. e.g. Method? +(void)renderLevel:(NSString levelNumber); e.g. .plist file? #LEVEL_ONE# 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 #LEVEL_TWO# 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1 Code that I'm currently using: int gameLevel[17][9] = { { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0 }, { 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 } }; for (int row=0; row < 17; row++) { for (int col=0; col < 17; col++) { thisBrickValue = gameLevel[row][col]; xOffset = 35 * floor(col); yOffset = 22 * floor(row); switch (thisBrickValue) { case 0: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block1.png"] autorelease]; break; case 1: brick = [[CCSprite spriteWithFile:@"block0.png"] autorelease]; break; } brick.position = ccp(xOffset, yOffset); [self addChild:brick]; } }

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  • How to stop input in Perl?

    - by user1472747
    First time poster and part time perl noobie. I'm making a reflex game. Here's the output - __________________________________________________________________________ Reflex game initiated. Press ENTER to begin the game, and then press ENTER after the asterisks are printed to measure your reflexes!. ************************* Your result: 0.285606 seconds. logout [Process completed] __________________________________________________________________________ There's one small problem though - There's 0-10 seconds (based on a random variable) after you press enter to start the game and before the stars are printed. During that time, if the player presses ENTER, it's logged as their reflex time. So I need a way to stop my code from reading their ENTER button before the stars are printed. The code - #!/usr/bin/perl use Time::HiRes qw(sleep); use Time::HiRes qw(gettimeofday); #random delay variable $random_number = rand(); print "Reflex game initiated. Press ENTER to begin the game, and then press ENTER after the asterisks are printed to measure your reflexes!.\n"; #begin button $begin = <>; #waits x milliseconds sleep(10*$random_number); #pre-game $start = [ Time::HiRes::gettimeofday() ]; print "\n****************************\n"; #user presses enter $stop = <>; #post game $elapsed = Time::HiRes::tv_interval($start); #delay time print print "Your result: ".$elapsed." seconds.\n";

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  • Smithsonian Showcases Video Game History with The Art of Video Games [Video]

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    The Art of Video Games is the Smithsonian’s look at the history of video games; check out this video trailer to see what the exhibition is all about and hear from some notable folks. From the Smithsonian listing for the exhibition: The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. It features some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. The exhibition focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for twenty gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. The exhibit will be at the Smithsonian until the end of September and will then begin touring the country. Hit up the link below for more information. The Art of Video Games Tour [via Neatorama] How To Properly Scan a Photograph (And Get An Even Better Image) The HTG Guide to Hiding Your Data in a TrueCrypt Hidden Volume Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage

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  • Confusion of the "stack" in Assembly-level programming

    - by Bigyellow Bastion
    What is the "stack" exactly? I've read articles, tried comprehending it through my understanding, experience, and educated guessing of programming and computers, but I'm a bit perplexed here. The "stack" is a region in RAM? Or is it some other space I'm uncertain of here? The processor pushes bits through registers on to the stack in RAM, or do I have it wrong here? Also, the processor moves the bits from the RAM to the register to "process" it, such as maybe a compare, arithmetic, etc. But what actually can help understand, in some visual or verbal description or both, of how to implement the idea of a "stack" here? Is the stack actually the same in terminology with a "machine stack" meaning it's in RAM? I'm sorry, I don't want to solicit debate or arguments, but I really could use some help here if anyone can straighten things out. TO ADD: I know what a software stack is. I know about LIFO, FIFO, etc. I just want to gain a better understanding of the Assembly-level stack, what it is, where it is, how exactly it works, etc. Thanks for reading!

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  • Pluralsight Meet the Author Podcast on HTML5 Canvas Programming

    - by dwahlin
      In the latest installment of Pluralsight’s Meet the Author podcast series, Fritz Onion and I talk about my new course, HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals.  In the interview I describe different canvas technologies covered throughout the course and a sample application at the end of the course that covers how to build a custom business chart from start to finish. Meet the Author:  Dan Wahlin on HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals   Transcript [Fritz] Hi. This is Fritz Onion. I’m here today with Dan Wahlin to talk about his new course HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals. Dan founded the Wahlin Group, which you can find at thewahlingroup.com, which specializes in ASP.NET, jQuery, Silverlight, and SharePoint consulting. He’s a Microsoft Regional Director and has been awarded Microsoft’s MVP for ASP.NET, Connected Systems, and Silverlight. Dan is on the INETA Bureau’s — Speaker’s Bureau, speaks at conferences and user groups around the world, and has written several books on .NET. Thanks for talking to me today, Dan. [Dan] Always good to talk with you, Fritz. [Fritz] So this new course of yours, HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals, I have to say that most of the really snazzy demos I’ve seen with HTML5 have involved Canvas, so I thought it would be a good starting point to chat with you about why we decided to create a course dedicated just to Canvas. If you want to kind of give us that perspective. [Dan] Sure. So, you know, there’s quite a bit of material out there on HTML5 in general, and as people that have done a lot with HTML5 are probably aware, a lot of HTML5 is actually JavaScript centric. You know, a lot of people when they first learn it, think it’s tags, but most of it’s actually JavaScript, and it just so happens that the HTML5 Canvas is one of those things. And so it’s not just, you know, a tag you add and it just magically draws all these things. You mentioned there’s a lot of cool things you can do from games to there’s some really cool multimedia applications out there where they integrate video and audio and all kinds of things into the Canvas, to more business scenarios such as charting and things along those lines. So the reason we made a course specifically on it is, a lot of the material out there touches on it but the Canvas is actually a pretty deep topic. You can do some pretty advanced stuff or easy stuff depending on what your application requirements are, and the API itself, you know, there’s over 30 functions just in the Canvas API and then a whole set of properties that actually go with that as well. So it’s a pretty big topic, and that’s why we created a course specifically tailored towards just the Canvas. [Fritz] Right. And let’s — let me just review the outline briefly here for everyone. So you start off with an introduction to getting started with Canvas, drawing with the HTML5 Canvas, then you talk about manipulating pixels, and you finish up with building a custom data chart. So I really like your example flow here. I think it will appeal to even business developers, right. Even if you’re not into HTML5 for the games or the media capabilities, there’s still something here for everyone I think working with the Canvas. Which leads me to another question, which is, where do you see the Canvas fitting in to kind of your day-to-day developer, people that are working business applications and maybe vanilla websites that aren’t doing kind of cutting edge stuff with interactivity with users? Is there a still a place for the Canvas in those scenarios? [Dan] Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of us — and I include myself here — over the last few years, the focus has generally been, especially if you’re, let’s say, a PHP or ASP.NET or Java type of developer, we’re kind of accustomed to working on the server side, and, you know, we kind of relied on Flash or Silverlight or these other plug-ins for the client side stuff when it was kind of fancy, like charts and graphs and things along those lines. With the what I call massive shift of applications, you know, mainly because of mobile, to more of client side, one of the big benefits I think from a maybe corporate standard way of thinking of things, since we do a lot of work with different corporations, is that, number one, rather than having to have the plug-in, which of course isn’t going to work on iPad and some of these other devices out there that are pretty popular, you can now use a built-in technology that all the modern browsers support, and that includes things like Safari on the iPad and iPhone and the Android tablets and things like that with their browsers, and actually render some really sophisticated charts. Whether you do it by scratch or from scratch or, you know, get a third party type of library involved, it’s just JavaScript. So it downloads fast so it’s good from a performance perspective; and when it comes to what you can render, it’s extremely robust. You can do everything from, you know, your basic circles to polygons or polylines to really advanced gradients as well and even provide some interactivity and animations, and that’s some of the stuff I touch upon in the class. In fact, you mentioned the last part of the outline there is building a custom data chart and that’s kind of gears towards more of the, what I’d call enterprise or corporate type developer. [Fritz] Yeah, that makes sense. And it’s, you know, a lot of the demos I’ve seen with HTML5 focus on more the interactivity and kind of game side of things, but the Canvas is such a diverse element within HTML5 that I can see it being applicable pretty much anywhere. So why don’t we talk a little bit about some of the specifics of what you cover? You talk about drawing and then manipulating pixels. You want to kind of give us the different ways of working with the Canvas and what some of those APIs provide for you? [Dan] Sure. So going all the way back to the start of the outline, we actually started off by showing different demonstrations of the Canvas in action, and we show some fun stuff — multimedia apps and games and things like that — and then also some more business scenarios; and then once you see that, hopefully it kinds of piques your interest and you go, oh, wow, this is actually pretty phenomenal what you can do. So then we start you off with, so how to you actually draw things. Now, there are some libraries out there that will draw things like graphs, but if you want to customize those or just build something you have from scratch, you need to know the basics, such as, you know, how do you draw circles and lines and arcs and Bezier curves and all those fancy types of shapes that a given chart may have on it or that a game may have in it for that matter. So we start off by covering what I call the core API functions; how do you, for instance, fill a rectangle or convert that to a square by setting the height and the width; how do you draw arcs or different types of curves and there’s different types supported such as I mentioned Bezier curves or quadratic curves; and then we also talk about how do you integrate text into it. You might have some images already that are just regular bitmap type images that you want to integrate, you can do that with a Canvas. And you can even sync video into the Canvas, which actually opens up some pretty interesting possibilities for both business and I think just general multimedia apps. Once you kind of get those core functions down for the basic shapes that you need to be able to draw on any type of Canvas, then we go a little deeper into what are the pixels that are there to manipulate. And that’s one of the important things to understand about the HTML5 Canvas, scalable vector graphics is another thing you can use now in the modern browsers; it’s vector based. Canvas is pixel based. And so we talk about how to do gradients, how can you do transforms, you know, how do you scale things or rotate things, which is extremely useful for charts ’cause you might have text that, you know, flips up on its side for a y-axis or something like that. And you can even do direct pixel manipulation. So it’s really, really powerful. If you want to get down to the RGBA level, you can do that, and I show how to do that in the course, and then kind of wrap that section up with some animation fundamentals. [Fritz] Great. Yeah, that’s really powerful stuff for programmatically rendering data to clients and responding to user inputs. Look forward to seeing what everyone’s going to come up with building this stuff. So great. That’s — that’s HTML5 Canvas Fundamentals with Dan Wahlin. Thanks very much, Dan. [Dan] Thanks again. I appreciate it.

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  • Retro Video Game Collection

    - by Matt Christian
    Recently I've decided, in true nerd fashion, to collect either comic books or video games.  Considering I'm much more versed in the technological arts and not in ACTUAL art, I thought collecting old video games would be an interesting venture.  After all, I am a self-described compulsive shopper (my bank statement at the end of the month has a purchase every few days).  (Don't worry, I'm not in debt and still pay my bills on time!) I went to a local video game store in Stevens Point called Gaming Generations which is a neat little shop with loads of old games for great prices.  For example, any NES cartridge on the shelf (not behind glass) is, at most, $4.99 with the cheaper ones around $1.99.  During my first round at GG, I picked up the following: NES: - Fester's Quest - Adventures of Link (Zelda 2, grey cart) - Little Nemo - Total Recall - The Goonies 2 PSX: - Galerians N64: - Mission: Impossible - Hybrid Heaven I was a little cautious, would I even like collecting old games?  As soon as I popped a few of those games in I knew right away the answer was an astounding YES!  Not only is it fun to bring back memories of all these old games, but searching for them in stores is also a blast and saying 'I have that one, I need the second one.' After finding such joy in buying these games, I decided to go search through 4-5 stores in Wausau for old games as well.  While the prices were a bit higher and selection smaller, the search was still fun.  I found the following: NES: - Maniac Mansion - T&C Surf - Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers - TMNT (the first one) - Mission: Impossible N64: - Turok - Turok 2 Genesis: - Sonic the Hedgehog Dreamcast: - Shenmue And I found a Gamegear for $5!  Now I just need to find games for it... Tonight I will go on one more small expedition into the used, once again stopping at GG and another second hand store to see if I can find any items for my collection.

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  • Book Review - Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan

    - by BuckWoody
    As part of my professional development, I’ve created a list of books to read throughout the year, starting in June of 2011. This a review of the first one, called Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan. You can find my entire list of books I’m reading for my career here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/06/07/head-in-the-clouds-eyes-on-the-books.aspx  Why I Chose This Book: As part of my learning style, I try to read multiple books about a single subject. I’ve found that at least 3 books are necessary to get the right amount of information to me. This is a “technical” work, meaning that it deals with technology and not business, writing or other facets of my career. I’ll have a mix of all of those as I read along. I chose this work in addition to others I’ve read since it covers everything from an introduction to more advanced topics in a single book. It also has some practical examples of actually working with the product, particularly on storage. Although it’s dated, many examples normally translate. I also saw that it had pretty good reviews. What I learned: I learned a great deal about storage, and many useful code snippets. I do think that there could have been more of a focus on the application fabric - but of course that wasn’t as mature a feature when this book was written. I learned some great architecture examples, and in one section I learned more about encryption. In that example, however, I would rather have seen the examples go the other way - the book focused on moving data from on-premise to Azure storage in an encrypted fashion. Using the Application Fabric I would rather see sensitive data left in a hybrid fashion on premise, and connect to for the Azure application. Even so, the examples were very useful. If you’re looking for a good “starter” Azure book, this is a good choice. I also recommend the last chapter as a quick read for a DBA, or Database Administrator. It’s not very long, but useful. Note that the limits described are incorrect - which is one of the dangers of reading a book about any cloud offering. The services offered are updated so quickly that the information is in constant danger of being “stale”. Even so, I found this a useful book, which I believe will help me work with Azure better. Raw Notes: I take notes as I read, calling that process “reading with a pencil”. I find that when I do that I pay attention better, and record some things that I need to know later. I’ll take these notes, categorize them into a OneNote notebook that I synchronize in my Live.com account, and that way I can search them from anywhere. I can even read them on the web, since the Live.com has a OneNote program built in. Note that these are the raw notes, so they might not make a lot of sense out of context - I include them here so you can watch my though process. Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan: Learning about how to select applications suitable for Distributed Technology. Application Fabric gets the least attention; probably because it was newer at the time. Very clear (Chapter One) Good foundation Background and history, but not too much I normally arrange my descriptions differently, starting with the use-cases and moving to physicality, but this difference helps me. Interesting that I am reading this using Safari Books Online, which uses many of these concepts. Taught me some new aspects of a Hypervisor – very low-level information about the Azure Fabric (not to be confused with the Application Fabric feature) (Chapter Two) Good detail of what is included in the SDK. Even more is available now. CS = Cloud Service (Chapter 3) Place Storage info in the configuration file, since it can be streamed in-line with a running app. Ditto for logging, and keep separated configs for staging and testing. Easy-switch in and switch out.  (Chapter 4) There are two Runtime API’s, one of external and one for internal. Realizing how powerful this paradigm really is. Some places seem light, and to drop off but perhaps that’s best. Managing API is not charged, which is nice. I don’t often think about the price, until it comes to an actual deployment (Chapter 5) Csmanage is something I want to dig into deeper. API requires package moves to Blob storage first, so it needs a URL. Csmanage equivalent can be written in Unix scripting using openssl. Upgrades are possible, and you use the upgradeDomainCount attribute in the Service-Definition.csdef file  Always use a low-privileged account to test on the dev fabric, since Windows Azure runs in partial trust. Full trust is available, but can be dangerous and must be well-thought out. (Chapter 6) Learned how to run full CMD commands in a web window – not that you would ever do that, but it was an interesting view into those links. This leads to a discussion on hosting other runtimes (such as Java or PHP) in Windows Azure. I got an expanded view on this process, although this is where the book shows its age a little. Books can be a problem for Cloud Computing for this reason – things just change too quickly. Windows Azure storage is not eventually consistent – it is instantly consistent with multi-phase commit. Plumbing for this is internal, not required to code that. (Chapter 7) REST API makes the service interoperable, hybrid, and consistent across code architectures. Nicely done. Use affinity groups to keep data and code together. Side note: e-book readers need a common “notes” feature. There’s a decent quick description of REST in this chapter. Learned about CloudDrive code – PowerShell sample that mounts Blob storage as a local provider. Works against Dev fabric by default, can be switched to Account. Good treatment in the storage chapters on the differences between using Dev storage and Azure storage. These can be mitigated. No, blobs are not of any size or number. Not a good statement (Chapter 8) Blob storage is probably Azure’s closest play to Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas). Blob change operations must be authenticated, even when public. Chapters on storage are pretty in-depth. Queue Messages are base-64 encoded (Chapter 9) The visibility timeout ensures processing of message in a disconnected system. Order is not guaranteed for a message, so if you need that set an increasing number in the queue mechanism. While Queues are accessible via REST, they are not public and are secured by default. Interesting – the header for a queue request includes an estimated count. This can be useful to create more worker roles in a dynamic system. Each Entity (row) in the Azure Table service is atomic – all or nothing. (Chapter 10) An entity can have up to 255 Properties  Use “ID” for the class to indicate the key value, or use the [DataServiceKey] Attribute.  LINQ makes working with the Azure Table Service much easier, although Interop is certainly possible. Good description on the process of selecting the Partition and Row Key.  When checking for continuation tokens for pagination, include logic that falls out of the check in case you are at the last page.  On deleting a storage object, it is instantly unavailable, however a background process is dispatched to perform the physical deletion. So if you want to re-create a storage object with the same name, add retry logic into the code. Interesting approach to deleting an index entity without having to read it first – create a local entity with the same keys and apply it to the Azure system regardless of change-state.  Although the “Indexes” description is a little vague, it’s interesting to see a Folding and Stemming discussion a-la the Porter Stemming Algorithm. (Chapter 11)  Presents a better discussion of indexes (at least inverted indexes) later in the chapter. Great treatment for DBA’s in Chapter 11. We need to work on getting secondary indexes in Table storage. There is a limited form of transactions called “Entity Group Transactions” that, although they have conditions, makes a transactional system more possible. Concurrency also becomes an issue, but is handled well if you’re using Data Services in .NET. It watches the Etag and allows you to take action appropriately. I do not recommend using Azure as a location for secure backups. In fact, I would rather have seen the examples in (Chapter 12) go the other way, showing how data could be brought back to a local store as a DR or HA strategy. Good information on cryptography and so on even so. Chapter seems out of place, and should be combined with the Blob chapter.  (Chapter 13) on SQL Azure is dated, although the base concepts are OK.  Nice example of simple ADO.NET access to a SQL Azure (or any SQL Server Really) database.  

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  • What's the benefit of object-oriented programming over procedural programming?

    - by niko
    I'm trying to understand the difference between procedural languages like C and object-oriented languages like C++. I've never used C++, but I've been discussing with my friends on how to differentiate the two. I've been told C++ has object-oriented concepts as well as public and private modes for definition of variables: things C does not have. I've never had to use these for while developing programs in Visual Basic.NET: what are the benefits of these? I've also been told that if a variable is public, it can be accessed anywhere, but it's not clear how that's different from a global variable in a language like C. It's also not clear how a private variable differs from a local variable. Another thing I've heard is that, for security reasons, if a function needs to be accessed it should be inherited first. The use-case is that an administrator should only have as much rights as they need and not everything, but it seems a conditional would work as well: if ( login == "admin") { // invoke the function } Why is this not ideal? Given that there seems to be a procedural way to do everything object-oriented, why should I care about object-oriented programming?

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  • Game Changer Appliance for SMBs Powered by Oracle Linux

    - by Zeynep Koch
    In the November 28th CRN article  Review: Thumbs-Up On Oracle Database Appliance  , Edward F. Moltzen mentions that "The Test Center likes this appliance (Oracle Database Appliance) , for the performance and for the strong security offered by the underlying Oracle Linux in the box. It’s more than a solid offering for the SMB space; it’s potentially a game-changer as data and security needs race to keep up with the oncoming generations of technology." The Oracle Database Appliance is a new way to take advantage of the world's most popular database—Oracle Database 11g—in a single, easy-to-deploy and manage system. It's a complete package of software, server, storage, and network that's engineered for simplicity; saving time and money by simplifying deployment, maintenance, and support of database workloads. All hardware and software components are supported by a single vendor—Oracle—and offer customers unique pay-as-you-grow software licensing to quickly scale from 2 processor cores to 24 processor cores without incurring the costs and downtime usually associated with hardware upgrades. It is: Simple—Complete plug-and-go hardware and software Reliable—Advanced management features and single-vendor support Affordable—Pay-as-you-grow platform for small database consolidation The Oracle Database Appliance is a 4U rack-mountable system pre-installed with Oracle Linux and Oracle appliance manager software. Redundancy is built into all components and the Oracle appliance manager software reduces the risk and complexity of deploying highly available databases. It's perfect for consolidating OLTP and data warehousing databases up to 4 terabytes in size, making it ideal for midsize companies or departmental systems. Read more about Oracle's Database Appliance  Read more about Oracle Linux

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  • HYUNDAI @ Oracle Open World 2012 General Session (GEN9449): Engineered Systems - From Vision to Game-Changing Results

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
     Why do data centers still demand an “assembly required” approach? This necessity  proves costly and complex, forces customers to deal with a wide range of vendors  for each  application, and fails to deliver performance optimization for application and data  workloads.  Oracle believes that systems (just like automobiles) should be designed and engineered “at the  factory” with the goal of reducing customers’ costs and complexity and delivering extreme performance, reliability, availability, and simplicity with a higher degree of automation. Hyundai Motor Company was founded in 1967 and since then has become a global brand in the automotive industry. Hyundai Motor Company’s was looking for a solution to manage its intellectual capital by capturing and facilitating re-use of knowledge of its thousands of employees. To achieve this Hyundai Motor Company set out to build a centralized document management platform that will allow its 30,000 knowledge workers to collaborate by sharing documents in a secure manner, anytime, anywhere. Furthermore this new knowledge management platform would bring about significant improvements in employee productivity.  Hear senior business leaders from Hyundai speak about the role and benefits of running their knowledge management platform on the Oracle family of engineered systems at the following general session at Oracle Open World 2012: Session: GEN9499 - General Session: Engineered Systems—From Vision to Game-Changing Results Date: Monday, 1 Oct, 2012Time: 1:45 pm - 2:45 pm (PST)Venue: Moscone West (2002 / 2004)

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  • Java Champion Jorge Vargas on Extreme Programming, Geolocalization, and Latin American Programmers

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    In a new interview, up on otn/java, titled “An Interview with Java Champion Jorge Vargas,” Jorge Vargas, a leading Mexican developer, discusses the process of introducing companies to Enterprise JavaBeans through the application of Extreme Programming. Among other things, he gives workshops about building code with agile techniques and creates a master project to build all apps based on Scrum, XP methods and Kanban. He focuses on building core components such as security, login, and menus. Vargas remarks, “This may sound easy, but it’s not—the process takes months and hundreds of hours, but it can be controlled, and with small iterations, we can translate customer requirements and problems of legacy systems to the new system.” In regard to his work with geolocalization, he says: “We have launched a beta program of Yumbling, a geolocalization-based app, with mobile clients for BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, and Nokia, with a Web interface. The first challenge was to design a simple universal mechanism providing information to all clients and to minimize maintenance provision to them. I try not to generalize a lot—to avoid low performance or misunderstanding in processing data. We use the latest Java EE technology—during the last five years, I’ve taught people how to use Java EE efficiently.” Check out the interview here.

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  • Documenting and enforcing programming standards and guidelines for shared library

    - by dreza
    Myself and another developer with the go ahead from our IT director have started a general purpose library in .NET with the intention that it will provide many common purpose classes that we use in our day to day development. During discussions and design of the library we have come up with a set of standards that we want the library to follow to ensure it is maintained and expanded on in a consistent manner. What is the best way to ensure these decisions we made for the library get feed to the other developers who might be using and adding to this library in the future. One of our decisions was to ensure we review all checked in code so we expect initially there to be some differences in coding styles of individuals not fitting in with the project standards. Some ideas I had were: Add a Read-me.txt to the project that outline the guidelines and standards Send an email out to everyone in the team to let them know about the project etc Call a team meeting to go through this new project and our expectations and standards we were aiming to follow Try and enforce the standards via Visual Studio (not sure if this would be possible or how just an idea) At the moment there is no general company programming standards so this would be a first really insofar as we are creating a standard that different project teams would need to adhere to.

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  • How to dealing with the "programming blowhard"?

    - by Peter G.
    (Repost, I posted this in the wrong section before, sorry) So I'm sure everyone has run into this person at one point or another, someone catches wind of your project or idea and initially shows some interest. You get to talking about some of your methods and usually around this time they interject stating how you should use method X instead, or just use library Y. But not as a friendly suggestion, but bordering on a commandment. Often repeating the same advice over and over like a overzealous parrot. Personally, I like to reinvent the wheel when I'm learning, or even just for fun, even if it turns out worse than what's been done before. But this person apparently cannot fathom recreating ANY utility for such purposes, or possibly try something that doesn't strictly follow traditional OOP practices, and will settle for nothing except their sense of perfection, and thus naturally heave their criticism sludge down my ears full force. To top it off, they eventually start justifying their advice (retardation) by listing all the incredibly complex things they've coded single-handedly (usually along the lines of "trust me, I've made/used program X for a long time, blah blah blah"). Now, I'm far from being a programming master, I'm probably not even that good, and as such I value advice and critique, but I think advice/critique has a time and place. There is also a big difference between being helpful and being narcissistic. In the past I probably would have used a somewhat stronger George Carlin style dismissal, but I don't think burning bridges is the best approach anymore. Maybe I'm just an asshole, but do you have any advice on how to deal with this kind of verbal flogging?

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  • How to organize a programming course?

    - by Bogdan Gavril
    I've been given the task to train our manual testers to become developers in test (write test automation!). some have basic programing knowledge (either dabbling in PHP or reading stuff) and some who have no experience. Note that I do have teaching experience, but with real students, not employees, and one concern is that they will not put extra hours except the 20% management gave them for the transition. Language to be taught and used: C# We have 8 hours per week to do this and should decide if they will make it in 2 months. I am thinking of a combined approach: use a manual such as Head First C# (although I'm not happy with the labs, they're mostly games and I don't want to add UI complexities) have them read from the manual do labs with them, solving more and more difficult problems and explain the theoretical stuff as well have them do a bigger project towards the end Some questions: do you have a better suggestion as far as manuals go? do you have a better aproach? Focus less on labs? what kind of assesments should I use and how often? should I let them do a bigger project (bank system or small game) and how much time should I invest in that? ideeas on labs? other resources ? Any other tips would be most welcomed! Thanks!

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  • What's the ethos of the programming profession?

    - by mac
    I am one of those people who became professional programmer by chance, rather than by choice: I moved to a country whose main language I couldn't speak, I knew how to code... and here I am a few years later. Because of this I never really gave much a thought about the ethos of being a programmer, and working as a freelance I neither had many occasions to discuss this with fellow colleagues. Among others, Dictionary.com define the word ethos as follows: The fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period. So my question is: How would you describe the ethos of being a programmer, and why would you say so? Please note that: my question is different than this and this other ones (although you might have chosen to become a programmer because of the programmer'ethos or you might think that part of the programmer ethos is about "programming being a meaningful profession"). beside the "how/what" part of the question, there is a "why" part too! :) I would appreciate if the answer could be based not only on the idealised vision of the hero-programmer, but also on real working and life experience. Thank you in advance for your time and contributions!

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  • The effects of Agile Programming can alter the five desirable properties of modeling tools and techniques

    The effects of Agile Programming can alter the five desirable properties of modeling tools and techniques as documented by Pfleeger. The agile methodology does promote human understanding and communication through the use of short iterative software development life cycles which forces stakeholders to review the project and adjust the project for any requirement changes.  Due to the consistent evaluations of a project and requirements, process are continually being refined, upgraded, and compared against other alternatives to ensure the best design delivered to the client. Due to the short repetitive development cycles, increased time is devoted to process management due to the fact that requirements and designs could be constantly changing. This requires additional forecasting, monitoring, and planning for each iteration. Because things can change so rapidly, automated guidance in performing process must be updated for each iteration because the environment and the available reusable process could change. In addition, the original guidance and suggestions for the project also need to be updated to account for these changes as well.   In essence the automation of process execution is supported by the agile methodology because during every iteration all processes must be tested, evaluated to ensure process integrity and compliance with the customer’s requirements. I do not think the agile approach diminishes modeling, in fact I think it increases the modeling because before the start of every development cycle, modeling must be checked for accuracy based on the changed requirements. So in essence the reduced time spent initially designing the models is in fact gained as the project completes every iteration of the project.

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  • How do I find a programming internship / practice?

    - by user828584
    I'm taking the SAT soon, and quickly heading toward the chaos of figuring out which college's I will be able to attend, and how on Earth I'll be able to afford it. I would like to be able to gain some experience in programming or web development, but I don't know where to look. I've been trying my best to learn over the past year, and have been doing alright in C# and the web languages (HTML, PHP, CSS, javascript). I have no idea where to look though. I've asked similar questions and rummaged through old questions on here, and they all say nothing specifically. The main two points are always "Contribute to open source projects" and "Find a company and ask to be a part of it." I don't know how to find either of the two. I've looked online at github and source forge, and the like, but all the projects are already so progressed and I just don't have the experience needed to bring myself up to speed with their code. I don't have much experience in code management, and I don't know how to get it. I would be ecstatic to be able to start a project with a group of more experienced members, but, like I said, I have no clue how to find these people.

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  • Live programming help

    - by frazras
    This idea has been floating around my head for a few years. I started some work on it but I just want to know if it is feasible, sensible, or if there is something else like it out there. Dont want to know I was wasting time on a solved issue. Whenever I have a programming issue, this is my sequence: Google it!: That usually brings up a lot of things: blogs, forums, stackoverflow, stackexchange, and even the official docs of the language/framework/cms. Ask on IRC: I format my question and try to get people on IRC to help me. Make a post: I create a post on forums/stackoverflow/stackexchange or shout on twitter with hashtags. Now a lot of the time I am in the middle of a project with a deadline. So I want answers NOW!!! Sometimes just 5-15 minutes worth of attention. Usually by the time I am failing at getting answers at #2, I am imagining how many people are ONLINE NOW with the skill and my exact answer but playing video games, watching youtube or idling online. However, if they were motivated, they would invest the 15 mintes helping me, that would make a world of a difference. I am even in positions where I would PAY for that 15 minutes of instant help. If your rate is as much as $100/hour (relatively good programmer) that is $25 that might save me 3 hours. This help would be live, text chat/skype/phone/screenshare. Should I continue developing this idea or is there a better alternative out there? Or is this even an unfeasible idea?

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  • Game: Age of Empires sound good but video "out of range"

    - by Ezekiel
    I'm new to the Ubuntu realm. Currently i'm using Linux Mint 12 with Wine 1.4 and PLAYONLINUX as game loading/playing programs. Video card is MSI GeForce FX5200 (NVIDIA) and is 3d enabled. I can play "Call of Duty 5 demo just fine. My real love is the Age of Empires series games. I loaded the WINE version of AOE 1 demo. No sound and no picture. Black screen with "Out of Range" window in red. I loaded my CD version of AOE 1 through PLAYONLINUX. I get the sound just fine but again the black screen with "Out of Range" window in red. I have used all the monitor settings in both the "settings" and in winecfg. None of the eight monitor options worked in any combination. I have checked all the questions and blogs on this error and tried all I found and no one seems to come up with a real fix. I guess I need to know exactly what the "Out of Range" means. Any help? Anywhere? Thanks

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  • How do you make slides for programming talks?

    - by Yuvi Masory
    I've given a few talks recently and I have not found a good way to make slides. Here are a few desirable characteristics for programming slides: They're slides. A standard emacs buffer won't do it. They have syntax highlighting for code. They support basic formatting, like font size and color and bullets. No fancy animations needed. The only animation I desire is one-by-one appearance of bullets. So far I have considered: Microsoft Office - out of the question for Linux users. OpenOffice.org - too much for my needs, code formatting/highlighting needs to be done externally and pasted in. On the plus side supports bullets, bullet-by-bullet animation, and font formatting. Emacs - Supports all the code formatting but I haven't found a slides mode that lets me transition from one chunk to another. HTML5 - I once made slides using html5rocks as a template. It supports everything, but is too hard and time-consuming the "throw together" a few slides before a minor talk. Also the html5-only features may not work on the podium computer's installed browser. Any suggestions for programs/techniques for making code-centric presentations?

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