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• Business Analyst role in development process

  - by Ryan

  I work as a business analyst and I currently oversee much of the development efforts of an internal project. I'm responsible for the requirements, specs, and overall testing. I work closely with the developers (onshore and offshore). The offshore team produces all of the reports. Version 1.0 had a 9 month development cycle and I had about 4-5 months to test all the reports. There was the usual back and forth to get the implementation right. Version 2.0 had a much shorter development cycle (3 months). I received the first version of the reports about 3 weeks ago and noticed a lot of things wrong with it. Many of the requirements were wrong and the performance of the queries was horrendous at 5x - 6x longer than it should have been. The onshore lead developer was out and did not supervise the offshore development team in generating the reports. Without consulting management, I took a look at the SQL in the reports and was able to improve performance greatly (by a factor of 6x) which is acceptable for this version. I sent the updated queries as guidelines to the offshore team and told them they should look at doing X instead of Y to improve performance and also to fix some specific logic issues. I then spoke to my managers about this because it doesn't feel right that I was developing SQL queries, but given our time crunch I saw no other way. We were able to fix the issue quite fast which I'm happy with. Current situation: the onshore managers aren't too pleased that the offshore team did not code for performance. I know there are some things I could have done better throughout this process and I do not in any way consider myself a programmer. My question is, if an offshore team that works apart from the onshore project resources fails to deliver an acceptable release, is it appropriate to clean up their work to meet a deadline? What kind of problems could this create in the future?

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• Did the developers of Java conciously abandon RAII?

  - by JoelFan

  As a long-time C# programmer, I have recently come to learn more about the advantages of Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII). In particular, I have discovered that the C# idiom: using (my dbConn = new DbConnection(connStr) { // do stuff with dbConn } has the C++ equivalent: { DbConnection dbConn(connStr); // do stuff with dbConn } meaning that remembering to enclose the use of resources like DbConnection in a using block is unnecessary in C++ ! This seems to a major advantage of C++. This is even more convincing when you consider a class that has an instance member of type DbConnection, for example class Foo { DbConnection dbConn; // ... } In C# I would need to have Foo implement IDisposable as such: class Foo : IDisposable { DbConnection dbConn; public void Dispose() { dbConn.Dispose(); } } and what's worse, every user of Foo would need to remember to enclose Foo in a using block, like: using (var foo = new Foo()) { // do stuff with "foo" } Now looking at C# and its Java roots I am wondering... did the developers of Java fully appreciate what they were giving up when they abandoned the stack in favor of the heap, thus abandoning RAII? (Similarly, did Stroustrup fully appreciate the significance of RAII?)

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• Which algorithms/data structures should I "recognize" and know by name?

  - by Earlz

  I'd like to consider myself a fairly experienced programmer. I've been programming for over 5 years now. My weak point though is terminology. I'm self-taught, so while I know how to program, I don't know some of the more formal aspects of computer science. So, what are practical algorithms/data structures that I could recognize and know by name? Note, I'm not asking for a book recommendation about implementing algorithms. I don't care about implementing them, I just want to be able to recognize when an algorithm/data structure would be a good solution to a problem. I'm asking more for a list of algorithms/data structures that I should "recognize". For instance, I know the solution to a problem like this: You manage a set of lockers labeled 0-999. People come to you to rent the locker and then come back to return the locker key. How would you build a piece of software to manage knowing which lockers are free and which are in used? The solution, would be a queue or stack. What I'm looking for are things like "in what situation should a B-Tree be used -- What search algorithm should be used here" etc. And maybe a quick introduction of how the more complex(but commonly used) data structures/algorithms work. I tried looking at Wikipedia's list of data structures and algorithms but I think that's a bit overkill. So I'm looking more for what are the essential things I should recognize?

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• XNA Masking Mayhem

  - by TropicalFlesh

  I'd like to start by mentioning that I'm just an amateur programmer of the past 2 years with no formal training and know very little about maximizing the potential of graphics hardware. I can write shaders and manipulate a multi-layered drawing environment, but I've basically stuck to minimalist pixel shaders. I'm working on putting dynamic point light shadows in my 2d sidescroller, and have had it working to a reasonable degree. Just chucking it in without working on serious optimizations outside of basic culling, I can get 50 lights or so onscreen at once and still hover around 100 fps. The only issue is that I'm on a very high end machine and would like to target the game at as many platforms I can, low and high end. The way I'm doing shadows involves a lot of masking before I can finally draw the light to my light layer. Basically, my technique to achieveing such shadows is as follows. See pics in this album http://imgur.com/a/m2fWw#0 The dark gray represents the background tiles, the light gray represents the foreground tiles, and the yellow represents the shadow-emitting foreground tile. I'll draw the light using a radial gradient and a color of choice I'll then exclude light from the mask by drawing some geometry extending through the tile from my point light. I actually don't mask the light yet at this point, but I'm just illustrating the technique in this image Finally, I'll re-include the foreground layer in my mask, as I only want shadows to collect on the background layer and finally multiply the light with it's mask to the light layer My question is simple - How can I go about reducing the amount of render target switches I need to do to achieve the following: a. Draw mask to exclude shadows from the foreground to it's own target once per frame b. For each light that emits shadows, -Begin light mask as full white -Render shadow geometry as transparent with an opaque blendmode to eliminate shadowed areas from the mask -Render foreground mask back over the light mask to reintroduce light to the foreground c. Multiply light texture with it's individual mask to the main light layer.

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• Intelligence as a vector quantity

  - by Senthil Kumaran

  I am reading this wonderful book called "Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming" by Peter Seibel and I am at part wherein the conversation is with Joshua Bloch and I found this answer which is an important point for a programmer. The paragraph, goes something like this. There's this problem, which is, programming is so much of an intellectual meritocracy and often these people are the smartest people in the organization; therefore they figure they should be allowed to make all the decisions. But merely the fact they are the smartest people in the organization does not mean that they should be making all the decisions, because intelligence is not a scalar quantity; it's a vector quantity. Here at the last sentence, I fail to get the insight which is he trying to share. Can someone explain it in a little further as what he means by a vector quantity, possibly trying to present the same insight. Further down, I get the point that he is not taking about having an organization where non-technical people (sometimes clueless) can be managers of the technical people for some reason that they can spend more time to write emails well, because the very next statement following the above paragraph was. And if you lack empathy or emotional intelligence, then you shouldn't be designing APIs or GUIs or languages. I understand that he is saying that in Software engineering, programmers should know how the users will see their product and design for them. I felt the above paragraph was very interesting.

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• Optimizing lifestyle and training

  - by Gabe

  I am a college freshman who has recently discovered a passion for computer science. Having had my first lick of formal python training last semester, I have cast aside my previously hedonist way of life and tunneled my sights on becoming the most rounded and proficient programmer I can be. I know that I'm taking strides in the right direction (I've stopped smoking, I've been exercising every day, I've taught myself C++ and OpenGL, and I've begun training in kung-fu and meditation), yet I am still finding myself struggling to achieve satisfactory results. I would like to be able to spend a good 3-4 hours every day burning through textbooks. I have the time cleared and the resources allocated. The problem lies in the logistics-- I have never taken anything seriously before. Recently I've realized that I am clueless when it comes to taking care of myself and gaining control of my mind, and it drastically hinders my productivity. My question is this: How can I learn to manage my time and take care of myself such that I can spend the maximum amount of time every day studying with steady concentration? Personal tricks would be key here: techniques you use to get yourself to sleep, a diet that yields focus, even computer break stretching routines or active reading techniques. Anything you could think of here would be great. I was a low-life in high school and I have the drive to turn my life around, I'm just quite a bit behind in the way of good habits :)

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• Java web app, with plugin framework and ability to connect to source for updates

  - by lessthancommon

  I've searched all around for some good sources, but either have been searching for the wrong keywords, or I'm just missing something. I'm looking to redevelop a web app I've been using for some time now. Many parts are out of date, and we're constantly throwing in little hacks to attempt to give it new life. So what I'd like to do is re-engineer it from the ground up, built on some sort of plug-in framework. Before I continue, I'm more or less an intermediate Java programmer. In some ways, I'm hoping to use this project as a big learning experience. I've read a lot about OSGi, and it seems that's the most complete framework. Ideally, I would like an end result web app which I can run one instance as my hosting environment, and other instances can connect to it to grab new and updated plug-ins. Eventually I'll want to lock down these plug-ins based on some undecided criteria of who can get them (basically some will simply be updates, others will provide new functionality and should be "purchased" through an external system). But that will probably be handled in a later phase. There should be an administration view for managing bundles in a hot environment (looking to avoid having to restart the server for an update). I know all these things are possible, I'm just trying to find some good resources for reference. All the OSGi tutorials I'm finding seem to be too simplistic. If anyone here can guide me in the right direction on any or all of the items I'm looking for, it would be much appreciated. Also, this is my first post, so I'll take any comments/criticisms about the content of my post. Thanks!

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• Do you ever worry that you're more concerned with how something is built rather than what you are actually building?

  - by Rob Stevenson-Leggett

  As a programmer I have an inherent nagging annoyance at my tools, other peoples code, my code, the world in general. I always want to improve it. So I refactor, I stay on top of the latest techniques. I try and learn patterns, I try to use frameworks so as not to reinvent the wheel. I can write a tech spec that will blow your socks off with the amount of patterns I can squeeze in. However, lately I feel I actually know more about the tools I use than how to actually implement successful software. I feel like I'm lacking in the human factors skill set and I believe that to be a successful software engineer takes more than knowing the coolest framework. I think it needs some of the following skillsets too. Interaction design User experience Marketing I've got a bit of this that I've learned from people I've worked with and great projects I've worked on but I don't feel like I "own" these skills. Am I right? Should I be trying to develop these skills further, or should these be left to the people who do these for a career? How do you make sure you don't get too tied up in how you're doing something and make sure you "make your users awesome"? Does anyone know of good resources for learning these skills from a programming point of view?

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• Are programmers getting lazier and less competent

  - by Skeith

  I started programming in C++ at uni and loved it. In the next term we changed to VB6 and I hated it. I could not tell what was going on, you drag a button to a form and the ide writes the code for you. While I hated the way VB functioned I cannot argue that it was faster and easier than doing the same thing in C++ so i can see why it is a popular language. Now I am not calling VB developers lazy in just saying it easier than C++ and I have noticed that a lot of newer languages are following this trend such a C#. This leads me to think that as more business want quick results more people will program like this and sooner or later there will be no such thing as what we call programming now. Future programmers will tell the computer what they want and the compiler will write the program for them like in star trek. Is this just an under informed opinion of a junior programmer or are programmers getting lazier and less competent in general? EDIT: A lot of answers say why re invent the wheel and I agree with this but when there are wheels available people are not bothering to learn how to make the wheel. I can google how to do pretty much anything in any language and half the languages do so much for you when it come to debugging they have no idea what there code does of how to fix the error. That's how I cam up with the theory that programmers are becoming lazier and less competent as no one cares how stuff works just that it does until it does not.

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• Correct level of abstraction for a 3d rendering component?

  - by JohnB

  I've seen lots of questions around this area but not this exact question so apologies if this is a duplicate. I'm making a small 3d game. Well to be honest, it's just a little hobby project and likely won't turn out to be an actual game, I'll be happy to make a nice graphics demo and learn about 3d rendering and c++ design. My intent is to use direct3d9 for rendering as I have some little experience of it, and it seems to meet my requirements. However if I've learned one thing as a programmer it's to ask "is there any conceivable reason that this component might be replaced by a different implmentation" and if the answer is yes then I need to design a proper abstraction and interface to that component. So even though I intend to implment d3d9 I need to design a 3d interface that could be implemented for d3d11, opengl... My question then is what level is it best to do this at? I'm thinking that an interface capable of creating and later drawing Vertex buffers and index buffers Textures Vertex and Pixel "shaders" Some representation of drawing state (blending modes etc...) In other words a fairly low level interface where my code to draw for example an animated model would use the interface to obtain abstract vertex buffers etc. I worry though that it's too low level to abstract out all the functionallity I need efficiently. The alternative is to do this at a higher level where the interface can draw objects, animations, landscapes etc, and implement them for each system. This seems like more work, but it more flexible I guess. So that's my question really, when abstracting out the drawing system, what level of interface works best?

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• C#.NET (AForge) against Java (JavaCV, JMF) for video processing

  - by Leron

  I'm starting to get really confused looking deeper and deeper at video processing world and searching for optimal choices. This is the reason to post this and some other questions to try and navigate myself in the best possible way. I really like Java, working with Java, coding with Java, at the same time C# is not that different from Java and Visual Studio is maybe the best IDE I've been working with. So even though I really want to do my projects in Java so I can get better and better Java programmer at the same time I'm really attract to video processing and even though I'm still at the beginning of this journey I want to take the right path. So I'm really in doubt could Java be used in a production environment for serious video processing software. As the title says I already have been looking at maybe the two most used technologies for video processing in Java - JMF and JavaCV and I'm starting to think that even they are used and they provide some functionality, when it comes to real work and real project that's not the first thing that comes to once mind, I mean to someone that have a professional opinion about this. On the other hand I haven't got the time to investigate .NET (c# specificly) options but even AForge looks a lot more serious library then those provided for Java. So in general -either ways I'm gonna spend a lot of time learning some technology and trying to do something that make sense with it, but my plan is at the end the thing that I'll eventually come up to be my headline project. To represent my skills and eventually help me find a job in the field. So I really don't want to spend time learning something that will give me the programming result I want but at the same time is not something that is needed in the real world development. So what is your opinion, which language, technology is better for this specific issue. Which one worths more in terms that I specified above?

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• B.S.in Computer Science, weak eyes => career change

  - by Prometheus

  So I am going to earn B.S. in Computer Science soon. I like computers. I like programming. The problem is that my eyes are very weak. Depending on their condition, I can only put in about 6 hours in front of computer a day. If I push myself, I have trouble even keeping my eyes open because of soreness/pain, consequently headaches. My eyes do not have medical conditions. I was just born with weak eyes. I tried many different approaches to work around this problem - better monitor, breaks every 10 minutes, supplements... I even memorized a lot of shortcuts to reduce my time on computers! But I am finally giving up. I do not think I can be a programmer for the rest of my life. I was the top of my class in high school because all works were paper-based, I did average in college due to the nature of my eyes and the difficulty of the material. So what do you recommend I do? Or, Is there a career that is similar to programming but requires interacting with computers less?

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• Keyboard layout - certain keys work with AltGr, other doesn't

  - by user23122

  I run Ubuntu 12.04 in VirtualBox 4.3.14 on Windows 7 with a Swedish keyboard layout. In Windows everything works fine but in Ubuntu some keys/characters (the most important for a programmer) doesn't work. This is the result from pressing the keys in the top row 1234567890+´ (Unmodified top row on keyboard) @£$€ {[]}\ (Windows with AltGr) ¡ £$€¥ ± (Ubuntu with "AltGr") More characters are broken (pipe | is a notable example) but the top row is the biggest problem. I can workaround this by enabling "direct connection" from my USB keyboard to VirtualBox but then I have to manually disable that every time I switch out of VirtualBox. I have tried different keyboard layout, sometimes @ et al works but then other characters are broken. I also tried sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration with default values, but it didn't change anything. I have guest additions installed (from the built in virtual CD). I got my VB disk image from a colleague who does not have this problem, however, he does not have guest additions installed (and hence can't use a higher resolution than 1024x768, and I need to run Ecplipse...). He also have different installation of Virtual Box and Windows. For example, the key for 2 should, in Ubuntu, produce four different characters, 2"²@. The first three works fine, including superscript 2 that requires AltGr-Shift-2, it is just plain AltGr-2 to get @ that does not work on this key (and all the other keys I have problem with). Any ideas for a fix?

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• How do you avoid jumping to a solution when under pressure? [closed]

  - by GlenPeterson

  When under a particularly strict programming deadline (like an hour), if I panic at all, my tendency is to jump into coding without a real plan and hope I figure it out as I go along. Given enough time, this can work, but in an interview it's been pretty unsuccessful, if not downright counter-productive. I'm not always comfortable sitting there thinking while the clock ticks away. Is there a checklist or are there techniques to recognize when you understand the problem well enough to start coding? Maybe don't touch the keyboard for the first 5-10 minutes of the problem? At what point do you give up and code a brute-force solution with the hope of reasoning out a better solution later? A related follow-up question might be, "How do you ensure that you are solving the right problem?" Or "When is it most productive to think and design more vs. code some experiments to and figure out the design later?" EDIT: One close vote already, but I'm not sure why. I wrote this in the first person, but I doubt I'm the only programmer to ever choke in an interview. Here is a list of techniques for taking a math test and another for taking an oral exam. Maybe I'm not expressing myself well, but I'm asking if there is a similar list of techniques for handling a programming problem under pressure?

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• What is the correct UI interface to learn for creating Windows phone 8 apps? [closed]

  - by Robert Oschler

  I am a veteran Delphi 6 programmer transitioning to C# development. My first project is a open source library that will have a minimal user interface since it is meant to be used as a Component primarily on desktop PCs running Visual Studio. My next project is going to be a Windows 8 phone app and I intend for that platform to be my primary focus for future C# development, not the desktop. My concern is that I waste as little time as possible learning a presentation framework that will benefit or distract me from writing Windows 8 phone apps. The plethora of framework names I have already encountered include, WinForms, WPF (Windows Presentation Framework), Silverlight, Silverlight Mobile, Metro and there may be others. Given my goal outlined in the first paragraph above, I have a few questions: 1) Which of the frameworks should I use for the small amount of UI work I will do with the desktop Component project that will help me the most, or hurt me the least, when I move to Windows 8 phone app development? 2) Which is the correct framework to study for developing Windows 8 phone apps? 3) Any awesome tutorials, resources or books you have run into targeted towards veteran programmers from other platforms? I read about the Portable Library Tools on this Stack Overflow thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5522355/windows-phone-7-wpf-sharing-a-codebase But the reply by Simon Guindon seemed to indicate to me that it's not the best solution for writing a competitive Windows 8 phone app.

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• How to use shared_ptr for COM interface pointers

  - by Seefer

  I've been reading about various usage advice relating to the new c++ standard smart pointers unique_ptr, shared_ptr and weak_ptr and generally 'grok' what they are about when I'm writing my own code that declares and consumes them. However, all the discussions I've read seem restricted to this simple usage situation where the programmer is using smart in his/her own code, with no real discussion on techniques when having to work with libraries that expect raw pointers or other types of 'smart pointers' such as COM interface pointers. Specifically I'm learning my way through C++ by attempting to get a standard Win32 real-time game loop up and running that uses Direct2D & DirectWrite to render text to the display showing frames per second. My first task with Direct2D is in creating a Direct2D Factory object with the following code from the Direct2D examples on MSDN: ID2D1Factory* pD2DFactory = nullptr; HRESULT hr = D2D1CreateFactory(D2D1_FACTORY_TYPE_SINGLE_THREADED, &pD2DFactory); pD2DFactory is obviously an 'out' parameter and it's here where I become uncertain how to make use of smart pointers in this context, if indeed it's possible. My inexperienced C++ mind tells me I have two problems: With pD2DFactory being a COM interface pointer type, how would smart_ptr work with the Add() / Release() member functions for a COM object instance? Are smart pointers able to be passed to functions in situations where the function is using an 'out' pointer parameter technique? I did experiment with the alternative of using _com_ptr_t in the comip.h header file to help with pointer lifetime management and declared the pD2DFactory pointer with the following code: _com_ptr_t<_com_IIID<pD2DFactory, &__uuidof(pD2DFactory)>> pD2DFactory = nullptr; and it appears to work so far but, as you can see, the syntax is cumbersome :) So, I was wondering if any C++ gurus here could confirm whether smart pointers are able to help in cases like this and provide examples of usage, or point me to more in-depth discussions of smart pointer usage when needing to work with other code libraries that know nothing of them. Or is it simply a case of my trying to use the wrong tool for the job? :)

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• How to talk a client out of a Flash website?

  - by bunglestink

  I have recently been doing a bunch of web side projects through word of mouth recommendations only. Although I am much more a of a programmer than a designer by any means, my design skills are not terrible, and do not hate dealing with UI like many programmers. As a result, I find myself lured into a bunch of side projects where aside from a minimal back end for content administration, most of the programming is on front end interfaces (read javascript/css). By far the biggest frustration I have had is convincing clients that they do not want Flash. Aside the fact that I really do not enjoy Flash "development", there are many practical reasons why Flash is not desirable (lack of compatibility across devices, decreased client accessibility, plug-in requirements, increased development time, etc.). Instead of just flat out telling the clients "I will not build you a flash website", I would much rather use tactics to convince/explain to them that this is not what they actually want, ie: meet their requirements any better than standard html/css/js and distract users from their content. What kind of first hand experience do others have with this? How do you explain to someone that javascript/css/AJAX is usually a better option for most websites? Why do people want to use Flash so bad to begin with? This question pertains to clients who do not have any technical reasons for wanting flash, but just want it because they think it makes pretty websites.

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• 2 year degree plus experience vs 4 year degree

  - by CenterOrbit

  Alright, I have searched around a bit on this site and found two somewhat similar questions: Computer Science Programming Certificate vs. Computer Science Degree? Is it possible/likely to be paid fairly without a college degree? But these do not provide an answer specifically to what I am seeking. I have my 2 year A.A.S. Degree in computer programming, along with a networking certificate from a technical college. I also have been working at a small educational game development company for 3 years now in various positions, but steadily moving up and now as a lead programmer on a few projects. Some of the higher programmers I work with claim that no matter how much experience I develop it still will not mean as much as someone with a 4 year degree. Their argument is that most employers will look over my resume because of the common '4 yr' minimum requirement. I have also heard people state (not as many though) that experience is everything and that an employer would rather have someone that has worked in the field instead of a rookie fresh out of college. I have heard both sides of this argument, but am looking for a general consensus, or more arguments from both sides from the people who have been there, or are there.

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• How can I make video games if I don't like programming?

  - by hoper

  I am studying C++ code in my school (my major is computer programming). Honestly, my grades are not so good, and assignments are really hard. Sometimes I feel sad that I will spend 8-10 hours per day coding (which is stressful) in the future for my job. But I still want to make video games. Maybe this is the only reason why I am taking all of these stressful courses. I always write down plots, stories, characters, fictional gaming worlds... Once, I thought I should study artistic technology such as game design and not computer technology such as C++, C#, etc. However, most of popular game designers (or directors) such as Kojima, Miyamoto, etc. used to be good programmers. Companies actaully assign programmers to directors because they understand how to make a game. I've try to find other colleges or universities where they teach game design programs. However, one article that lists rank 10 game design schools in North America seems untrustful because the survey company only scores it from intervews of students. Once, I tried to attend Art Institute of Vancouver which is rank 7 according to that article. However, one programmer who used to be an instructor in there told me the truth: the employement rate of graduated students is low. How can I have a future making games if I don't like programming?

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• Introducing Programming To a Mathematician

  - by ell

  I currently am a programmer, I'm almost 16 years of age and have pretty much narrowed my careers down to something involving a Computer Science degree or Electrical Engineering degree (I know they are quite different but this question is about my friend) but my friend isn't so sure. He is very interested in maths and is very good at it and I think he would enjoy programming but he isn't willing to try it (edit he is willing to try but has never done before). Can anyone give me an suggestions for a language or tool that he could dabble in programming (at a reasonably basic level I assume) to solve maths problems or involve some kind of maths. As I say he enjoys maths a lot but I think he would enjoy programming, the problem is I don't want him to be put off by the stuff that isn't relevant at introductory levels such as memory allocation et al. I know that is very important but the point is that I want him to learn a bit of programming with maths then hopefully if he is interested enough he can start learning programming as programming. Thanks in advance, ell. Edit: Its not that he's completely uninterested - more that he hasn't actively explored the area before, maybe because he isn't informed about it. I wouldn't want to force him to do something he doesn't want to, I see this as more of a little push so that he can learn about programming. If he doesn't like it - fair enough, I can't control that and don't want to but if he turns out to enjoy it - this push will have been the right thing.

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• What are the pros and cons about developing under MAC OS? [closed]

  - by user827992

  Sometimes i get the chance to program under MAC OS, i knew about this OS since Apple shipped its computers with a PowerPC by Motorola ( since Panther, more or less ), these days they are all X86 and i see no particular advantages about adopting this platform, also i see only downsides for the main part, i do not want to cause flames, please reply if you have a good answer or you can contribute in some constructive way. I'm trying to write a list of the natively supported languages, or the languages that comes only under MAC OS with some particular technology, my list is this: Objective C with Cocoa/Carbon I'm not considering personal preferences here, if a person X likes to code under Xcode it's probably ok to have a MAC, if a person Y likes to code under Visual Studio it's probably ok to not having a MAC, my purpose is to clarify what MAC OS is good for. I also do not get why people glorify the MAC for historical reasons, I mean a language like Java just comes for MAC only in the 7th edition of its JDK, things like GCC are just a porting and many technologies are out of the question like C# ( I'm sorry, i do not consider MonoDevelop like a serious alternative ) , .Net, ASP, DirectX, and many others are just, again, porting or free software, like PHP, MySQL, Javascript, XML, CSS, OpenGL, etc etc. My question is: what is so special about being a programmer under MAC OS? There is something that I have not seen? I also noticed that a significant portion of MAC users end up using their MAC like a normal Windows PC with Parallels or something like that. I can afford to buy a MAC, show me why this machine is so unique.

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• I need some career guidance, please.

  - by user18956

  Hi, I have been a teacher of guitar and music theory for the last ten years or so, and I have decided to get out of it and pursue something involving computers, but I am very confused about it all. I have no training related to programming besides a knowledge of xhtml and css - which I realize are not even programming languages. My problem is that I know I want to do something with either making video games, computer/online applications, or some other programming job, but I haven't a clue how to begin. I picked up a book from the Head First series entitled, Head First Programming that uses Python to teach programming concepts, but after that, I don't really know what is a good direction for me in terms of balancing career satisfaction with job availability and acceptable pay. I am not looking for a huge salary, I just want to be able to survive doing something I love, and which challenges me. I don't know even a single person involved in a related field, so I am in need of guidance. The first thing I would like to know is whether pursuing a career as a programmer for video games is a realistic option. I love video games, and play them all the time, and I have always wanted to make them. If this is an option, what would be the recommended course of action? What is a good language or technology to get involved in for the job market now? I have read that PHP/MySQL is a good place to find a job for some. Can I find a job without school, or do I need to got o college? Also, will the Python I learn in this book translate into any other language I need to learn? If it is anything like music, then I am sure it will, but I don't know much about programming - yet. And last, yet perhaps most important, is thirty years old too old to take such a radical redirection in careers? Thank you for any help you can offer. I really need it.

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• Too sell or give for free

  - by QAH

  Hello everyone! I am currently making a game that I was originally planning to sell. It is a simple 2D arcade style game for the PC. I've seen many indie games become popular and generate revenue from advertisements, but the game itself remains free. I need some advice on whether or not I should sell my game, release it for free with advertisements, or ask for donations and keep the game free. I feel that my game is fun, but of course the graphics aren't tip top because I am a programmer, not an artist. I just take screenshots of 3D models I get from Turbosquid and crop around it to make a sprite. Also, and I could be very wrong about this, it seems that there are more legal issues surrounding selling a game than making it free and generating revenue from advertisement, or asking for donations. If I am wrong, someone please correct me. Also, I am very interested in generating some revenue for my work, but that isn't at the very top of my list. I am in my last year of high school, soon to be going to college, and I am going to major in computer science/software engineering. So I am trying to gain some preliminary experience at home by coding stuff every day. One way of getting this experience is by making this game. So what do you think? What route should I take? What has worked well with other indie games? Thanks in advance.

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• Computer Bugs - Etymology and Entomology

  - by PointsToShare

  Whatever bugs you My wife and I used to take some of our summer vacation I a cabin on the shore of Lake Atsion in NJ. I t is a delightful place in the Wharton forest with Brown yet fresh water, where we would canoe, swim and enjoy true rest. Alas, in the last few years, yellow flies also discovered the area’s pastoral delights and came in hoards to bug us. So much so that we had to give up. As a computer programmer I abhor bugs. The bugs that bug me – except the pesky yellow flies – are program bugs , a specific variety of computer bugs. You can find an excellent take on the etymology of the word ‘bug” in this delightful monogram: http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/first_computer_bug.htm In my youth, I worked on Burroughs computers. Unlike their IBM brethren, the Burroughs used a 96 column card. The cards were much smaller than the 80 column IBM cards. We wrote our programs on coding sheets and then a key-punch operator transcribed them into punched cards. These were fed into a card reader and compiled. The compiler would notify us of compiler errors or bugs, but it was not always easy to get the meaning of the message. My friend Mark Wildt, also a Burroughs veteran, gave me an old punched card from one of his programs. Obviously a bug!! Here It Is!! That’s All Folks!

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• from Java to SAS

  - by Giovanni Rossi

  I am a seasoned python,java,...other programmer having a (fairly advanced) mathematical education (so I do understand statistics and data mining, for example) . For various reasons I am thinking to switch to SAS/BI area (I am naming SAS because it might be, for me, a possible way to enter in BI). My question, for whoever might have an experience of both: is it, in BI current state, worth it? I mean, the days of big ideas in BI for business seem to be over (there are the APIs, managers think that they know what you can do with them), and my mathematical background might turn out to be superflous. Also, the big companies now have their data organized, have their BI procedures well established, and trying to analyze it from a different standpoint might not be what they want. Another difference is: while in Java etc. development one codes and codes and codes, I don't know if this is the case for BI; in fact, from what I read on the net, a BI (or OLAP, ...etc) developer, in a big organization, is usually in a state of standby, and does in fact little coding. Any opinions, and in particular strong opinions, will be appreciated.

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