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• Where to Start?

  - by freemann098

  my name is Chase. I've been programming for over 3 years now and I've made very little progress towards game development. I blame myself for it due to reasons. I have experience in many languages such as C++, C#, and Java. I have a little bit of knowledge in JavaScript/HTML and Python. My question is where to start on actually understanding jumping into game development. Whenever I watch game development tutorials it mostly makes sense until points of things like OpenGL or advanced topics that make no sense at all. An example is something like glOrhho Matrix or whatever. Videos either don't explain things like this or they're not explained very well. Do I not know enough basics? I find myself always copying code from a video but understanding very little of it. It's like i'm memorizing things I don't understand which makes it hard to program at all. If I were to want to get to the point where I could write my own game engine or just a game by myself in general in C++ using at the most documentation how would I start at mastering to that level. Should I learn C first, or get really good at basics in general with C++. I know there is a similar posted question on this site but it's not the same due to the fact the person asking the question has a well knowledge level in programming. I'm stuck in a loop of learning the same things but if I go farther I don't understand. I'm stuck in the same spot and need to make progress.

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• Dealing with bad/incomplete/unclear specifications?

  - by eagerMoose

  I'm working on a project where our dev team gets the specifications from the business part of the company. Both the business management and the IT management require estimates and deadline projections, as they should. The good thing is that estimates are mostly made by the actual developers who get to do the required features. The bad thing is that the specifications are usually either too simple (it turns out you're left with a lot of question marks over your head because a lot of information seems to be missing) or too complex(up to the point that you can't even visualize where everything would "fit" in the app). More often than not, the business part of the specs are either incomplete or unaware of what can and can't be done (given the previously implemented business logic). Dev team is given about a day per new spec to give an estimate and we do try to clear uncertainties, usually by meeting up with whoever did the spec. Most of the times it turns out that spec writers haven't really thought everything through, and it's usually only when we start designing and developing that we end up in trouble, as a lot of the spec seems to have holes. How do you deal with this? Are you generous on estimates in advance?

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• Interface extension

  - by user877329

  Suppose that I have an input stream interface, which defines a method for reading data. I also have a seekable interface which defines a method for seeking. A natural way of defining a input file is then to implement both input stream and seekable. I want to construct a data decoder from the input stream interface so I can read data from a file or from another stream. The problem is that I also want to implement seek functionality to the data decoder, since I want to be able to step individual records not raw bytes. This is not possible if I only provide an input stream, which does not have the bytewise seek method. Should I skip the seekable interface and add the seek method to input stream instead and force all streams to at least leave it as a nop.

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• How do I set an event off when player is on certain tile?

  - by Tom Burman

  Here is the code I use to create and print my map to the canvas: var board = []; function loadMap(map) { if (map == 1) { return [ [2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,3,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2] ]; } } board = loadMap(1); enterfor (y = 0; y <= viewHeight; y++) { for (x = 0; x <= viewWidth; x++) { var theX = x * 32; var theY = y * 32; context.drawImage(mapTiles[board[y+viewY][x+viewX]], theX, theY, 32, 32); } } And here is the code I use for player movement: canvas.addEventListener('keydown', function(e) { console.log(e); var key = null; switch (e.which) { case 37: // Left if (playerX > 0) playerX--; break; case 38: // Up if (playerY > 0) playerY--; break; case 39: // Right if (playerX < worldWidth) playerX++; break; case 40: // Down if (playerY < worldHeight) playerY++; break; } viewX = playerX - Math.floor(0.5 * viewWidth); if (viewX < 0) viewX = 0; if (viewX+viewWidth > worldWidth) viewX = worldWidth - viewWidth; viewY = playerY - Math.floor(0.5 * viewHeight); if (viewY < 0) viewY = 0; if (viewY+viewHeight > worldHeight) viewY = worldHeight - viewHeight; }, false); What I am looking for is a method for when the player lands on tile 3 he loses health. I have tried to use this in the player movement but it doesnt seem to work e.g the left movement: case 37: // Left if (playerX > 0) playerX--; if(board[x2 - 1] == 3) { health--; playerX--; }

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• How can I store all my level data in a single file instead of spread out over many files?

  - by Jon

  I am currently generating my level data, and saving to disk to ensure that any modifications done to the level are saved. I am storing "chunks" of 2048x2048 pixels into a file. Whenever the player moves over a section that doesn't have a file associated with the position, a new file is created. This works great, and is very fast. My issue, is that as you are playing the file count gets larger and larger. I'm wondering what are techniques that can be used to alleviate the file count, without taking a performance hit. I am interested in how you would store/seek/update this data in a single file instead of multiple files efficiently.

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• Could someone explain in detail simplex /or perlin noise?

  - by Ryan Szemplinski

  I am really interested in perlin/simplex noise but I am having a difficult time understanding it. I am not very good at math but I am willing to learn because it interests me greatly. If someone is willing to dedicate there time into this I would be immensely appreciative of this. To be more concise, an explanation of functions and some calculation inside the functions would be nice to understand. Thanks in advance!

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• I've been told that Exceptions should only be used in exceptional cases. How do I know if my case is exceptional?

  - by tieTYT

  My specific case here is that the user can pass in a string into the application, the application parses it and assigns it to structured objects. Sometimes the user may type in something invalid. For example, their input may describe a person but they may say their age is "apple". Correct behavior in that case is roll back the transaction and to tell the user an error occurred and they'll have to try again. There may be a requirement to report on every error we can find in the input, not just the first. In this case, I argued we should throw an exception. He disagreed, saying, "Exceptions should be exceptional: It's expected that the user may input invalid data, so this isn't an exceptional case" I didn't really know how to argue that point, because by definition of the word, he seems to be right. But, it's my understanding that this is why Exceptions were invented in the first place. It used to be you had to inspect the result to see if an error occurred. If you failed to check, bad things could happen without you noticing. Without exceptions every level of the stack needs to check the result of the methods they call and if a programmer forgets to check in one of these levels, the code could accidentally proceed and save invalid data (for example). Seems more error prone that way. Anyway, feel free to correct anything I've said here. My main question is if someone says Exceptions should be exceptional, how do I know if my case is exceptional?

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• Inheritance vs containment while extending a large legacy project

  - by Flot2011

  I have got a legacy Java project with a lot of code. The code uses MVC pattern and is well structured and well written. It also has a lot of unit tests and it is still actively maintained (bug fixing, minor features adding). Therefore I want to preserve the original structure and code style as much as possible. The new feature I am going to add is a conceptual one, so I have to make my changes all over the code. In order to minimize changes I decided not to extend existing classes but to use containment: class ExistingClass { // .... existing code // my code adding new functionality private ExistingClassExtension extension = new ExistingClassExtension(); public ExistingClassExtension getExtension() {return extension;} } ... // somewhere in code ExistingClass instance = new ExistingClass(); ... // when I need a new functionality instance.getExtension().newMethod1(); All functionality that I am adding is inside a new ExistingClassExtension class. Actually I am adding only these 2 lines to each class that needs to be extended. By doing so I also do not need to instantiate new, extended classes all over the code and I may use existing tests to make sure there is no regression. However my colleagues argue that in this situation doing so isn't a proper OOP approach, and I need to inherit from ExistingClass in order to add a new functionality. What do you think? I am aware of numerous inheritance/containment questions here, but I think my question is different.

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• what knowledge would I need to make a good simulation games

  - by Skeith

  I have an idea for a game like theme park but don't know how simulation games are made. I am not some noob on his first game so I appreciated constructive answers instead of "its hard, don't do it". What I want is to know how simulation game mechanics are put together. I figure it would be heaver on the AI than normal games and not knowing much about AI would like to know some programming techniques I should look into for this style game. specific techniques please not just a book on ai. what sort of architecture would be used? I guess it would have some sort of probability engine with pre designed events that are triggered based on the AI state. Would it use a FSM or be purely event driven ? Any information on how a sims game functions would be cool.

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• Is it illegal to use content in such a way?

  - by MHZ

  I have a couple of questions about the legality of the content of some websites. I am currently working on two websites and I would like to make sure I am not breaking any laws, by using some content like I am... Do I need to get a license to use images from the Internet (such as google.images.com) in my site, assuming they aren't a company logo belonging to another company? If not, am I allowed to use it after I modify it with a image editing software? If content such as phone numbers, e-mail addresses, website addresses, and text from websites can be found for free online, and I gather this information for a search engine based site that I am working on and offering this information on a paid basis (similar to google, but more specialized), is something that is legal? Note: I am not 'copying' or redirecting business from anywhere, to my site. The exact opposite, the site I am working on actually helps advertise businesses and make it easier for customers to find them.

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• Self-Executing Anonymous Function vs Prototype

  - by Robotsushi

  In Javascript there are a few clearly prominent techniques for create and manage classes/namespaces in javascript. I am curious what situations warrant using one technique vs. the other. I want to pick one and stick with it moving forward. I write enterprise code that is maintained and shared across multiple teams, and I want to know what is the best practice when writing maintainable javascript ? I tend to prefer Self-Executing Anonymous Functions however I am curious what the community vote is on these techniques. Prototype : function obj() { } obj.prototype.test = function() { alert('Hello?'); }; var obj2 = new obj(); obj2.test(); Self-Closing Anonymous Function : //Self-Executing Anonymous Function (function( skillet, $, undefined ) { //Private Property var isHot = true; //Public Property skillet.ingredient = "Bacon Strips"; //Public Method skillet.fry = function() { var oliveOil; addItem( "\t\n Butter \n\t" ); addItem( oliveOil ); console.log( "Frying " + skillet.ingredient ); }; //Private Method function addItem( item ) { if ( item !== undefined ) { console.log( "Adding " + $.trim(item) ); } } }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery )); //Public Properties console.log( skillet.ingredient ); //Bacon Strips //Public Methods skillet.fry(); //Adding Butter & Fraying Bacon Strips //Adding a Public Property skillet.quantity = "12"; console.log( skillet.quantity ); //12 //Adding New Functionality to the Skillet (function( skillet, $, undefined ) { //Private Property var amountOfGrease = "1 Cup"; //Public Method skillet.toString = function() { console.log( skillet.quantity + " " + skillet.ingredient + " & " + amountOfGrease + " of Grease" ); console.log( isHot ? "Hot" : "Cold" ); }; }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery )); //end of skillet definition try { //12 Bacon Strips & 1 Cup of Grease skillet.toString(); //Throws Exception } catch( e ) { console.log( e.message ); //isHot is not defined } I feel that I should mention that the Self-Executing Anonymous Function is the pattern used by the jQuery team. Update When I asked this question I didn't truly see the importance of what I was trying to understand. The real issue at hand is whether or not to use new to create instances of your objects or to use patterns which do not require constructors of the use of the new keyword. I added my own answer, because in my opinion we should make use of patterns which don't use the new keyword. For more information please see my answer.

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• When module calling gets ugly

  - by Pete

  Has this ever happened to you? You've got a suite of well designed, single-responsibility modules, covered by unit tests. In any higher-level function you code, you are (95% of the code) simply taking output from one module and passing it as input to the next. Then, you notice this higher-level function has turned into a 100+ line script with multiple responsibilities. Here is the problem. It is difficult (impossible) to test that script. At least, it seems so. Do you agree? In my current project, all of the bugs came from this script. Further detail: each script represents a unique solution, or algorithm, formed by using different modules in different ways. Question: how can you remedy this situation? Knee-jerk answer: break the script up into single-responsibility modules. Comment on knee-jerk answer: it already is! Best answer I can come up with so far: create higher-level connector objects which "wire" modules together in particular ways (take output from one module, feed it as input to another module). Thus if our script was: FooInput fooIn = new FooInput(1, 2); FooOutput fooOutput = fooModule(fooIn); Double runtimevalue = getsomething(fooOutput.whatever); BarInput barIn = new BarInput( runtimevalue, fooOutput.someOtherValue); BarOutput barOut = barModule(BarIn); It would become with a connector: FooBarConnectionAlgo fooBarConnector = new fooBarConnector(fooModule, barModule); FooInput fooIn = new FooInput(1, 2); BarOutput barOut = fooBarConnector(fooIn); So the advantage is, besides hiding some code and making things clearer, we can test FooBarConnectionAlgo. I'm sure this situation comes up a lot. What do you do?

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• Query something and return the reason if nothing has been found

  - by Daniel Hilgarth

  Assume I have a Query - as in CQS that is supposed to return a single value. Let's assume that the case that no value is found is not exceptional, so no exception will be thrown in this case. Instead, null is returned. However, if no value has been found, I need to act according to the reason why no value has been found. Assuming that the Query knows the reason, how would I communicate it to the caller of the Query? A simple solution would be not return the value directly but a container object that contains the value and the reason: public class QueryResult { public TValue Value { get; private set; } public TReason ReasonForNoValue { get; private set; } } But that feels clumsy, because if a value is found, ReasonForNoValue makes no sense and if no value has been found, Value makes no sense. What other options do I have to communicate the reason? What do you think of one event per reason? For reference: This is going to be implemented in C#.

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• How can you predict the time it will take for two processes in two different machines in a cluster to communicate?

  - by Dokkat

  I am trying to develop a computing application which needs a lot of memory (500gb). Buying a single machine for that is overly expensive. I can, though, buy ~100 small instances on Digital Ocean or similar, divide the memory in blocks and use TCP to emulate shared memory between the instances. Now, my question is: how can I measure/predict the time it will take for two processes in two different machines like that to share information, in comparison to IPC and shared memory? Are there rules of thumb? I don't want exact values, but knowing more or less how much faster one is would be very helpful in visualising the feasibility of this approach.

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• Have you worked with a well designed application?

  - by Vilx-

  Inspired by this question, I started wondering - is there or has there ever been such a thing as a "well designed application"? One where the architecture would be perfect and no refactoring would ever be needed; code would be easy to read and understand even for someone new to the project; changes could be done with a 100% certainty that they won't break anything; etc? I must admit that whatever codebases I've worked with, they've all been more or less a mess. Even code that I start myself only stays organized at the start, and then slowly deteriorates as the time passes. I'm even starting to accept this as part of life and can't figure out whether I should be worried about that or not. So... is there such a thing as a "well designed application"? Or is all our code so shitty that there isn't even a point in trying to make it better, because it will never be good anyway?

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• How to explain bad software to non-technical people?

  - by mtutty

  In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a "house" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say "just take this pill," but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine): The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem.

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• How stable are Single Page Application (SPA) build with Microsoft .Net for enterprise application [on hold]

  - by Husrat Mehmood

  Imagine a situation where you have your data loading to your application via REST Api,you are building a responsive application(ajax request) for an Enterprise. What potential problems might I run into for a single page application(SPA) using Microsoft Asp.Net Web application build using MVC template? Are there advantages to just designing a multi-page application using asp.net mvc 5 remember I am using SPA for an Enterprise Application where there are role based views for the users.?

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• Which numeral systems are useful in computer science?

  - by authchir

  I am wondering which numeral system different programmers are using, or would use if their language has support for them. As an example, in C++ we can use: Octal by prefixing with 0 (e.g. 0377) Decimal by default (e.g. 255) Hexadecimal by prefixing with 0x (e.g. 0xff) When working with bitmask, I am using hexadecimal but would sometimes want to be able to express binary numbers directly. I know some programming language support it with 0b syntax (e.g. 0b11111111). Is there any other numeric system useful in some computer science domain (e.g. cryptography, codecs, 3D graphics, etc)?

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• Abstract Factory Method and Polymorphism

  - by Scotty C.

  Being a PHP programmer for the last couple of years, I'm just starting to get into advanced programming styles and using polymorphic patterns. I was watching a video on polymorphism the other day, and the guy giving the lecture said that if at all possible, you should get rid of if statements in your code, and that a switch is almost always a sign that polymorphism is needed. At this point I was quite inspired and immediately went off to try out these new concepts, so I decided to make a small caching module using a factory method. Of course the very first thing I have to do is create a switch to decide what file encoding to choose. DANG! class Main { public static function methodA($parameter='') { switch ($parameter) { case 'a': $object = new \name\space\object1(); break; case 'b': $object = new \name\space\object2(); break; case 'c': $object = new \name\space\object3(); break; default: $object = new \name\space\object1(); } return (sekretInterface $object); } } At this point I'm not really sure what to do. As far as I can tell, I either have to use a different pattern and have separate methods for each object instance, or accept that a switch is necessary to "switch" between them. What do you guys think?

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• Should I limit my type name suffix vocabulary when using OOP?

  - by Den

  My co-workers tend to think that it is better to limit non-domain type suffixes to a small fixed set of OOP-pattern inspired words, e.g.: *Service *Repository *Factory *Manager *Provider I believe there is no reason to not extend that set with more names, e.g. (some "translation" to the previous vocabulary is given in brackets): *Distributor (= *DistributionManager or *SendingService) *Generator *Browser (= *ReadonlyRepositoryService) *Processor *Manipulator (= *StateMachineManager) *Enricher (= *EnrichmentService) (*) denotes some domain word, e.g. "Order", "Student", "Item" etc. The domain is probably not complex enough to use specialized approaches such as DDD which could drive the naming.

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• Designing exceptions for conversion failures

  - by Mr.C64

  Suppose there are some methods to convert from "X" to "Y" and vice versa; the conversion may fail in some cases, and exceptions are used to signal conversion errors in those cases. Which would be the best option for defining exception classes in this context? A single XYConversionException class, with an attribute (e.g. an enum) specifying the direction of the conversion (e.g. ConversionFromXToY, ConversionFromYToX). A XYConversionException class, with two derived classes ConversionFromXToYException and ConversionFromYToXException. ConversionFromXToYException and ConversionFromYToXException classes without a common base class.

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• Should I close database connections after use in PHP?

  - by Sprottenwels

  I wonder if I should close any unnecessary database connection inside of my PHP scripts. I am aware of the fact that database connections are closed implicitly when the block stops executing and 'manually' closing the connections could kinda bloat the codebase with unnecessary code. But shouldn't I do so in order to make by code as readable and as easy understandable as possible, while also preventing several possible issues during run time? Also, if I would do, would it be enough to unset() my database object?

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• How to copy or replicate a complex website to local file and modify then

  - by Andre Chenier

  I am not good at designing the visual side of a website. I found a website which I gave 10 over 10 because its functionality suits my aims and also it seems very esthetical. I know HTML, PHP, mySQL and some degree of CSS. I don't know JS, Ajax, Jquery. So I want to replicate this web site (save completely) on my local and then modify it. (content, colors, icons etc.) I saved this web site in Chrome and IE. After clicking the site from my local folder, a saw an ugly & non-working site. My aim is to understand the functions of the parts that I don't know. For example when I delete a js in its page what will happen as the result of the deletion operation. Since the page is too complex it has lots of css, js files to download inside. I don't want to deal it manually. Is there any alternative and easy way to get the web page completely to my local which also works like a charm from local? regards

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• Versioning APIs

  - by Sharon

  Suppose that you have a large project supported by an API base. The project also ships a public API that end(ish) users can use. Sometimes you need to make changes to the API base that supports your project. For example, you need to add a feature that needs an API change, a new method, or requires altering of one of the objects, or the format of one of those objects, passed to or from the API. Assuming that you are also using these objects in your public API, the public objects will also change any time you do this, which is undesirable as your clients may rely on the API objects remaining identical for their parsing code to work. (cough C++ WSDL clients...) So one potential solution is to version the API. But when we say "version" the API, it sounds like this also must mean to version the API objects as well as well as providing duplicate method calls for each changed method signature. So I would then have a plain old clr object for each version of my api, which again seems undesirable. And even if I do this, I surely won't be building each object from scratch as that would end up with vast amounts of duplicated code. Rather, the API is likely to extend the private objects we are using for our base API, but then we run into the same problem because added properties would also be available in the public API when they are not supposed to be. So what is some sanity that is usually applied to this situation? I know many public services such as Git for Windows maintains a versioned API, but I'm having trouble imagining an architecture that supports this without vast amounts of duplicate code covering the various versioned methods and input/output objects. I'm aware that processes such as semantic versioning attempt to put some sanity on when public API breaks should occur. The problem is more that it seems like many or most changes require breaking the public API if the objects aren't more separated, but I don't see a good way to do that without duplicating code.

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• Truly useful UML diagrams

  - by eversor

  UML has a jungle of Diagrams. Profile Diagrams, Class Diagrams, Package Diagrams... However, (IMH-and-not-too-experienced-O) I quite see that doing each and every diagram is overkill. Therefore, which UML Diagrams are more suitable in a web context, more expecificly a blog (we want to build it from scratchs). I understand that just because I used UML Diagrams does not imply that our code would be great and brilliant... but, it certainly would be better than just unplanified code...

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