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  • Scene graphs and spatial partitioning structures: What do you really need?

    - by tapirath
    I've been fiddling with 2D games for awhile and I'm trying to go into 3D game development. I thought I should get my basics right first. From what I read scene graphs hold your game objects/entities and their relation to each other like 'a tire' would be the child of 'a vehicle'. It's mainly used for frustum/occlusion culling and minimizing the collision checks between the objects. Spatial partitioning structures on the other hand are used to divide a big game object (like the map) to smaller parts so that you can gain performance by only drawing the relevant polygons and again minimizing the collision checks to those polygons only. Also a spatial partitioning data structure can be used as a node in a scene graph. But... I've been reading about both subjects and I've seen a lot of "scene graphs are useless" and "BSP performance gain is irrelevant with modern hardware" kind of articles. Also some of the game engines I've checked like gameplay3d and jmonkeyengine are only using a scene graph (That also may be because they don't want to limit the developers). Whereas games like Quake and Half-Life only use spatial partitioning. I'm aware that the usage of these structures very much depend on the type of the game you're developing so for the sake of clarity let's assume the game is a FPS like Counter-Strike with some better outdoor environment capabilities (like a terrain). The obvious question is which one is needed and why (considering the modern hardware capabilities). Thank you.

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  • How to add a new developer to the team

    - by lortabac
    I run a small company composed of only 2 developers. For one of our clients we are building a very big application, whose development has gone on for 1.5 years. Now this client has found an important sponsorship, and they are organizing some events related to this project, so we have a deadline in 2 months and we can't miss it. We are thinking of adding a new developer to the team, and I am wondering what we can do to help his integration. This is the situation: We are approaching the threshhold of Brooks's law, the point when adding new developers will be counter-productive. The application is relatively well designed, but the implementation is chaotic in some points (especially older code). There are unit tests only for more recent code. When this project started, we didn't have the habit of doing tests. Documentation and comments are incomplete. The application is both large and complex. The client has written down almost every detail about his project, in a very clear and "programmer-friendly" way. Is it a good idea to add a person now? If so, what can we do in order to help the new developer integrate into the team?

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  • Should components have sub-components in a component-based system like Artemis?

    - by Daniel Ingraham
    I am designing a game using Artemis, although this is more of philosophical question about component-based design in general. Let's say I have non-primitive data which applies to a given component (a Component "animal" may have qualities such as "teeth" or "diet"). There are three ways to approach this in data-driven design, as I see it: 1) Generate classes for these qualities using "traditional" OOP. I imagine this has negative implications for performance, as systems then must be made aware of these qualities in order to process them. It also seems counter to the overall philosophy of data-driven design. 2) Include these qualities as sub-components. This seems off, in that we are now confusing the role of components with that of entities. Moreover out of the box Artemis isn't capable of mapping these subcomponents onto their parent components. 3) Add "teeth", "diet", etc. as components to the overall entity alongside "animal". While this feels odd hierarchically, it may simply be a peculiarity of component-based systems. I suspect 3 is the correct way to think about things, but I was curious about other ideas.

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  • Control convention for circular movement?

    - by Christian
    I'm currently doing a kind of training project in Unity (still a beginner). It's supposed to be somewhat like Breakout, but instead of just going left and right I want the paddle to circle around the center point. This is all fine and dandy, but the problem I have is: how do you control this with a keyboard or gamepad? For touch and mouse control I could work around the problem by letting the paddle follow the cursor/finger, but with the other control methods I'm a bit stumped. With a keyboard for example, I could either make it so that the Left arrow always moves the paddle clockwise (it starts at the bottom of the circle), or I could link it to the actual direction - meaning that if the paddle is at the bottom, it goes left and up along the circle or, if it's in the upper hemisphere, it moves left and down, both times toward the outer left point of the circle. Both feel kind of weird. With the first one, it can be counter intuitive to press Left to move the paddle right when it's in the upper area, while in the second method you'd need to constantly switch buttons to keep moving. So, long story short: is there any kind of existing standard, convention or accepted example for this type of movement and the corresponding controls? I didn't really know what to google for (control conventions for circular movement was one of the searches I tried, but it didn't give me much), and I also didn't really find anything about this on here. If there is a Question that I simply didn't see, please excuse the duplicate.

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  • Am I an idealist?

    - by ereOn
    This is not only a question, this is also a call for help. Since I started my career as a programmer, I always tried to learn from my mistakes. I worked hard to learn best-practices and while I don't consider myself a C++ expert, I still believe I'm not a beginner either. I was recently hired into a company for C++ development. There I was told that my way to work was "against the rules" and that I would have to change my mind. Here are the topics I disagree with my hierarchy (their words): "You should not use separate header files for your different classes. One big header file is both easier to read and faster to compile." "Trying to use different headers is counter-productive : use the same super-set of headers everywhere, and enforce the use #pragma hdrstop to hasten compilation" "You may not use Boost or any other library that uses nested directories to organize its files. Our build-machine doesn't work with nested directories. Moreover, you don't need Boost to create great software." One might think I'm somehow exaggerated things, but the sad truth is that I didn't. That's their actual words. I believe that having separate files enhance maintainability and code-correctness and can fasten compilation time by the use of the proper includes. Have you been in a similar situation? What should I do? I feel like it's actually impossible for me to work that way and day after day, my frustration grows.

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  • How should I architect a personal schedule manager that runs 24/7?

    - by Crawford Comeaux
    I've developed an ADHD management system for myself that's attempting to change multiple habits at once. I know this is counter to conventional wisdom, but I've tried the conventional for years & am now trying it my way. (just wanted to say that to try and prevent it from distracting people from the actual question) Anyway, I'd like to write something to run on a remote server that monitors me, helps me build/avoid certain habits, etc. What this amounts to is a system that: runs 24/7 may have multiple independent tasks to run at once may have tasks that require other tasks to run first lets tasks be scheduled by specific time, recurrence (ie. "run every 5 mins"), or interval (ie. "run from 2pm to 3pm") My first naive attempt at this was just a single PHP script scheduled to run every minute by cron (language was chosen in order to use a certain library, but no longer necessary). The logic behind when to run this or that portion of code got hairy pretty quick. So my question is how should I approach this from here? I'm not tied to any one language, though I'm partial to python/javascript. Thoughts: Could be done as a set of scripts that include a scheduling mechanism with one script per bit of logic...but the idea just feels wrong to me. Building it as a daemon could be helpful, but still unsure what to do about dozens of if-else statements for detecting the current time

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  • Pair Programming, for or against? [on hold]

    - by user1037729
    I believe it has many advantages over individual programming: Pros By pairing senior with relatively junior staff, the more junior can get up to speed with both project and computing experience, and the senior will re-think the problem in order to communicate with the junior, thus re-checking his own thinking (rubber duck principle!). At least 2 people will know about any single piece of work, if one person is away the other can cover, or if some one leaves a project knowledge transfer is easier. Two brains on a complex task is more effective, communication keeps the work free flowing and provides redundancy in decision making. Code is effectively reviewed as its being written, no need for a separate reviewing phase which requires a context switch as someone who has not been working on the piece in question would be required to understand and review the related code. Reviewing code on your own which you haven't written or architected is not fun, hence counter productive. Cons Less bandwith for performing tasks, lets say we have 4 devs, pair programming requires 2 devs per task, so we would be doing 2 tasks concurrently as a posed to 4. I believe this "Con" does not stand up as the pair programmed task would complete sooner and comes with a review built in for free! Ie the pair programming task would be more efficient and thus free up resources earlier. Less flexibility to chop and change tasks as two developers are tied into a task, when flexibility is required this could be a problem.

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  • My game seems to be incompatible with recording software. What could be causing this?

    - by Lewis Wakeford
    I've just finished a little Game-Dev project for university and I need to record a video to accompany my submission (just in case they can't get my source to work). Basically my game doesn't work at all when FRAPS or Bandicam attempts to attach to it, I get a black screen and a stream of GL INVALID OPERATION messages from my error reporting code. Dxtory can't seem to hook into it correctly at all, it doesn't display it's FPS counter or anything. My game logic appears to be running correctly from the debug traces, it just seems like all the gl library calls break. I don't know a huge amount about how these programs operate so I don't really know what I could be doing to cause this. I've heard they read from the OpenGL frame buffers so maybe I'm doing something wrong there? I'm letting GLFW and GLEW do all the low level initialization, but I have successfully recorded projects with the same setup and recording software. Essentially, has anyone ever run into something like this before or do you know anything about how these programs work that could give a clue as to the cause of the issue?

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 11, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 11, 2013Popular ReleasesULS Log Viewer Feature: ULS Log Viewer Feature: What's getting installed? - The solution include Custom Action (New action in Site Menu). Features: - Only Site Administrators can see Custom Action in site menu. - Multi-Language SUPPORT! (English, Hebrew). - Works against Secure Store Service to use administrator rights for getting access to ULS Logs Path on farm servers (Use the guide for creating new SSA). - Load only the last log file from ULS log path. - Gets automatically the ULS log path from Central Administration. - Choose from whi...Lib.Web.Mvc & Yet another developer blog: Lib.Web.Mvc 6.3.3: Lib.Web.Mvc is a library which contains some helper classes for ASP.NET MVC such as strongly typed jqGrid helper, XSL transformation HtmlHelper/ActionResult, FileResult with range request support, custom attributes and more. Release contains: Lib.Web.Mvc.dll with xml documentation file Standalone documentation in chm file and change log Library source code Sample application for strongly typed jqGrid helper is available here. Sample application for XSL transformation HtmlHelper/ActionRe...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.501: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.5. Breaking changes: - Refactored MagickImageStatistics to prepare for upcoming changes in ImageMagick 7. - Renamed MagickImage.SetOption to SetDefine.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.587b: Fixed* TV - Locked shows display correctly after refresh * TV - missing episodes display in correct colour for missed or to be aired * TV - Rescrape of Multi-episodes working. * TV - Cache fix where was writing episodes multiple times * TV - Fixed Cache writing missing episodes when Display missing eps was disabled. Revision HistoryGenerate report of user mailbox size for Exchange 2010: Script Download: Script Download http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Generate-report-of-user-e4e9afcaCheck SQL Server a specified database index fragmentation percentage (SQL): Script Download: Script Download http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Check-SQL-Server-a-a5758043Save attachments from multiple selected items in Outlook (VBA): Script Download: Script Download: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Save-attachments-from-5b6bf54bRemove Windows Store apps in Windows 8: Script Download: Script Download http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Remove-Windows-Store-Apps-a00ef4a4PCSX-Reloaded: 1.9.94: General changes:Support for compressed audio in cue files. ECM support. OS X changes:32-bit support has been dropped Partial French and Hungarian translationsDynamics AX 2012 R2 Kitting: AX 2012 R2 CU7 release of Kitting: Here is the AX 2012 R2 CU7 release of kitting. Released both as a XPO and a model.VidCoder: 1.5.12 Beta: Added an option to preserve Created and Last Modified times when converting files. In Options -> Advanced. Added an option to mark an automatically selected subtitle track as "Default". Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5878. Fixed auto passthrough not applying just after switching to it. Fixed bug where preset/profile/tune could disappear when reverting a preset.Toolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.9.25): XrmToolbox improvement Correct changing connection from the status dropdown Tools improvement Updated tool Audit Center (v1.2013.9.10) -> Publish entities Iconator (v1.2013.9.27) -> Optimized asynchronous loading of images and entities MetadataDocumentGenerator (v1.2013.11.6) -> Correct system entities reading with incorrect attribute type Script Manager (v1.2013.9.27) -> Retrieve only custom events SiteMapEditor (v1.2013.11.7) -> Reset of CRM 2013 SiteMap ViewLayoutReplicator (v1.201...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: SQL Server 2014 CTP2 In-Memory OLTP Sample, based: This sample showcases the new In-Memory OLTP feature, which is part of SQL Server 2014 CTP2. It shows the new memory-optimized tables and natively-compiled stored procedures, and can be used to show the performance benefit of in-memory OLTP. Installation instructions for the sample are included in the file ‘awinmemsample.doc’, which is part of the download. You can ask a question about this sample at the SQL Server Samples Forum Composite C1 CMS - Open Source on .NET: Composite C1 4.1: Composite C1 4.1 (4.1.5058.34326) Write a review for this release - help us improve, recommend us. Getting started If you are new to Composite C1 and want to install it: http://docs.composite.net/Getting-started What's new in Composite C1 4.1 The following are highlights of major changes since Composite C1 4.0: General user features: Drag-and-drop images and files like PDF and Word directly from own your desktop and folders into page content Allow you to install Composite Form Builder ...CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.9.0: Implemented Recent Scripts list Added checking for plugin updates from AboutBox Multiple formatting improvements/fixes Implemented selection of the CLR version when preparing distribution package Added project panel button for showing plugin shortcuts list Added 'What's New?' panel Fixed auto-formatting scrolling artifact Implemented navigation to "logical" file (vs. auto-generated) file from output panel To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.Resources Editor: Resources Editor: Stable releaseWPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.10 binaries: Now row summaries are updated whenever autofilter value sis modified.Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9.1): This new version includes: - Include me option is back - Fixed the login bug reported latelyVeraCrypt: VeraCrypt version 1.0c: Changes between 1.0b and 1.0c (11 November 2013) : Set correctly the minimum required version in volumes header (this value must always follow the program version after any major changes). This also solves also the hidden volume issueCaptcha MVC: Captcha MVC 2.5: v 2.5: Added support for MVC 5. The DefaultCaptchaManager is no longer throws an error if the captcha values was entered incorrectly. Minor changes. v 2.4.1: Fixed issues with deleting incorrect values of the captcha token in the SessionStorageProvider. This could lead to a situation when the captcha was not working with the SessionStorageProvider. Minor changes. v 2.4: Changed the IIntelligencePolicy interface, added ICaptchaManager as parameter for all methods. Improved font size ...New ProjectsASP.NET Web API: ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services that reach a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices. ASP.NET WebDungeonPaper: DungeonPaper will be a platform for RPG players to utilize computers to replace traditional pen and paper in their campaigns.EMS: demoEvent Dispatcher: Event Dispatcher is a powershell module for centralized logging. Supports filtering events, and outputs to flat files or the Windows event log.Koopakiller.Numerics: A growing Math-Library for .NET, provided as a portable class library.NetroTrix: NetroTrix is a LAN Messenger Project.....Sharp Explorer: Sort of an alpha Play with C# to make a treeView Windows explorer. Currently multi-threaded dbl click to explore, r-click to preview some text files.TI Sensor Tag Library: A library to access the Texas Instruments Sensor Tag in Windows Store apps with Bluetooth GATT. Written in C#.ULS Log Viewer Feature: "ULS Log Viewer Feature" used by SharePoint Administrators, Developers and SharePoint Site Managers for get easily the real error behind the Correlation ID.Visual Studio Code Line Counter: VS Code Line Counter parses a Visual Studio solution file (.sln), reads each included project, and counts the number of lines in each included file.Vulcanus: TODOWax - The WiX Setup Project Editor: An interactive editor for WiX setup projects.

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  • What does SVN do better than git?

    - by doug
    No question that the majority of debates over programmer tools distill to either personal choice (by the user) or design emphasis, i.e., optimizing design according to particular uses cases (by the tool builder). Text Editors are probably the most prominent example--a coder who works on a Windows at work and codes in Haskell on the Mac at home, values cross-platform and compiler integration and so chooses Emacs over Textmate, etc. It's less common that a newly introduced technology is genuinely, demonstrably superior to the extant options. I wonder if this is in fact the case with version-control systems, in particular, centralized VCS (CVS, SVN) versus distributed VCS (git, hg)? I used SVN for about five years, and SVN is currently used where I work. A little less than three years ago, I switched to git (and gitHub) for all of my personal projects. I can think of a number of advantages of git over subversion (and which for the most part abstract to advantages of distributed over centralized VCS), but I cannot think of one contra example--some task (that's relevant and arises in a programmers usual workflow) that subversion does better than git. The only conclusion I have drawn from this is that I don't have any data--not that git is better, etc. My guess is that such counter-examples exist, hence this question.

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  • Web application interacts bi-directional with server program?

    - by Roelof Berkepeis
    I want to write a web application to play chess against the engine Crafty. I'm not new to PHP and javascript, but must learn how to interact with a server process : how can a web application and/or (jQuery) ajax interact bi-directionally with a (linux) program running on the server? At this moment i am developing on (Apache) local host. Crafty is installed on my Ubuntu PC. This well-known chess engine has no GUI, it runs in terminal by the command $ /usr/games/crafty and so you can play chess against it and even see it's calculations. I can make Crafty run by PHP, using the functions proc_open() or exec(), and most documentation i found states that the output stream should be a file .. But i think i don't want such setup, because then the webpage should be constanty polling that file (eg. by ajax) to see if some new data was appended, right? How can Crafty talk to the web page directly, saying "i have calculated another variation" or "i have decided a move" etc, then display this info on the web page and let the user give some counter move, just like in terminal. Isn't it possible to use some session / stream / listener? I have no clue at all, can anybody point me in a right direction?

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  • How to 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? When is it most productive to think and design more vs. code some experiments to and figure out the design later? Here is a list of techniques for taking a math test and another for taking an oral exam. Is there is a similar list of techniques for handling a programming problem under pressure? ANSWERS: I think this is a valid answer: How To Solve It. I found the link as an answer to Steps to solve or approach towards a solution. There were also some really good tips at Is thinking out loud during an interview really the best strategy?. A great and concise argument for TDD is the first answer to TDD Writing code vs Figuring out the answer to a problem?. My question may be a near-duplicate of that one.

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  • digital magazine publishing engine licensing question

    - by nosarious
    I have a publishing engine I have been developing for thirty months but find myself being unable to work on it during my masters degree. I would like to make it open source in the interim to get others to use it and improve how it works. I would like to consider a licensing system that allows for multiple instances of the software for singular users (ie, a newspaper/magazine or zine hosting the code on their own). I would like to limit it from becoming the basis of a larger magazine hosting service right now because it is intended to be an integral part of a much larger publishing ecosystem which allows for the creation, dissemination and collection of publications as a free or very inexpensive service. Right now there is no license associated with it, which is why I am not posting a link here. (This system was developed to counter implied censorship for digital magazines and remove costly and confusing 'barriers to entry' for creators wishing to make interactive digital content. It is intended to be useful for free, but I would like to prevent people taking the code and using it to take advantage of others. It needs a bit of work to separate the content from the page itself to allow the access of multiple which I cannot develop right now) Any help or suggestion on how to handle licensing this code for contributions and use would be appreciated, and if anyone would like to see examples or the github I would be happy to send it.

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  • Leadership Tip&ndash;Vent Up!

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    Leadership is difficult, for many reasons. One of those reasons is that we not only need to keep ourselves motivated when difficult or challenging times come, but we also need to motivate our teams and keep them focussed on the tasks at hand regardless of the mortars being rained down around them. Inexperienced (and experienced) leaders can fall into the “me-too” mentality – that is, the leader sees themselves as part of the team member instead of the leader of the team. Once a leader changes the teams view that he/she is a peer and not the leader, dynamics can change on the team. One of the biggest dangers is that the leader starts sharing frustrations, fears, concerns, etc. with the team that they’re supposed to be leading on to victory. This can destroy a team’s morale and productivity. One simple thing you can do to counter this is remember this rule when it comes to venting: Vent Up! Don’t vent sideways or down, vent up. Vent to the people above you – they’re the ones that tend to have the power to actually change things anyway. You as a leader stay healthy by getting your frustrations and concerns off your chest, your team is still insulated from it, and your superiors are aware of issues that need to be addressed or can coach you through the obstacles. D

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  • Language Design: Are languages like Python and CoffeeScript really more comprehensible?

    - by kittensatplay
    The "Verbally Readable !== Quicker Comprehension" argument on http://ryanflorence.com/2011/case-against-coffeescript/ is really potent and interesting. I and I'm sure others would be very interested in evidence arguing against this. There's clear evidence for this and I believe it. People naturally think in images, not words, so we should be designing languages that aren't similar to human language like English, French, whatever. Being "readable" is quicker comprehension. Most articles on Wikipedia are not readable as they are long, boring, dry, sluggish and very very wordy. Because Wikipedia documents a ton of info, it is not especially helpful when compared to sites with more practical, useful and relevant info. Languages like Python and CoffeScript are "verbally readable" in that they are closer to English syntax. Having programmed firstly and mainly in Python, I'm not so sure this is really a good thing. The second interesting argument is that CoffeeScript is an intermediator, a step between two ends, which may increase the chance of bugs. While CoffeeScript has other practical benefits, this question specifically requests evidence showing support for the counter-case of language "readability"

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  • Unity gizmos vs. referenced game objects

    - by DuckMaestro
    I'm designing a Unity script that I intend to be highly reusable and as easy as possible to setup within the editor. To this end, a number of properties of this script really need some kind of visual representation on screen. It is an unresolved question to me whether the design of the script should require references to placeholder game objects, OR just Vector3's and float's that have associated gizmos drawn for them. Normally a gizmo would be a natural choice, except that Unity gizmos are not directly manipulable (as far as I can tell). Because of this shortcoming I'm having to consider whether depending on references to placeholder game objects is a more designer-friendly approach ultimately, in spite of the extra setup required, and that it might be counter-intuitive when the placeholder game objects disappear at run-time (which my script would do). Is there a community standard or preference here in this case? Can a Unity-experienced game programmer / designer speak to which approach they feel is more intuitive or more convenient to setup, when using a 3rd party script? Or is this just splitting hairs as long as I ship an example prefab with my script?

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  • How to revert to Eclipse's old behavior when double-clicking on frames or windows, in Juno?

    - by mattquiros
    I find Eclipse Juno very counter-intuitive. In my workspace, I used to just have the package view at the left, my code on the right, and whenever I'm printing something in the console, that's only when the console frame shows up from the bottom right. When you double click on a particular window, it either only goes fullscreen within Eclipse, or back to its original size together with the size of the other frames. In Juno, however, it seems that frames are put on layers on top of each other. When I print something to the console, the output frame only shows up as a small, useless square to my right. When I double-click, it goes full screen. When I double-click again, it occupies the full right frame, hiding my code. I double-click again and it goes full screen, then it double-clicks before it shares the right frame with my code on top of it. Then when I minimize it, it goes to the side. Any way to go back to the good old days of Eclipse? Thanks.

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  • Why is quicksort better than other sorting algorithms in practice?

    - by Raphael
    This is a repost of a question on cs.SE by Janoma. Full credits and spoils to him or cs.SE. In a standard algorithms course we are taught that quicksort is O(n log n) on average and O(n²) in the worst case. At the same time, other sorting algorithms are studied which are O(n log n) in the worst case (like mergesort and heapsort), and even linear time in the best case (like bubblesort) but with some additional needs of memory. After a quick glance at some more running times it is natural to say that quicksort should not be as efficient as others. Also, consider that students learn in basic programming courses that recursion is not really good in general because it could use too much memory, etc. Therefore (and even though this is not a real argument), this gives the idea that quicksort might not be really good because it is a recursive algorithm. Why, then, does quicksort outperform other sorting algorithms in practice? Does it have to do with the structure of real-world data? Does it have to do with the way memory works in computers? I know that some memories are way faster than others, but I don't know if that's the real reason for this counter-intuitive performance (when compared to theoretical estimates).

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  • How to manage Agile developers working with traditional (serial) business persons?

    - by Riggy
    Good afternoon, My work environment has some problems. Our IT team is trying to be more agile, but we're not really getting buy-in from the business. They attend our daily stand-ups and sprint reviews, and they help with sprint planning, but then they turn around and do 4 months of requirements gathering for a project before moving forward with a (mostly) serial development style. The sprint goals are things like "get XX% closer to release". For the IT team, they've turned the Sprints into a sort of death march. We end a Sprint one day and start a new Sprint the very next day. There's no reflection or changes done between sprints, only during. Having never done any of the agile methodologies before, I haven't had a very pleasant introduction to them. So my questions are: 1) Should there be some time (perhaps a week or so) between sprints to do the reflection/introspection/changes/etc.? Or are back-to-back-to-back sprints the norm? 2) Is there any chance for survival for an agile team with no agile business counter-parts? If not, are there some transitional methodologies or even tips for moving the business towards an iterative if not necessarily agile mindset? 3) Should your entire team be on every sprint? We have almost 20 programmers on a single sprint but working on completely different projects (typically teams of 3-5, sometimes larger). Is it normal to have a single sprint or should we be trying to manage multiple independent sprints? Should we be trying to keep the multiple sprints in concurrent lockstep or should their timetables be allowed to overlap and be flexible? Any thoughts or advice is appreciated. This is my first time coming over from SO for a question, so please let me know if there are better ways to phrase these kinds of questions (faq was rather helpful, but still not sure I'm following it perfectly). Thanks!

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  • What is the standard technique for shifting the frames of a sprite according to user input?

    - by virtual__
    From my own experience, I developed two techniques for changing the sprites of a character that's reacting to user input -- this in the context of a classic 2D platformer. The first one is to store all character's pixmaps in a list, putting the index of the currently used pixmap in an ordinary variable. This way, every time the player presses a key -- say the right arrow for moving the character forward -- the graphics engine sees what's the next pixmap to draw, draws it, and increments the index counter. That's a pretty common approach I believe, the problem is that in this case the animation's quality depends not only on the number of sprites available but also on how often your engine listens to user input. The second technique is to actually play an animation every key press event. For this you can use any sort of animation framework you want. It's only necessary to set the timer, the animation steps and to call the animation's play() method on your key press event handler. The problem with that approach is that is lacks responsiveness, since the character won't react to any input while the current animation is still being played. What I want to know is whether you are using one of these techniques -- or something similar -- in your games, or whether there's a standard method for animating sprites out there that's widely known by everybody but me.

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  • Application that provides unique keys to multiple threads

    - by poly
    Thanks all for your help before. So, this is what I came up with so far, the requirements are, application has two or more threads and each thread requires a unique session/transaction ID. is the below considered thread safe? thread 1 will register itself with get_id by sending it's pid thread 2 will do the same then thread 1 & 2 will call the function to get a unique ID function get_id(bool choice/*register thread or get id*/, pid_t pid) { static int pid[15][1]={0};//not sure if this work, anyway considor any it's been set to 0 by any other way than this static int total_threads = 0; static int i = 0; int x=0,y=0; if (choice) // thread registeration part { for(x=0;x<15;x++) { if (pid[x][0]==0); { pid[x][0] = (int) pid; pid[x][1] = (x & pidx[x][1]) << 24;//initiate counter for this PID by shifting x to the 25th bit, it could be any other bit, it's just to set a range. //so the range will be between 0x0000000 and 0x0ffffff, the second one will be 0x1000000 and 0x1ffffff, break; } total_threads++; } } //search if pid exist or not, if yes return transaction id for(x=0;x<15;x++) { if (pid[x][0]==pid); { pid[x][1]++;//put some test here to reset the number to 0 if it reaches 0x0ffffff return pid[x][1]; break; } } }

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  • How do you tell if advice from a senior developer is bad?

    - by learnjourney
    Recently, I started my first job as a junior developer and I have a more senior developer in charge of mentoring me in this small company. However, there are several times when he would give me advice on things that I just couldn't agree with (it goes against what I learned in several good books on the topic written by the experts, questions I asked on some Q&A sites also agree with me) and given our busy schedule, we probably have no time for long debates. So far, I have been trying to avoid the issue by listening to him, raising a counterpoint based on what I've learned as current good practices. He raises his original point again (most of the time he will say best practice, more maintainable but just didn't go further), I take a note (since he didn't raise a new point to counter my counterpoint), think about it and research at home, but don't make any changes (I'm still not convinced). But recently, he approached me yet again, saw my code and asked me why haven't I changed it to his suggestion. This is the 3rd time in 2--3 weeks. As a junior developer, I know that I should respect him, but at the same time I just can't agree with some of his advice. Yet I'm being pressured to make changes that I think will make the project worse. Of course as an inexperienced developer, I could be wrong and his way might be better, it may be 1 of those exception cases. My question is: what can I do to better judge if a senior developer's advice is good, bad or maybe it's (good but outdated in today context)? And if it is bad/outdated, what tactics can I use to not implement it his way despite his 'pressures' while maintaining the fact that I respect him as a senior?

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  • What online games would let me practice AI development?

    - by Myn
    I am working on a project experimenting with Artificial Intelligence design methodologies for online world avatars. Online world here is quite open to interpretation; Second Life is just as applicable as Counter Strike, for example. To carry out these experiments, I must first develop an intelligent agent for the world in question. However, I am honestly quite stuck as to which game I could use for this. My preference was to develop an intelligent "bot" to play an MMORPG, but the legal restrictions of such games prevent me. Likewise with most FPS games the use of an intelligent agent in place of a human player is considered cheating. The alternative, of course, is to create an NPC bot; an intelligent agent that populates the world alongside the player(s) rather than replacing a particular player. However, I'm struggling to find a game that would enable me to create an intelligent opponent either. I suppose the main requirements would be a game allows a third party program to use the function calls usually utilised by players and read feedback on the state of the world. Quake III and Unreal Tournament have been suggested before, but they have already been the subject of work on this research project. Short of writing my own online game from scratch, what games would allow me, through middleware, an API, or otherwise, to create either an artificially intelligent player or a bot?

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  • Recommended display/background brightness ratio and UI color schemes [duplicate]

    - by user1306322
    This question already has an answer here: Colour scheme for editor - guidelines or medical reccomendations 3 answers I'm a professional programmer, which means I spend a lot of time staring at various displays. Recently I've been having some problems with my eyes, so I went to talk to several doctors, which all gave me different recommendations as to how bright the background of the room should be in comparison to the display's brightness. It was very confusing, as some of them even agreed with counter-arguments of others, which made it all even less clear. So I'd like to ask the professional programmers, as people who actually have some experience with that. Some of the doctors said that looking at a monitor is like looking at a book, so the brightness ratios should be approximately the same. Others said that background should be as bright as the display itself, because then there is no brightness difference at the edges, and that's what may cause eye fatigue. From my own experience, I can say that reading a book isn't the same as writing or debugging a program, where you have to pay close attention to each symbol, and in books most words are easily recognizable without focusing too hard on them. Also, books are black on white and I myself use the default (dark text, white bg) color scheme for my IDE, but I've seen some programmers use mid-bright text on very dark background color schemes. So I'd like to ask what are the recommended display/background brightness ratios for programming? I'm not sure this site is the right one for this kind of questions, so if you know a better one, please comment.

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  • How to Program AWS Spot Instances to Strategically Bid So the Auction is Never Lost Until a Competitor Beats the Maximum I'm Willing to Pay?

    - by Taal
    I believe I'm in the right section of stack exchange to ask this. If not, let me know. I only use Amazon Web Services for temporary type hosting services, so the spot instances are quite valuable to me. I would also just make an instance and start and stop it - but - that doesn't necessarily fit my bootstrapped budget sadly. Anyways, it really kills me when someone outbids me on a spot instance I have (I tend to go for the larger ones which there are fewer of available) and I get randomly kicked off. I know or at least I believe there is a way to program in something somehow to dynamically change your bidding price to beat a potential competitor's if their's is higher than yours. Now, I previously believed Amazon would just charge me for the highest price right above the next lowest competitor automatically (eliminating the need for this) - so if I bid too high, then I only pay what I would of needed to in order to win and keep the auction. Essentially, I thought my bid price was my max bid price. Apparently, according to my bills and several experiments I've done - this is not the case. They charge me for whatever I bid even when I know there is no one else around to counter bid me. I needed to clarify that, but let me get back to the main point: Let's say I'm bidding $0.50, competitor comes in and bids 0.55 cents. I get kicked off. I want to have it to where I'd set a maximum I'm willing to pay (let's say $1.00 here), and then when competitor comes in and tries to bid $.55, my bid is dynamically adjusted to beat his at $0.56 up until he breaks my $1.00 threshold. I've been reading the guides and although they are more or less straightforward, I feel like they leave a few holes in them that end up confusing me. Like, for instance, where do I input said command or when do I do it? Maybe I'm just tech illiterate and need help deciphering these guides. A good start for someone willing to answer/help me decipher this problem would be here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/spot-as-update-bid.html

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