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  • 24 Hours of PASS next week, pre-con preview style

    - by drsql
    I will be doing my Characteristics of a Great Relational Database , which is a session that I haven’t done since last PASS. When I was asked about doing this Summit Preview version of 24 hours of PASS, I decided that I would do this session, largely because it is kind of light and fun, but also because it is either going to be the basis of the end section of my pre-con at the summit or it is going to be the section of the pre-con we don’t get to because we are so involved in working out designs that...(read more)

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  • Square One to Game Development

    - by Ian Quach
    How does someone even get into developing a game. What would they need to know, how would someone find the knowledge to program a game? I've always looked at game development as a future career. Now that I'm getting closer to university I was hoping to find a way to head start this future in game development. What would be the best place to start? I would love any help or tips from anyone. Thanks for reading this. :)

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  • Designing and refactoring of payment logic

    - by jokklan
    Im currently working on an application that helps users to coordinate dinner clubs and all related accounting. (A dinner club is where people in a group, take turns to cook for the rest and then you pay a small amount to participate. This is pretty normal in dorms and colleges where im from). However there is some different models that all have a price and the accounting aspect is therefore a little spread. We both have DinnerClub, ShoppingItem and are about to implement the third Payment when users pay their debts (or get refunded for expenses). Each of these have a "price" attribute and a users expense (that he or she needs refunded) is calculated by the total of these "prices" minus what other users have bought and he or she have used/participated in. My question is then if someone have some hints to refactor this bring all this behavior together in one place? For now have i thought about a Transaction class that are responsible for this behaviour, but I'm a little worried about the performance impact on having to query for another polymorphic record each time i want to show the price on dinner clubs and shopping items (i have a standard index page with a list for both so it's a lot of extra records being queried)...

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  • Should I build a multi-threaded system that handles events from a game and sorts them, independently, into different threads based on priority?

    - by JonathonG
    Can I build a multi-threaded system that handles events from a game and sorts them, independently, into different threads based on priority, and is it a good idea? Here's more info: I am about to begin work on porting a mid-sized game from Flash/AS3 to Java so that I can continue development with multi-threading capabilities. Here's a small bit of background about the game: The game contains numerous asynchronous activities, such as "world updating" (the game environment is constantly changing based on a set of natural laws and forces), procedural generation of terrain, NPCs, quests, items, etc., and on top of that, the effects of all of the player's interactions with his environment are programmatically calculated in real time, based on a set of constantly changing "stats" and once again, natural laws and forces. All of these things going on at once, in an asynchronous manner, seem to lend themselves to multi-threading very well. My question is: Can I build some kind of central engine that handles the "stacking" of all of these events as they are triggered, and dynamically sorts them out amongst the available threads, and would it be a good idea? As an example: Essentially, every time something happens (IE, a magic missile being generated by a spell, or a bunch of plants need to grow to their next stage), instead of just processing that task right then and adding the new object(s) to a list of managed objects, send a reference to that event to a core "event handler" that throws it into a stack of all other currently queued events, which then sorts them out and orders them according to urgency, splits them between a number of available threads for as-fast-as-possible multithreaded execution.

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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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  • Should developers make their games easier with new versions?

    - by Gil Kalai
    It seems that the game Angry Birds is becoming gradually easier with new versions. Maybe so people get the illusion of progress and satisfaction of breaking new records? I would like to know if gradual small modifications of games to enhance the sense of improvement and learning by users is known/common/standard practice in game developing. (I don't mean to say that there is anything wrong with such a practice.)

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  • Where to hire a scenario writer for a small interactive story game?

    - by Alexander Gladysh
    I need a scenario for a small dialog-based game / interactive story. The game would be used as an example for a middleware tool we're developing. I would like to buy an existing story (it should be dynamic of course — with branching dialogs etc.), or hire someone to write a new one. Please advise, where to go to find such person / service? We're based in Russia, so getting a talented enough native English writer locally is a bit of a problem. Update: To be extra clear: We must get all necessary rights to reuse the story and make a derived work (i.e. the game we're talking about) from it. This is a commercial product. Borrowing someone else's work at random and using it just not going to work.

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  • Master Data Management

    - by Logicalj
    I am looking for a very flexible, easy to integrate and dynamic application with as many features as possible for Master Data Management. As Master Data Management is used to Manage Operational Data, Analytical Data and Master Data so, I want guidance about "What is exactly expected from Master Data Management and What are the Basic and Challenging Scenarios to be covered or resolved in Master Data Management". Please guide me with all the possible aspects of Master Data Management like Data Cleansing, Data Management and Start Data Analyzing, etc.

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  • Ubiquitous Language and Custom types

    - by EdvRusj
    Note that my question is referring to those attributes that even on their own already represent a concept ( ie on their own provide a cohesive meaning ). Thus such attribute needs no additional functional support and as such is self-contained. I'm also well-aware that even with self-contained attributes the custom types may prove beneficial ( for example, they give the ability to add new behavior later, when business requirements change ). Thus, my question focuses only on whether custom types for self-contained attributes really enrich Ubiquitous Language UL a) I've read that in most cases, even simple, self-contained attributes should have custom, more descriptive types rather than basic value types ( double, string ... ), because among other things, descriptive types add to the UL, while the use of basic types instead weakens the language. I understand the importance of UL, but how does having a basic type for a self-contained attribute weaken the language, since with self-contained attributes the name of the attribute already adequately describes the concept and thus contributes to the UL vocabulary? For example, the term person_age already adequately explains the concept of quantifying the number of years a person has: class Person { string person_age; } so what could we possibly gain by also introducing the term ThingAge to the UL: class person { ThingAge person_age; } thanks

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  • Implementing new required feature after software release

    - by TiagoBrenck
    Fake Scenario There is a software that was released 1 year ago. The software is to map and register all kind of animals on our planet. When the software was released, the client only needed to know the scientific name of the animal, a flag if it is in risk of extinction and a scale of dangerous(that is a fake software and specification, I don't want to discuss this here). There are already 100.000 animals records saved on DB. New Feature One year later, the client wants a new feature. It is really important to him to know the animals classes, and this is a required field. So he asks me to put a field to input the animal class, and this field is required. Or maybe where this animal was discovered. Problem I have already 100.000 recorded animals without a class or where it was discovered, but I need to insert a new column to storage this information and this column can't be null. I don't have a default value for this situation (there isn't a default animal class or where it was discovered). I don't want to keep the requirement rule only on my software, my DB must have this requirement too(I like to keep business rules on DB too). What are the alternatives to solve this situation? I am on a situation that this new feature cannot be previewed or reviewed for the existing records. The time already passed and I can't go back on time to get it

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  • How were some language communities (eg, Ruby and Python) able to prevent fragmentation while others (eg, Lisp or ML) were not?

    - by chrisaycock
    The term "Lisp" (or "Lisp-like") is an umbrella for lots of different languages, such as Common Lisp, Scheme, and Arc. There is similar fragmentation is other language communities, like in ML. However, Ruby and Python have both managed to avoid this fate, where innovation occurred more on the implementation (like PyPy or YARV) instead of making changes to the language itself. Did the Ruby and Python communities do something special to prevent language fragmentation?

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  • overriding implemented base class methods

    - by user793468
    I read somewhere that the chain of inheritance breaks when you alter a behavior from derived class. What does "altering a behavior" mean here? Is overriding an already implemented method in base class considered as "altering behavior"? Or, does the author mean altering method signatures and the output? Also, I ready Duplicating code is not a good practice, and its a maintenance nightmare. Again, does overriding an already implemented method in base class considered "Duplicating code"? If not, what would be considered as "Duplicating code"? I

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  • Story and news-feed ideas for social network games

    - by arpine
    I am currently working on a educational and fun 2-in-1 game. As I am not a professional, I need advice on story and news-feed. The goal is simple-get richer, the story is about a worker who is trying to get over his/her financial problems and become rich. During the whole gaming process there is a news-feed (every day there are a couple of fresh news about what is going on). The news are fresh and individual so I need to write about 2000 pieces of news for 2 year gaming, maybe more. The problem is that I am not sure whether repetitive news can interest in this game. What can be done to make the news-making process easier but not boring from the point of view of the player?

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  • How common are circular references? Would reference-counting GC work just fine?

    - by user9521
    How common are circular references? The less common they are, the fewer hard cases you have if you are writing in a language with only reference counting-GC. Are there any cases where it wouldn't work well to make one of the references a "weak" reference so that reference counting still works? It seems like you should be able to have a language only use reference counting and weak references and have things work just fine most of the time, with the goal of efficiency. You could also have tools to help you detect memory leaks caused by circular references. Thoughts, anyone? It seems that Python uses references counting (I don't know if it uses a tracing collector occasionally or not for sure) and I know that Vala uses reference counting with weak references; I know that it's been done before, but how well would it work?

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  • The balance between client and server functionality

    - by Eugen Martynov
    I want to bring the discussion that started in our teams and get your opinion about it. Assume we have an user account which could have different credentials for authentication and associated email to recover. An user has possibility to do signup with an email or use his social profile to complete signup process. As an Rest API from the backend to client looks like: Create account Authorise Update user data Link social account Register email Verify email In addition our BE is distributed and divided between several services/servers/clusters. So different calls are related to different end points. In case of the social sign up some of steps should be skipped or simplified. For example, with Facebook signup we could already skip email registration and verification step (we ask email permission form user), linking the social account and pre-fill user displayed name. So we proposed to have another end point which will hide/combine different calls on BE and return whole process result to the clients. The pros for this approach: No more duplication of functionality between clients Speed up the networking and user experience The cons for this approach: Additional work for backend Probably most complex scenarios in future updates I would like to get your opinion or experience with this situation. Especially if you already experienced point #2 from against reasons.

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  • What are some internet trends that you've noticed over the past ~10 years? [closed]

    - by Michael
    I'll give an example of one that I've noticed: the number of web sites that ask for your email address (GOOG ID, YAHOO! ID, etc.) has skyrocketed. I can come up with no legitimate reason for this other than (1) password reset [other ways to do this], or (2) to remind you that you have an account there, based upon the time of your last visit. Why does a web site need to know your email address (Google ID, etc.) if all you want to do is... download a file (no legit reason whatsoever) play a game (no legit reason whatsoever) take an IQ test or search a database (no legit reason whatsoever) watch a video or view a picture (no legit reason whatsoever) read a forum (no legit reason whatsoever) post on a forum (mildly legit reason: password reset) newsletter (only difference between a newsletter and a blog is that you're more likely to forget about the web site than you are to forget about your email address -- the majority of web sites do not send out newsletters, however, so this can't be the justification) post twitter messages or other instant messaging (mildly legit reason: password reset) buy something (mildly legit reasons: password reset + giving you a copy of a receipt that they can't delete, as receipts stored on their server can be deleted) On the other hand, I can think of plenty of very shady reasons for asking for this information: so the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. can very easily track what you do by reading your email or asking GOOG, etc. what sites you used your GOOG ID at to use the password that you provide for your account in order to get into your email account (most people use the same password for all of their accounts), find all of your other accounts in your inbox, and then get into all of those accounts sell your email address to spammers These reasons, I believe, are why you are constantly asked to provide your email address. I can come up with no other explanations whatsoever. Question 1: Can anyone think of any legitimate or illegitimate reasons for asking for someone's email address? Question 2: What are some other interesting internet trends of the past ~10 years?

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  • share distribution question

    - by facebook-100000781341887
    Hi, I just developed a facebook game(mifia like), but the graphic I make is not good, because it is reference with some existing photo, trace with AI, and coloring it. Therefore, I invite my friend to join me, he is a graphic designer, own a company with his friend (I know both of them), for the share, I expect at least 70% for me, and at most 30% for them (both of them want to join). Therefore, they give me a counter offer, 60% for me and 40% for them, of course, I feel their counter offer is unacceptable because they only build the image in part time, and all the other work just like coding, webhosting...etc, is what I do in full time. Why they said they worth 40% is that they will make a good graphic, they can provide a advertise channel(on local magazine), etc... Actually, I don't think the game need advertisement on local magazine because the game is not target for local... Please give me some comments on this issue(is the share fair? what is the importance of the image of the game, is it worth more than 30%), or can anyone share the experience on this. Thanks in advance.

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  • Player & Level class structure in 2D python console game?

    - by Markus Meskanen
    I'm trying to create a 2D console game, where I have a player who can freely move around in a level (~map, but map is a reserved keyword) and interfere with other objects. Levels construct out of multiple Blocks, such as player(s), rocks, etc. Here's the Block class: class Block(object): def __init__(self, x=0, y=0, char=' ', solid=False): self.x = x self.y = y self.char = char self.solid = solid As you see, each block has a position (x, y) and a character to represent the block when it's printed. Each block also has a solid attribute, defining whether it can overlap with other solids or not. (Two solid blocks cannot overlap) I've now created few subclasses from Block (Rock might be useless for now) class Rock(Block): def __init__(self, x=0, y=0): super(Rock, self).__init__(x, y, 'x', True) class Player(Block): def __init__(self, x=0, y=0): super(Player, self).__init__(x, y, 'i', True) def move_left(self, x=1): ... # How do I make sure Player wont overlap with rocks? self.x -= x And here's the Level class: class Level(object): def __init__(self, name='', blocks=None): self.name = name self.blocks = blocks or [] Only way I can think of is to store a Player instance into Level's attributes (self.player=Player(), or so) and then give Level a method: def player_move_left(self): for block in self.blocks: if block.x == self.player.x - 1 and block.solid: return False But this doesn't really make any sense, why have a Player class if it can't even be moved without Level? Imo. player should be moved by a method inside Player. Am I wrong at something here, if not, how could I implement such behavior?

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  • Implementing traffic conditions in TORCS

    - by user1837811
    I am working on a project about "Effects of Traffic conditions and Track Complexity on Car Driving Behavior". Is it possible to implement traffic in TORCS, or should I use another car simulator? By the word "traffic" I mean there are cars running on both tracks in both directions and I can detect the distances, direction and speed of these cars. Depending on this information I can decide whether I should slow down, speed up and calculate the correct timing to overtake.

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  • Semantic coupling vs. large class

    - by user106587
    I have hardware I communicate with via TCP. This hardware accepts ~40 different commands/requests with about 20 different responses. I've created a HardwareProxy class which has a TcpClient to send and receive data. I didn't like the idea of having 40 different methods to send the commands/requests, so I started down the path of having a single SendCommand method which takes an ICommand and returns an IResponse, this results in 40 different SpecificCommand classes. The problem is this requires semantic coupling, i.e. the method that invokes SendCommand receives an IResponse which it has to downcast to SpecificResponse, I use a future map which I believe ensures the appropriate SpecificResponse, but I get the impression this code smells. Besides the semantic coupling, ICommand and IResponse are essentially empty abstract classes (Marker Interfaces) and this seems suspicious to me. If I go with the 40 methods I don't think I have broken the single responisbility principle as the responsibility of the HardwareProxy class is to act as the hardware, which has all of these commands. This route is just ugly, plus I'd like to have Asynchronous versions, so there'd be about 80 methods. Is it better to bite the bullet and have a large class, accept the coupling and MarkerInterfaces for a smaller soultuion, or am I missing a better way? Thanks.

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  • Is programming in layers real?

    - by Aura
    I am fairly new in product development and I am trying to work over a product. The problem that I have realized is that people draw diagrams and charts showing different modules and layers. But as I am working alone (I am my own team) I got a bit confused about the interaction I am facing in the development within the programs and I am wondering whether developing a product in modules is real or not? Maybe I am not a great programmer, but I see no boundaries when data start to travel from frontend to backend.

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  • Should I use a config file or database for storing business rules?

    - by foiseworth
    I have recently been reading The Pragmatic Programmer which states that: Details mess up our pristine code—especially if they change frequently. Every time we have to go in and change the code to accommodate some change in business logic, or in the law, or in management's personal tastes of the day, we run the risk of breaking the system—of introducing a new bug. Hunt, Andrew; Thomas, David (1999-10-20). The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master (Kindle Locations 2651-2653). Pearson Education (USA). Kindle Edition. I am currently programming a web app that has some models that have properties that can only be from a set of values, e.g. (not actual example as the web app data confidential): light-type = sphere / cube / cylinder The light type can only be the above three values but according to TPP I should always code as if they could change and place their values in a config file. As there are several incidents of this throughout the app, my question is: Should I store possibly values like these in: a config file: 'light-types' = array(sphere, cube, cylinder), 'other-type' = value, 'etc = etc-value a single table in a database with one line for each config item a database with a table for each config item (e.g. table: light_types; columns: id, name) some other way? Many thanks for any assistance / expertise offered.

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  • Options for Application Registry

    - by Matt Felzani
    I work for a small software company (about 200 people building 8-10 applications) and I was hoping to get some advice on products that might be out there to manage the information of which clients are using which versions of our products? The most fundamental relationship would be that a "product" has "versions" and a given "version" is used by a "client." Uses would be: Determine which clients use which products Determine which clients are on which versions of a product Determine which clients are exposed to which vulnerabilities because of the version they use Determine which clients cannot move to a new version because of a vulnerability in the new version that they may hit Determine which clients should be approached for an upgrade Any thoughts or product reviews would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

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  • Using Dynamic LINQ to get a filter for my Web API

    - by Espo
    We are considering using the Dynamic.CS linq-sample included in the "Samples" directory of visual studio 2008 for our WebAPI project to allow clients to query our data. The interface would be something like this (In addition to the normal GET-methods): public HttpResponseMessage List(string filter = null); The plan is to use the dynamic library to parse the "filter"-variable and then execute the query agains the DB. Any thoughts if this is a good idea? Is it a security problem?

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  • What is the difference between "data hiding" and "encapsulation"?

    - by Software Engeneering Learner
    I'm reading "Java concurrency in practice" and there is said: "Fortunately, the same object-oriented techniques that help you write well-organized, maintainable classes - such as encapsulation and data hiding -can also help you create thread-safe classes." The problem #1 - I never heard about data hiding and don't know what it is. The problem #2 - I always thought that encapsulation is using private vs public, and is actually the data hiding. Can you please explain what data hiding is and how it differs from encapsulation?

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