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• Have all the geeks gone to some other planet? [closed]

  - by Rishabh Ohri

  Why is no one answering the posts?

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• Speeding up procedural texture generation

  - by FalconNL

  Recently I've begun working on a game that takes place in a procedurally generated solar system. After a bit of a learning curve (having neither worked with Scala, OpenGL 2 ES or Libgdx before), I have a basic tech demo going where you spin around a single procedurally textured planet: The problem I'm running into is the performance of the texture generation. A quick overview of what I'm doing: a planet is a cube that has been deformed to a sphere. To each side, a n x n (e.g. 256 x 256) texture is applied, which are bundled in one 8n x n texture that is sent to the fragment shader. The last two spaces are not used, they're only there to make sure the width is a power of 2. The texture is currently generated on the CPU, using the updated 2012 version of the simplex noise algorithm linked to in the paper 'Simplex noise demystified'. The scene I'm using to test the algorithm contains two spheres: the planet and the background. Both use a greyscale texture consisting of six octaves of 3D simplex noise, so for example if we choose 128x128 as the texture size there are 128 x 128 x 6 x 2 x 6 = about 1.2 million calls to the noise function. The closest you will get to the planet is about what's shown in the screenshot and since the game's target resolution is 1280x720 that means I'd prefer to use 512x512 textures. Combine that with the fact the actual textures will of course be more complicated than basic noise (There will be a day and night texture, blended in the fragment shader based on sunlight, and a specular mask. I need noise for continents, terrain color variation, clouds, city lights, etc.) and we're looking at something like 512 x 512 x 6 x 3 x 15 = 70 million noise calls for the planet alone. In the final game, there will be activities when traveling between planets, so a wait of 5 or 10 seconds, possibly 20, would be acceptable since I can calculate the texture in the background while traveling, though obviously the faster the better. Getting back to our test scene, performance on my PC isn't too terrible, though still too slow considering the final result is going to be about 60 times worse: 128x128 : 0.1s 256x256 : 0.4s 512x512 : 1.7s This is after I moved all performance-critical code to Java, since trying to do so in Scala was a lot worse. Running this on my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S3), however, produces a more problematic result: 128x128 : 2s 256x256 : 7s 512x512 : 29s Already far too long, and that's not even factoring in the fact that it'll be minutes instead of seconds in the final version. Clearly something needs to be done. Personally, I see a few potential avenues, though I'm not particularly keen on any of them yet: Don't precalculate the textures, but let the fragment shader calculate everything. Probably not feasible, because at one point I had the background as a fullscreen quad with a pixel shader and I got about 1 fps on my phone. Use the GPU to render the texture once, store it and use the stored texture from then on. Upside: might be faster than doing it on the CPU since the GPU is supposed to be faster at floating point calculations. Downside: effects that cannot (easily) be expressed as functions of simplex noise (e.g. gas planet vortices, moon craters, etc.) are a lot more difficult to code in GLSL than in Scala/Java. Calculate a large amount of noise textures and ship them with the application. I'd like to avoid this if at all possible. Lower the resolution. Buys me a 4x performance gain, which isn't really enough plus I lose a lot of quality. Find a faster noise algorithm. If anyone has one I'm all ears, but simplex is already supposed to be faster than perlin. Adopt a pixel art style, allowing for lower resolution textures and fewer noise octaves. While I originally envisioned the game in this style, I've come to prefer the realistic approach. I'm doing something wrong and the performance should already be one or two orders of magnitude better. If this is the case, please let me know. If anyone has any suggestions, tips, workarounds, or other comments regarding this problem I'd love to hear them.

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• Unity3D: How to make the camera focus a moving game object with ITween?

  - by nathan

  I'm trying to write a solar system with Unity3D. Planets are sphere game objects rotating around another sphere game object representing the star. What i want to achieve is let the user click on a planet and then zoom the camera on this planet and then make the camera follow and keep it centered on the screen while it keep moving around the star. I decided to use iTween library and so far i was able to create the zoom effect using iTween.MoveUpdate. My problem is that the focused planet does not say properly centered as it moves. Here is the relevant part of my script: void Update () { if (Input.GetButtonDown("Fire1")) { Ray ray = Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay(Input.mousePosition); RaycastHit hit; if (Physics.Raycast(ray, out hit, Mathf.Infinity, concernedLayers)) { selectedPlanet = hit.collider.gameObject; } } } void LateUpdate() { if (selectedPlanet != null) { Vector3 pos = selectedPlanet.transform.position; pos.z = selectedPlanet.transform.position.z - selectedPlanet.transform.localScale.z; pos.y = selectedPlanet.transform.position.y; iTween.MoveUpdate(Camera.main.gameObject, pos, 2); } } What do i need to add to this script to make the selected planet stay centered on the screen? I hosted my current project as a webplayer application so you see what's going wrong. You can access it here.

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• Extremely Hybrid Game requirements

  - by tugrul büyükisik

  What system specifications would a game need if it was: Total players per planet: ~20000 Total players per team:~1M Total players per map(small volume of space or small surface over a planet): ~2000 Total players: ~10M(world has more players than this amount i think) Two of the players are commanders of opposite quadrants(from HUD of a strategy game). Lots of players use space-crafts as a captain(like 3d fps and rts). Many many players control consoles in those space-crafts as under command of captains.(fps ) Some players are still in stone-age trying to reinvent wheel in some planet. Players design and construct any vehicles they have. With good physics engine Has puzzles inside. Everyone get experience by doing stuff(RPG). Commerce, income or totally different resource-based group(like starcraft) Player classes(primitive: cunning and strong, wrapped: healthy, wealthy) Arcade top-down style firing with ships when people get bored very low chance of miraculous things.(mediclorians, wormholes, bugs) Different game-modes: persistent(living world), resetted periodically(a new chance for noobs), instant(pre-built space + hack&slash) I suspect this would need 128GB ram and 2048 cores.

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• Move Camera Freely Around Object While Looking at It

  - by Alex_Hyzer_Kenoyer

  I've got a 3D model loaded (a planet) and I have a camera that I want to allow the user to move freely around it. I have no problem getting the camera to orbit the planet around either the x or y axis. My problem is when I try to move the camera on a different axis I have no idea how to go about doing it. I am using OpenGL on Android with the libGDX library. I want the camera to orbit the planet in the direction that the user swipes their finger on the screen.

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• Increasing efficiency of N-Body gravity simulation

  - by Postman

  I'm making a space exploration type game, it will have many planets and other objects that will all have realistic gravity. I currently have a system in place that works, but if the number of planets goes above 70, the FPS decreases an practically exponential rates. I'm making it in C# and XNA. My guess is that I should be able to do gravity calculations between 100 objects without this kind of strain, so clearly my method is not as efficient as it should be. I have two files, Gravity.cs and EntityEngine.cs. Gravity manages JUST the gravity calculations, EntityEngine creates an instance of Gravity and runs it, along with other entity related methods. EntityEngine.cs public void Update() { foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in Entities) { e.Value.Update(); } gravity.Update(); } (Only relevant piece of code from EntityEngine, self explanatory. When an instance of Gravity is made in entityEngine, it passes itself (this) into it, so that gravity can have access to entityEngine.Entities (a dictionary of all planet objects)) Gravity.cs namespace ExplorationEngine { public class Gravity { private EntityEngine entityEngine; private Vector2 Force; private Vector2 VecForce; private float distance; private float mult; public Gravity(EntityEngine e) { entityEngine = e; } public void Update() { //First loop foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in entityEngine.Entities) { //Reset the force vector Force = new Vector2(); //Second loop foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e2 in entityEngine.Entities) { //Make sure the second value is not the current value from the first loop if (e2.Value != e.Value ) { //Find the distance between the two objects. Because Fg = G * ((M1 * M2) / r^2), using Vector2.Distance() and then squaring it //is pointless and inefficient because distance uses a sqrt, squaring the result simple cancels that sqrt. distance = Vector2.DistanceSquared(e2.Value.Position, e.Value.Position); //This makes sure that two planets do not attract eachother if they are touching, completely unnecessary when I add collision, //For now it just makes it so that the planets are not glitchy, performance is not significantly improved by removing this IF if (Math.Sqrt(distance) > (e.Value.Texture.Width / 2 + e2.Value.Texture.Width / 2)) { //Calculate the magnitude of Fg (I'm using my own gravitational constant (G) for the sake of time (I know it's 1 at the moment, but I've been changing it) mult = 1.0f * ((e.Value.Mass * e2.Value.Mass) / distance); //Calculate the direction of the force, simply subtracting the positions and normalizing works, this fixes diagonal vectors //from having a larger value, and basically makes VecForce a direction. VecForce = e2.Value.Position - e.Value.Position; VecForce.Normalize(); //Add the vector for each planet in the second loop to a force var. Force = Vector2.Add(Force, VecForce * mult); //I have tried Force += VecForce * mult, and have not noticed much of an increase in speed. } } } //Add that force to the first loop's planet's position (later on I'll instead add to acceleration, to account for inertia) e.Value.Position += Force; } } } } I have used various tips (about gravity optimizing, not threading) from THIS question (that I made yesterday). I've made this gravity method (Gravity.Update) as efficient as I know how to make it. This O(N^2) algorithm still seems to be eating up all of my CPU power though. Here is a LINK (google drive, go to File download, keep .Exe with the content folder, you will need XNA Framework 4.0 Redist. if you don't already have it) to the current version of my game. Left click makes a planet, right click removes the last planet. Mouse moves the camera, scroll wheel zooms in and out. Watch the FPS and Planet Count to see what I mean about performance issues past 70 planets. (ALL 70 planets must be moving, I've had 100 stationary planets and only 5 or so moving ones while still having 300 fps, the issue arises when 70+ are moving around) After 70 planets are made, performance tanks exponentially. With < 70 planets, I get 330 fps (I have it capped at 300). At 90 planets, the FPS is about 2, more than that and it sticks around at 0 FPS. Strangely enough, when all planets are stationary, the FPS climbs back up to around 300, but as soon as something moves, it goes right back down to what it was, I have no systems in place to make this happen, it just does. I considered multithreading, but that previous question I asked taught me a thing or two, and I see now that that's not a viable option. I've also thought maybe I could do the calculations on my GPU instead, though I don't think it should be necessary. I also do not know how to do this, it is not a simple concept and I want to avoid it unless someone knows a really noob friendly simple way to do it that will work for an n-body gravity calculation. (I have an NVidia gtx 660) Lastly I've considered using a quadtree type system. (Barnes Hut simulation) I've been told (in the previous question) that this is a good method that is commonly used, and it seems logical and straightforward, however the implementation is way over my head and I haven't found a good tutorial for C# yet that explains it in a way I can understand, or uses code I can eventually figure out. So my question is this: How can I make my gravity method more efficient, allowing me to use more than 100 objects (I can render 1000 planets with constant 300+ FPS without gravity calculations), and if I can't do much to improve performance (including some kind of quadtree system), could I use my GPU to do the calculations?

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• LibGdx drawing weird behaviour

  - by Ryckes

  I am finding strange behaviour while rendering TextureRegions in my game, only when pausing it. I am making a game for Android, in Java with LibGdx. When I comment out the line "drawLevelPaused()" everything seems to work fine, both running and paused. When it's not commented, everything works fine until I pause the screen, then it draws those two rectangles, but maybe ships are not shown, and if I comment out drawShips() and drawTarget() (just trying) maybe one of the planets disappears, or if I change the order, other things disappear and those that disappeared before now are rendered again. I can't find the way to fix this behaviour I beg your help, and I hope it's my mistake and not a LibGdx issue. I use OpenGL ES 2.0, stated in AndroidManifest.xml, if it is of any help. Thank you in advance. My Screen render method(game loop) is as follows: @Override public void render(float delta) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); controller.update(delta); renderer.render(); } When world state is PAUSED controller.update does nothing at all, there is a switch in it. And renderer.render() is as follows: public void render() { int worldState=this.world.getWorldState(); updateCamera(); spriteBatch.begin(); drawPlanets(); drawTarget(); drawShips(); if(worldState==World.PAUSED) { drawLevelPaused(); } else if(worldState==World.LEVEL_WON) { drawLevelWin(); } spriteBatch.end(); } And those methods are: private void updateCamera() { this.offset=world.getCameraOffset(); } private void drawPlanets() { for(Planet planet : this.world.getPlanets()) { this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(planet.getTexture()), (planet.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (planet.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY); } } private void drawTarget() { Target target=this.world.getTarget(); this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(target.getTexture()), (target.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (target.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY); } private void drawShips() { for(Ship ship : this.world.getShips()) { this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(ship.getTexture()), (ship.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (ship.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX/2, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY/2, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY, 1.0f, 1.0f, ship.getAngle()-90.0f); } if(this.world.getStillShipVisibility()) { Ship ship=this.world.getStillShip(); Arrow arrow=this.world.getArrow(); this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(ship.getTexture()), (ship.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * ppuX, (ship.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX/2, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY/2, ship.getBounds().width*ppuX, ship.getBounds().height*ppuY, 1f, 1f, ship.getAngle() - 90f); this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(arrow.getTexture()), (ship.getCenter().x - this.offset[0] - arrow.getBounds().width/2) * ppuX, (ship.getCenter().y - this.offset[1]) * ppuY, arrow.getBounds().width*ppuX/2, 0, arrow.getBounds().width*ppuX, arrow.getBounds().height*ppuY, 1f, arrow.getRate(), ship.getAngle() - 90f); } } private void drawLevelPaused() { this.shapeRenderer.begin(ShapeType.FilledRectangle); this.shapeRenderer.setColor(0f, 0f, 0f, 0.8f); this.shapeRenderer.filledRect(0, 0, this.width/this.ppuX, PAUSE_MARGIN_HEIGHT/this.ppuY); this.shapeRenderer.filledRect(0, (this.height-PAUSE_MARGIN_HEIGHT)/this.ppuY, this.width/this.ppuX, PAUSE_MARGIN_HEIGHT/this.ppuY); this.shapeRenderer.end(); for(Button button : this.world.getPauseButtons()) { this.spriteBatch.draw(this.textures.getTexture(button.getTexture()), (button.getPosition().x - this.offset[0]) * this.ppuX, (button.getPosition().y - this.offset[1]) * this.ppuY); } }

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• Ordering by formula fields in NHibernate

  - by Darin Dimitrov

  Suppose that I have the following mapping with a formula property: <class name="Planet" table="planets"> <id name="Id" column="id"> <generator class="native" /> </id> <!-- somefunc() is a native SQL function --> <property name="Distance" formula="somefunc()" /> </class> I would like to get all planets and order them by the Distance calculated property: var planets = session .CreateCriteria<Planet>() .AddOrder(Order.Asc("Distance")) .List<Planet>(); This is translated to the following query: SELECT Id as id0, somefunc() as formula0 FROM planets ORDER BY somefunc() Desired query: SELECT Id as id0, somefunc() as formula0 FROM planets ORDER BY formula0 If I set a projection with an alias it works fine: var planets = session .CreateCriteria<Planet>() .SetProjection(Projections.Alias(Projections.Property("Distance"), "dist")) .AddOrder(Order.Asc("dist")) .List<Planet>(); SQL: SELECT somefunc() as formula0 FROM planets ORDER BY formula0 but it populates only the Distance property in the result and I really like to avoid projecting manually over all the other properties of my object (there could be many other properties). Is this achievable with NHibernate? As a bonus I would like to pass parameters to the native somefunc() SQL function. Anything producing the desired SQL is acceptable (replacing the formula field with subselects, etc...), the important thing is to have the calculated Distance property in the resulting object and order by this distance inside SQL.

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• How to write Java-like enums in C++ ?

  - by Rahul G

  Coming from Java background, I find C++'s enums very lame. I wanted to know how to write Java-like enums (the ones in which the enum values are objects, and can have attributes and methods) in C++. As an example, translate the following Java code (a part of it, sufficient to demonstrate the technique) to C++ : public enum Planet { MERCURY (3.303e+23, 2.4397e6), VENUS (4.869e+24, 6.0518e6), EARTH (5.976e+24, 6.37814e6), MARS (6.421e+23, 3.3972e6), JUPITER (1.9e+27, 7.1492e7), SATURN (5.688e+26, 6.0268e7), URANUS (8.686e+25, 2.5559e7), NEPTUNE (1.024e+26, 2.4746e7); private final double mass; // in kilograms private final double radius; // in meters Planet(double mass, double radius) { this.mass = mass; this.radius = radius; } private double mass() { return mass; } private double radius() { return radius; } // universal gravitational constant (m3 kg-1 s-2) public static final double G = 6.67300E-11; double surfaceGravity() { return G * mass / (radius * radius); } double surfaceWeight(double otherMass) { return otherMass * surfaceGravity(); } public static void main(String[] args) { if (args.length != 1) { System.err.println("Usage: java Planet <earth_weight>"); System.exit(-1); } double earthWeight = Double.parseDouble(args[0]); double mass = earthWeight/EARTH.surfaceGravity(); for (Planet p : Planet.values()) System.out.printf("Your weight on %s is %f%n", p, p.surfaceWeight(mass)); } } Any hep would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

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• Sorting data by relevance, from multiple tables

  - by Oden

  Hey, How is it possible to sort data from multiple tables by relevance? My table structure is following: I have 3 tables in my database, one table contains the name of solar systems, the second for e.g. of planets. There is one more table, witch is a connection between solar systems and planets. If I want to get data of a planet, witch is in the Milky Way, i post this data to the server, and it gives me a multi-dimensional array witch contains: The Milky Way, with every planet in it Every planet, witch name contains the string Milky Way (maybe thats a bat example because i don't think that theres but one planet with this name, but the main concept is on file) But, i want to set the most relevant restaurants to the top of the array. (for the relevance i would check the description of the restaurants or something like that) So, how would you do that kind of data sorting?

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• Is it wise to ask about design decisions made on a product during an interview?

  - by Desolate Planet

  I've been thinking about interview questions lately and I've been reflecting on bad interview experiences I've had in the past. One of particular note is where I had asked the interviewer why the team chose to use Spring over EJB3 in their product. The interviewer pretty much tore my face off, yelling "Because Spring is not the be all and end all of Java software development, do you want this job or not?". In response to this, I told him that this probably wasn't the job for me and I walked out the interview. He told me at the start of the interview that they had high stuff turnover, the product had gone from Modula 3 to Perl to Java then after asking him a technical question, he went in flames. It seemed obvious to me that he was toxic to the company with that kind of attitude. Question: Is it a good idea to probe on architectural choices taken in an interview? If not, why? From my own point of view, an interview is a two-way process. If the interviewers are testing me on my technical skills, I've got every right to ask them the same questions to 1) Figure out what their mindset and attitudes towards developing software solutions are and 2) To figure out if there are in line with how I would approach problems of that kind. It's very possible that the interviewer who got angry was a bad interviewer and forgot that an interview is a two-way process. If I was asked this, I would have simply said something along the lines of wanting to leverage the container more, but I certainly wouldn't have tried to put him in a state of meek capitulation. The interviewer in question was the lead developer in the team.

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• How to convince management to deal with technical debt?

  - by Desolate Planet

  This is a question that I often ask myself when working with developers. I've worked at four companies so far, and I've noticed a lack of attention to keeping code clean and dealing with technical debt that hinders future progress in a software app. For example, the first company I worked for had written a database from scratch rather than take something like MySQL and that created hell for the team when refacoring or extending the app. I've always tried to be honest and clear with my manager when he discusses projections, but management doesn't seem interested in fixing what's already there and it's horrible to see the impact it has on team morale and in their attitude towards others. What are your thoughts on the best way to tackle this problem? What I've seen is people packing up and leaving and the company becomes a revolving door with developers coming and and out and making the code worse. How do you communicate this to management to get them interested in sorting out technical debt?

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• Is there value in having technical authors in a software team?

  - by Desolate Planet

  During my 5 years in IT as a software developer, I've noticed that developers have a strong distaste towards doing any documentation. The act of taking screenshots and creating documentation seems to be a painful and time consuming experience. In one company I worked for, we had a technical documentation team with two technical authors and they developed all the user guides for our customers. In other companies where I've suggested hiring a technical author, I've been told they are not worth the money, but I'm a little unsure if that rings true. Is it better to have developers stop coding and take half a day to do screenshots and create the various guides or is it worth hiring someone who handles such tasks?

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• Is it common to lie in job ads regarding the technologies in use?

  - by Desolate Planet

  Wanted: Experienced Delphi programmer to maintain ginormous legacy application and assist in migration to C# Later on, as the new hire settles into his role... "Oh, that C# migration? Yeah, we'd love to do that. But management is dead-set against it. Good thing you love Pascal, eh?" I've noticed quite a lot of this where I live (Scotland) and I'm not sure how common this is across IT: a company is using a legacy technology and they know that most developers will avoid them to keep mainstream technology on their resumes. So, they will put out a advertisement saying they are looking to move their product to some hip new tech (C#, Ruby, FORTRAN 99) and require someone who has exposure to both - but the migration is just a carrot on a stick, perpetually hung in front of the hungry developer as he spends each day maintaining the legacy app. I've experienced this myself, and heard far too many similar stories to the point where it seems like common practice. I've learned over time that every company has legacy problems of some sort, but I fail to see why they can't be honest about it. It should be common sense to any developer that the technology in place is there to support the business and not the other way round. Unless the technology is hurting the business in someway, I hardly see any just cause for reworking the software stack to be made up whatever is currently vogue in the industry. Would you say that this is commonplace? If so, how can I detect these kinds of leading advertisements beforehand?

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• Do you think code is self documenting?

  - by Desolate Planet

  This is a question that was put to me many years ago as a gradute in a job interview and it's kind of picked at my brain now and again and I've never really found a good answer that satisfies me. The interviewer in question was looking for a black and white answer, there was no middle ground. I never got the chance to ask about the rationale behind the question, but I'm curious why that question would be put to a developer and what you would learn from a yes or no answer? From my own point of view, I can read Java, Python, Delphi etc, but if my manager comes up to me and asks me how far along in a project I am and I say "The code is 80% complete" (and before you start shooting me down, I've heard this uttered in a couple of offices by developers), how exactly is that self documenting? Apologies if this question seems strange, but I'd rather ask and get some opinions on it to gain a better understanding of why it would be put to someone in an interview.

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• Using template questions in a technical interview

  - by Desolate Planet

  I've recently been in an argument with a colleage about technical questions in interviews. As a graduate, I went round lots of companies and noticed they used the same questions. An example is "Can you write a function that determines if a number is prime or not?", 4 years later, I find that particular question is quite common even for a junior developer. I might not be looking at this the correct way, but shouldn't software houses be intelligent enought to think up their own interview questions. This may well be the case, but I've been to about 16 interviews as a graduate and the same questions came up in about 75% of them. This leads me to believe that many companies are lazy and simply Google: 'Template questions for interviewing software developers' and I kind of look down on that. Question: Is it better to use a sest of questions off some template or should software houses strive to be more original and come up with their own interview material? From my point of view, if I failed an inteview and went off and looked for good answers to the questions I messed up on, I could fly through the next interview if they questions are the same.

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• How can I convince management to deal with technical debt?

  - by Desolate Planet

  This is a question that I often ask myself when working with developers. I've worked at four companies so far and I've become aware of a lack of attention to keeping code clean and dealing with technical debt that hinders future progress in a software app. For example, the first company I worked for had written a database from scratch rather than use something like MySQL and that created hell for the team when refactoring or extending the application. I've always tried to be honest and clear with my manager when he discusses projections, but management doesn't seem interested in fixing what's already there and it's horrible to see the impact it has on team morale. What are your thoughts on the best way to tackle this problem? What I've seen is people packing up and leaving. The company then becomes a revolving door with developers coming in and out and making the code worse. How do you communicate this to management to get them interested in sorting out technical debt?

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• Is it wise for a programmer to move into management?

  - by Desolate Planet

  Many times, a developer has suggested that I become a team leader because I'm motivated, but during my career in the IT industry, I've seen so many people who are great at programming, move into management and they are miserable. I've also seen many managers return to programming stating "I'm a technical person, I like technical problems". If this is such a common thing, why do developers feel compelled to leave the technical domain and move into management? Sure you'll have more money and more control, but if you don't enjoy your work and take your problems out on your tream. Secondly, I've been asked in developer interviews, "Would you consider leading a team?" and I'm always tempted to cite the Peter Principle based on what I've seen. I am interested in furthering myself, but not in the way the company may want i.e "Vice President of department blah". To be honest, I've seen this more often in the corporate world than in small development houses and it's always put me off ever going back to a corporate environment. I just feel that this is becoming more and more the norm and it's impacting team morale and degrading the quality of the work. Question: Based on what I've said, Is it a smart move for a technical person to move into management?

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• Is the difference between BDD and TDD nothing more than a vocabulary shift?

  - by Desolate Planet

  Hello, I recently made a start on learning BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) after watching a Google tech talk presented by David Astels. He made a very interesting case for using BDD and some of the literature I've read seem to highlight that it's easier to sell BDD to management. Admittedly, I'm a little skeptical about BDD after watching the above video. So, I'm interested to understand if BDD is indeed nothing more than a change in vocabulary or if it offers other benefits.

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• Do you think code is self documenting?

  - by Desolate Planet

  This is a question that was put to me many years ago as a gradute in a job interview and it's nagged at my brain now and again and I've never really found a good answer that satisfied me. The interviewer in question was looking for a black and white answer, there was no middle ground. I never got the chance to ask about the rationale behind the question, but I'm curious why that question would be put to a developer and what you would learn from a yes or no answer? From my own point of view, I can read Java, Python, Delphi etc, but if my manager comes up to me and asks me how far along in a project I am and I say "The code is 80% complete" (and before you start shooting me down, I've heard this uttered in a couple of offices by developers), how exactly is that self documenting? Apologies if this question seems strange, but I'd rather ask and get some opinions on it to gain a better understanding of why it would be put to someone in an interview.

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• Dealing with technical debt

  - by Desolate Planet

  This is a question that I often ask myself when working with developers. I've worked at four companies so far, and I've noticed a lack of attention to keeping code clean and dealing with technical debt that hinders future progress in a software app. For example, the first company I worked for had written a database from scratch rather than take something like MySQL and that created hell for the team when refacoring or extending the app. I've always tried to be honest and clear with my manager when he discusses projections, but management doesn't seem interested in fixing what's already there and it's horrible to see the impact it has on team morale and in their attitude towards others. What are your thoughts on the best way to tackle this problem? What I've seen is people packing up and leaving and the company becomes a revolving door with developers coming and and out and making the code worse. How do you communicate this to management to get them interested in sorting out technical debt?

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• Using template questions in a technical interview

  - by Desolate Planet

  I've recently been in an argument with a colleague about technical questions in interviews. As a graduate, I went round lots of companies and noticed they used the same questions. An example is "Can you write a function that determines if a number is prime or not?", 4 years later, I find that particular question is quite common even for a junior developer. I might not be looking at this the correct way, but shouldn't software houses be intelligent enough to think up their own interview questions? I've been to about 16 interviews as a graduate and the same questions came up in about 75% of them. This leads me to believe that many companies are lazy and simply Google: 'Template questions for interviewing software developers' and I look down on that. Question: Is it better to use a set of questions off some template or should software houses strive to be more original and come up with their own interview material? From my point of view, if I failed an interview and went off and looked for good answers to the questions I messed up on, I could fly through the next interview if the questions are the same.

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• How do I avoid the complexity concerns of frameworks while keeping my team marketable?

  - by Desolate Planet

  When deciding upon how to design a software project with my colleagues, most suggestions tend to be for using specific frameworks "because it's popular in the job market" or "that's the framework that gets recruiters on the phone," and never what I'm looking for which is, "because it's a good fit for the project as it makes the system more adaptive to future changes and makes life easier for developers." I didn't start looking at projects in this way until I started reading up on domain-driven design. I've found that the actual domain is hidden deep under the frameworks used and it's hard to learn the business processes that have been implemented by the software product. Is there a way to marry the two competing goals: getting exposure as a development team while still being able to avoid complexity? Are frameworks that compromise, or are there other solutions out there?

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• Arguing Developers

  - by Desolate Planet

  My head hurts as I type this question. The reason for this? I've got two developers yelling behind me at the top of their voices while everyone else tries to get some work done. I've worked in three companies so far and I've noticed that developers refuse to make use of meeting rooms and instead feel the need to enter long drawn out conversations where they yell at each other. Any ideas on how to handle this? A "Please be quiet" doesn't seem to have any effect and my head is thumping, so I'll entertain any ideas.

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• New Horizons arrives at Neptune on a 25-year anniversary!

  - by TATWORTH

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2014/08/25/new-horizons-arrives-at-neptune-on-a-25-year-anniversary.aspxToday the New Horizons probe to the planet Pluto crosses the orbit of the planet Neptune. By a “cosmic coincidence”, this is exactly 25 years since Voyager 2 took close-up pictures of Neptune and its satellite Triton. For more see http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/passingplanets/passingPlanets_current.php New Horizons current position is shown at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php

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