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  • Any technical references for game-oriented icons and symbols?

    - by willc2
    To make localizing easier, I'm using icons to show in-game information like achievements and bonuses. Coming up with good designs isn't easy, especially when it has to be integrated into the rest of the game's art style. Can I do better than looking at some random selection of existing games? Are there any reference books or sites that cover game graphics specifically? I'm looking for more theory and best-practices rather than pre-made graphics.

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  • Extension Methods - IsNull and IsNotNull, good or bad use?

    - by Jaimal Chohan
    I like readability. So, I came up with an extension mothod a few minutes ago for the (x =! null) type syntax, called IsNotNull. Inversly, I also created a IsNull extension method, thus if(x == null) becomes if(x.IsNull()) and if(x != null) becomes if(x.IsNotNull()) However, I'm worried I might be abusing extension methods. Do you think that this is bad use of Extenion methods?

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  • Best practices regarding equals: to overload or not to overload?

    - by polygenelubricants
    Consider the following snippet: import java.util.*; public class EqualsOverload { public static void main(String[] args) { class Thing { final int x; Thing(int x) { this.x = x; } public int hashCode() { return x; } public boolean equals(Thing other) { return this.x == other.x; } } List<Thing> myThings = Arrays.asList(new Thing(42)); System.out.println(myThings.contains(new Thing(42))); // prints "false" } } Note that contains returns false!!! We seems to have lost our things!! The bug, of course, is the fact that we've accidentally overloaded, instead of overridden, Object.equals(Object). If we had written class Thing as follows instead, then contains returns true as expected. class Thing { final int x; Thing(int x) { this.x = x; } public int hashCode() { return x; } @Override public boolean equals(Object o) { return (o instanceof Thing) && (this.x == ((Thing) o).x); } } Effective Java 2nd Edition, Item 36: Consistently use the Override annotation, uses essentially the same argument to recommend that @Override should be used consistently. This advice is good, of course, for if we had tried to declare @Override equals(Thing other) in the first snippet, our friendly little compiler would immediately point out our silly little mistake, since it's an overload, not an override. What the book doesn't specifically cover, however, is whether overloading equals is a good idea to begin with. Essentially, there are 3 situations: Overload only, no override -- ALMOST CERTAINLY WRONG! This is essentially the first snippet above Override only (no overload) -- one way to fix This is essentially the second snippet above Overload and override combo -- another way to fix The 3rd situation is illustrated by the following snippet: class Thing { final int x; Thing(int x) { this.x = x; } public int hashCode() { return x; } public boolean equals(Thing other) { return this.x == other.x; } @Override public boolean equals(Object o) { return (o instanceof Thing) && (this.equals((Thing) o)); } } Here, even though we now have 2 equals method, there is still one equality logic, and it's located in the overload. The @Override simply delegates to the overload. So the questions are: What are the pros and cons of "override only" vs "overload & override combo"? Is there a justification for overloading equals, or is this almost certainly a bad practice?

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  • Is it bad to explicitly compare against boolean constants e.g. if (b == false) in Java?

    - by polygenelubricants
    Is it bad to write: if (b == false) //... while (b != true) //... Is it always better to instead write: if (!b) //... while (!b) //... Presumably there is no difference in performance (or is there?), but how do you weigh the explicitness, the conciseness, the clarity, the readability, etc between the two? Note: the variable name b is just used as an example, ala foo and bar.

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  • Is it a bad programming practise to have "Public" members inside an "Internal" class?

    - by Amby
    I mean, won;t it be more specific and appropriate if i "only" keep "protected","internal" and "private" members (field,method,property,event) in a class which is declared as "internal" ? I have seen this practice ( having "public" members in an "internal" class) in various code so just wanted to know is it a bad practice or does it has some benefit or advantage. [Only concerned about C#] Thanks for your interest.

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  • Is it a bad programming practice to have "Public" members inside an "Internal" class?

    - by Amby
    I mean, won;t it be more specific and appropriate if i "only" keep "protected","internal" and "private" members (field,method,property,event) in a class which is declared as "internal" ? I have seen this practice ( having "public" members in an "internal" class) in various code so just wanted to know is it a bad practice or does it has some benefit or advantage. [Only concerned about C#] Thanks for your interest.

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  • Which are the Extreme Programming "core" practices?

    - by MiKo
    Recently, I began reading about agile methodologies and XP in particular. I am a bit confused, though, about what are considered the practices involved in extreme programming. More precisely: Wikipedia reports 12 practices, which I someway believe to be the "classic" ones. Both Kent Beck and Ron Jeffries indicate 13 practices (you can find the links at the bottom of wikipedia page about "Extreme Programming Practices", I cannot post them here since I am new user of Stack Overflow), while this review of Kent Beck's "XP explained" (2nd edition) report more than 20 somewhat different practices. As a complete beginner in the topic (and basically as a complete beginner as a programmer), I would like to be enlightened on the matter. My impression is that I should look at Beck's book, since the second edition has been written after several years of XPerience, but I can find a lot less material based on that.

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  • Video Games from the Bad Guys’ Perspective [Video]

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    We’re so used to seeing video games from our perspective–the hero with the endless power ups and do-overs–but how does the video game world look from the perspective of the bad guys? Rather grim and confusing, as the video above highlights. [via Geekosystem] How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless HTG Explains: What Is Two-Factor Authentication and Should I Be Using It?

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  • Why the “Toilet” Analogy for SQL might be bad

    - by Jonathan Kehayias
    Robert Davis(blog/twitter) recently blogged The Toilet Analogy … or Why I Never Recommend Increasing Worker Threads , in which he uses an analogy for why increasing the value for the ‘max worker threads’ sp_configure option can be bad inside of SQL Server.  While I can’t make an argument against Robert’s assertion that increasing worker threads may not improve performance, I can make an argument against his suggestion that, simply increasing the number of logical processors, for example from...(read more)

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  • Mobile Development- Obtaining development hardware - best practices?

    - by Zoot
    I'm looking to get into smartphone development, but there a quite a few options out there for platforms right now. (iOS/Android/WebOS/Bada/Symbian/MeeGo/WindowsMobile/JavaME) I'd like to have development hardware to test my code and the overall functionality of the devices. What is the best way to obtain and/or borrow hardware for development and testing? Are there rules of thumb to follow which apply to all companies and platforms? In this situation, I'm a single developer. Does this process change for a startup? A hackerspace? A small business? A large business? Thanks.

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  • Web Development know how. Best practices [closed]

    - by Mir
    Possible Duplicate: What should every programmer know about web development? I have recently started learning about web development and I am currently working on a project that involves web scraping. While doing the project I came across an error which upon doing a little web search made me realize that one must clean the html before processing it further. Similarly, there were a few more interesting things that I had missed. My question is how can I quickly familiarize myself with best practice methods for web development.( I am asking as an an electrical engineer with experience in C/C++/Java and very little experience in web dev). Thanks

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  • OBIEE 11.1.1 - (Updated) Best Practices Guide for Tuning Oracle® Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Whitepaper)

    - by Ahmed Awan
    Applies To: This whitepaper applies to OBIEE release 11.1.1.3, 11.1.1.5 and 11.1.1.6 Introduction: One of the most challenging aspects of performance tuning is knowing where to begin. To maximize Oracle® Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition performance, you need to monitor, analyze, and tune all the Fusion Middleware / BI components. This guide describes the tools that you can use to monitor performance and the techniques for optimizing the performance of Oracle® Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition components. Click to Download the OBIEE Infrastructure Tuning Whitepaper (Right click or option-click the link and choose "Save As..." to download this file) Disclaimer: All tuning information stated in this guide is only for orientation, every modification has to be tested and its impact should be monitored and analyzed. Before implementing any of the tuning settings, it is recommended to carry out end to end performance testing that will also include to obtain baseline performance data for the default configurations, make incremental changes to the tuning settings and then collect performance data. Otherwise it may worse the system performance.

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  • Unit testing best practices for a unit testing newbie

    - by wilhil
    In recent years, I have only written small components for people in larger projects or small tools. I have never written a unit test and it always seems like learning how to write them and actually making one takes a lot longer than simply firing up the program and testing for real. I am just about to start a fairly large scale project that could take a few months to complete and whilst I will try to test elements as I write them (like always), I am wondering if unit testing could save me time. I was just wondering if anyone could give good advice: Should I be looking at unit testing at the start of the project and possibly adopt a TDD approach. Should I just write tests as I go along, after each section is complete. Should I complete the project and then write unit tests at the end.

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  • git tagging comments - best practices

    - by Evan
    I've adopted a tagging system of x.x.x.x, and this works fine. However, you also need to leave a comment with your git tag. I've been using descriptions such as "fixes bug Y" or "feature X", but is this the best sort of comment to be leaving? Particularly, what if a tag encompasses several fixes, it seems not to make sense to have a very long tag comment. Does this mean that I should be creating a tag for every bug fix or feature, or should the tag comments be reflective of something else? I have a few ideas that may be good, but I'd love some advice from seasoned git tagging veterans :) For those who prefer specific examples: 1.0.0.0 - initial release 1.0.0.1 - bug fix for issue X 1.0.0.2 - (what if this is a bug fix for multiple issues, the comment would be too long, no?) Another example, in this example, the comments are more or less the same as the tags, it seems redundant. Is there something else we could be describing? https://github.com/osCommerce/oscommerce2/tags

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  • SEO Practices - Comments on Blogs

    I have been creating web pages for some time and have spent considerable time researching SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques, and as the owner of several blogs have always wondered about one of the techniques. Quoted from the results of a recent Google search on "SEO Blog Comments":

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  • Best Practices for Handing over Legacy Code

    - by PersonalNexus
    In a couple of months a colleague will be moving on to a new project and I will be inheriting one of his projects. To prepare, I have already ordered Michael Feathers' Working Effectively with Legacy Code. But this books as well as most questions on legacy code I found so far are concerned with the case of inheriting code as-is. But in this case I actually have access to the original developer and we do have some time for an orderly hand-over. Some background on the piece of code I will be inheriting: It's functioning: There are no known bugs, but as performance requirements keep going up, some optimizations will become necessary in the not too distant future. Undocumented: There is pretty much zero documentation at the method and class level. What the code is supposed to do at a higher level, though, is well-understood, because I have been writing against its API (as a black-box) for years. Only higher-level integration tests: There are only integration tests testing proper interaction with other components via the API (again, black-box). Very low-level, optimized for speed: Because this code is central to an entire system of applications, a lot of it has been optimized several times over the years and is extremely low-level (one part has its own memory manager for certain structs/records). Concurrent and lock-free: While I am very familiar with concurrent and lock-free programming and have actually contributed a few pieces to this code, this adds another layer of complexity. Large codebase: This particular project is more than ten thousand lines of code, so there is no way I will be able to have everything explained to me. Written in Delphi: I'm just going to put this out there, although I don't believe the language to be germane to the question, as I believe this type of problem to be language-agnostic. I was wondering how the time until his departure would best be spent. Here are a couple of ideas: Get everything to build on my machine: Even though everything should be checked into source code control, who hasn't forgotten to check in a file once in a while, so this should probably be the first order of business. More tests: While I would like more class-level unit tests so that when I will be making changes, any bugs I introduce can be caught early on, the code as it is now is not testable (huge classes, long methods, too many mutual dependencies). What to document: I think for starters it would be best to focus documentation on those areas in the code that would otherwise be difficult to understand e.g. because of their low-level/highly optimized nature. I am afraid there are a couple of things in there that might look ugly and in need of refactoring/rewriting, but are actually optimizations that have been out in there for a good reason that I might miss (cf. Joel Spolsky, Things You Should Never Do, Part I) How to document: I think some class diagrams of the architecture and sequence diagrams of critical functions accompanied by some prose would be best. Who to document: I was wondering what would be better, to have him write the documentation or have him explain it to me, so I can write the documentation. I am afraid, that things that are obvious to him but not me would otherwise not be covered properly. Refactoring using pair-programming: This might not be possible to do due to time constraints, but maybe I could refactor some of his code to make it more maintainable while he was still around to provide input on why things are the way they are. Please comment on and add to this. Since there isn't enough time to do all of this, I am particularly interested in how you would prioritize.

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  • Good practices - database programming, unit testing

    - by Piotr Rodak
    Jason Brimhal wrote today on his blog that new book, Defensive Database Programming , written by Alex Kuznetsov ( blog ) is coming to bookstores. Alex writes about various techniques that make your code safer to run. SQL injection is not the only one vulnerability the code may be exposed to. Some other include inconsistent search patterns, unsupported character sets, locale settings, issues that may occur during high concurrency conditions, logic that breaks when certain conditions are not met. The...(read more)

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  • Best practices when creating/modeling databases?

    - by Oscar Mederos
    I learned at the University some steps to model a database: Model the problem using the Extended Entity-Relationship Model. Extract the functional dependencies Apply some algorithms to normalize the database (3NF or Boyce-Codd) Create the database I'm studying Computer Science and since I received that course I'm wondering if I always need to do those steps when creating a complex database for an specified problem. For example, do PHP / .NET / .. programmers always do that? or there are some tools to simplify that process, maybe using another way of represent the problem instead of the EERM?

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  • Portal And Content - Content Integration - Best Practices

    - by Stefan Krantz
    Lately we have seen an increase in projects that have failed to either get user friendly content integration or non satisfactory performance. Our intention is to mitigate any knowledge gap that our previous post might have left you with, therefore this post will repeat some recommendation or reference back to old useful post. Moreover this post will help you understand ground up how to design, architect and implement business enabled, responsive and performing portals with complex requirements on business centric information publishing. Design the Information Model The key to successful portal deployments is Information modeling, it's a key task to understand the use case you designing for, therefore I have designed a set of question you need to ask yourself or your customer: Question: Who will own the content, IT or Business? Answer: BusinessQuestion: Who will publish the content, IT or Business? Answer: BusinessQuestion: Will there be multiple publishers? Answer: YesQuestion: Are the publishers computer scientist?Answer: NoQuestion: How often do the information changes, daily, weekly, monthly?Answer: Daily, weekly If your answers to the questions matches at least 2, we strongly recommend you design your content with following principles: Divide your pages in to logical sections, where each section is marked with its purpose Assign capabilities to each section, does it contain text, images, formatting and/or is it static and is populated through other contextual information Select editor/design element type WYSIWYG - Rich Text Plain Text - non-format text Image - Image object Static List - static list of formatted informationDynamic Data List - assembled information from multiple data files through CMIS query The result of such design map could look like following below examples: Based on the outcome of the required elements in the design column 3 from the left you will now simply design a data model in WebCenter Content - Site Studio by creating a Region Definition structure matching your design requirements.For more information on how to create a Region definition see following post: Region Definition Post - note see instruction 7 for details. Each region definition can now be used to instantiate data files, a data file will hold the actual data for each element in the region definition. Another way you can see this is to compare the region definition as an extension to the metadata model in WebCenter Content for each data file item. Design content templates With a solid dependable information model we can now proceed to template creation and page design, in this phase focuses on how to place the content sections from the region definition on the page via a Content Presenter template. Remember by creating content presenter templates you will leverage the latest and most integrated technology WebCenter has to offer. This phase is much easier since the you already have the information model and design wire-frames to base the logic on, however there is still few considerations to pay attention to: Base the template on ADF and make only necessary exceptions to markup when required Leverage ADF design components for Tabs, Accordions and other similar components, this way the design in the content published areas will comply with other design areas based on custom ADF taskflows There is no performance impact when using meta data or region definition based data All data access regardless of type, metadata or xml data it can be accessed via the Content Presenter - Node. See below for applied examples on how to access data Access metadata property from Document - #{node.propertyMap['myProp'].value}myProp in this example can be for instance (dDocName, dDocTitle, xComments or any other available metadata) Access element data from data file xml - #{node.propertyMap['[Region Definition Name]:[Element name]'].asTextHtml}Region Definition Name is the expect region definition that the current data file is instantiatingElement name is the element value you like to grab from the data file I recommend you read following  useful post on content template topic:CMIS queries and template creation - note see instruction 9 for detailsStatic List template rendering For more information on templates:Single Item Content TemplateMulti Item Content TemplateExpression Language Internationalization Considerations When integrating content assets via content presenter you by now probably understand that the content item/data file is wired to the page, what is also pretty common at this stage is that the content item/data file only support one language since its not practical or business friendly to mix that into a complex structure. Therefore you will be left with a very common dilemma that you will have to either build a complete new portal for each locale, which is not an good option! However with little bit of information modeling and clear naming convention this can be addressed. Basically you can simply make sure that all content item/data file are named with a predictable naming convention like "Content1_EN" for the English rendition and "Content1_ES" for the Spanish rendition. This way through simple none complex customizations you will be able to dynamically switch the actual content item/data file just before rendering. By following proposed approach above you not only enable a simple mechanism for internationalized content you also preserve the functionality in the content presenter to support business accessible run-time publishing of information on existing and new pages. I recommend you read following useful post on Internationalization topics:Internationalize with Content Presenter Integrate with Review & Approval processes Today the Review and approval functionality and configuration is based out of WebCenter Content - Criteria Workflows. Criteria Workflows uses the metadata of the checked in document to evaluate if the document is under any review/approval process. So for instance if a Criteria Workflow is configured to force any documents with Version = "2" or "higher" and Content Type is "Instructions", any matching content item version on check in will now enter the workflow before getting released for general access. Few things to consider when configuring Criteria Workflows: Make sure to not trigger on version one for Content Items that are Data Files - if you trigger on version 1 you will not only approve an empty document you will also have a content presenter pointing to a none existing document - since the document will only be available after successful completion of the workflow Approval workflows sometimes requires more complex criteria, the recommendation if that is the case is that the meta data triggering such criteria is automatically populated, this can be achieved through many approaches including Content Profiles Criteria workflows are configured and managed in WebCenter Content Administration Applets where you can configure one or more workflows. When you configured Criteria workflows the Content Presenter will support the editors with the approval process directly inline in the "Contribution mode" of the portal. In addition to approve/reject and details of the task, the content presenter natively support the user to view the current and future version of the change he/she is approving. See below for example: Architectural recommendation To support review&approval processes - minimize the amount of data files per page Each CMIS query can consume significant time depending on the complexity of the query - minimize the amount of CMIS queries per page Use Content Presenter Templates based on ADF - this way you minimize the design considerations and optimize the usage of caching Implement the page in as few Data files as possible - simplifies publishing process, increases performance and simplifies release process Named data file (node) or list of named nodes when integrating to pages increases performance vs. querying for data Named data file (node) or list of named nodes when integrating to pages enables business centric page creation and publishing and reduces the need for IT department interaction Summary Just because one architectural decision solves a business problem it doesn't mean its the right one, when designing portals all architecture has to be in harmony and not impacting each other. For instance the most technical complex solution is not always the best since it will most likely defeat the business accessibility, performance or both, therefore the best approach is to first design for simplicity that even a non-technical user can operate, after that consider the performance impact and final look at the technology challenges these brings and workaround them first with out-of-the-box features, after that design and develop functions to complement the short comings.

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