Search Results

Search found 9718 results on 389 pages for 'classes'.

Page 209/389 | < Previous Page | 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216  | Next Page >

• Code Clone Analysis on Rawr &ndash; Part 1

  - by Dylan Smith

  In this post we’ll take a look at the first result from the Code Clone Analysis, and do some refactoring to eliminate the duplication.  The first result indicated that it found an exact match repeated 14 times across the solution, with 18 lines of duplicated code in each of the 14 blocks.   Net Lines Of Code Deleted: 179     In this case the code in question was a bunch of classes representing the various Bosses.  Every Boss class has a constructor that initializes a whole bunch of properties of that boss, however, for most bosses a lot of these are simply set to 0’s.     Every Boss class inherits from the class MultiDiffBoss, so I simply moved all the initialization of the various properties to the base class constructor, and left it up to the Boss subclasses to only set those that are different than the default values. In this case there are actually 22 Boss subclasses, however, due to some inconsistencies in the code structure Code Clone only identified 14 of them as identical blocks.  Since I was in there refactoring the 14 identified already, it was pretty straightforward to identify the other 8 subclasses that had the same duplicated behavior and refactor those also.   Note: Code Clone Analysis is pretty slow right now.  It takes approx 1 min to build this solution, but it takes 9 mins to run Code Clone Analysis.  Personally, if the results are high quality I’m OK with it taking a long time to run since I don’t expect it’s something I would be running all that often.  However, it would be nice to be able to run it as part of a nightly build, but at this time I don’t believe it’s possible to run outside of Visual Studio due to a dependency on the meta-data available in the VS environment.

  Read the article

• I have an MIS degree. How do I sell myself as a programmer?

  - by hydroparadise

  So, I graduated with a BSBA in Management Information Systems with honors almost 2 years ago which is more of a business degree. As of right now, I do have a job title of "Programmer", but it's more of a report writing position in an arbitrary, proprietary language called PowerOn with the occasional interesting project using more mainstream technologies like .Net and Java. I am also somewhat isoloated being the only programmer in the workplace, which I beleive is a detriment to my career path. The only people I have to bounce ideas against are those on the various SE sites. I don't regret going MIS, but over the past couple of years I have discovered my passion for coding, even though I have been doing some form of coding profesionally and as an enthusiast for years. I do want to persue my Masters in CS (at a later time), but I am not sure if I necessarily need a CS degree to get in with a team of programmers. In addition, I do have a number classes I have taken for different laguanges on the way (C++, Java, SQL, and VB.Net) I beleive my strength is in problem solving where code is just a tool to tackling to problem if needed. My question: How do I best sell myself as a programmer? Should I continue pounding out reports and wait till I have my masters in CS? Or am I viable to be a programmer as I stand?

  Read the article

• Why is CS never a topic of conversation of the layman? [closed]

  - by hydroparadise

  Granted, every profession has it's technicalities. If you are an MD, you better know the anatomy of the human body, and if you are astronomer, you better know your calculus. Yet, you don't have to know these more advance topics to know that smoking might give you lung cancer because of carcinogens or the moon revolves around the earth because of gravity (thank you Discovery Channel). There's sort of a common knowledge (at least in more developed countries) of these more advanced topics. With that said, why are things like recursive descent parsing, BNF, or Turing machines hardly ever mentioned outsided 3000 or 4000 level classes in a university setting or between colleagues? Even back in my days before college in my pursuit of knowledge on how computers work, these very important topics (IMHO) never seem to get the light of day. Many different sources and sites go into "What is a processor?" or "What is RAM?", or "What is an OS?". You might get lucky and discover something about programming languages and how they play a role in how applications are created, but nothing about the tools for creating the language itself. To extend this idea, Dennis Ritchie died shortly after Steve Jobs, yet Dennis Ritchie got very little press compared to Steve Jobs. So, the heart of my question: Does the public in general not care to hear about computer science topics that make the technology in their lives work, or does the computer science community not lend itself to the general public to close the knowledge gap? Am I wrong to think the general public has the same thirst for knowledge on how things work as I do? Please consider the question carefully before answering or vote closing please.

  Read the article

• Should all public methods in an abstract class be marked virtual?

  - by Justin Pihony

  I recently had to update an abstract base class on some OSS that I was using so that it was more testable by making them virtual (I could not use an interface as it combined two). This got me thinking whether I should mark all of the methods that I needed virtual, or if I should mark every public method/property virtual. I generally agree with Roy Osherove that every method should be made virtual, but I came across this article that got me thinking about whether this was necessary or not. I am going to limit this down to abstract classes for simplicity, however (whether all concrete public methods should be virtual is especially debatable, I am sure). I could see where you might want to allow a sub-class to use a method, but not want it overriding the implementation. However, as long as you trust that Liskov's Substitution Principle will be followed, then why would you not allow it to be overriden? By marking it abstract, you are forcing a certain override anyway, so, it seems to me that all public methods inside of an abstract class should indeed be marked virtual. However, I wanted to ask in case there was something I might not be thinking. Should all public methods within an abstract class be made virtual?

  Read the article

• Serializing network messages

  - by mtsvetkov

  I am writing a network wrapper around boost::asio and was wondering what is a good and simple way to serialize my messages. I have a message factory which can take care of dispatching the data to the correct builder, but I want to know if there are any established solutions for getting the binary data on the sender side and consequently passing the data for deserialization on the receiver end. Some options I've explored are: passing a pointer to a char[] to the serialize/deserialize functions (for serialize to write to, and deserialize to read from), but it's difficult to enforce buffer size this way; building on that, I decided to have the serialize function return a boost::asio::mutable_buffer, however ownership of the memory gets blurred between multiple classes, as the network wrapper needs to clean up the memory allocated by the message builder. I have also seen solutions involving streambuf's and stringstream's, but manipulating binary data in terms of its string representation is something I want to avoid. Is there some sort of binary stream I can use instead? What I am looking for is a solution (preferrably using boost libs) that lets the message builder dictate the amount of memory allocated during serialization and what that would look like in terms of passing the data around between the wrapper and message factory/message builders. PS. Messages contain almost exclusively built-in types and PODs and form a shallow but wide hierarchy for the sake of going through a factory. Note: a link to examples of using boost::serialization for something like this would be appreciated as I'm having difficulties figuring out the relation between it and buffers.

  Read the article

• Why is the use of abstractions (such as LINQ) so taboo?

  - by Matthew Patrick Cashatt

  I am an independent contractor and, as such, I interview 3-4 times a year for new gigs. I am in the midst of that cycle now and got turned down for an opportunity even though I felt like the interview went well. The same thing has happened to me a couple of times this year. Now, I am not a perfect guy and I don't expect to be a good fit for every organization. That said, my batting average is lower than usual so I politely asked my last interviewer for some constructive feedback, and he delivered! The main thing, according to the interviewer, was that I seemed to lean too much towards the use of abstractions (such as LINQ) rather than towards lower-level, organically grown algorithms. On the surface, this makes sense--in fact, it made the other rejections make sense too because I blabbed about LINQ in those interviews as well and it didn't seem that the interviewers knew much about LINQ (even though they were .NET guys). So now I am left with this question: If we are supposed to be "standing on the shoulders of giants" and using abstractions that are available to us (like LINQ), then why do some folks consider it so taboo? Doesn't it make sense to pull code "off the shelf" if it accomplishes the same goals without extra cost? It would seem to me that LINQ, even if it is an abstraction, is simply an abstraction of all the same algorithms one would write to accomplish exactly the same end. Only a performance test could tell you if your custom approach was better, but if something like LINQ met the requirements, why bother writing your own classes in the first place? I don't mean to focus on LINQ here. I am sure that the JAVA world has something comparable, I just would like to know why some folks get so uncomfortable with the idea of using an abstraction that they themselves did not write. UPDATE As Euphoric pointed out, there isn't anything comparable to LINQ in the Java world. So, if you are developing on the .NET stack, why not always try and make use of it? Is it possible that people just don't fully understand what it does?

  Read the article

• What's wrong with circular references?

  - by dash-tom-bang

  I was involved in a programming discussion today where I made some statements that basically assumed axiomatically that circular references (between modules, classes, whatever) are generally bad. Once I got through with my pitch, my coworker asked, "what's wrong with circular references?" I've got strong feelings on this, but it's hard for me to verbalize concisely and concretely. Any explanation that I may come up with tends to rely on other items that I too consider axioms ("can't use in isolation, so can't test", "unknown/undefined behavior as state mutates in the participating objects", etc.), but I'd love to hear a concise reason for why circular references are bad that don't take the kinds of leaps of faith that my own brain does, having spent many hours over the years untangling them to understand, fix, and extend various bits of code. Edit: I am not asking about homogenous circular references, like those in a doubly-linked list or pointer-to-parent. This question is really asking about "larger scope" circular references, like libA calling libB which calls back to libA. Substitute 'module' for 'lib' if you like. Thanks for all of the answers so far!

  Read the article

• How to make the members of my Data Access Layer object aware of their siblings

  - by Graham

  My team currently has a project with a data access object composed like so: public abstract class DataProvider { public CustomerRepository CustomerRepo { get; private set; } public InvoiceRepository InvoiceRepo { get; private set; } public InventoryRepository InventoryRepo { get; private set; } // couple more like the above } We have non-abstract classes that inherit from DataProvider, and the type of "CustomerRepo" that gets instantiated is controlled by that child class. public class FloridaDataProvider { public FloridaDataProvider() { CustomerRepo = new FloridaCustomerRepo(); // derived from base CustomerRepository InvoiceRepo = new InvoiceRespository(); InventoryRepo = new InventoryRepository(); } } Our problem is that some of the methods inside a given repo really would benefit from having access to the other repo's. Like, a method inside InventoryRepository needs to get to Customer data to do some determinations, so I need to pass in a reference to a CustomerRepository object. Whats the best way for these "sibling" repos to be aware of each other and have the ability to call each other's methods as-needed? Virtually all the other repos would benefit from having the CustomerRepo, for example, because it is where names/phones/etc are selected from, and these data elements need to be added to the various objects that are returned out of the other repos. I can't just new-up a plain "CustomerRepository" object inside a method within a different repo, because it might not be the base CustomerRepository that actually needs to run.

  Read the article

• Including Microsoft.XNA.Framework.Input.Touch in a project?

  - by steven_desu

  So after running through tutorials by both Microsoft and www.xnadevelopment.com I feel very confident in my ability to get to work on my first game using the XNA Framework. I've manipulated sprites, added audio, changed game states, and even went a step further to apply the knowledge I had and figure out how to make animations and basic 2-dimensional physics (including impulses, force, acceleration, and speed calculations) But then shortly into the project I hit a curious bump that I've been unable to figure out. In wanting to implement menus, pause screens, and several different aspects of play (a "pre-level" prep screen, the level itself, and a screen after the level to review how well you did) I took a look at Microsoft's Game State Management sample. I understood the concept, although it was admittedly quite a lot to take in. Not wanting to recreate the entire concept by scratch (after all- what purpose would that serve?) I tried copying and pasting the sample code into my own ScreenManager class (as well as InputState and GameScreen classes) to try and borrow their ingenuity. When I did this, however, my project stopped compiling. I was getting the following error: The type or namespace name 'Touch' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input' (are you missing an assembly reference?) Having read through their sample code already, I realized that this namespace and every function and class within it could be safely ripped from the code without losing functionality. It's a namespace simply for integrating with touchscreen devices (presumably Windows Phone 7, but maybe also tablets). But then I began to wonder- how come Microsoft's sample compiled but mine didn't? I copied their code exactly so there must be a setting somewhere that I need to change in Visual Studio in order to correct this. I tried creating a new project as a Windows Phone 7 game rather than a Windows game, however that only forced it to compile to a Windows Phone emulator and denied me the ability to change the resolution and other features which I clearly had the power to do in the sample code. So my question is simple - how do I properly use the namespace Microsoft.XNA.Framework.Input.Touch?

  Read the article

• How to visualize code?

  - by gablin

  I've mostly only had to read my own code. As such, I've had no need to visualize the code as I already know how each and every class and module communicate with one another. But the few times I've had to read someone else's code - let us now assume we are talking about at least one larger module which contains several internal classes - I've almost always found myself wishing "This would have been so much easier to understand if I could just visualize it!" So what are the common methods or tools for enabling this? Which do you use, and why do you prefer them over the others? I've heard stuff like UML, module and class diagrams, but I imagine there are more. Furthermore, any of these is most likely better than anything I can devise on my own. EDIT: For those who answer with "Use pen and paper and just draw it": This isn't very helpful unless you explain this further. What exactly am I supposed to draw? A box for each class? Should I include the public methods? What about its fields? How should I draw connections that explain how one class uses another? What about modules? What if the language isn't object-oriented but functional or logical, or even just imperative (C, for instance)? What about global variables and functions? Is there an already-standardized way of drawing this, or do I need to think up of a method of my own? You get the drift.

  Read the article

• Should I make a seperate unit test for a method, if it only modifies the parent state?

  - by Dante

  Should classes, that modify the state of the parent class, but not itself, be unit tested separately? And by separately, I mean putting the test in the corresponding unit test class, that tests that specific class. I'm developing a library based on chained methods, that return a new instance of a new type in most cases, where a chained method is called. The returned instances only modify the root parent state, but not itself. Overly simplified example, to get the point across: public class BoxedRabbits { private readonly Box _box; public BoxedRabbits(Box box) { _box = box; } public void SetCount(int count) { _box.Items += count; } } public class Box { public int Items { get; set; } public BoxedRabbits AddRabbits() { return new BoxedRabbits(this); } } var box = new Box(); box.AddRabbits().SetCount(14); Say, if I write a unit test under the Box class unit tests: box.AddRabbits().SetCount(14) I could effectively say, that I've already tested the BoxedRabbits class as well. Is this the wrong way of approaching this, even though it's far simpler to first write a test for the above call, then to first write a unit test for the BoxedRabbits separately?

  Read the article

• C# class architecture for REST services

  - by user15370

  Hi. I am integrating with a set of REST services exposed by our partner. The unit of integration is at the project level meaning that for each project created on our partners side of the fence they will expose a unique set of REST services. To be more clear, assume there are two projects - project1 and project2. The REST services available to access the project data would then be: /project1/search/getstuff?etc... /project1/analysis/getstuff?etc... /project1/cluster/getstuff?etc... /project2/search/getstuff?etc... /project2/analysis/getstuff?etc... /project2/cluster/getstuff?etc... My task is to wrap these services in a C# class to be used by our app developer. I want to make it simple for the app developer and am thinking of providing something like the following class. class ProjectClient { SearchClient _searchclient; AnalysisClient _analysisclient; ClusterClient _clusterclient; string Project {get; set;} ProjectClient(string _project) { Project = _project; } } SearchClient, AnalysisClient and ClusterClient are my classes to support the respective services shown above. The problem with this approach is that ProjectClient will need to provide public methods for each of the API's exposed by SearchClient, etc... public void SearchGetStuff() { _searchclient.getStuff(); } Any suggestions how I can architect this better?

  Read the article

• EE vs Computer Science: Effect on Developers' Approaches, Styles?

  - by DarenW

  Are there any systematic differences between software developers (sw engineers, architect, whatever job title) with an electronics or other engineering background, compared to those who entered the profession through computer science? By electronics background, I mean an EE degree, or a self-taught electronics tinkerer, other types of engineers and experimental physicists. I'm wondering if coming into the software-making professions from a strong knowledge of flip flops, tristate buffers, clock edge rise times and so forth, usually leads to a distinct approach to problems, mindsets, or superior skills at certain specialties and lack of skills at others, when compared to the computer science types who are full of concepts like abstract data types, object orientation, database normalization, who speak of "closures" in programming languages - things that make little sense to the soldering iron crowd until they learn enough programming. The real world, I'm sure, offers a wild range of individual exceptions, but for the most part, can you say there are overall differences? Would these have hiring implications e.g. (to make up something) "never hire an electron wrangler to do database design"? Could knowing about any differences help job seekers find something appropriate more effectively? Or provide enlightenment or some practical advice for those who find themselves misfits in a particular job role? (Btw, I've never taken any computer science classes; my impression of exactly what they cover is fuzzy. I'm an electronics/physics/art type, myself.)

  Read the article

• Loading images in XNA 4.0; "Cannot Open File" Problems

  - by user32623

  Okay, I'm writing a game in C#/XNA 4.0 and am utterly stumped at my current juncture: Sprite animation. I understand how it works and have all the code in place, but my ContentLoader won't open my file... Basically, my directory looks like this: //WindowsGame1 - "Game1.cs" - //Classes - "NPC.cs" - Content Reference - //Images - "Monster.png" Inside my NPC class, I have all the essential drawing functions, i.e. LoadContent, Draw, Update. And I can get the game to find the correct file and attempt to open it, but when it tries, it throws an exception and tells me it can't open the file. This is how my code in my NPC class looks: Texture2D NPCImage; Vector2 NPCPosition; Animation NPCAnimation = new Animation(); public void Initialize() { NPCAnimation.Initialize(NPCPosition, new Vector2(4, 4)); } public void LoadContent(ContentManager Content) { NPCImage = Content.Load<Texture2D>("_InsertImageFilePathHere_"); NPCAnimation.AnimationImage = NPCImage; } The rest of the code is irrelevant at this point because I can't even get the image to load. I think it might have to do with a directory problem, but I also know little to nothing about spriting or working with images or animations in my code. Any help is appreciated. Not sure if I provided enough information here, so let me know if more is needed! Also, what would be the correct way to direct that Content.Load to Monster.png given the current directory situation? Right now I just have it using the full path from the C:// drive. Thanks in advance!

  Read the article

• c# vocabulary

  - by foxjazz

  I have probably seen and used the word Encapsulation 4 times in my 20 years of programming.I now know what it is again, after an interview for a c# job. Even though I have used the public, private, and protected key words in classes for as long as c# was invented. I can sill remember coming across the string.IndexOf function and thinking, why didn't they call it IndexAt.Now with all the new items like Lambda and Rx, Linq, map and pmap etc, etc. I think the more choices there is to do 1 or 2 things 10 or 15 differing ways, the more programmers think to stay with what works and try and leverage the new stuff only when it really becomes beneficial.For many, the new stuff is harder to read, because programmers aren't use to seeing declarative notation.I mean I have probably used yield break, twice in my project where it may have been possible to use it many more times. Or the using statement ( not the declaration of namespace references) but inline using. I never really saw a big advantage to this, other than confusion. It is another form of local encapsulation (oh there 5 times used in my programming career) but who's counting?  THE COMPUTERS ARE COUNTING!In business logic most programming is about displaying lists, selecting items in a list, and sending those choices to some other system or database to keep track of those selections. What makes this difficult is how these items relate to one, each other, and two externally listed items.Well I probably need to go back to school and learn c# certification so I can say I am an expert in c#. Apparently using all aspects of c# (even unsafe code) in my programming life, doesn't make me certified, just certifiable.This is a good time to sign off:Fox-jazzy

  Read the article

• Cookie access within a HTTP Class

  - by James Jeffery

  I have a HTTP class that has a Get, and Post, method. It's a simple class I created to encapsulate Post and Get requests so I don't have to repeat the get/post code throughout the application. In C#: class HTTP { private CookieContainer cookieJar; private String userAgent = "..."; public HTTP() { this.cookieJar = new CookieContainer(); } public String get(String url) { // Make get request. Return the JSON } public String post(String url, String postData) { // Make post request. Return the JSON } } I've made the CookieJar a property because I want to preserve the cookie values throughout the session. If the user is logged into Twitter with my application, each request I make (be it get or post) I want to use the cookies so they remain logged in. That's the basics of it anyway. But, I don't want to return a string in all instances. Sometimes I may want the cookie, or a header value, or something else from the request. Ideally I'd like to be able to do this in my code: Cookie cookie = http.get("http://google.com").cookie("g_user"); String g_user = cookie.value; or String source = http.get("http://google.com").body; My question - To do this, would I need to have a Get class, and a Post class, that are included within the HTTP class and are accessible via accessors? Within the Get and Post class I would then have the Cookie method, and the body property, and whatever else is needed. Should I also use an interface, or create a Request class and have Post and Get extend it so that common methods and properties are available to both classes? Or, am I thinking totally wrong?

  Read the article

• 25 years old and considering a career change...possible? practical?

  - by mq330

  Hi all, I'm new to this site and new to programming as well. I've spent some time going through an intro cs book that uses python as the language of choice. I find the exercises interesting and engaging and I generally have had a favorable experience programming so far. I've gone through some of the basics with python like writing simple programs, basics of GUIs, manipulating strings, lists, defining functions, etc. And I've always loved technology. Although I've never done any real hardcore programming yet, I was inclined to building websites from a very young age but I never really developed my skills. Now, the thing is I'm 25, I have my bacholors in environmental studies and two masters degrees in urban planning and landscape architecture respectively. I know, it would be quite a departure to pursue a career in programming at this point. Currently, I'm working as a geographic information systems intern. I've taken some GIS classes and have a lot of experience with making maps, doing spatial analysis etc. So what I'm thinking is maybe I can learn some solid programming skills and apply these skills in the field of GIS. From what I've seen, .net languages are the norm in this arena. Could you perhaps provide some guidance to me in terms of what languages I should focus on or courses I should take at this point? What about for building web mapping applications? Also, I was thinking about getting a certificate in programming from a university extension program. Do you think it would be worth it? And furthermore, do you think potential employers would be interested in hiring someone like me (once I get a couple of languages down pretty well) as an intern or in an entry level position? I'll be living in the bay area so I feel that there should be decent opportunities even though I don't have a b.s. in cs.

  Read the article

• Best way: restructure an existing Team Foundation Server (TFS) solution

  - by dhh

  In my department we are developing several smaller AddOns for some unified communication server. For versioning and distributed development we use a Team Foundation Server 2012. But: there is only one large TFS solution for all of our applications and libraries: Main Solution Applications App 1 App 2 App 3 Externals Libraries Lib 1 Lib 2 Tools The "Application" path contains all main applications. Those are not depending on each other, but they depend on the Libraries and Externals projects. The "Externals" path contains some external DLLs referenced in our Applications and Libraries. The Libraries path contains commonly used libs (UI templates, Helper classes, etc.). They do not depend on each other and they are referenced in the Libraries and the Tools projects. The Tools path contains some helper programs like setup helpers, update web services, etc. Now, there's some major points why I'd like to change this structure: We can't use server builds. It's uncomfortable to manage TFS scrum management with sprints, impediments, etc. with a solution structure like that. Every developer always has access to all projects in the solution. A complete build lasts too long if one accidentally hits [F6] in Visual Studio... What would you change in this solution? How would you break those projects into smaller Solutions, how should those solutions be structured. My first approach would be, to create one TFS project for each Application, Library and Tool. But how can I ensure that e.g. App 2 always contains the newest version of Lib 1? Do I have to monitor changes on Lib 1 and update App 2 manually as soon as the Lib changes? Or can I somehow force Visual Studio to always use the newest version of an external project somehow?

  Read the article

• Does it make sense to write tests for legacy code when there is no time for a complete refactoring?

  - by is4

  I usually try to follow the advice of the book Working Effectively with Legacy Code. I break dependencies, move parts of the code to @VisibleForTesting public static methods and to new classes to make the code (or at least some part of it) testable. And I write tests to make sure that I don't break anything when I'm modifying or adding new functions. A colleague says that I shouldn't do this. His reasoning: The original code might not work properly in the first place. And writing tests for it makes future fixes and modifications harder since devs have to understand and modify the tests too. If it's GUI code with some logic (~12 lines, 2-3 if/else block, for example), a test isn't worth the trouble since the code is too trivial to begin with. Similar bad patterns could exist in other parts of the codebase, too (which I haven't seen yet, I'm rather new); it will be easier to clean them all up in one big refactoring. Extracting out logic could undermine this future possibility. Should I avoid extracting out testable parts and writing tests if we don't have time for complete refactoring? Is there any disadvantage to this that I should consider?

  Read the article

• How should an undergraduate programmer organize his time learning the maximum possible?

  - by nischayn22

  I started programming lately(pre-final year of a CS degree) and now feel like there's a sea of uncovered treasure for me out there. So, I decided to cover as much as is possible before I look out for a job after graduation. So, I started to read books (The C++ Programming Language, Introduction to Algorithms, Cracking the Coding Interview, Programming Pearls,etc ) participate in StackExchange sites, solving problems (InterviewStreet and ProjectEuler), coding for open source, chatting to fellow programmers/mentors and try to learn more and more. Good,then what's the problem?? The problem is I am trying to do many things, but I am doubtful that I am still utilizing my time properly. I am reading many books and sometimes I just leave a book halfway (jumping from one book to another), sometimes I spend way too much time on chatting and also in getting lost somewhere in the huge internet world, and lastly the wasteful burden of attending classes (I don't think my teachers know good enough or I prefer learning on my own) May be some of you had similar situation. How did you organize your time? Or what do you think is the best way to organize it for an undergraduate? Also what mistakes am I making that you can warn me of

  Read the article

• Seperation of drawing and logic in games

  - by BFree

  I'm a developer that's just now starting to mess around with game development. I'm a .Net guy, so I've messed with XNA and am now playing around with Cocos2d for the iPhone. My question really is more general though. Let's say I'm building a simple Pong game. I'd have a Ball class and a Paddle class. Coming from the business world development, my first instinct is to not have any drawing or input handling code in either of these classes. //pseudo code class Ball { Vector2D position; Vector2D velocity; Color color; void Move(){} } Nothing in the ball class handles input, or deals with drawing. I'd then have another class, my Game class, or my Scene.m (in Cocos2D) which would new up the Ball, and during the game loop, it would manipulate the ball as needed. The thing is though, in many tutorials for both XNA and Cocos2D, I see a pattern like this: //pseudo code class Ball : SomeUpdatableComponent { Vector2D position; Vector2D velocity; Color color; void Update(){} void Draw(){} void HandleInput(){} } My question is, is this right? Is this the pattern that people use in game development? It somehow goes against everything I'm used to, to have my Ball class do everything. Furthermore, in this second example, where my Ball knows how to move around, how would I handle collision detection with the Paddle? Would the Ball need to have knowledge of the Paddle? In my first example, the Game class would have references to both the Ball and the Paddle, and then ship both of those off to some CollisionDetection manager or something, but how do I deal with the complexity of various components, if each individual component does everything themselves? (I hope I'm making sense.....)

  Read the article

• Design in "mixed" languages: object oriented design or functional programming?

  - by dema80

  In the past few years, the languages I like to use are becoming more and more "functional". I now use languages that are a sort of "hybrid": C#, F#, Scala. I like to design my application using classes that correspond to the domain objects, and use functional features where this makes coding easier, more coincise and safer (especially when operating on collections or when passing functions). However the two worlds "clash" when coming to design patterns. The specific example I faced recently is the Observer pattern. I want a producer to notify some other code (the "consumers/observers", say a DB storage, a logger, and so on) when an item is created or changed. I initially did it "functionally" like this: producer.foo(item => { updateItemInDb(item); insertLog(item) }) // calls the function passed as argument as an item is processed But I'm now wondering if I should use a more "OO" approach: interface IItemObserver { onNotify(Item) } class DBObserver : IItemObserver ... class LogObserver: IItemObserver ... producer.addObserver(new DBObserver) producer.addObserver(new LogObserver) producer.foo() //calls observer in a loop Which are the pro and con of the two approach? I once heard a FP guru say that design patterns are there only because of the limitations of the language, and that's why there are so few in functional languages. Maybe this could be an example of it? EDIT: In my particular scenario I don't need it, but.. how would you implement removal and addition of "observers" in the functional way? (I.e. how would you implement all the functionalities in the pattern?) Just passing a new function, for example?

  Read the article

• At the end of my rope

  - by hvgotcodes

  I am a contractor to a big company. Currently, there are three developers on the project, myself included. The problem is the other 2 developers don't really get it. By "it" i mean the following: They don't understand the best practices for the technology we are using. After 6 months of me and others giving them examples there are terrible anti-patterns being used. They are "copy and paste" programmers that produce primarily spaghetti code. They constantly break things, implementing changes but not doing a basic smoke test to see if all is good They refuse/rarely to ask for code-reviews. They refuse/rarely even do basic things like formatting code. No documentation on any classes (jsdocs) Afraid to delete code that doesn't do anything Leave commented code blocks everywhere even though we have version control. I find myself getting more and more frustrated as I format others code, fix bugs, discover functionality that is broken, and create abstractions to remove the spaghetti. I really don't know what to do. I try not to get to frustrated, but it's just a mess. I like these people as people, but I feel like the coding situation is so bad that I could move faster if they simply browsed the web all day. Would it be out of line to ask our manager to review the others svn commit access; commits can only be done after a review by someone who is knowledgeable in what we are doing? As a contractor, I'm not sure if that's the best move. Is there a subtle/not so subtle way of making it clear how many things I am fixing?

  Read the article

• Finding the best practice for a game simulating tool

  - by Tougheart

  I'm studying Java right now, and I'm thinking of this tool as my practice project. The game is "League of Legends" in case anyone knows it, I'm not actually simulating the game as in simulating game play, I'm just trying to create a tool that can compare different champions to each other based on their own abilities and items bought inside the game. The game basics are: Every player has a champion in a team of 5 players playing against another team. Each champion has a different set of abilities (usually 4) that s/he uses to do damage to opposing champions. Each champion gets stronger by buying different items, increasing the attack it deals or decreasing the damage received. What I want to do is to create a tool to be used outside the game enabling players to try out different builds for their champions and compare the figures against other champions they usually fight against. The goal is to enable players get a deeper understanding of the different item combinations (builds) that can be used during the games, instead of trying them out in real games which can be somehow very time consuming. What I'm stuck at is the best practice I should follow to make this possible using Java, I can't figure out which classes should inherit from which, should I make champions and items specs in the code or extracted from other files, specially that I'm talking about hundreds of items and champions to use in that tool. I'm self studying Java, and I don't have much practice at it, so I would really appreciate any broad guidelines regarding this, and sorry if my question doesn't fit here, I tried to follow the rules. English isn't my native language, so I'm really sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I would be more than happy to explain anything that's not understood.

  Read the article

• Matrices: Arrays or separate member variables?

  - by bjz

  I'm teaching myself 3D maths and in the process building my own rudimentary engine (of sorts). I was wondering what would be the best way to structure my matrix class. There are a few options: Separate member variables: struct Mat4 { float m11, m12, m13, m14, m21, m22, m23, m24, m31, m32, m33, m34, m41, m42, m43, m44; // methods } A multi-dimensional array: struct Mat4 { float[4][4] m; // methods } An array of vectors struct Mat4 { Vec4[4] m; // methods } I'm guessing there would be positives and negatives to each. From 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development, 2nd Edition p.155: Matrices use 1-based indices, so the first row and column are numbered 1. For example, a12 (read “a one two,” not “a twelve”) is the element in the first row, second column. Notice that this is different from programming languages such as C++ and Java, which use 0-based array indices. A matrix does not have a column 0 or row 0. This difference in indexing can cause some confusion if matrices are stored using an actual array data type. For this reason, it’s common for classes that store small, fixed size matrices of the type used for geometric purposes to give each element its own named member variable, such as float a11, instead of using the language’s native array support with something like float elem[3][3]. So that's one vote for method one. Is this really the accepted way to do things? It seems rather unwieldy if the only benefit would be sticking with the conventional math notation.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216  | Next Page >