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  • What is the best way to code the XNA Game Server for FPS game?

    - by AgentFire
    I'm writing a FPS XNA game. It gonna be multiplayer so I came up with following: I'm making two different assemblies — one for the game logic and the second for drawing it and the game irrelevant stuff (like rocket trails). The type of the connection is client-server (not peer-to-peer), so every client at first connects to the server and then the game begins. I'm completly decided to use XNA.Framework.Game class for the clients to run their game in window (or fullscreen) and the GameComponent/DrawableGameComponent classes to store the game objects and update&draw them on each frame. Next, I want to get the answer to the question: What should I do on the server side? I got few options: Create my own Game class on the server, which will process all the game logic (only, no graphics). The reason why I am not using the standart Game class is when I call Game.Run() the white window appears and I cant figure out how to get rid of it. Use somehow the original XNA's Game class, which is already has the GameComponent collection and Update event (60 times per second, just what I need). UPDATE: I got more questions: First, what socket mode should I use? TCP or UDP? And how to actually let the client know that this packet is meant to be processed after that one? Second, if I is going to use exacly GameComponent class for the game objects which is stored and process on the server, how to make them to be drawn on the client? Inherit them (while they are combined to an assembly)? Something else?

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  • Fight for your rights as a video gamer.

    - by Chris Williams
    Soon, the U.S. Supreme Court may decide whether to hear a case that could have a lasting impact on computer and video games. The case before the Court involves a law passed by the state of California attempting to criminalize the sale of certain computer and video games. Two previous courts rejected the California law as unconstitutional, but soon the Supreme Court could have the final say. Whatever the Court's ruling, we must be prepared to continue defending our rights now and in the future. To do so, we need a large, powerful movement of gamers to speak with one voice and show that we won't sit back while lawmakers try to score political points by scapegoating video games and treating them differently than books, movies, and music. If the Court decides to hear the case, we're going to need thousands of activists like you who can help defend computer and video games by writing letters to editors, calling into talk radio stations, and educating Americans about our passion for and appreciation of computer and video games. You can help build this movement right now by inviting all your friends and fellow gamers to join the Video Game Voters Network. Use our simple tool to send an email to everyone you know asking them to stand up for gaming rights: http://videogamevoters.org/movement You can also help spread the word through Facebook and Twitter, or you can simply forward this email to everyone you know and ask them to sign up at videogamevoters.org. Time after time, courts continue to reject politicians' efforts to restrict the sale of computer and video games. But that doesn't mean the politicians will stop trying anytime soon -- in fact, it means they're likely to ramp up their efforts even more. To stop them, we must make it clear that gamers will continue to stand up for free speech -- and that the numbers are on our side. Help make sure we're ready and able to keep fighting for our gaming rights. Spread the word about the Video Game Voters Network right now: http://videogamevoters.org/movement Thank you. -- Video Game Voters Network

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  • How to advertise (free) software?

    - by nebukadnezzar
    I'm not sure if this fits on SO, but other SE sites don't seem to fit either, so I understand when this question gets moved, Although I'd like to avoid getting it closed due to being offtopics, since I think that this question might fit, considering this part of the FAQ: Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, ... covers … a specific programming problem ... matters that are unique to the programming profession Sorry for the lengthy Introduction, though. When Software is advertised, it is usually Software for one (or more) specific purpose, such as: Mozilla Firefox - A Web Browser Ubuntu - An Operating System Python - A Programming Language Visual Studio - A Development Studio ... And so on. But when writing Libraries, that is, Software that doesn't necessarily serve one specific purpose, but instead multiple purposes, which are usually supposed to be used inside an application, such as: Irrlicht - A 3D Engine Qt - An Application Framework ... The process of advertisement gets a little more difficult. I'm a developer of the latter kind of Software, and I naturally want to advertise my Software. It's not commercial Software; It's not GPL either. It's completely free (Licensed under the MIT License :-)). I naturally host my stuff at github, which technically makes it very easy to access the software, and I thought that these might be possible options, although I have no experience with them: Submit the Software to Freshmeat, and hope for the best Submit the Software to Sourceforge, and hope someone accidently stumbles over it Write spammails, and get death threats via Mail ... But something tells me that these methods are probably not the best Methods. So, my final question would be, How does the Average Joe Hobby Programmer advertise his/her Software Library?

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  • Adventures in MVVM &ndash; My ViewModel Base &ndash; Silverlight Support!

    - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz
    More Adventures in MVVM In my last post, I outlined the powerful features that are available in the ViewModelSupport.  It takes advantage of the dynamic features of C# 4.0 (as well as some 3.0 goodies) to help eliminate the plumbing that often comes with writing ViewModels.  If you are interested in learning about the capabilities, please take a look at that post and look at the code on CodePlex.  When I wrote about the ViewModel base class, I complained that the features did not work in Silverlight because as of 4.0, it does not support binding to dynamic properties.  Although I still think this is a bummer, I am happy to say that I have come up with a workaround.  In the Silverlight version of my base class, I include a PropertyCollectionConverter that lets you bind to dynamic properties in the ViewModelBase, especially the convention-based commands that the base class supports. To take advantage of any properties that are not statically defined, you can bind to the Properties property of the ViewModel and pass in a converter parameter for the name of the property you want to bind. For example, a ViewModel that looks like this: public class ExampleViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MyCommand() { Set("Text", "Foo"); } } Can bind to the dynamic property and the convention-based command with the following XAML. <TextBlock Text="{Binding Properties, Converter={StaticResource PropertiesConverter}, ConverterParameter=Text}" Margin="5" /> <Button Content="Execute MyCommand" Command="{Binding Properties, Converter={StaticResource PropertiesConverter}, ConverterParameter=MyCommand}" Margin="5" /> Of course, it is not as pretty as binding to Text and MyCommand like you can in WPF.  But, it is better than having a failed feature.  This allows you to share your ViewModels between WPF and Silverlight very easily.  <BeatDeadHorse>Hopefully, in Silverlight 5.0, we will see binding to dynamic properties more directly????</BeatDeadHorse>

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  • Where could Distributed Version Control Systems currently be in Gartner's hype cycle?

    - by dukeofgaming
    Edit: Given the recent downvoting (+8/-6 at this point) it was made clear to me that Gartner's lifecycle is a biased metric from a programmer's perspective. This is something that is part of a paper I'm going to present to management, and management types are part of Gartner's audience. Giving DVCS exposure & enthusiasm (that "could" be deemed as hype, or at least attacked as such), think about the following question when reading this one: "how could I use Gartner's hype cycle to convince management that DVCSs are ready (or ready-enough) for us, and that it is not just hype" Just asking if DVCSs is hype wouldn't be constructive, Gartner's hype cycle is a more objective instrument than just asking that (even if this instrument is regarded as biased). If you know any other instrument please, by all means, mention it. Edit #2: I agree that Gartner's Life Cycle is not for every technology, but I consider it may have generated enough buzz to be considered hype by some, so it maybe deserves to be at least evaluated/pondered as such by using this instrument in order to prove/disprove it to whatever degree. I'm an advocate of DVCS, BTW. I'm doing research for a whitepaper I'm writing in favor of DVCS adoption at company and I stumbled upon the concept of social proof. I want to prove that the social proof of DVCS adoption is not necessarily cargo cult and doing further research I now stumbled upon Gartner's hype cycle which describes technology maturity in 5 phases. My question is: what could be an indicator of the current location of Distributed Version Control Systems (I mean git, mercurial, bazaar, etc. in general) at a particular phase in the hype cycle?... in other (less convoluted) words, would you say that currently expectations of DVCSs are a) starting, b)inflated, c)decreasing (disillusionment), d)increasing (enlightenment) or e)stabilizing (mature) and (more importantly) why? I know it is a hard question and there is subjectivity involved, but I'll grant the answer (and the traditional cookie) to the clearest argument/evidence for a particular phase.

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  • Using Exception Handler in an ADF Task Flow

    - by anmprs
    Problem Statement: Exception thrown in a task flow gets wrapped in an exception that gives an unintelligible error message to the user. Figure 1 Solution 1. Over-writing the error message with a user-friendly error message. Figure 2 Steps to code 1. Generating an exception: Write a method that throws an exception and drop it in the task flow.2. Adding an Exception Handler: Write a method (example below) to overwrite the Error in the bean or data control and drop the method in the task flow. Figure 3 This method is marked as the Exception Handler by Right-Click on method > Mark Activity> Exception Handler or by the button that is displayed in this screenshot Figure 4 The Final task flow should look like this. This will overwrite the exception with the error message in figure 2. Note: There is no need for a control flow between the two method calls (as shown below). Figure 5 Solution 2: Re-Routing the task flow to display an error page Figure 6 Steps to code 1. This is the same as step 1 of solution 1.2. Adding an Exception Handler: The Exception handler is not always a method; in this case it is implemented on a task flow return.  The task flow looks like this. Figure 7 In the figure below you will notice that the task flow return points to a control flow ‘error’ in the calling task flow. Figure 8 This control flow in turn goes to a view ‘error.jsff’ which contains the error message that one wishes to display.  This can be seen in the figure below. (‘withErrorHandling’ is a  call to the task flow in figure 7) Figure 9

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  • Oracle University Seminars April/May/June 2012

    - by A&C Redaktion
    Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Oracle University's Expert Seminars are exclusive events delivered by top experts with years of experience in working with Oracle products. The seminars topics cover the breadth of the Oracle portfolio and are aimed at helping you to get the most of your Oracle products and to stay connected with new technologies. We currently have the following events scheduled: RAC Performance Tuning Online with Arup Nanda - 30 Apr 2012 Understanding Explain Plans & Index Utilization Online with Dan Hotka - 8-9 May 2012 Writing Optimal SQL & Troubleshooting & Tuning with Jonathan Lewis, Düsseldorf, 9-10 May 2012 Flashback Techniques in Oracle11g with Carl Dudley, München, 14 May 2012 Minimize Downtime with Rolling Upgrade using Data Guard with Uwe Hesse, München, 16 May 2012 Enterprise Business Intelligence 11g Advanced Development Online with Mark Rittman – 24-25 May Mastering Backup & Recovery with Francisco Munoz Alvarez, Düsseldorf, 29-30 May 2012 Real World Java EE 6 – Re-thinking Best Practice with Adam Bien, München, 15 Jun 2012

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  • Early Z culling - Ogre

    - by teodron
    This question is concerned with how one can enable this "pixel filter" to work within an Ogre based app. Simply put, one can write two passes, the first without writing any colour values to the frame buffer lighting off colour_write off shading flat The second pass is the one that employs heavy pixel shader computations, hence it would be really nice to get rid of those hidden surface patches and not process them pixel-wise. This approach works, except for one thing: objects with alpha, such as billboard trees suffer in a peculiar way - from one side, they seem to capture the sky/background within their alpha region and ignore other trees/houses behind them, while viewed from the other side, they exhibit the desired behavior. To tackle the issue, I thought I could write a custom vertex shader in the first pass and offset the projected Z component of the vertex a little further away from its actual position, so that in the second pass there is a need to recompute correctly the pixels of the objects closest to the camera. This doesn't work at all, all surfaces are processed in the pixel shader and there is no performance gain. So, if anyone has done a similar trick with Ogre and alpha objects, kindly please help.

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  • Building apps that work Together

    - by Tim Murphy
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/07/03/building-apps-that-work-together.aspx  Writing apps that stand alone will only get yon so far.  If your app can allow the user to leverage other applications and share data you Can have a real winner on your hands. Jake Sabulsky started off by explaining that you should be concentrating on the core functionality of your app and letting the framework take care of the features that users require these days.  This is implemented be leveraging contracts.  When Windows 8 was released it included the File, Share and Pickers contracts.  With the release of Windows 8.1 they have added the Contacts and Calendar contracts. There have been a number of improvements to the original contracts. The File URI contract will now automatically detect the size that a new windows should be opened and will also allow you to programmatically influence new window size.  The Share contract has been enhanced by allowing apps to always share screenshots and links to the app in the store. To my thinking the contracts are one of the most powerful features of Windows 8.  Take the time view this session and learn how to leverage them. Technorati Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8,Live tiles

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  • Rawr Code Clone Analysis&ndash;Part 0

    - by Dylan Smith
    Code Clone Analysis is a cool new feature in Visual Studio 11 (vNext).  It analyzes all the code in your solution and attempts to identify blocks of code that are similar, and thus candidates for refactoring to eliminate the duplication.  The power lies in the fact that the blocks of code don't need to be identical for Code Clone to identify them, it will report Exact, Strong, Medium and Weak matches indicating how similar the blocks of code in question are.   People that know me know that I'm anal enthusiastic about both writing clean code, and taking old crappy code and making it suck less. So the possibilities for this feature have me pretty excited if it works well - and thats a big if that I'm hoping to explore over the next few blog posts. I'm going to grab the Rawr source code from CodePlex (a World Of Warcraft gear calculator engine program), run Code Clone Analysis against it, then go through the results one-by-one and refactor where appropriate blogging along the way.  My goals with this blog series are twofold: Evaluate and demonstrate Code Clone Analysis Provide some concrete examples of refactoring code to eliminate duplication and improve the code-base Here are the initial results:   Code Clone Analysis has found: 129 Exact Matches 201 Strong Matches 300 Medium Matches 193 Weak Matches Also indicated is that there was a total of 45,181 potentially duplicated lines of code that could be eliminated through refactoring.  Considering the entire solution only has 109,763 lines of code, if true, the duplicates lines of code number is pretty significant. In the next post we’ll start examining some of the individual results and determine if they really do indicate a potential refactoring.

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  • Is it possible to execute keyboard input programmatically in Linux?

    - by Taylor Hawkes
    For example is there a Linux command or way that I could from a program (c++ | python| or other) enter a series of keyboard inputs that are interpreted as though they are keyboard inputs. I have a bad case of Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI) from typing. To ease my pain I developed a voice controlled interface using pocket sphinx and a custom grammar and to run a number of very common commands. ex: "open chrome" , "open vim". Basically what is shown here, but with slightly diff tools: http://bloc.eurion.net/archives/2008/writing-a-command-and-control-application-with-voice-recognition/ I have run into some limitation as I can only execute command line commands given a voice command. Rather than having a "voice command" - "command line command" mapping, I would like to have "voice command" - "keyboard input" mapping. So when my active window is a browser and I type + n, and new tab opens. If I'm in vim and new vim tab opens. Any suggestions, ideas, tools or approaches to this problem would be much appreciated. I understand the answer may not be simple, but would like to develop it none the less.

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  • Mac OS needs Windows Live Writer &ndash; badly!

    - by digitaldias
    I recently bought a new  Macbook Pro (the 13” one) to dive into a new world of programming challenges as well as to get a more powerful netbook than my Packard Bell Dot which I’ve been using since last year. I’ve had immense pleasure using the netbook format and their small size in meetings (taking notes with XMind), surfing “anywhere”, and, of course blogging with windows live writer. So far the Mac is holding up, it’s sleek, responsive, and I’ve even begun looking at coding in Objective C with it, but in one arena, it is severely lacking: Blogging software. There is nothing that even comes close to Live Writer for getting your blog posts out. The few blogger applications that do exist on mac both look and feel medieval in comparison, AND some even cost money! It looks like some mac users actually install a virtual machine on their mac to run Windows XP just so they can use WLW. I’m not that extreme; instead, I’m hoping that the WLW team will write it’s awesome application as a Silverlight 4 app. That way, it would run on Mac and Windows (as a desktop app). I wonder if it will ever happen though…   PS: The image is of me, took it with the built-in camera on the mac and emailed it to the windows PC that I am writing on :)

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  • Links for Getting Started with PowerShell for Office 365 and Exchange Online

    - by Brian Jackett
    This past week I worked with some customers who were getting started with using PowerShell against Exchange Online as part of their new Office 365 solution.  As you may know Exchange is not my primary focus area but since these customers’ needs centered around PowerShell I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn more.  What soon became apparent to me was a few things: The output / objects returned from Exchange Online vs. on-premises commandlets sometimes differ (mainly due to Exchange Online output needing to be serialized across the wire) Some of the community scripts posted on TechNet Script Center or PoSH Code Repository that work for on-premises won’t work against Exchange Online due to the above I went to multiple resources to get an introduction of using the Exchange Online commandlets      In light of the last item I would like to share some resources I gathered for getting started with the Exchange Online commandlets.  I will address the first two items in a follow up post that shows one sample script that I helped a customer fix.   Links Using PowerShell with Office365 http://blah.winsmarts.com/2011-4-Using_PowerShell_with_Office365.aspx   Administering Microsoft Office 365 using WIndows PowerShell http://blog.powershell.no/2011/05/09/administering-microsoft-office-365-using-windows-powershell/   Reference to Available PowerShell Cmdlets in Exchange Online http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/dd575549.aspx   Windows PowerShell cmdlets for Office 365 http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/hh125002.aspx   Role Based Access Control in Exchange Online http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/dd207274.aspx   Exchange Online and RBAC http://blogs.technet.com/b/ilvancri/archive/2011/05/16/exchange-online-office365-and-rbac.aspx   Conclusion    Office 365 is being integrated into more and more customers’ environments.  While your PowerShell skills can still be used to manage certain portions of Office 365 (Exchange Online as of the time of this writing) there are a few differences in how data is passed back and forth.  Hopefully the links above will get you started on scripting against  cloud based services.         -Frog Out

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  • Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?

    - by Ken
    As an entrepreneur/programmer who makes a good living from writing and selling software, I'm dumbfounded as to why developers write applications and then put them up on the Internet for free. You've found yourself in one of the most lucrative fields in the world. A business with 99% profit margin, where you have no physical product but can name your price; a business where you can ship a buggy product and the customer will still buy it. Occasionally some of our software will get a free competitor, and I think, this guy is crazy. He could be making a good living off of this but instead chose to make it free. Do you not like giant piles of money? Are you not confident that people would pay for it? Are you afraid of having to support it? It's bad for the business of programming because now customers expect to be able to find a free solution to every problem. (I see tweets like "is there any good FREE software for XYZ? or do I need to pay $20 for that".) It's also bad for customers because the free solutions eventually break (because of a new OS or what have you) and since it's free, the developer has no reason to fix it. Customers end up with free but stale software that no longer works and never gets updated. Customer cries. Developer still working day job cries in their cubical. What gives? PS: I'm not looking to start an open-source/software should be free kind of debate. I'm talking about when developers make a closed source application and make it free.

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  • Subsumption architecture vs. perceptual control theory

    - by Yasir G.
    I'm a new person to AI field and I have to research and compare 2 different architectures for a thesis I'm writing. Before you scream (homework thread), I've been reading on these 2 topics only to find that I'm confusing myself more.. let me first start with stating briefly what I know so far. Subsumption is based on the fact that targets of a system are different in sophistication, thus that requires them to be added as layers, each layer can suppress (modify) the command of the layers below it, and there are inhibitors to stop signals from execution lets say. PCT stresses on the fact that there are nodes to handle environmental changes (negative feedback), so the inputs coming from an environment go through a comparator node and then an action is generated by that node, HPCT or (Hierarchical PCT) is based on nesting these cycles inside each other so a small cycle to avoid crashing would be nested in a more sophisticated cycle that targets a certain location for example. My questions, am I getting this the right way? am I missing any critical understanding about these 2 models? also any idea where I can find simplified explanations for each theory (so far been struggling trying to understand the papers from Google scholar :< ) /Y

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  • Leveraging Code in Ever Bigger Games

    - by ashes999
    Summary: The same way that I continually build complex engines and libraries within a single platform and technology to allow me to build increasingly bigger and better games, how to continue this when development crosses into different platforms? If I switch platforms, how do I leverage past code and experiences? Games are hard to build. Big games are even harder to build. I've decided that to be able to make big games, I need to start building smaller games, and building up an asset base of code, assets (graphics, sounds), tools, and most importantly, game engines, so that I can eventually get there. One game at a time. Let me give an analogy. To build an MMO 3D RPG, I would approach this by building and releasing small games with increasingly more features. This could entail, for example: A simple 2D game A tile-based game A game with RPG elements (items, equipment, monsters, battle) A full-fledged RPG A 3D RPG The problem now is if I have to change platforms or tools, I don't know how to leverage past code-bases (and experience) to start with a mature product. Right now, I'm writing Silverlight (FlatRedBall) games. Let's say I stick with this for ten years, and then suddenly decide to write a PS6 game, which is in a different programming language entirely. Granted, I have ten years of game-development experience (and correspondingly ten years of professional software development experience from my day job) to back me up. But I would still like some way to transplant that 2D RPG engine into the new programming language, or else leverage it somehow. Is this even possible? What are my options?

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  • What kinds of demos are good to make for a software engineer job

    - by user23012
    I have created my cv site and sent out my demos for a while now, but most of my demos are either from my course or games related since my course was a games programming course, I was wondering what kind of demos are good to show off my skills in programming in general. These are what i already have Pennies:just a simple game first coursework i did. Compiler:coursework for compiler writing module Pongout: basic a pong game in 68k using colour detection Snake: snake in 68k same thing as the pong Game Cube Maze: gamecube work BeatmyBot: basic Ai Basic plat-former game: 2d game with different types of collision Turing Lambda Simulation: my dissertation Turing machine simulated in Miranda. alpha and Beta reduction,and SKI calculus simulated in the Turing machine. What I am asking here is what kind of demos are good to add or have, i have been looking and have hit a tough spot I cant think of anything to make more than games. so for a general graduate software engineer what types would be good examples? EDIT: since responding to the comments bellow well for what languages well my main one would be C++, followed by Java, Erlang and abit of Haskell

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  • How to practice object oriented programming?

    - by user1620696
    I've always programmed in procedural languages and currently I'm moving towards object orientation. The main problem I've faced is that I can't see a way to practice object orientation in an effective way. I'll explain my point. When I've learned PHP and C it was pretty easy to practice: it was just matter of choosing something and thinking about an algorithm for that thing. In PHP for example, it was matter os sitting down and thinking: "well, just to practice, let me build one application with an administration area where people can add products". This was pretty easy, it was matter of thinking of an algorithm to register some user, to login the user, and to add the products. Combining these with PHP features, it was a good way to practice. Now, in object orientation we have lots of additional things. It's not just a matter of thinking about an algorithm, but analysing requirements deeper, writing use cases, figuring out class diagrams, properties and methods, setting up dependency injection and lots of things. The main point is that in the way I've been learning object orientation it seems that a good design is crucial, while in procedural languages one vague idea was enough. I'm not saying that in procedural languages we can write good software without design, just that for sake of practicing it is feasible, while in object orientation it seems not feasible to go without a good design, even for practicing. This seems to be a problem, because if each time I'm going to practice I need to figure out tons of requirements, use cases and so on, it seems to become not a good way to become better at object orientation, because this requires me to have one whole idea for an app everytime I'm going to practice. Because of that, what's a good way to practice object orientation?

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  • How can I re-enable the typing break in 11.10?

    - by Hamish Downer
    I've just upgraded to beta 2 of Oneiric/11.10 and the typing break has gone. I've gone into the system settings and looked in "Keyboard Layout" and "Keyboard" and can't find anything. Has it just been dropped? Is there some hidden way to re-enable it? Update: Thought I'd write an update based on some stuff that has happened since this question (and the two answers) were written. Workrave has now been re-instated in oneiric-backports and for 12.04 (how to enable backports). It works fine, though if you want to put it in your systray then you need to allow it in there. The easy/lazy command line way to allow workrave into the notification area is to do something like: gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']" But read this question if you want a more detailed explanation about what you're doing here. Meanwhile the Gnome typing break has been split out into an app called DrWright, however it has not (at time of writing) been packaged for 11.10 (or later). And as mentioned in the other answer, another option is RSIBreak. It is a KDE app but works fine in Unity.

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  • Tracking state of a one time event on a big website

    - by Mattis
    Assume a website with 250 million active users. I add a new feature to the website. Once a user visits I want to use a short tutorial to teach them how to use said feature. I only want them to complete the tutorial once (or actively click it away). What is the smart way to code the verification check for this? How do I track the progress in the database? Having a separate table with like NewTutorial_completed = 1 for user_id = 21312315 would just snowball. It also feels intuitively bad to check for every one-time event for every user on every page view. While writing the question I got one idea, to have a separate event log that is checked periodically for any new action the user need to see or perform. I push events to this log and once they are completed they are removed from the log. No need to store NewTutorial_completed = 1-type variables this way. I am sure this is a common problem. I would appreciate any input on what best practice is.

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  • Where to put code documentation?

    - by Patrick
    I am currently using two systems to write code documentation (am using C++): Documentation about methods and class members are added next to the code, using the Doxygen format. On a server Doxygen is run on the sources so the output can be seen in a web browser Overview pages (describing a set of classes, the structure of the application, example code, ...) is added to a Wiki I personally think that this approach is easy because the documentation about members and classes is really close to the code, while the overview pages are really easy to edit in the Wiki (and it's also easy to add images, tables, ...). A web browser allows you to see both documentations. My co-worker now suggests to put everything in Doxygen, because we can then create one big help file with everything in it (using either Microsoft's HTML WorkShop or Qt Assistant). My concern is that editing Doxygen-style documentation is much harder (compared to Wiki), especially when you want to add tables, images, ... (or is there a 'preview' tool for Doxygen that doesn't require you to generate the code before you can see the result?) What do big open-source (or closed source) projects use to write their code documentation? Do they also split this up between Doxygen-style and a Wiki? Or do they use another system? What is the most appropriate way to expose the documentation? Via a Web server/browser, or via a big (several 100MB) help file? Which approach do you take when writing code documentation?

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  • Learning from jQuery - Solid fundament for experienced jQuery developers

    Frankly speaking, I had to sleep a night over before typing this review. And even now it is not an easy, straight-forward task to write this recension. I'm not sure whether I'm the right kind of audience this title is actually addressed to. It clearly states that this book is for web developers which are very familiar with jQuery library but would like to extend their knowledge to vanilla JavaScript. Not being part of this particular group it felt strange to go through the various chapters after all. This title is clearly addressed to experienced jQuery users and developers especially while looking for improvements in performance and better ways of optimisations. Sometimes just to simplify the existing jQuery code in order to avoid the heavy load of the complete jQuery library and sometimes for the better understanding of JavaScript and its syntax. Callum's style of writing is clear and the numerous code samples used to emphasize the various techniques are good ones and easy to understand. Quite interestingly, it put a light smile on my face when I compared his sample code of sending an AJAX request to some code in one of my own blog articles I wrote back in 2006 (in German language). JavaScript is clearly a mature language and certain requirements are simply done this way. And Callum explains the nuts and bolts of JavaScript very well. Personally, I gained most out of this book from chapter 5 - JavaScript Conventions. The paragraphs and code snippets on Optimizations and Common Antipatterns gave me a better understanding on various aspects of JavaScript development, and I definitely have to revise a couple of code fragments I have written in the past. Overall the book provides solid information on JavaScript for jQuery developers and is worth the money spent. Just be sure that you're part of the targeted audience.

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  • ASP.NET MVC Cookbook &ndash; public review

    - by Andrew Siemer - www.andrewsiemer.com
    I have recently started writing another book.  The topic of this book is ASP.NET MVC.  This book differs from my previous book in that rather than working towards building one project from end to end – this book will demonstrate specific topics from end to end.  It is a recipe book (hence the cookbook name) and will be part of the Packt Publishing cookbook series.  An example recipe in this book might be how to consume JSON, creating a master /details page, jquery modal popups, custom ActionResults, etc.  Basically anything recipe oriented around the topic of ASP.NET MVC might be acceptable.  If you are interested in helping out with the review process you can join the “ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook-review” group on Google here: http://groups.google.com/group/aspnet-mvc-2-cookbook-review Currently the suggested TOC for the project is listed.  Also, chapters 1, 2, and most of 8 are posted.  Chapter 5 should be available tonight or tomorrow. In addition to reporting any errors that you might find (much appreciated), I am very interested in hearing about recipes that you want included, expanded, or removed (as being redundant or overly simple).  Any input is appreciated!  Hearing user feedback after the book is complete is a little late in my opinion (unless it is positive feedback of course). Thank you!

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  • What is the best way to "carve" a terrain created from a heightmap?

    - by tigrou
    I have a 3d landscape created from a heightmap. I'd like to "carve" some holes in that terrain. That will allow me to create bridges, caverns and tunnels inside it. That operation will be done in the game editor so it doesn't need to be realtime. In the end, rendering is done using traditional polygons. What would be the best/easiest way to do that ? I already think about several solutions : Solution 1 1) Create voxels from the heightmap (very easy). In other words, fill a 3D array like this : voxels[32][32][32] from the heightmap values. 2) Carve holes in the voxels as i want (easy too). 3) Convert voxels to polygons using some iso-surface extraction technique (like marching cubes). 4) Reduce (decimate) polygons created in 3). This technique seems to be the most promising for giving good results (untested). However the problem with marching cubes is that they tends to produce lots of polygons thus reducing them is mandatory. Implementing 4) also seems not trivial, i have read several papers on the web and it seems pretty complex. I was also unable to find an example, code snippet or something to start writing an algorithm for triangle mesh decimation. Maybe there is a special decimation algorithm (simpler) for meshes created from marching cubes ? Solution 2 1) Create some triangle mesh from the heighmap (easy). 2) Apply severals 3D boolean operation (eg: subtraction with a sphere) to carve the mesh. 3) apply some procedure to reduce polygons (optional). Operation 2) seems to be very complex and to be honest i have no idea how to do that. Also applying many boolean operation seems to be slow and will maybe degrade the triangle mesh every time a boolean operation is applied.

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  • Be careful when installing the Blend Windows Phone 7 Add-In

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    There was a small issue today with the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (April 2010 Refresh) refresh. The issue is that the Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone (April Refresh) is not compatible with Blend 4.0.20408.0, which was the public RC (release candidate). A few days ago, the Blend team released a fix for an issue that was sometimes causing a crash when Blend was starting up. This new release (V4.0.20421.0) was not very well announced however, and many people (including me) did not install it. After all, Blend did not crash at startup of either of my machines, so I didn’t deem necessary to install yet a new RC. However, it is now clear that the Windows Phone 7 Add-In needs this latest-and-greatest version to work. If you have Blend 4.0.20408.0, you won’t be able to work with Windows Phone 7 in Blend. To add to the confusion, the page where you can download V4.0.20421.0 from has an error, and the wrong version number is wrong (at least at the time of writing). Do not let this confuse you. You must download this version and install it. Hopefully this helps clarify some of the confusion… Happy WinPhone7 coding :) Laurent

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