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  • Cloud service and IM protocol advice, for a backend to group chat mobile app

    - by Jonathan
    Overview I’m going to develop an app on Android and iOS. It will allow users to set up group ‘chat rooms’ and talk on chat rooms set up by other users. The service needs to be highly scalable, such that it could accommodate a massive increase in users overnight (we can only dream). Chat requirements The chat protocol used should be flexible: it should allow me to determine who can view/post on ‘chat rooms’ based on certain other factors, as determined by the first poster/creator of the particular ‘chat room’. It should also allow for users to simply install the app and begin using the service, after only providing a simple nickname (which could be changed later). Chat protocol plans Having looked around I think the XMPP protocol is the best candidate. In particular the Multi-user chat extension looks like what I’ll need. Would this be most suited to my requirements, or do you know another potential solution? Cloud service I have been deciding between Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine and Windows Azure. I’m coming to the conclusion that Azure will be best, as it is easier to manage than AWS (ease of scalability will be a key factor in the design), I think it may be less restricted than GAE, plus Azure will soon have toolkits to allow easy interfacing with both Android and iOS phones. Is this the decision you would have made, or would you recommend/look into other cloud services? General project philosophy I have only recently started looking into this project’s feasibility, and am no expert on any of its aspects. So wherever possible I will leave the actual implementations to experts, i.e. choosing a higher-level cloud service, using a well-documented plugin of a, proven reliable, group chat protocol etc. My background I have some programming knowledge from a computer science degree. Main languages I’ve used have been Java and Python, but I don’t want this to affect design decisions for the project. The most appropriate languages for the task should be used, i.e. I don’t mind learning a lot of new skills (my current programming levels are relatively basic anyway). Thank you Thanks for reading, and any advice you have about any aspect would be greatly appreciated :-)

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  • How to handle interruptions in developer work without losing concentration? [closed]

    - by tomaszs
    I work as a developer for some years now. Mainly the issue why it's antisocial work is because you need to spend much time programming. I've been always the kind of developer who likes to cut off from any sources of distraction and spend several hours on project because in this way i (as i hope) do it faster. There are also other kinds of developers, more social that can chat, read, watch movies while development and they are ok with this and don't hesitate to be interrupted in their work in any time and come back to the project without any problem. For me any distraction is source of frustration because i need to spend substantial time to load my mind with all info about the project and to concentrate back on the tasks. I always thought it's better to do this that way because project is completed faster. But it makes some things difficult: it's hard to chat with someone who needs to have some important info: because you are a bit frustrated when you know you loose your Zen. And sometimes its more important to chat with someone than to loose Zen. Well.. mostly in any other kind of work the ability to be "multitask" is very important. But as a developer and as a person it's also very important to stay social. And i see now that the problem of concentration makes it difficult to make the right chose: the cost of maintaining concentration is just sometimes so damn high! So is it only me that i have so little concentration skills so any interruption is for me a big deal? Maybe it's just i have so bad memory so that i dont remember all issues of a project so long? Or maybe i develop the project in a fashion that requires me to store so much info on my mind only to be able to start working with code? Or should i just accept that being more social will make me finish project slower and in the fashion that i personally consider non 100% productive? And it's just normal thing and i should just accept it and start to live like any other person who has many works and don't assume that programming is in any case other than any other work and i just do fuzz about the whole concentration thing? This is question for mid-pro developers. I think you was having the same dillema in your life. I would be glad if you could help me take the right road here because it's just driving me and i suppose people i work with crazy for years.

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  • NEW: Oracle Certification Exam Preparation Seminars

    - by Harold Green
    Hi Everyone, I am really excited about a new offering that we are announcing this week - Oracle Certification Exam Preparation Seminars. These are something that will make a big difference for many of you in your efforts to become certified and move your career forward. They are also something that have previously only been available (but very popular) to the limited number of customers who have attended our annual conferences in San Francisco (Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne). These are the first in a series of offerings that we are releasing over the next few months. So for those of you either preparing or considering Oracle certification - keep watching here on the blog, Facebook, Twitter and the Oracle Certification website for additional announcements related to our most popular certification areas. Details of the new Exam Preparation Seminars are found below: NEW: ORACLE CERTIFICATION EXAM PREPARATION SEMINARS Becoming Oracle certified is a great way to build your career, gain additional credibility and improve your earning power. We know that the decision to become certified is not trivial. Our surveys indicate that people consider their time investment a critical factor in their decision to become certified. Your time is important. In order to help candidates maximize the efficiency of their study time we are releasing a new series of video-based seminars called Exam Preparation Seminars. These seminars are patterned after the extremely popular Exam Cram sessions that until now have only been available at our annual customer conferences (Oracle Open World and JavaOne). Beginning today they are now available to anyone, anywhere as a part of this Exam Prep Seminar series. Features: Fast-paced objective by objective review of the exam topics - led by top Oracle University instructors 24/7 access through Oracle University's training on demand platform. Ability to re-watch all or part of the the seminar. All the conveniences of video-based training: start, stop, fast-forward, skip, rewind, review. Tips that will help you better understand what you need to know to pass the exam. The Exam Preparation Seminars are meant to help anyone with a working knowledge of the technology get that extra boost to help them finalize their preparation, and will help anyone who wants a better understanding of the the depth and breadth of the exam topics and objectives. Benefits: Save time by understanding what you should study. Makes you efficient because you will understand the breadth and depth of each of the exam topics. Helps you create a better, more efficient study plan. Improves your confidence in your skills and ability to pass the certification exam. Exam Preparation Seminars are available individually, or in convenient Value Packages (which include the Exam Preparation Seminar, and an exam voucher which includes one free-retake if you need it). Currently we are releasing two seminars - one for DBA SQL and one for DBA Administration I. Additional offerings are in process. Find out more: General WEB: Oracle Certification Exam Preparation Seminars VIDEO: Exam Preparation Seminars Promo (1:27) Oracle Database Administration I (11g, 10g) VIDEO: Instructor Introduction (1:08) VIDEO: Sample Video (2:16) Oracle Database SQL VIDEO: Instructor Introduction (1:08) VIDEO: Sample Video (2:16)

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  • parallel_for_each from amp.h – part 1

    - by Daniel Moth
    This posts assumes that you've read my other C++ AMP posts on index<N> and extent<N>, as well as about the restrict modifier. It also assumes you are familiar with C++ lambdas (if not, follow my links to C++ documentation). Basic structure and parameters Now we are ready for part 1 of the description of the new overload for the concurrency::parallel_for_each function. The basic new parallel_for_each method signature returns void and accepts two parameters: a grid<N> (think of it as an alias to extent) a restrict(direct3d) lambda, whose signature is such that it returns void and accepts an index of the same rank as the grid So it looks something like this (with generous returns for more palatable formatting) assuming we are dealing with a 2-dimensional space: // some_code_A parallel_for_each( g, // g is of type grid<2> [ ](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) { // kernel code } ); // some_code_B The parallel_for_each will execute the body of the lambda (which must have the restrict modifier), on the GPU. We also call the lambda body the "kernel". The kernel will be executed multiple times, once per scheduled GPU thread. The only difference in each execution is the value of the index object (aka as the GPU thread ID in this context) that gets passed to your kernel code. The number of GPU threads (and the values of each index) is determined by the grid object you pass, as described next. You know that grid is simply a wrapper on extent. In this context, one way to think about it is that the extent generates a number of index objects. So for the example above, if your grid was setup by some_code_A as follows: extent<2> e(2,3); grid<2> g(e); ...then given that: e.size()==6, e[0]==2, and e[1]=3 ...the six index<2> objects it generates (and hence the values that your lambda would receive) are:    (0,0) (1,0) (0,1) (1,1) (0,2) (1,2) So what the above means is that the lambda body with the algorithm that you wrote will get executed 6 times and the index<2> object you receive each time will have one of the values just listed above (of course, each one will only appear once, the order is indeterminate, and they are likely to call your code at the same exact time). Obviously, in real GPU programming, you'd typically be scheduling thousands if not millions of threads, not just 6. If you've been following along you should be thinking: "that is all fine and makes sense, but what can I do in the kernel since I passed nothing else meaningful to it, and it is not returning any values out to me?" Passing data in and out It is a good question, and in data parallel algorithms indeed you typically want to pass some data in, perform some operation, and then typically return some results out. The way you pass data into the kernel, is by capturing variables in the lambda (again, if you are not familiar with them, follow the links about C++ lambdas), and the way you use data after the kernel is done executing is simply by using those same variables. In the example above, the lambda was written in a fairly useless way with an empty capture list: [ ](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), where the empty square brackets means that no variables were captured. If instead I write it like this [&](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), then all variables in the some_code_A region are made available to the lambda by reference, but as soon as I try to use any of those variables in the lambda, I will receive a compiler error. This has to do with one of the direct3d restrictions, where only one type can be capture by reference: objects of the new concurrency::array class that I'll introduce in the next post (suffice for now to think of it as a container of data). If I write the lambda line like this [=](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), all variables in the some_code_A region are made available to the lambda by value. This works for some types (e.g. an integer), but not for all, as per the restrictions for direct3d. In particular, no useful data classes work except for one new type we introduce with C++ AMP: objects of the new concurrency::array_view class, that I'll introduce in the post after next. Also note that if you capture some variable by value, you could use it as input to your algorithm, but you wouldn’t be able to observe changes to it after the parallel_for_each call (e.g. in some_code_B region since it was passed by value) – the exception to this rule is the array_view since (as we'll see in a future post) it is a wrapper for data, not a container. Finally, for completeness, you can write your lambda, e.g. like this [av, &ar](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) where av is a variable of type array_view and ar is a variable of type array - the point being you can be very specific about what variables you capture and how. So it looks like from a large data perspective you can only capture array and array_view objects in the lambda (that is how you pass data to your kernel) and then use the many threads that call your code (each with a unique index) to perform some operation. You can also capture some limited types by value, as input only. When the last thread completes execution of your lambda, the data in the array_view or array are ready to be used in the some_code_B region. We'll talk more about all this in future posts… (a)synchronous Please note that the parallel_for_each executes as if synchronous to the calling code, but in reality, it is asynchronous. I.e. once the parallel_for_each call is made and the kernel has been passed to the runtime, the some_code_B region continues to execute immediately by the CPU thread, while in parallel the kernel is executed by the GPU threads. However, if you try to access the (array or array_view) data that you captured in the lambda in the some_code_B region, your code will block until the results become available. Hence the correct statement: the parallel_for_each is as-if synchronous in terms of visible side-effects, but asynchronous in reality.   That's all for now, we'll revisit the parallel_for_each description, once we introduce properly array and array_view – coming next. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Gauging Maturity of your BPM Strategy - part 1 / 2

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} In this post I will discuss the essence of maturity assessment and the business imperative for doing the same in the context of BPM. Social psychology purports that an individual progresses from being a beginner to an expert in a given activity or task along four stages of self-awareness: Unconscious Incompetence where the individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit and may even deny the usefulness of the skill. Conscious Incompetence where the individual recognizes the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. Conscious Competence where the individual understands or knows how to do something but demonstrating the skill requires explicit concentration. Unconscious Competence where the individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and serves as a basis of developing other complementary skills. We can extend the above thinking to an organization as a whole by measuring an organization’s level of competence in a specific area or capability, as an aggregate of the competence levels of individuals it is comprised of. After all organizations too like individuals, evolve through experience, develop “memory” and capabilities that are shaped through a constant cycle of learning, un-learning and re-learning. Hence the key to organizational success lies in developing these capabilities to enable execution of its strategy in-line with the external environment i.e. demand, competition, economy etc. However developing a capability merits establishing a base line in order to Assess the magnitude of improvement from past investments Identify gaps and short-comings Prioritize future investments in the right areas A maturity assessment is essentially an organizational self-awareness check that is aimed at depicting the “as-is” snapshot of an existing capability in-order to guide future investments to develop that capability in-line with business goals. This effectively is the essence of a maturity Organizational capabilities stem through its architecture, routines, culture and intellectual resources that are implicitly and explicitly embedded in its business processes. Given that business processes underpin realization of organizational capabilities, is what has prompted business transformation and process management efforts. Thus, the BPM capability of an organization needs to be measured on an on-going basis to ensure delivery of its planned benefits. In my next post I will describe Oracle’s BPM Maturity assessment methodology.

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  • The Solution

    - by Patrick Liekhus
    So I recently attended a class about time management as well as read the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.  Both have been instrumental in helping me get my priorities aligned as well as keep me focused. The reason I bring this up is that it gave me a great idea for a small application with which to create a great technical stack solution that would be easy to demo and explain.  Therefore, the project from this point forward with be the Liekhus.TimeTracker application which will bring some the time management skills that I have acquired into a technical implementation.  The idea is rather simple, but leverages some of the basic principles of Covey along with some of the worksheets that I garnered from class.  The basics are as such: 1) a plan is a must have and 2) write it down!  A plan not written down is just an idea.  How many times have you had an idea that didn’t materialize?  Exactly.  Hence why I am writing it all down now! The worksheet consists of a few simple columns that I will outline below as well as some modifications that I made according to the Covey habits.  The worksheet looks like the following: Status Issue Area CQ Notes P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   The idea is really simple and straightforward; you write down all your tasks and keep track of them along the way.  The status stands for (P)ending, (F)inished or (L)ater.  You write a quick title for the issue and select the CQ (Covey Quadrant) with which the issue occurs.  The notes section is for things that happen while you are working through the issue.  And last, but not least, is the Area column that I added as a way to identify the Role or Area of your life that this task falls within based upon Covey’s teachings. The second part of this application is a simple phone log that allows you to track your phone conversations throughout the day.  All of this is currently done on a sheet of paper, but being involved in technology, I want it to have bells and whistles.  Therefore, this is my simple idea for a project that will allow me to test my theories about coding and implementations.  Stay tuned as the next session will be flushing out the concept and coming up with user stories to begin the SCRUM process. Thanks

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  • Wesquare (NL) helps major CG customer integrating Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with JDEdwards

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE When this well known, Italy based, CG player claimed that they needed a new CRM tool, Oracle partner WeSquare had a precise idea of what would be required, knowing that the customer was using JDEdwards as an ERP: they immediately thoughts about a solution that would help synchronizing the customer’s back-end system with the new CRM interface. The customer asked for presentations from three companies, including Oracle, and eventually selected Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with Alfa Sistemi (Oracle Platinum Partner) as a System Integrator supported by Wesquare (Oracle Gold partner specialized in RightNow). Synchronizing an On Premises ERP with a new SaaS based CRM platform could be seen as an uphill task, but WeSquare was determined, during the presales cycle, to prove that they had the skills and the attitude to make the difference. So, they rolled up their sleeves and got to it: five days of relentless work, missed lunches, and hours of brainstorming showed its result in the form of a new interface that works fabulously well with the JDEdwards ERP back-end and was successfully pitched by Oracle to the end-customer to win the deal! WeSquare took the occasion to learn that they can integrate Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with practically every other solution that a customer may run. As part of the project, WeSquare was also involved in different add-on’s development with the aim of enriching Oracle Service Cloud’s functionality. WeSquare is based in The Netherlands with an in-shore practice supported by off-shore teams in India. WeSquare can integrate and synchronize any application with RightNow. For more information, visit www.wesquare.nl or contact Wiebe Blankenberg (Managing Director) at +31 (0) 6 3632 1104 /* 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-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • As a tooling/automation developer, can I be making better use of OOP?

    - by Tom Pickles
    My time as a developer (~8 yrs) has been spent creating tooling/automation of one sort or another. The tools I develop usually interface with one or more API's. These API's could be win32, WMI, VMWare, a help-desk application, LDAP, you get the picture. The apps I develop could be just to pull back data and store/report. It could be to provision groups of VM's to create live like mock environments, update a trouble ticket etc. I've been developing in .Net and I'm currently reading into design patterns and trying to think about how I can improve my skills to make better use of and increase my understanding of OOP. For example, I've never used an interface of my own making in anger (which is probably not a good thing), because I honestly cannot identify where using one would benefit later on when modifying my code. My classes are usually very specific and I don't create similar classes with similar properties/methods which could use a common interface (like perhaps a car dealership or shop application might). I generally use an n-tier approach to my apps, having a presentation layer, a business logic/manager layer which interfaces with layer(s) that make calls to the API's I'm working with. My business entities are always just method-less container objects, which I populate with data and pass back and forth between my API interfacing layer using static methods to proxy/validate between the front and the back end. My code by nature of my work, has few common components, at least from what I can see. So I'm struggling to see how I can better make use of OOP design and perhaps reusable patterns. Am I right to be concerned that I could be being smarter about how I work, or is what I'm doing now right for my line of work? Or, am I missing something fundamental in OOP? EDIT: Here is some basic code to show how my mgr and api facing layers work. I use static classes as they do not persist any data, only facilitate moving it between layers. public static class MgrClass { public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName) { // Perform logic to validate or apply biz logic // call APIClass to do the work return APIClass.PowerOnVM(VMName); } } public static class APIClass { public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName) { // Calls to 3rd party API to power on a virtual machine // returns true or false if was successful for example } }

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-05

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Why is enterprise software often so complicated? | Rajesh Raheja rraheja.wordpress.com Rajesh Raheja shares "a few examples of requirements that lead to creation of complex platform infrastructures that up the complex enterprise software." Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more | Cole Clark blogs.oracle.com Cole Clark discusses why "higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia." Oracle VM RAC template - what it took | Wim Coekaerts blogs.oracle.com Wim Coekaerts shares an example that shows how easy it is to deploy a complete Oracle RAC cluster with Oracle VM. Oracle Cloud and Oracle Platinum Services Announcements oracle.com Featuring Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd. Wednesday, June 06, 2012. 1:00 p.m. PT – 2:30 p.m. PT Creating an Oracle Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 Application Part 1 : Scoping and Design | Mark Rittman www.rittmanmead.com Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman launches a new series that dives into "the various stages in building a simple Oracle Endeca Information Discovery application, using the recent Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 release." Introducing Decision Tables in the SOA Suite 11g | Lucas Jellama technology.amis.nl Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema demonstrates how "the decision table can be put to good use to implement the business logic behind the classical game of Rock, Paper and Scissors." Application integration: reorganise, recycle, repurpose | Andrew Clarke radiofreetooting.blogspot.com "Integration is a topic which is in everybody's baliwick," says Oracle ACE Andrew Clarke. "The business people want to get the best value from their existing IT investments. The architects need to understand the interfaces between the silos and across the layers. The developers have to implement it." Using XA Transactions in Coherence-based Applications | Jonathan Purdy blogs.oracle.com Purdy shares "a few common approaches when integrating Coherence into applications via the use of an application server's transaction manager." Thought for the Day "The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones..." — John Maynard Keynes (June 5, 1883 - April 4, 1946) Source: Quotations Page

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  • 50 Billion Served: Java Embedded on Devices

    - by Tori Wieldt
    It doesn't matter if it is 50 billion or 24 billion, just suffice it to stay that there will be MANY connected devices in the year 2020. With just 24 billion devices, they will outnumber humans six to one! So as a developer, you don't want to ignore this opportunity. What if you could use your Java skills and deploy an app to a fraction of these devices (don't be greedy, how about just, say, 118,000 of them)? Fareed Suliman, Java ME Product Manager had lots of good news for Java Developers in his presentation Modernizing the Explosion of Advanced Microcontrollers with Embedded Java at ARM TechCon in Santa Clara, CA last week. "A radical architecture shift is underway in this space, from proprietary to standards-based," he explained.  He pointed out several advantages to using Embedded Java for devices: Java is a proven and open standard. Java provides connectivity, encryption, location, and web services APIs. You don't have to focus on and keep reinventing the plumbing below the JVM. Abstracting the software from the hardware allows you to repeat your app across many devices. Abstracting the software from the hardware allows allows parallel development so you can get your app done more quickly. You already know Java (or you can hire lots of Java talent). Java is a full ecosystem, with Java Embedded plugins for IDEs like Eclipse and NetBeans. Java ME allows for in-field software upgrades. Suliman mentioned two ways developers can start using Java Embedded today:  Java ME Embedded Suite 7.0 Oracle Java Embedded Suite is a new packaged solution from Oracle (including Java DB, GlassFish for Embedded Suite, Jersey Web Services Framework, and Oracle Java SE Embedded 7 platform), created to provide value added services for collecting, managing, and transmitting data to embedded devices such as gateways and concentrators. Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is designed and optimized to meet the unique requirements of small embedded, low power devices such as micro-controllers and other resource-constrained hardware without screens or user interfaces. Think tiny. Really tiny. And think big.  Read more about Java Embedded at the Oracle Technology Network, and read The Java Source blog Java Embedded Releases from September.

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  • My co-worker has not been doing such a good job for the past decade. What do I do? [closed]

    - by stijn
    Possible Duplicate: How do I approach a coworker about his or her code quality? I started working with him almost a decade ago and back then I had never really programmed before, being a young hardware engineer. Right now however I have made quite some progress in all areas being part of software design and i am much, much more skilled than my co-worker who is 15 years older and has been programming more than twice as long. He is super nice and definitely smart enough, but lately his lack of skill and performance are starting to drag me down because we're more and more working on the same codebase. And soon we are going to do a quite ambitious start from scratch creating a whole new hard/software system. I feel it is time to address all issues now, but i do not know how to start. Here are some of the things that I would like to see him improve on: no consistent usage of style, spaces nor tabs (eg if(something ) a =b ) adds newlines around pieces of code to make it easier to read, then commits those with messages like 'no changes made' overall commit messages are useless and so are most of the comments, if there are any (eg 'remove solves for bug Rik' if Rik reported a bug). There is no function/class documentation. lots of spelling errors, in both English and native language, which sometimes are mixed 6/7/8 level deep deep nesting is no exception, a lot of functions start with one level already like if(ptr!=Null){ even when ptr is the result of allocation via new in the constructor numerous source files have over 10k lines of those lines, a major part is simply a result of copy-pasting functionality instead of using a function. This includes copying comments so we end up with 50 occurrences of var=NULL; //TODO TEST this!!!!!!! another part is hundreds of lines of dead code knows what versioning does, yet comments out old code and places new code underneath it when making changes coding skills are below par, especially for the type of rather high precision applications we do. Yet somehow, after a lot of trying and testing, stuff starts to work. But then breaks again some time later because every change casues a waterfall effect. violates every single item in the C++ FAQ lite, practices every bad practice I can think of still doesn't know how to properly use the debugger, but spends hours inspecting messy logfiles in notepad on a tiny laptop screen. Does not make any adjustments to the settings of the software he uses. Never uses keyboard shortcuts. does not seem to progress or learn new things at all. Work rather slow, mostly due to the lack of planning and incorrect usage of tools. How does one deal with this? For starters, how do I make him aware of all these problems? Should I tell the staff about it? And the next step, how to get him to learn new things and adopt another way of working?

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  • On the art of self-promotion

    - by Tony Davis
    I attended Brent Ozar's Building the Fastest SQL Servers session at Tech Ed last week, and found myself engulfed in a 'perfect storm' of excellent technical and presentational skills coupled with an astute awareness of the value of promoting one's work. I spend a lot of time at such events talking to developers and DBAs about the value of blogging and writing articles, and my impression is that some could benefit from a touch less modesty and a little more self-promotion. I sense a reticence in many would-be writers. Is what I have to say important enough? Haven't far more qualified and established commentators, MVPs and so on, already said it? While it's a good idea to pick reasonably fresh and interesting topics, it's more important not to let such fears lead to writer's block. In the eyes of any future employer, your published writing is an extension of your resume. They will not care that a certain MVP knows how to solve problem x, but they will be very interested to see that you have tackled that same problem, and solved it in your own way, and described the process in your own voice. In your current job, your writing is one of the ways you can express to your peers, and to the organization as a whole, the value of what you contribute. Many Developers and DBAs seem to rely on the idea that their work will speak for itself, and that their skill shines out from it. Unfortunately, this isn't always true. Many Development DBAs, for example, will be painfully aware of the massive effort involved in tuning and adding resilience to rapidly developed applications. However, others in the organization who are unaware of what's involved in getting an application that is 'done' ready for production may dismiss such efforts as fussiness or conservatism. At the dark end of the development cycle, chickens come home to roost, but their droppings tend to land on those trying to clear up the mess. My advice is this: next time you fix a bug or improve the resilience or performance of a database or application, make sure that you use team meetings, informal discussions and so on to ensure that people understand what the problem was and what you had to do to fix it. Use your blog to describe, generally, the process you adopted, the resources you used and the insights that came from your work. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. By spreading the art of self-promotion to everyone involved in an IT project, we get a better idea of the extent of the work and the value of the contribution of all the team members. As always, we'd love to hear what you think. This very week, Simple-talk launches its new blogging platform. If any of this has moved you to 'throw your hat into the ring', drop us a mail at [email protected]. Cheers, Tony.

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  • How do I maintain a really poorly written code base?

    - by onlineapplab.com
    Recently I got hired to work on existing web application because of NDA I'm not at liberty to disclose any details but this application is working online in sort of a beta testing stage before official launch. We have a few hundred users right now but this number is supposed to significantly increase after official launch. The application is written in PHP (but it is irrelevant to my question) and is running on a dual xeon processor standalone server with severe performance problems. I have seen a lot of bad PHP code but this really sets new standards, especially knowing how much time and money was invested in developing it. it is as badly coded as possible there is PHP, HTML, SQL mixed together and code is repeated whenever it is necessary (especially SQL queries). there are not any functions used, not mentioning any OOP there are four versions of the app (desktop, iPhone, Android + other mobile) each version has pretty much the same functionality but was created by copying the whole code base, so now there are some differences between each version and it is really hard to maintain the database is really badly designed, which is causing severe performance problems also for fixing some errors in PHP code there is a lot of database triggers used which are updating data on SELECT and on INSERT so any testing is a nightmare Basically, any sin of a bad programming you can imagine is there for example it is not only possible to use SQL injections in literally every place but you can log into app if you use a login which doesn't exist and an empty password. The team which created this app is not working on it any more and there is an outsourced team which suggested that there are some problems but was never willing to deal with the elephant in the room partially because they've got a very comfortable contract and partially due to lack of skills (just my opinion). My job was supposed to be fixing some performance problems and extending existing functionality but first thing I was asked to do was a review of the existing code base. I've made my review and it was quite a shock for the management but my conclusions were after some time finally confirmed by other programmers. Management made it clear that it is not possible to start rewriting this app from scratch (which in my opinion should be done). We have to maintain its operable state and at the same time fix performance errors and extend the functionality. My question is, as I don't want just to patch the existing code, how to transform this into properly written app while keeping the existing code working at the same time? My plan is: Unify four existing versions into common code base (fixing only most obvious errors). Redesign db and use triggers to populate it with data (so data will be maintained in two formats at the same time) All new functionality will be written as separate project. Step by step transfer existing functionality into the new project After some time everything will be in the new project Some explanation about #2, right now it is practically impossible to make any updates in existing db any change requires reviewing whole code and making changes in many places. Is such plan feasible at all? Another solution is to walk away and leave the headache to someone else.

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  • Keep Learning After Your Oracle Training Class is Over - Save 50%!

    - by KJones
    Written by Amit Kumar, Senior Director Oracle University Digital Training        Every training class you take about the latest Oracle application or technology moves you closer to developing the skills you need to succeed. But after class is over, how do you keep up with today’s accelerating pace of innovation? To   To keep with the very latest technological advances, you need an ongoing and flexible training solution.       One that lets you learn during your own downtime.       Knowledge that’s easy to access.       Interactive lessons where you connect with experts.       A simple way to increase your knowledge, on your own time and at your own pace. The new Oracle Learning Streams is the flexible training solution you're looking for. Continuously Learn with Oracle Learning Streams Over time, Oracle Learning Streams help you develop the depth and breadth of knowledge that will give you the tools to become an expert in your field. By taking advantage of comprehensive and frequently updated information, you can keep learning continuously, at your own pace, when it's convenient for you. Sign up today and get 12 months of unlimited access to: •    Hundreds of videos delivered by Oracle experts for fresh and continuous product learning•    Live connections with Oracle's top instructors•    Robust video search capability to find exactly what you’re looking for•    Features that allow you to build your own custom learning queue and request new content Oracle Learning Streams are now available for Oracle Database and Oracle Middleware. Take a moment to preview the content now.  For a Limited Time - Save 50% For a limited time, save 50% when you order Oracle Learning Streams with any other Oracle Classroom, Live Virtual Class or Training On Demand course. Now there is no reason for learning to stop when class is over!

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  • Which programming language to get into?

    - by user602479
    I'm ending my third term in a few weeks so I have some spare time coming up. I'd like to spend it seriously digging into programming. My problem: I'm not sure which language to begin with. Just to be clear, I don't want to start a language-y-compared-to-language-z discussion. There are a some other issues that play a major role. In my 5th term I'm going to be participating in a major practical course which will include either Java or C programming. It will take a lot of time and energy, as I found out while talking to a few students who passed the final exams (only 15% pass on their first try). Which practical course I will take is randomly decided. My skills so far are the absolute basics of Java and C programming. I know the different data types and how to handle them, objects, pointers, thread programming, etc. All of that is on a very low level, though. My question now is, what language should I start seriously practicing? Java: I did my first GUIs with this language. I'm familiar with Eclipse but I need a project to work on (which I don't have) to really keep me pushing. Besides that, I don't think it would help me if I have to do C in a year. C: As with Java, I can't think of a personal project to keep me working and keep me interested in programming. If I get assigned to Java in a year, this wouldn't give me any advantages either, would it? (No objects, etc.) Objective-C: I recently came up with this idea. I have a Mac; I'm not really familiar with Xcode but I have one or two personal projects I'd like to work on. Further, I would be working with objects (as in Java) and C language constructs which would both be great for this practical course in a year. What do you think I should begin with? Should I just stick to Java and hope for the best, force myself through C or start (nearly) completely from the beginning with Objective C? Maybe you folks could give me some good advice that would stop me from switching from one language to the next?

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  • Professional immigration

    - by etranger
    Hello all, Does anyone here have a practical advice on professional relocation from Russia to Europe? The reasons behind making such a decision are far beyond the subject, perhaps, so I'll stick to the practical part. Having done some of the "common stuff" for finding a job, I am now facing two serious problems: I am a "dual-class" person, with university degree in marketing, and multiple years of self-studied computer competence (hence my writing here). Have professional experience in both areas. I don't currently hold a European work permit. From what I can see, this results in normal HR person throwing out my CV as either being "overqualified" or "too much trouble with making the permit". I do have the skills and character to start my own business, but it requires start-up capital that I don't have, over the last years I had to pay high bills for medical treatment of my family member, who had deceased. Now, I'm almost out of debts. As you can probably guess, English is not a problem, and I'm open to new languages, but first steps of entering the market, or the society, is the problematic part. I live close to Norway, and am trying to get some professional contacts there, but it hasn't got me any practical perspective so far. Any advice is greatly appreciated. EDIT: I am currently making my living off web site development, and occasional consulting services both in IT and marketing. For purely geographic reasons I'm dealing with clients that reside in the same city where I live, pop. 350 000. Being quite local, market requirements for web sites are simple and stable — clients need to control navigation, write articles in a word-like editor, upload illustrations and place ad banners, all with no additional programming. As many web developers do, I'm using my own content management system that fits these expectations. I have also started developing a newer version of this system that has better support for international environments, but I'm too distant from the real market demand in Europe to speak of the right track here. Technically it's based on php/mysql and uses xslt for templating. It allows for quick website deployment, and has architectural neatness, lack of which made me abandon similar opensource solutions (Joomla and the like). Deploying time from rasterized design proofs is normally under 6-8 working hours, don't know how that compares to the world practice. EDIT 2: Can anyone share what Norwegian (Scandinavian) web solutions market currently demands?

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  • MVC Razor Engine For Beginners Part 1

    - by Humprey Cogay, C|EH, E|CSA
    I. What is MVC? a. http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/older-versions/overview/asp-net-mvc-overview II. Software Requirements for this tutorial a. Visual Studio 2010/2012. You can get your free copy here Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 b. MVC Framework Option 1 - Install using a standalone installer http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30683 Option 2 - Install using Web Platform Installer http://www.microsoft.com/web/handlers/webpi.ashx?command=getinstallerredirect&appid=MVC4VS2010_Loc III. Creating your first MVC4 Application a. On the Visual Studio click file new solution link b. Click Other Project Type>Visual Studio Solutions and on the templates window select blank solution and let us name our solution MVCPrimer. c. Now Click File>New and select Project d. Select Visual C#>Web> and select ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application and Enter MyWebSite as Name e. Select Empty, Razor as view engine and uncheck Create a Unit test project f. You can now view a basic MVC 4 Application Structure on your solution explorer g. Now we will add our first controller by right clicking on the controllers folder on your solution explorer and select Add>Controller h. Change the name of the controller to HomeController and under the scaffolding options select Empty MVC Controller. i. You will now see a basic controller with an Index method that returns an ActionResult j. We will now add a new View Folder for our Home Controller. Right click on the views folder on your solution explorer and select Add> New Folder> and name this folder Home k. Add a new View by right clicking on Views>Home Folder and select Add View. l. Name the view Index, and select Razor(CSHTML) as View Engine, All checkbox should be unchecked for now and click add. m. Relationship between our HomeController and Home Views Sub Folder n. Add new HTML Contents to our newly created Index View o. Press F5 to run our MVC Application p. We will create our new model, Right click on the models folder of our solution explorer and select Add> Class. q. Let us name our class Customer r. Edit the Customer class with the following code s. Open the HomeController by double clickin HomeController of our Controllers folder and edit the HomeControllerusing System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Mvc;   namespace MyWebSite.Controllers {     public class HomeController : Controller     {         //         // GET: /Home/           public ActionResult Index()         {             return View();         }           public ActionResult ListCustomers()         {             List<Models.Customer> customers = new List<Models.Customer>();               //Add First Customer to Our Collection             customers.Add(new Models.Customer()                     {                         Id = 1,                         CompanyName = "Volvo",                         ContactNo = "123-0123-0001",                         ContactPerson = "Gustav Larson",                         Description = "Volvo Car Corporation, or Volvo Personvagnar AB, is a Scandinavian automobile manufacturer founded in 1927"                     });                 //Add Second Customer to Our Collection             customers.Add(new Models.Customer()                     {                         Id = 2,                         CompanyName = "BMW",                         ContactNo = "999-9876-9898",                         ContactPerson = "Franz Josef Popp",                         Description = "Bayerische Motoren Werke AG,  (BMW; English: Bavarian Motor Works) is a " +                                       "German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1917. "                     });                 //Add Third Customer to Our Collection             customers.Add(new Models.Customer()             {                 Id = 3,                 CompanyName = "Audi",                 ContactNo = "983-2222-1212",                 ContactPerson = "Karl Benz",                 Description = " is a multinational division of the German manufacturer Daimler AG,"             });               return View(customers);         }     } } t. Let us now create a view for this Class, But before continuing Press Ctrl + Shift + B to rebuild the solution, this will make the previously created model on the Model class drop down of the Add View Menu. Right click on the views>Home folder and select Add>View u. Let us name our View as ListCustomers, Select Razor(CSHTML) as View Engine, Put a check mark on Create a strongly-typed view, and select Customer (MyWebSite.Models) as model class. Slect List on the Scaffold Template and Click OK. v. Run the MVC Application by pressing F5, and on the address bar insert Home/ListCustomers, We should now see a web page similar below.   x. You can edit ListCustomers.CSHTML to remove and add HTML codes @model IEnumerable<MyWebSite.Models.Customer>   @{     Layout = null; }   <!DOCTYPE html>   <html> <head>     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />     <title>ListCustomers</title> </head> <body>     <h2>List of Customers</h2>     <table border="1">         <tr>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.CompanyName)             </th>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Description)             </th>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.ContactPerson)             </th>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.ContactNo)             </th>         </tr>         @foreach (var item in Model) {         <tr>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.CompanyName)             </td>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Description)             </td>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.ContactPerson)             </td>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.ContactNo)             </td>                   </tr>     }         </table> </body> </html> y. Press F5 to run the MVC Application   z. You will notice some @HTML.DisplayFor codes. These are called HTML Helpers you can read more about HTML Helpers on this site http://www.w3schools.com/aspnet/mvc_htmlhelpers.asp   That’s all. You now have your first MVC4 Razor Engine Web Application . . .

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  • career planning advice [closed]

    - by JDB
    Possible Duplicate: Are certifications worth it? I am at the point in my career where people start to veer off into either management-type roles or they focus on solidifying their technical skills to stay in the development game for the long-haul. Here's my story: I've got a degree in economics, an MA in Political Science and an MBA in Finance and Management. In addition, I've done coursework in advanced math and software development (although no degree in math or software). All-in-all, I've got 13 years of post-secondary education under my belt. I, however, currently work as a software developer using C# for desktop, Silverlight, Flex and javascript for web, and objective c for mobile. I've been in software development for the past 3.3 years, and it seems like it comes pretty easy to me. I work in a field called "geospatial information systems," which just involves customization and manipulation of geospatial data. Right now I am looking at one of several certifications. Given this background, which of these certifications has the highest ceiling? CFA PMP various development/technological certifications from Microsoft, etc. Other? My academic and work experience are all heavy on the analytical/development side, esp. so given the MBA and the B.S. in Econ. The political science degree was really a lot of stats. So it seems that I would be good pursuing more of the CFA/analytical role. This is a difficult path, however, because I have no work experience in the financial sector, and the developers in finance are all "quants," which again, I am OK with, but I haven't done much statistical modeling in the past 3.3 years. The PMP would require knowledge of best practices as it pertains explicitly to software development. I also don't enjoy a lot of business travel, a common theme for most PMP jobs I've seen. If certifications is the route, which would you recommend? Anything else? I've thought about going back to try to knock out a B.S. in C.S., but I wasn't sure how long that would take, or what would be involved. Thoughts or recommendations? Thanks in advance! I turn 32 this weekend, which is what has forced me to think about these issues.

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  • Some Problems Can't Be Outsourced

    - by mikef
    More and more companies are becoming attracted to the idea of Infrastructure as a Service (or IaaS). It would seem that you can outsource the provisioning and management of your services, encompassing everything from Email, through to your servers, workstations and software, all the way down to your LAN and internet services. This type of outsourcing can be a very attractive option for companies who have tight budgets who are short of technical skills or don't have the means to provide long-term IT support. Essentially, they can outsource your services at low short-term costs that are knowable and controllable, are quickly and easily scalable, and generate a minimum of hassle for your internal staff. If you want to get a sophisticated IT infrastructure set up in a hurry without the usual high buy-in costs, or the task of finding and hiring the right specialists. It would seem the way to go, particularly when their salesmen are hypnotizing you with oleaginous phrases such as "we are closely aligned with our client organization's core business requirements, providing agile services". It sounds too good to be true, and so it is. Whereas the costs will have initially been calculated on the annual renewal fees and service fees for ongoing support, there are other charges too which aren't so obvious. It can end up costing far more than the conventional solution once you take into account the extra costs, the fees for customization and upgrades. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) only becomes apparent when it is too late to extract the company easily from the arrangement. After a few years, these annual fees can add up to more than the initial cost of implementing a traditional in-house system. Worse than that is that you can then lose your power to determine your priorities: When you become reliant on this company, with its own schedule of priorities, to implement every change, however simple, you have effectively lost control of your technical infrastructure. This will make senior management very nervous. There is definitely a requirement for this sort of service. If you urgently need an exceptionally high class of service or more expertise than you currently possess, then outsourcing is probably for you. You and your IT colleagues will always have something to do, be it user assistance, smoothing out integrations with an external provider, or working on something entirely new. Heck, if you outsource to IBM, the SysAdmins can go along for the ride and polish their expertise. What you need to figure out is how much your time is worth, because time is ultimately all that outsourcing will buy you and your organization. Now you just need to convince your nervous CEO. Cheers, Michael

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  • Is Innovation Dead?

    - by wulfers
    My question is has innovation died?  For large businesses that do not have a vibrant, and fearless leadership (see Apple under Steve jobs), I think is has.  If you look at the organizational charts for many of the large corporate megaliths you will see a plethora of middle managers who are so risk averse that innovation (any change involves risk) is choked off since there are no innovation champions in the middle layers.  And innovation driven top down can only happen when you have a visionary in the top ranks, and that is also very rare.So where is actual innovation happening, at the bottom layer, the people who live in the trenches…   The people who live for a challenge. So how can big business leverage this innovation layer?  Remove the middle management layer.   Provide an innovation champion who has an R&D budget and is tasked with working with the bottom layer of a company, the engineers, developers  and business analysts that live on the edge (Where the corporate tires meet the road). Here are two innovation failures I will tell you about, and both have been impacted by a company so risk averse it is starting to fail in its primary business ventures: This company initiated an innovation process several years ago.  The process was driven companywide with team managers being the central points of collection of innovative ideas.  These managers were given no budget to do anything with these ideas.  There was no process or incentive for these managers to drive it about their team.  This lasted close to a year and the innovation program slowly slipped into oblivion…. A second example:  This same company failed an attempt to market a consumer product in a line where there was already a major market leader.  This product was under development for several years and needed to provide some major device differentiation form the current market leader.  This same company had a large Lead Technologist community made up of real innovators in all areas of technology.  Did this same company leverage the skills and experience of this internal community,   NO!!! So to wrap this up, if large companies really want to survive, then they need to start acting like a small company.  Support those innovators and risk takers!  Reward them by implementing their innovative ideas.  Champion (from the top down) innovation (found at the bottom) in your companies.  Remember if you stand still you are really falling behind.Do it now!  Take a risk!

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  • Adventures in Windows 8: Working around the navigation animation issues in LayoutAwarePage

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    LayoutAwarePage is a pretty cool add-on to Windows 8 apps, which facilitates greatly the implementation of orientation-aware (portrait, landscape) as well as state-aware (snapped, filled, fullscreen) apps. It has however a few issues that are obvious when you use transformed elements on your page. Adding a LayoutAwarePage to your application If you start with a blank app, the MainPage is a vanilla Page, with no such feature. In order to have a LayoutAwarePage into your app, you need to add this class (and a few helpers) with the following operation: Right click on the Solution and select Add, New Item from the context menu. From the dialog, select a Basic Page (not a Blank Page, which is another vanilla page). If you prefer, you can also use Split Page, Items Page, Item Detail Page, Grouped Items Page or Group Detail Page which are all LayoutAwarePages. Personally I like to start with a Basic Page, which gives me more creative freedom. Adding this new page will cause Visual Studio to show a prompt asking you for permission to add additional helper files to the Common folder. One of these helpers in the LayoutAwarePage class, which is where the magic happens. LayoutAwarePage offers some help for the detection of orientation and state (which makes it a pleasure to design for all these scenarios in Blend, by the way) as well as storage for the navigation state (more about that in a future article). Issue with LayoutAwarePage When you use UI elements such as a background picture, a watermark label, logos, etc, it is quite common to do a few things with those: Making them partially transparent (this is especially true for background pictures; for instance I really like a black Page background with a half transparent picture placed on top of it). Transforming them, for instance rotating them a bit, scaling them, etc. Here is an example with a picture of my two beautiful daughters in the Bird Park in Kuala Lumpur, as well as a transformed TextBlock. The image has an opacity of 40% and the TextBlock a simple RotateTransform. If I create an application with a MainPage that navigates to this LayoutAwarePage, however, I will have a very annoying effect: The background picture appears with an Opacity of 100%. The TextBlock is not rotated. This lasts only for less than a second (during the navigation animation) before the elements “snap into place” and get their desired effect. Here is the XAML that cause the annoying effect: <common:LayoutAwarePage x:Name="pageRoot" x:Class="App13.BasicPage1" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:common="using:App13.Common" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d"> <Grid Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootStyle}"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="140" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Image Source="Assets/el20120812025.jpg" Stretch="UniformToFill" Opacity="0.4" Grid.RowSpan="2" /> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Button x:Name="backButton" Click="GoBack" IsEnabled="{Binding Frame.CanGoBack, ElementName=pageRoot}" Style="{StaticResource BackButtonStyle}" /> <TextBlock x:Name="pageTitle" Grid.Column="1" Text="Welcome" Style="{StaticResource PageHeaderTextStyle}" /> </Grid> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Center" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="Welcome to my Windows 8 Application" Grid.Row="1" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" FontFamily="Segoe UI Light" FontSize="70" FontWeight="Light" TextAlignment="Center" Foreground="#FFFFA200" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5" UseLayoutRounding="False" d:LayoutRounding="Auto" Margin="0,0,0,153"> <TextBlock.RenderTransform> <CompositeTransform Rotation="-6.545" /> </TextBlock.RenderTransform> </TextBlock> <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> [...] </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> </Grid> </common:LayoutAwarePage> Solving the issue In order to solve this “snapping” issue, the solution is to wrap the elements that are transformed into an empty Grid. Honestly, to me it sounds like a bug in the LayoutAwarePage navigation animation, but thankfully the workaround is not that difficult: Simple change the main Grid as follows: <Grid Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootStyle}"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="140" /> <RowDefinition Height="*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid Grid.RowSpan="2"> <Image Source="Assets/el20120812025.jpg" Stretch="UniformToFill" Opacity="0.4" /> </Grid> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Button x:Name="backButton" Click="GoBack" IsEnabled="{Binding Frame.CanGoBack, ElementName=pageRoot}" Style="{StaticResource BackButtonStyle}" /> <TextBlock x:Name="pageTitle" Grid.Column="1" Text="Welcome" Style="{StaticResource PageHeaderTextStyle}" /> </Grid> <Grid Grid.Row="1"> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Center" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="Welcome to my Windows 8 Application" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" FontFamily="Segoe UI Light" FontSize="70" FontWeight="Light" TextAlignment="Center" Foreground="#FFFFA200" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5" UseLayoutRounding="False" d:LayoutRounding="Auto" Margin="0,0,0,153"> <TextBlock.RenderTransform> <CompositeTransform Rotation="-6.545" /> </TextBlock.RenderTransform> </TextBlock> </Grid> <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> [...] </Grid> Hopefully this will help a few people, I banged my head on the wall for a while before someone at Microsoft pointed me to the solution ;) Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • returning a heap block by reference in c++

    - by basicR
    I was trying to brush up my c++ skills. I got 2 functions: concat_HeapVal() returns the output heap variable by value concat_HeapRef() returns the output heap variable by reference When main() runs it will be on stack,s1 and s2 will be on stack, I pass the value by ref only and in each of the below functions, I create a variable on heap and concat them. When concat_HeapVal() is called it returns me the correct output. When concat_HeapRef() is called it returns me some memory address (wrong output). Why? I use new operator in both the functions. Hence it allocates on heap. So when I return by reference, heap will still be VALID even when my main() stack memory goes out of scope. So it's left to OS to cleanup the memory. Right? string& concat_HeapRef(const string& s1, const string& s2) { string *temp = new string(); temp->append(s1); temp->append(s2); return *temp; } string* concat_HeapVal(const string& s1, const string& s2) { string *temp = new string(); temp->append(s1); temp->append(s2); return temp; } int main() { string s1,s2; string heapOPRef; string *heapOPVal; cout<<"String Conact Experimentations\n"; cout<<"Enter s-1 : "; cin>>s1; cout<<"Enter s-2 : "; cin>>s2; heapOPRef = concat_HeapRef(s1,s2); heapOPVal = concat_HeapVal(s1,s2); cout<<heapOPRef<<" "<<heapOPVal<<" "<<endl; return -9; }

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  • Turn-Based RPG Battle Instance Layout For Larger Groups

    - by SoulBeaver
    What a title, eh? I'm currently designing a videogame; a turn-based RPG like Final Fantasy (because everybody knows Final Fantasy). It's a 2D sprite game. These are my ideas for combat: -The player has a group of 15 members (main character included) -During battle, five of the group are designated as active, and appear in the battle. -These five may be switched out at leisure, or when one of the five die. -At any time, the Waiting members can cast buffs, be healed by the active members, or perform special attacks. -Battles should contain 10+ monsters at least. I'm aiming for 20, but I'm not sure if that's possible yet. -Battles should feel larger than normal due to the interaction of Waiting members, active members and the increased amount of monsters per battle. -The player has two rows in which to put the Active members: front and back. -Depending on the implementation, I might allow comboing of player attacks and skills. These are just design ideas, so beware! I have not been able to test this out yet- I have no idea yet if any of these ideas bunched together will make for a compelling game. What sounds good on paper doesn't necessarily have to be good in practice! What I'm asking now is how to create the layout for this. My starting point are the battles in Final Fantasy VI, with up to 5-6 monsters on the left and the characters on the right- monsters on both sides if it's a pincer attack. However, this view would not work feasible with my goal of 20 monsters and 5 characters. All the monsters on the left would appear cluttered unless I scale them far far back. If I create a pincer-like map, then there would be no real pincer-attack possible. If I space the monsters out I force the player to scroll the screen- a game mechanic I've come across and not enjoyed imho. My question is: does anybody have any layouts or guides for designing battle maps in turn-based RPGs, especially with a larger number of enemies taken into consideration? How should it look? I am not asking for specific combat mechanics, just the layout for the moment.

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  • I didn't mean to become a database developer, but now I am. Should I stop or try to get better?

    - by pretlow majette
    20 years ago I couldn't afford even a cheap POS program when I opened my first surf shop in the Virgin Islands. I bought a copy of Paradox (remember that?) in 1990 and spent months in a back room scratching out a POS application. Over many iterations, including a switch to Access (2000)/SQL Server (2003), I built a POS and backoffice solution that runs four stores with multiple cash registers, a warehouse and office. Until recently, all my stores were connected to the same LAN (in a small shopping center) and performance wasn't an issue. Now that we've opened a location in the States that's changed. Connecting to my local server via the internet has slowed that locations application to a crawl. This is partly due to the slow and crappy dsl service we have in the Virgin Islands, and partly due to my less-than-professional code and sql. With other far-away stores in the works, I need a better solution. I like my application. My staff knows it well, and I'm not inclined to take on the expense of a proper commercial solution. So where does that leave me? I should probably host my sql online to sidestep the slow dsl here. I think I can handle cleaning up my SQL querries to speed that up a bit. What about Access? My version seems so old, but I don't like the newer versions with the 'ribbon'. There are so many options... Should I be learning Visual Studio with an eye on moving completely to the web? Will my VBA skills help me at all there? I don't have the luxury of a year at the keyboard to figure it out anymore. What about dotnetnuke, sharepoint, or lightswitch? They all seem like possibilities, but even understanding their capabilities is daunting. I'm pretty deep into it, but maybe I should bail and hire a consultant or programmer. That sounds expensive tho, and there's no guarantee there either... Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Or, if anybody is interested in buying a small chain of surf shops...

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  • Complete Beginner to Game Programming and Unreal Engine 4, Looking For Advice [on hold]

    - by onemic
    I am currently a 2nd year programming student(Just finished my first year so I will be starting my second year in September) and have mainly learned C and C++ in my classes. In terms of what I know of C++, I know about general inheritance, polymorphism, overloading operators, iterators, a little bit about templates(only class and function templates) etc. but not of the more advanced topics like linked lists and other sequential containers(containers in general I guess), enumerations, most of the standard library(other than like strings and vectors), and probably a bunch of other stuff I dont even know about yet. I subscribed to Unreal Engine 4 as I was very intrigued by their Unreal Tournament announcement earlier this month, especially after hearing that UE4 is going completely C++. Of course my end goal in doing this programming program is to eventually go into game/graphics programming. Since it's my summer off, I thought what better way then to actually apply some of my skills to a personal project so I actually have a firmer understanding of C++ past what my professors tell me. My questions are this: What would be the best way to start off making a small personal game in UE4 as a project for the summer? What should I be aiming for, especially for someone that is still learning C++? Should I focus on making a simple 2D game rather than a 3D one to get started? Seeing the Flappy Chicken showcase intrigued me because before I thought the UE engine was pretty much pigeonholed into being for FPS games What should my expectations be going into UE4 and a game engine for the first time?(UE4 will be my first foray into making a game) What can I expect to gain from making things in UE4, in terms of making games and in terms of further fleshing out my knowledge of C++? Would you recommend I start off 100% using C++ for scripting or using the visual blueprints? Since I'm not a designer, how would I be able to add objects and designs to my game? For someone at my level is retaining the UE4 subscription worth it or is it better to cancel and resub when I learn enough about UE4 and C++? Lastly is there anything to be gained in terms of knowledge/insight through me looking at the source code for UE4? I opened it in VS2013, but noticed that most of the files were C# files and not cpp's. Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer.

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