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• Maintainability of Boolean logic - Is nesting if statements needed?

  - by Vaccano

  Which of these is better for maintainability? if (byteArrayVariable != null) if (byteArrayVariable .Length != 0) //Do something with byteArrayVariable OR if ((byteArrayVariable != null) && (byteArrayVariable.Length != 0)) //Do something with byteArrayVariable I prefer reading and writing the second, but I recall reading in code complete that doing things like that is bad for maintainability. This is because you are relying on the language to not evaluate the second part of the if if the first part is false and not all languages do that. (The second part will throw an exception if evaluated with a null byteArrayVariable.) I don't know if that is really something to worry about or not, and I would like general feedback on the question. Thanks.

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• My Last "Catch-Up" Post for 2010 Content

  - by KKline

  I did a lot of writing in 2010. Unfortunately, I didn't do a good job of keeping all of that writing equally distributed throughout all of the channels where I'm active. So here are a few more posts from my blog, put on-line during the months of November and December 2010, that I didn't get posted here on SQLBlog.com: 1. It's Time to Upgrade! So many of my customers and many of you, dear readers, are still on SQL Server 2005. Join Kevin Kline , SQL Server MVP and SQL Server Technology Strategist...(read more)

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• Algorithm for dynamically calculating a level based on experience points?

  - by George

  One of the struggles I've always had in game development is deciding how to implement experience points attributed to gaining a level. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to gaining a level in many of the games I've played, so I assume they have a static dictionary table which contains experience points vs. the level. e.g. Experience Level 0 1 100 2 175 3 280 4 800 5 ...There isn't a rhyme or reason why 280 points is equal to level 4, it just is. I'm not sure how those levels are decided, but it certainly wouldn't be dynamic. I've also thought about the possibility of exponential levels, as not to have to keep a separate lookup table, e.g. Experience Level 0 1 100 2 200 3 400 4 800 5 1600 6 3200 7 6400 8 ...but that seems like it would grow out of control rather quickly, as towards the upper levels, the enemies in the game would have to provide a whopping amount of experience to level -- and that would be to difficult to control. Leveling would become an impossible task. Does anyone have any pointers, or methods they use to decide how to level a character based on experience? I want to be fair in leveling and I want to stay ahead of the players as not to worry about constantly adding new experience/level lookups.

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• MiniMax not working properly(for checkers game)

  - by engineer

  I am creating a checkers game but My miniMax is not functioning properly,it is always switching between two positions for its move(index 20 and 17).Here is my code: public double MiniMax(int[] board, int depth, int turn, int red_best, int black_best) { int source; int dest; double MAX_SCORE=-INFINITY,newScore; int MAX_DEPTH=3; int[] newBoard=new int[32]; generateMoves(board,turn); System.arraycopy(board, 0, newBoard, 0, 32); if(depth==MAX_DEPTH) { return Evaluation(turn,board);} for(int z=0;z<possibleMoves.size();z+=2){ source=Integer.parseInt(possibleMoves.elementAt(z).toString()); System.out.println("SOURCE= "+source); dest=Integer.parseInt(possibleMoves.elementAt(z+1).toString());//(int[])possibleMoves.elementAt(z+1); System.out.println("DEST = "+dest); applyMove(newBoard,source,dest); newScore=MiniMax(newBoard,depth+1,opponent(turn),red_best, black_best); if(newScore>MAX_SCORE) {MAX_SCORE=newScore;maxSource=source; maxDest=dest;}//maxSource and maxDest will be used to perform the move. if (MAX_SCORE > black_best) { if (MAX_SCORE >= red_best) break; /* alpha_beta cutoff */ else black_best = (int) MAX_SCORE; //the_score } if (MAX_SCORE < red_best) { if (MAX_SCORE<= black_best) break; /* alpha_beta cutoff */ else red_best = (int) MAX_SCORE; //the_score } }//for ends return MAX_SCORE; } //end minimax I am unable to find out the logical mistake. Any idea what's going wrong?

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• Windows Live Writer Code Snippet Plugin

  - by schnieds

  I love Windows Live Writer as a blogging application and use it pretty much exclusively for writing my blog posts. The only downside is that I have found it difficult to get code snippets formatted correctly in my posts. Luckily a friend of mine, Tyson Swing, turned me on to a great code snippet plugin for Windows Live writer.[Read More]Aaron Schniederhttp://www.churchofficeonline.com

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• What is the best way to diagrammatically represent a system threading architecture?

  - by thegreendroid

  I am yet to find the perfect way to diagrammatically represent the overall threading architecture for a system (using UML or otherwise). I am after a diagramming technique that would show all the threads in a given system and how they interact with each other. There are a few similar questions - Drawing Thread Interaction, UML Diagrams of Multithreaded Applications and Intuitive UML Approach to Depict Threads but they don't fully answer my question. What are some of the techniques that you've found useful to depict the overall threading architecture for a system?

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• How to manage long running background threads and report progress with DDD

  - by Mr Happy

  Title says most of it. I have found surprising little information about this. I have a long running operation of which the user wants to see the progress (as in, item x of y processed). I also need to be able to pause and stop the operation. (Stopping doesn't rollback the items already processed.) The thing is, it's not that each item takes a long time to get processed, it's that that there are usually a lot of items. And what I've read about so far is that it's somewhat of an anti-pattern to put something like a queue in the DB. I currently don't have any messaging system in place, and I've never worked with one either. Another thing I read somewhere is that progress reporting is something that belongs in the application layer, but it didn't go into the details. So having said all this, what I have in mind is the following. User request with list of items enters the application layer. Application layer gets some information from the domain needed to process the items. Application layer passes the items and the information off to some domain service (should the implementation of this service belong in the infrastructure layer?) This service spins up a worker thread with callbacks for both progress reporting and pausing/stopping it. This worker thread will process each item in it's own UoW. This means the domain information from earlier needs to be stored in some DTO. Since nothing is really persisted, the service should be singleton and thread safe Whenever a user requests a progress report or wants to pause/stop the operation, the application layer will ask the service. Would this be a correct solution? Or am I at least on the right track with this? Especially the singleton and thread safe part makes the whole thing feel icky.

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• designing classes with similar goal but widely different decisional core

  - by Stefano Borini

  I am puzzled on how to model this situation. Suppose you have an algorithm operating in a loop. At every loop, a procedure P must take place, whose role is to modify an input data I into an output data O, such that O = P(I). In reality, there are different flavors of P, say P1, P2, P3 and so on. The choice of which P to run is user dependent, but all P have the same finality, produce O from I. This called well for a base class PBase with a method PBase::apply, with specific reimplementations of P1::apply(I), P2::apply(I), and P3::apply(I). The actual P class gets instantiated in a factory method, and the loop stays simple. Now, I have a case of P4 which follows the same principle, but this time needs additional data from the loop (such as the current iteration, and the average value of O during the previous iterations). How would you redesign for this case?

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• Microsoft Money alternative?

  - by torbengb

  I'm looking for something to replace my MS Money 2004 application. I've tried KMyMoney which seems pretty simple (that's good!) but it can't import the OFC files I get from my bank, so I would have to enter everything manually = not good. I've tried GnuCash which does import OFC files but I can't wrap my mind around this double-entry philosophy. It may be good for accounting but not for home use. I've tried to make MS Money run in Wine with some success but it was hard to make it work and I'd have to re-do that on my new machine. This is still a useful alternative for me though... Is there a similar tool that can import OFC files and that doesn't do double-entry accounting? Tax capability is not needed for me, I only do after-tax numbers. Some nice dashboard views (upcoming bills, future cash flow, total net worth) and some graphs would be a definite bonus!

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• What is the relationship between the business logic layer and the data access layer?

  - by Matt Fenwick

  I'm working on an MVC-ish app (I'm not very experienced with MVC, hence the "-ish"). My model and data access layer are hard to test because they're very tightly coupled, so I'm trying to uncouple them. What is the nature of the relationship between them? Should just the model know about the DAL? Should just the DAL know about the model? Or should both the model and the DAL be listeners of the other? In my specific case, it's: a web application the model is client-side (javascript) the data is accessed from the back-end using Ajax persistence/back-end is currently PHP/MySQL, but may have to switch to Python/GoogleDataStore on the GAE

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• Pattern for a class that does only one thing

  - by Heinzi

  Let's say I have a procedure that does stuff: void doStuff(initalParams) { ... } Now I discover that "doing stuff" is quite a compex operation. The procedure becomes large, I split it up into multiple smaller procedures and soon I realize that having some kind of state would be useful while doing stuff, so that I need to pass less parameters between the small procedures. So, I factor it out into its own class: class StuffDoer { private someInternalState; public Start(initalParams) { ... } // some private helper procedures here ... } And then I call it like this: new StuffDoer().Start(initialParams); or like this: new StuffDoer(initialParams).Start(); And this is what feels wrong. When using the .NET or Java API, I always never call new SomeApiClass().Start(...);, which makes me suspect that I'm doing it wrong. Sure, I could make StuffDoer's constructor private and add a static helper method: public static DoStuff(initalParams) { new StuffDoer().Start(initialParams); } But then I'd have a class whose external interface consists of only one static method, which also feels weird. Hence my question: Is there a well-established pattern for this type of classes that have only one entry point and have no "externally recognizable" state, i.e., instance state is only required during execution of that one entry point?

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• Is there a shell-independent HUD-like menu search tool for Xfce/GNOME/Cinnamon?

  - by Redsandro

  The Ubuntu Heads-Up Display (HUD) - you love it or you hate it. Personally I rather like a classic desktop, so I use Xfce or GNOME-fork Cinnamon, and I'd like to keep those menu's where they are. But the HUD is pretty awesome when your menus are complex and you forgot where an option sits. This makes that search trick very interesting. I know the HUD is Unity specific. I am looking for a HUD-like tool to complement the menu in shells other than Unity. There is Appmenu Runner for KDE that does this. There is also appmenu-qt for KDE. Problem with the above is that it uses KDE libs, and it only works for KDE apps. This is Linux, there aught to be something like this for GNOME/GTK apps, right? Looking for any tool that can search the menus. I already use(d) Synapse, Kupfer and GNOME Do, but those are simply app-launchers (with some tricks). Something like that would suffice if only they included searching the menus for the currently focused application. The HUD allows users to activate menu items by typing part of the name. It uses a fuzzy search algorithm that will highlight partial matches. It can match menu items that are multiple layers deep in an application's menu hierarchy. The feature, which replaces traditional menu accelerators, is activated by pressing the alt key. Similar questions: Is there a way to search a menu bar in Debian? - Unix.StackExchange How can I access menu bar items alike hud (unity)? - Unix.StackExchange HUD in other window managers (especially xmonad) - AskUbuntu

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• Easiest turn-base games you can think of?

  - by Edgar Miranda

  I'm planning to get into the process of programming multiplayer turn-base games. I would like to start off by making some of the simplest (yet fun) multiplayer turn-base games out there. What are some that you can provide? For example... Tic-Tac-Toe Rock-Paper-Scissors Checkers Some not so easy games... 4 in a row chess poker In terms of "ease" of implementation I'm mainly looking at logic. For example, Rock-Paper-Scissors has very simple logic, while chess has logic that is more complicated. So far I have the following: Hexagon Heroes of Might and Magic Nine Men's Morris Connect 4 21 (card game) Pen the Pig (The Dot game) Memory Match

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• Is there a taskbar applet to show the status of a remote host?

  - by Mathew

  At the end of the day I would like to be able to copy files to my home PC just in case I feel inspired to work on them in the evening. But I only want to do this if the PC is on already. (I can remote wake-on-lan the PC but I don't want to always be doing that). I would like some taskbar applet that shows the status of the PC and whether I can ssh into it or not. Obviously it would also be interesting to have an idea as to how long it is on for whilst I am at work as that gives a good indication of whether anyone is in or not. However being able to unobtrusively copy files to the remote machine is the main objective. Perhaps another approach is to run rsync on cron and if the remote host is not up then I guess it will fail. Is that correct? If anyone else has ideas on how to best sync a work and home PC then please do tell.

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• What Type of Options should be on the Game Settings Menu?

  - by A13X

  I have seen a post about the main menu options here: UI: Main Menu options for mobile games. What options should be listed? What do users want to see? But I want to know what kind of options should/need to be available on the settings screen. I am making a rather simple 2D game for Android, but really I haven't found many aspects that warrant an options button or a check box besides turning the sound and music on/off. I was thinking graphics settings but then again, how many apps really need graphics settings besides immersive 3D ones?

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• How do I know when should I package my classes in Ruby?

  - by Omega

  In Ruby, I'm creating a small game development framework. Just some personal project - a very small group of friends helping. Now I am in need of handling geometric concepts. Rectangles, Circles, Polygons, Vectors, Lines, etc. So I made a class for each of these. I'm stuck deciding whether I should package such classes in a module, such as Geometry. So I'd access them like Geometry::Rectangle, or just Rectangle if I include the module. Now then, my question isn't about this specific scenario. I'd like to know, when is it suitable to package similar classes into one module in Ruby? What factors should I consider? Amount of classes? Usage frequency? Complexity?

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• Stupid simple music player?

  - by itsadok

  Here's what I want: I have a folder with MP3 files. I would like to play all the files in the folder, alphabetically. And I need a way to pause, skip to next file, and that's pretty much it. I don't want to use my music player to organize my music library, I don't need connection to network services, and I don't even need ID3 support. On Windows, WinAmp 2 did what I wanted. What's my best option on Ubuntu?

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• When do domain concepts become application constructs?

  - by Noren

  I recently posted a question regarding recovering a DDD architecture that became an anemic domain model into a multitier architecture and this question is a follow-on of sorts. My question is when do domain concepts become application constructs. My application is a local client C# 4/WPF with the following architecture: Presentation Layer Views ViewModels Business Layer ??? Domain Layer Classes that take the POCOs with primitive types and create domain concepts (e.g. image, layer, etc) Sanity checks values (e.g. image width 0) Interfaces for DTOs Interface for a repository that abstracts the filesystem Data Access Layer Classes that parse the proprietary binary files into POCOs with primitive types by explicit knowledge of the file format Implementation of domain DTOs Implementation of domain repository class Local Filesystem Proprietary binary files When does the MyImageType domain class with Int32 width, height, and Int32[] pixels become a System.Windows.Media.ImageDrawing? If I put it in the domain layer, it seems like implemenation details are being leaked (what if I didn't want to use WPF?). If I put it in the presentation layer, it seems like it's doing too much. If I create a business layer, it seems like it would be doing too little since there are few "rules" given the CRUD nature of the application. I think all of my reading has lead to analysis paralysis, so I thought fresh eyes might lend some perspective.

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• Entity Framework 4.0: My Favorite Books

  - by nannette

  I'm in the process of reading several Entity Framework 4.0 books. I'm going to recommend two such books: 1) Programming Entity Framework: Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO.NET Entity Framework by Julia Lerman 2) Entity Framework 4.0 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach by Larry Tenny and Zeeshan Hirani Visit these Entity Framework 4.0 Quick Start videos by Julia Lerman. The book links include numerous detailed reviews. If you can only afford one of the books, I'd recommend Julia's book as the...(read more)

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• How do I get the source code of packages installed through apt-get?

  - by dustyprogrammer

  I am assuming that all application installed through apt-get are open source; but for those that are available in that manner, where can I get the source code for these applications as well as update them? I have a couple applications I use regularly that aren't being actively developed any longer and I would like to add features. Where would I go to get the rights to update these applications? mainly: hellanzb in my case Please and thank you.

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• Ensuring non conflicting components in a modular system

  - by Hailwood

  So lets say we are creating a simple "modular system" framework. The bare bones might be the user management. But we want things like the Page Manager, the Blog, the Image Gallery to all be "optional" components. So a developer could install the Page Manager to allow their client to add a static home page and about page with content they can easily edit with a wysiwyg editor. The developer could then also install the Blog component to allow the client to add blog entries. The developer could then also install the Gallery component to allow the client to show off a bunch of images. The thing is, all these components are designed to be independent, so how do we go about ensuring they don't clash? E.g. ensuring the client doesn't create a /gallery page with the Page Manager and then wonder why the gallery stopped working, or the same issue with the Blog component, assuming we allow the users to customize the URL structure of the blog (because remember, the Page Manager doesn't necessarily have to be there, so we might not wan't our blog posts to be Date/Title formatted), likewise our clients aren't always going to be happy to have their pages under pages/title formatting. My core question here is, when building a modular system how to we ensure that the modules don't conflict without restricting functionality? Do we just leave it up to the clients/developer using the modules to ensure they get setup in a way that does not conflict?

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• In-Game Encyclopedias

  - by SHiNKiROU

  There are some games where there is an in-game encyclopedia where you can know many things about characters and settings of the game. For example, the Codex in Mass Effect. I want to know if it is exclusive to Bioware, and get inspired about other encyclopedia systems. What are some other examples of in-game encyclopedias? How effective is it? I also want some examples where the in-game encyclopedia is not effective at all or an ignored feature

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• What are good reasons to use explicit interface implementation for the sole purpose of hiding members?

  - by Nathanus

  During one of my studies into the intricacies of C#, I came across an interesting passage concerning explicit interface implementation. While this syntax is quite helpful when you need to resolve name clashes, you can use explicit interface implementation simply to hide more "advanced" members from the object level. The difference between allowing the use of object.method() or requiring the casting of ((Interface)object).method() seems like mean-spirited obfuscation to my inexperienced eyes. The text noted that this will hide the method from Intellisense at the object level, but why would you want to do that if it was not necessary to avoid name conflicts?

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• Get Info From Database, or Build Inferred Info?

  - by Zaemz

  Does it make more sense to store and retrieve properties or information directly related to an item in a database, or, say in such a case that a product's ID could describe information about it, should the information be gathered from that? Example: Item SKU -- 4HBU12 4 - is the number of motors H - the voltage B - the color, blue U - the model 12 - the length Should I store those individual attributes as well as the SKU, or should I store only the SKU and build the attributes from it?

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• Best Creational Pattern for loggers in a multi-threaded system?

  - by Dipan Mehta

  This is a follow up question on my past questions : Concurrency pattern of logger in multithreaded application As suggested by others, I am putting this question separately. As the learning from the last question. In a multi-threaded environment, the logger should be made thread safe and probably asynchronous (where in messages are queued while a background thread does writing releasing the requesting object thread). The logger could be signleton or it can be a per-group logger which is a generalization of the above. Now, the question that arise is how does logger should be assigned to the object? There are two options I can think of: 1. Object requesting for the logger: Should each of the object call some global API such as get_logger()? Such an API returns "the" singleton or the group logger. However, I feel this involves assumption about the Application environment to implement the logger -which I think is some kind of coupling. If the same object needs to be used by other application - this new application also need to implement such a method. 2. Assign logger through some known API The other alternative approach is to create a kind of virtual class which is implemented by application based on App's own structure and assign the object sometime in the constructor. This is more generalized method. Unfortunately, when there are so many objects - and rather a tree of objects passing on the logger objects to each level is quite messy. My question is there a better way to do this? If you need to pick any one of the above, which approach is would you pick and why? Other questions remain open about how to configure them: How do objects' names or ID are assigned so that will be used for printing on the log messages (as the module names) How do these objects find the appropriate properties (such as log levels, and other such parameters) In the first approach, the central API needs to deal with all this varieties. In the second approach - there needs to be additional work. Hence, I want to understand from the real experience of people, as to how to write logger effectively in such an environment.

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