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• Is learning C# as a first language a mistake?

  - by JuniorDeveloper1208

  I know there are similar questions on here, which I've read, but I recently read this post by Joel Spolsky: How can I teach a bright person, with no programming experience, how to program? And it got me thinking about my way of learning and whether it might actually be harmful in the long run. I've dabbled with various languages but C# is my first serious one, I've read "Head First C#" and created a few projects. But after reading the post above I've found it a bit disheartening that I may be going about it all wrong, obviously I respect Joel's opinion which is what has thrown me a bit. I've started reading "Code" as recommended in the reading list and I'm finding it pretty hard going, although enjoyable. I feel like it's taken the shine off of my "noobish hacking about" in Visual Studio. So now I'm unsure as to what path I should take? Should I take a step back and follow Joel's advice and start reading? I guess my main aim is just to become a good programmer, like everyone else, but I don't want to be going into bad practice by learning a .NET language when someone who's opinion I respect thinks that it is harmful. Thoughts?

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• Dedicated server: managed hosting or manage it myself?

  - by ddawber

  We're currently hosting a number of sites on a self-managed dedicated server. Some companies, however, offer a managed dedicated server hosting service. They offer: Roughly the same server spec Ticketing system support Managed daily backups Virtual firewall (but with a limit of 10 IP addresses allowed through at any one time) Now, this managed hosting is at extra expense - somewhere in the region of $500 per month, and the limit on the number of IP addresses they'll manage on the firewall is also a real pain. My thinking is it would be better and cheaper to Stay with the same host since the dedicated box is fine Get an Amazon AWS account and use their server to manage backups; there are a number of good tools that can be used to automate the process Configure iptables so that I have complete control of the firewall I want to know Is a managed virtual firewall likely to be more secure than me configuring iptables? Whether, in your opinion, it's best to let someone else take care of backups? If, from your experience, there's anything else i'm missing that warrants using managed hosting over a DIY service? I think there is some reluctance to not having managed hosting since a managed host in effect takes responsibility for your server, whereas any hardware or security issues with a server that we manage would mean we are forced to hold our hands up when a client site goes down. That said, I personally don't think a managed host does that much in the day to day running of your server (backups are automatic, OS updates are carried out with ease, etc.).

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• Entry level engineer question regarding memory mangement

  - by Ealianis

  It has been a few months since I started my position as an entry level software developer. Now that I am past some learning curves (e.g. the language, jargon, syntax of VB and C#) I'm starting to focus on more esoteric topics, as to write better software. A simple question I presented to a fellow coworker was responded with "I'm focusing on the wrong things." While I respect this coworker I do disagree that this is a "wrong thing" to focus upon. Here was the code (in VB) and followed by the question. Note: The Function GenerateAlert() returns an integer. Dim alertID as Integer = GenerateAlert() _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, NewErrorInfo(Now(), alertID)) vs... _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, New ErrorInfo(Now(), GenerateAlert())) I originally wrote the ladder and rewrote it with the "Dim alertID" so that someone else might find it easier to read. But here was my concern and question. "Should one write this with the Dim AlertID, it would in fact take up more memory; finite but more, and should this method be called many times could it lead to an issue? How will .NET handle this object AlertID. Outside of .NET should one manually dispose of the object after use (near the end of the sub)." I want to ensure I become a knowledgeable programmer that does not just rely upon garbage collection. Am I over thinking this? Am I focusing on the wrong things?

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• Storing Tiled Level Data in J2ME game

  - by Alex

  I'm developing a J2ME game which uses tiled backgrounds for the levels. My question is how do I store this tile information in my game. At the moment it is stored as an array; with each number representing a different tile from the tile-sheet. This works well enough, however I don't like the fact that it is 'hard-coded' into the game because (at least in my opinion) it is harder to edit the levels, or design new ones. I was also thinking that it would be difficult if you wanted to add a 'level pack', I'm not sure on how this would be achieved though; it's not something I was planning on doing, I'm just curious. I was wondering if there was a way I could store level data in some external file and then load this in to the game. The problem is I don't know what the limitations are for J2ME regarding file I/O, can it read in any file like Java? I am aware of the RMS, but from my experience I don't think this would work (unless I am mistaken). Also, would loading the data in this way be too big a performance hit? Or is there another way I can achieve what I am trying to do. As I said, the way I have it at the moment works fine, and if this is the only viable option then it will suffice.

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• Does IE have more strict Javascript parsing than Chrome?

  - by Clay Shannon

  This is not meant to start a religio-technical browser war - I still prefer Chrome, at least for now, but: Because of a perhaps Chrome-related problem with my web page (see https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?can=2&start=0&num=100&q=&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Iteration%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified&groupby=&sort=&id=161473), I temporarily switched to IE (10) to see if it would also view the time value as invalid. However, I didn't even get to that point - IE stopped me in my tracks before I could get there; but I found that IE was right - it is more particular/precise in validating my code. For example, I got this from IE: SCRIPT5007: The value of the property '$' is null or undefined, not a Function object ...which was referring to this: <script src="/CommonLogin/Scripts/jquery-1.9.1.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> // body sometimes becomes white???? with jquery 1.6.1 $("body").css("background-color", "#405DA7"); < This line is highlighted as the culprit: $("body").css("background-color", "#405DA7"); jQuery is referenced right above it - so why did it consider "$" to be undefined, especially when Chrome had no problem with it...ah! I looked at that location (/CommonLogin/Scripts/) and saw that, sure enough, the version of jQuery there was actually jquery-1.6.2.min.js. I added the updated jQuery file (1.9.1) and it got past this. So now the question is: why does Chrome ignore this? Does it download the referenced version from its own CDN if it can't find it in the place you specify? IE did flag other errs after that, too; so I'm thinking perhaps IE is better at catching lurking problems than, at least, Chrome is. Haven't tested Firefox diesbzg yet.

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• I seem to be missing a few important concepts with PhoneGap

  - by garethdn

  I'm planning on developing an app on multiple platforms and I'm thinking that PhoneGap might be perfect for me. I had been reading that it's one codebase for all platforms but looking at the PhoneGap guide it seems there are separate instructions for each platform. So if i want to develop for iOS, Android, BB and WP7 I need to write 4 different sets of code? I'm sure i'm missing something fundamental here. Aside from that, how do people usually approach a PhoneGap build? You obviously / probably want the finished app to look like a native app - is it more common than not to use jQuery Mobile together with PhoneGap? Is there a preferred IDE? I see, in the guide, for iOS they seem to suggest Xcode. I'm fine using Xcode but it seems a bit overkill for HTML & CSS. Do I need to develop in Xcode and if not how do i approach it? Use a different IDE / Text Editor and then copy paste into Xcode for building and testing? I know this question is long-winded and fundamental but it something which i don't think is properly addressed in the guides. Thanks.

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• Microsoft Lifecam VX-2000 doesn't work anymore in Cheese

  - by paed808

  I got have two Lifecam VX-2000's and they don't work in cheese anymore. I don't know if it's a problem with a missing package, or a package I installed. Here is the output. (cheese:11122): Clutter-WARNING **: No listener with the specified listener id 29 (cheese:11122): Clutter-WARNING **: No listener with the specified listener id 30 (cheese:11122): Clutter-WARNING **: No listener with the specified listener id 31 (cheese:11122): Clutter-WARNING **: No listener with the specified listener id 32 (cheese:11122): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_hash_table_remove_internal: assertion `hash_table != NULL' failed (cheese:11122): Clutter-WARNING **: Not able to remove listener with id 1 (cheese:11122): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_hash_table_size: assertion `hash_table != NULL' failed totem-video-thumbnailer: 'file:///home/myusername/Videos/Webcam/2012-09-20- 191530.webm' isn't thumbnailable Reason: Media contains no supported video streams. ** (cheese:11122): WARNING **: could not generate thumbnail for /home/myusername/Videos/Webcam/2012-09-20-191530.webm (video/webm) Notice the: Reason: Media contains no supported video streams. When I try to record a video it just makes a 13.2KB WEBM file with nothing. When I take a picture it works. Edit: I've been thinking that the problem started after installing the MediUbuntu repository on my system.

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• I can't program because the code I am using uses old coding styles. Is this normal to programmers? [closed]

  - by Renato Dinhani Conceição

  I'm in my first real job as programmer, but I can't solve any problems because of the coding style used. The code here: Does not have comments Does not have functions (50, 100, 200, 300 or more lines executed in sequence) Uses a lot of if statements with a lot of paths Has variables that make no sense (eg.: cf_cfop, CF_Natop, lnom, r_procod) Uses an old language (Visual FoxPro 8 from 2002), but there are new releases from 2007. I feel like I have gone back to 1970. Is it normal for a programmer familiar with OOP, clean-code, design patterns, etc. to have trouble with coding in this old-fashion way? EDIT: All the answers are very good. For my (un)hope, appears that there are a lot of this kind of code bases around the world. A point mentioned to all answers is refactor the code. Yeah, I really like to do it. In my personal project, I always do this, but... I can't refactor the code. Programmers are only allowed to change the files in the task that they are designed for. Every change in old code must be keep commented in the code (even with Subversion as version control), plus meta informations (date, programmer, task) related to that change (this became a mess, there are code with 3 used lines and 50 old lines commented). I'm thinking that is not only a code problem, but a management of software development problem.

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• 2D Camera Acceleration/Lag

  - by Cyral

  I have a nice camera set up for my 2D xna game. Im wondering how I should make the camera have 'acceleration' or 'lag' so it smoothly follows the player, instead of 'exactly' like mine does now. Im thinking somehow I need to Lerp the values when I set CameraPosition. Heres my code private void ScrollCamera(Viewport viewport) { float ViewMargin = .35f; float marginWidth = viewport.Width * ViewMargin; float marginLeft = cameraPosition.X + marginWidth; float marginRight = cameraPosition.X + viewport.Width - marginWidth; float TopMargin = .3f; float BottomMargin = .1f; float marginTop = cameraPosition.Y + viewport.Height * TopMargin; float marginBottom = cameraPosition.Y + viewport.Height - viewport.Height * BottomMargin; Vector2 CameraMovement; Vector2 maxCameraPosition; CameraMovement.X = 0.0f; if (Player.Position.X < marginLeft) CameraMovement.X = Player.Position.X - marginLeft; else if (Player.Position.X > marginRight) CameraMovement.X = Player.Position.X - marginRight; maxCameraPosition.X = 16 * Width - viewport.Width; cameraPosition.X = MathHelper.Clamp(cameraPosition.X + CameraMovement.X, 0.0f, maxCameraPosition.X); CameraMovement.Y = 0.0f; if (Player.Position.Y < marginTop) //above the top margin CameraMovement.Y = Player.Position.Y - marginTop; else if (Player.Position.Y > marginBottom) //below the bottom margin CameraMovement.Y = Player.Position.Y - marginBottom; maxCameraPosition.Y = 16 * Height - viewport.Height; cameraPosition.Y = MathHelper.Clamp(cameraPosition.Y + CameraMovement.Y, 0.0f, maxCameraPosition.Y); }

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• Dual Booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04. Partition Sizes?

  - by John F.

  I'm about to reinstall Windows, so I thought that I'd try Ubuntu out on a partition just for fun. My question is, how large should my partitions be for each of them? I know this various depending on what you use, so i'll give you a general idea of what I have, and what I have in mind. I'm currently running: Windows 7 Professional (64bit) RAM: 4GB CPU: 2.5Ghz Quad Core processor HDD: 500GB GPU: 1GB Nvidia GeForce I have around 130GB in Steam games, and some heavier applications like Photoshop CS6, Sony Vegas Pro 11. But other Applications I use are: Chrome Skype Dxtory Fraps OpenOffice BitTorrent and other assorted smaller programs. So, I was thinking that I would give my Windows partition about 150-200GB, my Ubuntu Partition around 20GB, and the rest to shared storage. I'm not really sure if I'd need more or less on Ubuntu, because I've never used it and I'm not really sure what kind of apps i'd be using over there. This would also be a clean install, so I'd be wiping my HDD, creating the Partitions in GParted, then installing Windows with Ubuntu following that. Any critique you could give me? Maybe explanations to what the /root, /boot and /home partitions I hear are about? Thanks in advanced if you actually read this lengthy thing! Any help is appreciated. (x

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• Performing a Depth First Search iteratively using async/parallel processing?

  - by Prabhu

  Here is a method that does a DFS search and returns a list of all items given a top level item id. How could I modify this to take advantage of parallel processing? Currently, the call to get the sub items is made one by one for each item in the stack. It would be nice if I could get the sub items for multiple items in the stack at the same time, and populate my return list faster. How could I do this (either using async/await or TPL, or anything else) in a thread safe manner? private async Task<IList<Item>> GetItemsAsync(string topItemId) { var items = new List<Item>(); var topItem = await GetItemAsync(topItemId); Stack<Item> stack = new Stack<Item>(); stack.Push(topItem); while (stack.Count > 0) { var item = stack.Pop(); items.Add(item); var subItems = await GetSubItemsAsync(item.SubId); foreach (var subItem in subItems) { stack.Push(subItem); } } return items; } I was thinking of something along these lines, but it's not coming together: var tasks = stack.Select(async item => { items.Add(item); var subItems = await GetSubItemsAsync(item.SubId); foreach (var subItem in subItems) { stack.Push(subItem); } }).ToList(); if (tasks.Any()) await Task.WhenAll(tasks); The language I'm using is C#.

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• Can I have a computer with 2 physical HDs, & Dual boot option, one for Windows & one for Ubuntu

  - by Frank

  When my HD failed in my old computer with a dual core, I immediately went out and bought a new 6 core PC because I needed it for business and had to have an immediate solution. The old computer was otherwise a good computer. I don't want to spend a $100+ for a new operating system for the old computer because the Windows 7 Professional opperating system for the new computer will only allow one install. So, I decided to look and see if there were any free operating systems and found Ubuntu. I downloaded it and burned a live CD and would like to try it on the old computer. I found a 200 GB HD I can buy for $30 and the seller will format it any way I want. There are also other HDs available at a similar price. What I was thinking I would like to do is buy 2 HDs. Then I can have one formatted for Ubuntu 12.04 and install Windows XP Pro SP1 on the other HD for which I have the original installation CD. Then I would like to have a dual boot option so that when I power up the computer, I can choose whether to use Windows XP or Ubuntu. Is this possible? If so, how would I do it, that is, arrange it so a dual boot option presents itself on power up.

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• is there a checklist that a small website should

  - by Mecon

  I am not a web developer - this would be my first foray. I can do HTML/CSS/Javascript, but never created a website for a company. If anybody is creating a site for small company (expecting some 10-15 static pages), what kinda things would it need to have? I am thinking of the following: Make the eventual owner buy in his/her name: Domain name, Web Hosting package and Email package. Q - DO Web Developers generally ask their clients to buy this stuff and then ask them to share their passwords? OR - Do Web Developers ship the source files to clients so that they can upload it? Create Cross Browser compatible HTML+CSS+javascript pages Add SEO stuff like Meta tags and xml file for crawler Buy professional images from stock website Q - IS there is a best-practice for this step? Add Copyright stuff. Q - ANY idea about how to do this? Add Faceboook widgets, so people can 'like' my website. Register website somewhere so that its searchable from multiple search-engine/yellopages. Q - DOES such a thing exist? Please check my checklist :) and let me know what you think could be missing? Thanks!

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• For an ORM supporting data validation, should constraints be enforced in the database as well?

  - by Ramnique Singh

  I have always applied constraints at the database level in addition to my (ActiveRecord) models. But I've been wondering if this is really required? A little background I recently had to unit test a basic automated timestamp generation method for a model. Normally, the test would create an instance of the model and save it without validation. But there are other required fields that aren't nullable at the in the table definition, meaning I cant save the instance even if I skip the ActiveRecord validation. So I'm thinking if I should remove such constraints from the db itself, and let the ORM handle them? Possible advantages if I skip constraints in db, imo - Can modify a validation rule in the model, without having to migrate the database. Can skip validation in testing. Possible disadvantage? If its possible that ORM validation fails or is bypassed, howsoever, the database does not check for constraints. What do you think? EDIT In this case, I'm using the Yii Framework, which generates the model from the database, hence database rules are generated also (though I could always write them post-generation myself too).

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• Why does Android make good coding so difficult?

  - by metacircle

  my daily work is writing tools in C#/WPF. After over more than 1 year on the job now, I came to love MVVM, IoC Containers, XAML (and more). It's pure fun to write code, since simple, maintainable and extendable code just comes naturally when you follow a few basic patterns. In my free time I really want to write some apps, mainly for my own personal use. I want to write apps for fun and not to make money or anything, that being said, paying an annual fee to be allowed to use my own apps on my own device is a total no-go for me. So I am not able to code for Windows Phone and am also not able to use Xamarin on Android (which is sad since Visual Studio + Resharper is programmers heaven). So I am stuck with Android "classic" Java development. Everytime I sit down at home to create an app, or improve some of the code I have already written I get annoyed very quick because getting good, decoupled code is just so hard to accomplish. It feels like everything you have to do in Android to create a good architecture is a workaround instead of being the way things are meant to be. Writing the UI in xml is fine, but everything else is one big code mess. Even all the tutorials do all their coding in the code behind. For 'hello world' this is fine, but for anything bigger this gets messy very very quick. This is where the fun for me ends. It's just no fun anymore because I just spend 90% of my time refactoring and thinking of workarounds how to make my code more maintainable with all the restrictions Android puts on me. Am I missing a crucial part or is this just the way Android is meant to be? Do you have any suggestions how to learn 'the fun way' of Android programming.

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• Should I avoid or embrace asking questions of other developers on the job?

  - by T.K.

  As a CS undergraduate, the people around me are either learning or are paid to teach me, but as a software developer, the people around me have tasks of their own. They aren't paid to teach me, and conversely, I am paid to contribute. When I first started working as a software developer co-op, I was introduced to a huge code base written in a language I had never used before. I had plenty of questions, but didn't want to bother my co-workers with all of them - it wasted their time and hurt my pride. Instead, I spent a lot of time bouncing between IDE and browser, trying to make sense of what had already been written and differentiate between expected behavior and symptoms of bugs. I'd ask my co-workers when I felt that the root of my lack of understanding was an in-house concept that I wouldn't find on the internet, but aside from that, I tried to confine my questions to lunch hours. Naturally, there were occasions where I wasted time trying to understand something in code on the internet that had, at its heart, an in-house concept, but overall, I felt I was productive enough during my first semester, contributing about as much as one could expect and gaining a pretty decent understanding of large parts of the product. I was wondering what senior developers felt about that mindset. Should new developers ask more questions to get to speed faster, or should they do their own research for themselves? I see benefits to both mindsets, and anticipate a large variety of responses, but I figure new developers might appreciate your answers without thinking to ask this question.

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• Handling deleted users - separate or same table?

  - by Alan Beats

  The scenario is that I've got an expanding set of users, and as time goes by, users will cancel their accounts which we currently mark as 'deleted' (with a flag) in the same table. If users with the same email address (that's how users log in) wish to create a new account, they can signup again, but a NEW account is created. (We have unique ids for every account, so email addresses can be duplicated amongst live and deleted ones). What I've noticed is that all across our system, in the normal course of things we constantly query the users table checking the user is not deleted, whereas what I'm thinking is that we dont need to do that at all...! [Clarification1: by 'constantly querying', I meant that we have queries which are like: '... FROM users WHERE isdeleted="0" AND ...'. For example, we may need to fetch all users registered for all meetings on a particular date, so in THAT query, we also have FROM users WHERE isdeleted="0" - does this make my point clearer?] (1) continue keeping deleted users in the 'main' users table (2) keep deleted users in a separate table (mostly required for historical book-keeping) What are the pros and cons of either approach?

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• Which is the best image hosting site for hosting images for website? [closed]

  - by rahul dagli

  I currently have a website and blog and using a limited web hosting plan. When I upload images on my hosting server it consumes a lot of bandwidth and space. So I was thinking of hosting images on some-other image hosting site and direct linking it to my site. I found out few sites like imageshack, photobucket, tinypic, imgur. However, I see all have certain restrictions. The features i am looking for are as follows: 1. At least 10gb space 2. At least 500gb bandwidth (bec I hav very high traffic) 3. Very high speed even during heavy load like 1000 visitors accessing every hour. 4. Ultra reliable servers (99.9% uptime) 5. Privacy control 6. Must not ever delete image if inactive 7. Create and manage albums 8. Company that will last long in business atleast for next 10 years. 9. Free of cost 10. Hotlinking/ Directlinking image.

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• Cheap ways to do scaling ops in shader?

  - by Nick Wiggill

  I've got an extensive world terrain that uses vec3 for the vertex position attribute. That's good, because the terrain has endless gradations due to the use of floating point. But I'm thinking about how to reduce the amount of data uploaded to the GPU. For my terrain, which uses discrete / grid-based vertex positions in x and z, it's pretty clear that I can replace my vec3s (floats, really) with shorts, halving the per-vertex position attribute cost from 12 bytes each to 6 bytes. Considering I've got little enough other vertex data, and an enormous amount of terrain data to push into the world, it's a major gain. Currently in my code, one unit in GLSL shaders is equal to 1m in the world. I like that scale. If I move over to using shorts, though, I won't be able to use the same scale, as I would then have a very blocky world where every step in height is an entire metre. So I see these potential solutions to scale the positional data correctly once it arrives at the vertex shader stage: Use 10:1 scaling, i.e. 1 short unit = 1 decimetre in CPU-side code. Do a division by 10 in the vertex shader to scale incoming decimetre values back to metres. Arbirary (non-PoT) divisions tend to be slow, however. Use (some-power-of-two):1 scaling (eg. 8:1), which enables the use of a bitshift (eg. val >> 3) to do the division... not sure how performant this is in shaders, though. Not as intuitive to read values, but possibly quite a bit faster than div by a non-PoT value. Use a texture as lookup table. I've heard that this is really fast. Or whatever solutions others can offer to achieve the same results -- minimal vertex data with sensible scaling.

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• snapping an angle to the closest cardinal direction

  - by Josh E

  I'm developing a 2D sprite-based game, and I'm finding that I'm having trouble with making the sprites rotate correctly. In a nutshell, I've got spritesheets for each of 5 directions (the other 3 come from just flipping the sprite horizontally), and I need to clamp the velocity/rotation of the sprite to one of those directions. My sprite class has a pre-computed list of radians corresponding to the cardinal directions like this: protected readonly List<float> CardinalDirections = new List<float> { MathHelper.PiOver4, MathHelper.PiOver2, MathHelper.PiOver2 + MathHelper.PiOver4, MathHelper.Pi, -MathHelper.PiOver4, -MathHelper.PiOver2, -MathHelper.PiOver2 + -MathHelper.PiOver4, -MathHelper.Pi, }; Here's the positional update code: if (velocity == Vector2.Zero) return; var rot = ((float)Math.Atan2(velocity.Y, velocity.X)); TurretRotation = SnapPositionToGrid(rot); var snappedX = (float)Math.Cos(TurretRotation); var snappedY = (float)Math.Sin(TurretRotation); var rotVector = new Vector2(snappedX, snappedY); velocity *= rotVector; //...snip private float SnapPositionToGrid(float rotationToSnap) { if (rotationToSnap == 0) return 0.0f; var targetRotation = CardinalDirections.First(x => (x - rotationToSnap >= -0.01 && x - rotationToSnap <= 0.01)); return (float)Math.Round(targetRotation, 3); } What am I doing wrong here? I know that the SnapPositionToGrid method is far from what it needs to be - the .First(..) call is on purpose so that it throws on no match, but I have no idea how I would go about accomplishing this, and unfortunately, Google hasn't helped too much either. Am I thinking about this the wrong way, or is the answer staring at me in the face?

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• Emulate Historical Figures i.e. Einstein - Is this possible using linguistic logic for my http://www.ustimeline.com Education System

  - by Johnnylight

  After hearing about the success of IBM's Watson I started thinking perhaps emulating human language is now possible? My goal is to create Virtual Historical characters to represent the main characters in my Adventur-Cation The Great American Adventure program such as Einstein or Crazy Horse. The goal is to build an intelligent system capable of indexing the internet and storing the data using a schema using modern knowledge on linguistic theory (phonemes, morphemes, syntax) to build a system capable to returning a semantically sound response very similar to the response made by the same person if still alive today. The goal would be to use the same engine/system for all characters. Each characters would have their own digital representation and voice, and would organize data differently based on tags/keywords stored about the individual. Imagine a Max Headroom Einstein. Based on the success of Watson, I believe something like this may now be possible. Would be an interesting way to study history and would be a vehicle of entertainment as well. Can anyone confirm if this has already been attempted? Is anyone interested in exploring this using Cognitive Science, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Historical data captured on the internet, and Linguistic theory?

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• Question on methods in Object Oriented Programming

  - by mal

  I’m learning Java at the minute (first language), and as a project I’m looking at developing a simple puzzle game. My question relates to the methods within a class. I have my Block type class; it has its many attributes, set methods, get methods and just plain methods. There are quite a few. Then I have my main board class. At the moment it does most of the logic, positioning of sprites collision detection and then draws the sprites etc... As I am learning to program as much as I’m learning to program games I’m curious to know how much code is typically acceptable within a given method. Is there such thing as having too many methods? All my draw functionality happens in one method, should I break this into a few ‘sub’ methods? My thinking is if I find at a later stage that the for loop I’m using to cycle through the array of sprites searching for collisions in the spriteCollision() method is inefficient I code a new method and just replace the old method calls with the new one, leaving the old code intact. Is it bad practice to have a method that contains one if statement, and place the call for that method in the for loop? I’m very much in the early stages of coding/designing and I need all the help I can get! I find it a little intimidating when people are talking about throwing together a prototype in a day too! Can’t wait until I’m that good!

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• Keeping a domain model consistent with actual data

  - by fstuijt

  Recently domain driven design got my attention, and while thinking about how this approach could help us I came across the following problem. In DDD the common approach is to retrieve entities (or better, aggregate roots) from a repository which acts as a in-memory collection of these entities. After these entities have been retrieved, they can be updated or deleted by the user, however after retrieval they are essentially disconnected from the data source and one must actively inform the repository to update the data source and make is consistent again with our in-memory representation. What is the DDD approach to retrieving entities that should remain connected to the data source? For example, in our situation we retrieve a series of sensors that have a specific measurement during retrieval. Over time, these measurement values may change and our business logic in the domain model should respond to these changes properly. E.g., domain events may be raised if a sensor value exceeds a predefined threshold. However, using the repository approach, these sensor values are just snapshots, and are disconnected from the data source. Does any of you have an idea on how to solve this following the DDD approach?

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• Why is Ubuntu unmounting my primary hard drive?

  - by Twisol

  I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 on my laptop (an Asus G73j), dual-booting Windows 7 if that matters. After using the computer for couple of hours or so, I get a popup complaining that a file was unmounted, then my GNOME desktop panels disappear. I can't save any unsaved work (the file browser shows "Filesystem" as totally empty), and other programs break in odd ways (like Chrome can't browse to any new pages, but keeps current ones going... at least I still have Pandora to listen to when this happens!). I've tried looking in the system logs to no avail; I'm assuming that it can't write any errors to the logs because, of course, the logs are on the primary hard drives. This started happening maybe a few days ago. Yesterday I upgraded from 10.4, but I believe it was happening before then. Any advice for figuring this out? EDIT: It just happened again, and I heard a small little clicky sound from the hard drive about five seconds before things went south. I'm thinking I should start backing up ASAP. In response to a comment, here's the dmesg output: http://askubuntu.pastebin.com/uYGshBay Also, the SMART status says the disk has a few bad sectors, and the detailed data says there are 14. It says it passed the self-assessment though. Lastly, this doesn't seem to be happening when I'm on Windows. I recently re-enabled ureadahead (which I disabled ages ago because it was causing Ubuntu to hang at the startup logo), could that be the source of the problem? I've disabled it again to see.

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• Whole continent simulation [on hold]

  - by user2309021

  Let's suppose I am planning to create a simulation of an entire continent at some point in the past (let's say, around 0 A.D). Is it feasible to spawn a hundred million actors that interact with each other and their environments? Having them reproduce, extract resources, etc? The fact is that I actually want to create a simulation that allows me to zoom in from a view of the entire continent up to a single village, and interact with it. (Think as if you could keep zooming in the campaign map of any Total War game and the transition to the battle map was seamless, not a change of the "game mode"). By the way, I have never made a game in my entire life (I have programmed normal desktop applications, though), so I am really having trouble wrapping my head around how to implement such a thing. Even while thinking about how to implement a simple population simulator, without a graphical interface, I think that the O(n) complexity of traversing an array and telling all people to get one year older each time the program ticks is kind of stupid. Any kind help would be greatly appreciated :) EDIT: After being put on hold, I shall specify a question. How would you implement a simulation of all basic human dynamics (reproduction, resource consumption) in an entire continent (with millions of people)?

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