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• Surviving MATLAB and R as a Hardcore Programmer

  - by dsimcha

  I love programming in languages that seem geared towards hardcore programmers. (My favorites are Python and D.) MATLAB is geared towards engineers and R is geared towards statisticians, and it seems like these languages were designed by people who aren't hardcore programmers and don't think like hardcore programmers. I always find them somewhat awkward to use, and to some extent I can't put my finger on why. Here are some issues I have managed to identify: (Both): The extreme emphasis on vectors and matrices to the extent that there are no true primitives. (Both): The difficulty of basic string manipulation. (Both): Lack of or awkwardness in support for basic data structures like hash tables and "real", i.e. type-parametric and nestable, arrays. (Both): They're really, really slow even by interpreted language standards, unless you bend over backwards to vectorize your code. (Both): They seem to not be designed to interact with the outside world. For example, both are fairly bulky programs that take a while to launch and seem to not be designed to make simple text filter programs easy to write. Furthermore, the lack of good string processing makes file I/O in anything but very standard forms near impossible. (Both): Object orientation seems to have a very bolted-on feel. Yes, you can do it, but it doesn't feel much more idiomatic than OO in C. (Both): No obvious, simple way to get a reference type. No pointers or class references. For example, I have no idea how you roll your own linked list in either of these languages. (MATLAB): You can't put multiple top level functions in a single file, encouraging very long functions and cut-and-paste coding. (MATLAB): Integers apparently don't exist as a first class type. (R): The basic builtin data structures seem way too high level and poorly documented, and never seem to do quite what I expect given my experience with similar but lower level data structures. (R): The documentation is spread all over the place and virtually impossible to browse or search. Even D, which is often knocked for bad documentation and is still fairly alpha-ish, is substantially better as far as I can tell. (R): At least as far as I'm aware, there's no good IDE for it. Again, even D, a fairly alpha-ish language with a small community, does better. In general, I also feel like MATLAB and R could be easily replaced by plain old libraries in more general-purpose langauges, if sufficiently comprehensive libraries existed. This is especially true in newer general purpose languages that include lots of features for library writers. Why do R and MATLAB seem so weird to me? Are there any other major issues that you've noticed that may make these languages come off as strange to hardcore programmers? When their use is necessary, what are some good survival tips? Edit: I'm seeing one issue from some of the answers I've gotten. I have a strong personal preference, when I analyze data, to have one script that incorporates the whole pipeline. This implies that a general purpose language needs to be used. I hate having to write a script to "clean up" the data and spit it out, then another to read it back in a completely different environment, etc. I find the friction of using MATLAB/R for some of my work and a completely different language with a completely different address space and way of thinking for the rest to be a huge source of friction. Furthermore, I know there are glue layers that exist, but they always seem to be horribly complicated and a source of friction.

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• Conference networking for the socially awkward

  - by Melanie Townsend

  Do you approach a room full of strangers with excitement at all the new people you’re going to chat to over coffee and a muffin as you swap tales of how you convinced your manager to give you the day “off”? Or, do you find rooms full of strangers intimidating and begin by scouting out a place you can stand quietly and not be in someone’s way until the next session begins? If you’re on the train to extrovert city, that’s great, well done, move along. If, on the other hand, a room full of strangers who all seem to inexplicably know each other already is more challenge than opportunity, then making those connections with other professionals can be more difficult. So, here’s some advice, some gleaned from other things I’ve read online when trying to overcome my own discomfort in large groups (hopefully minus the infuriating condescension), others are just things I’ve found helpful over the years. Start small Smaller groups are less intimidating, and, now that you’ve taken the plunge to show up, it’s harder to remain inconspicuous. I find it’s easier to speak to new people once the option NOT to has been taken away. You’re there now, smile through the awkward and you’ll be forever grateful when the three people you’ve met and gotten to know here are also at that gigantic conference later on (ideally, introducing you to other people). Smile, or at the very least, stop scowling You probably don’t even know you’re doing it. If your resting face doesn’t come across as manically happy, tinge that with some social anxiety and you become one great ball of unapproachable. Normally, I wouldn’t suggest this as a problem that needs fixing, I have personally honed this face to use while travelling alone all the time. However, if you are indeed hoping to meet some useful people and get the most out of this conference, you may need to remind yourself to smile. Prepare some ice breakers This is going to sound stupid, like “no one does this right?” stupid, but, just, trust me a minute. It’s okay to prepare. You don’t need to write word-for-word questions to ask people and practice them in a mirror – that would be strange. I’m suggesting to just have an arsenal of questions to ask people if you get stuck, what session has been your favorite, which ones are you most looking forward to, have you heard X presenter speak before, what did you think of them? Even just thinking about these things in advance can help, and, as a bonus, while the other person is answering it gives you a moment to tamp down that panic, I mean breathe, I mean get to know them. You’re not alone (in the least creepy way possible) See that person in the corner clutching their phone with a mild deer in the headlights look?  That is potentially your new conference buddy. Starting with something along the lines of: I don’t know about you, the sessions here are great but I find the crowds a little tough to deal with. Mind if I park here for a second? is a decent opener. Just walking around and looking at exhibitors (if applicable) is fine, but it’s a little too easy to wander about and not actually speak to anyone if that’s all you’re doing. If joining a group of people talking is too much to start with, one-on-one can be easier. Have goals Are there people in particular you wanted to speak to? Did you have a personal goal of speaking to at least “x” new people? Are you trying to get a contact in a specific company because you want to work with them on something? Does the business have vague goals as well that you may or may not be judged on later? Making specific goals you can accomplish lets you know whether you’ve actually succeeded in your “networking pursuits” or what you need to work on more for next time. Everyone’s got their own coping technique. Some people are able to remind themselves that “humans are fundamentally social creatures” and somehow that helps them, others drink which is not really something I recommend for professional conferences but to each their own, and some focus on the fact that networking can play a big role in their career path. Just do what works for you, and if there’re any tricks you’ve found helpful over the years, please share em.

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• Weird SSIS Configuration Error

  - by Christopher House

  I ran into an interesting SSIS issue that I thought I'd share in hopes that it may save someone from bruising their head after repeatedly banging it on the desk like I did.  I was trying to setup what I believe is referred to as "indirect configuration" in SSIS.  This is where you store your configuration in some repository like a database or a file, then store the location of that repository in an environment variable and use that to configure the connection to your configuration repository.  In my specific situation, I was using a SQL database.  I had this all working, but for reasons I'll not bore you with, I had to move my SSIS development to a new VM last week.  When I got my new VM, I set about creating a new package.  I finished up development on the package and started setting up configuration.  I created an OLE DB connection that pointed to my configuration table then went through the configuration wizard to have the connection string for this connection set through my environment variable.  I then went through the wizard to set another property through a value stored in the configuration table.  When I got to the point where you select the connection, my connection wasn't in the list: As you can see in the screen capture above, the ConfigurationDb connection isn't in the list of available SQL connections in the configuration wizard.  Strange.  I canceled out of the wizard, went to the properties for ConfigurationDb, tested the connection and it was successful.  I went back to the wizard again and this time ConfigurationDb was there.  I completed the wizard then went to test my package.  Unfortunately the package wouldn't run, I got the following error: Unfortunately, googling for this error code didn't help much as none of the results appears related to package configuration.  I did notice that when I went back through the package configuration and tried to edit a previously saved config entry,  I was getting the following error: I checked the connection string I had stored in my environment variable and noticed that indeed, it did not have a provider name.  I didn't recall having included one on my previous VM, but I figured I'd include it just to see what happened.  That made no difference at all.  After a day and a half of trying to figure out what the problem was, I'm pleased to report that through extensive trial and error, I have resolved the error. As it turns out, the person who setup this new VM for me named the server SQLSERVER2008.  This meant my configuration connection string was: Initial Catalog=SSISConfigDb;Data Source=SQLSERVER2008;Integrated Security=SSPI; Just for the heck of it, I tried changing it to: Initial Catalog=SSISConfigDb;Data Source=(local);Integrated Security=SSPI; That did the trick!  As soon as I restarted BIDS, I was able to run the package with no errors at all.  Crazy.  So, the moral of the story is, don't name your server SQLSERVER2008 if you want SSIS configuration to work when using SQL as your config store.

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• Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  A number of out customers have asked if there are any problems in installing and running multiple versions of Microsoft Project on a single client. Although this is a case of Caveat utilitor (Let the user beware), as long as the user understands and accepts the issues that can occur then they can do this. Although Microsoft provide the ability to leave old versions of Office products (except Outlook) on your client when you are installing a new version of the product they certainly do not endorse doing so. Figure: For Project you can choose to keep the old stuff   That being the case I would have preferred that they put a “(NOT RECOMMENDED)” after the options to impart that knowledge to the rest of us, but they did not. The default and recommended behaviour is for the newer version installer to remove the older versions. Of course this does not apply in the revers. There are no forward compatibility packs for Office. There are a number of negative behaviours (or bugs) that can occur in this configuration: There is only one MS Project In Windows a file extension can only be associated with a single program.  In this case, MPP files can be associated with only one version of winproj.exe.  The executables are in different folders so if a user double-clicks a Project file on the desktop, file explorer, or Outlook email, Windows will launch the winproj.exe associated with MPP and then load the MPP file.  There are problems associated with this situation and in some cases workarounds. The user double-clicks on a Project 2010 file, Project 2007 launches but is unable to open the file because it is a newer version.  The workaround is for the user to launch Project 2010 from the Start menu then open the file.  If the file is attached to an email they will need to first drag the file to the desktop. All your linked MS Project files need to be of the same version There are a number of problems that occur when people use on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology.  The three common uses of OLE are: for inserted projects where a Master project contains sub-projects and each sub-project resides in its own MPP file shared resource pools where multiple MPP files share a common resource pool kept in a single MPP file cross-project links where a task or milestone in one MPP file has a  predecessor/successor relationship with a task or milestone in a different MPP file What I’ve seen happen before is that if you are running in a version of Project that is not associated with the MPP extension and then try and activate an OLE link then Project tries to launch the other version of Project.  Things start getting very confused since different MPP files are being controlled by different versions of Project running at the same time.  I haven’t tried this in awhile so I can’t give you exact symptoms but I suspect that if Project 2010 is involved the symptoms will be different then in a Project 2003/2007 scenario.  I’ve noticed that Project 2010 gives different error messages for the exact same problem when it occurs in Project 2003 or 2007.  -Anonymous The recommendation would be either not to use this feature if you have to have multiple versions of Project installed or to use only a single version of Project. You may get unexpected negative behaviours if you are using shared resource pools or resource pools even when you are not running multiple versions as I have found that they can get broken very easily. If you need these thing then it is probably best to use Project Server as it was created to solve many of these specific issues. Note: I would not even allow multiple people to access a network copy of a Project file because of the way Windows locks files in write mode. This can cause write-locks that get so bad a server restart is required I’ve seen user’s files get write-locked to the point where the only resolution is to reboot the server. Changing the default version to run for an extension So what if you want to change the default association from Project 2007 to Project 2010?   Figure: “Control Panel | Folder Options | Change the file associated with a file extension” Windows normally only lists the last version installed for a particular extension. You can select a specific version by selecting the program you want to change and clicking “Change program… | Browse…” and then selecting the .exe you want to use on the file system. Figure: You will need to select the exact version of “winproj.exe” that you want to run Conclusion Although it is possible to run multiple versions of Project on one system in the main it does not really make sense.

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• IE9 and the Mystery of the Broken Video Tag

  - by David Wesst

  I was very excited when Microsoft released the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate. As far as I was concerned, this was another nail in the coffin for IE6 and step in the right direction for us .NET web developers as our base camp was finally starting to support the latest and greatest future-web standards. Unfortunately, my celebration was short lived as I soon hit a snag while loading up an HTML5 site I was building in Visual Studio 2010. The Mystery After updating Internet Explorer, I ran my HTML5 site that had the oh-so-lovely HTML5 video tag showing a video. Even though this worked in IE9 Beta, it appeared that IE9 RC could not load the same file. I figured that it was the video codec. Maybe IE9 RC no longer supported the video codec I used to encode my video. Here's the code I used: <video width="854" height="480" id="myOtherVideo" autoplay="" controls=""> <source src="/DemoSite1/Media/big_buck_bunny.mp4"/> <div> <p>Your browser does not support HTML5 Video.</p> </div> </video> As you can see from the code, I had the "fail-safe" code inside the video tag. The idea there being that if the video tag, or the video files themselves, are not supported by the browser my video should fail gracefully. What was even more strange was the fact that it worked in all the other HTML5 browsers that supported video. The Investigation Whoa! DJ stop the music. How can any of that make sense? Would the IE team really take such huge strides forward only to forget to include a feature that was already in the beta? I don't think so. I did plenty of searching on the web and asking around on the web, but could not seem to find anyone else having the same problem. Eventually I came across this post talking about declaring the MIME type in the .htaccess file. That got me thinking: does my web server support the video MIME type? I was using VS2010, so how do I know what kind of MIME types are supported by default? Still, my page hosted in Cassini (the web development server in VS2010) works on the other browsers. Why wouldn't it work with IE9 RC? To answer that, it was time to open up the upgraded toolbox known as the Developer's Tools in IE9 and use the new Network Tab. The Conclusion If you take a closer look at the results displayed from the Network tab, you can see that IE9 RC has interpreted the video file as text/html rather than video/mp4. To make this work, I decided to use IIS to debug my HTML5 web application by setting the web project's properties. Then, I added the MIME types that I want to support (i.e. video/mp4, video/ogg, video/webm). Et voila! The Mystery of the Broken Video Tag is solved. After Thoughts After solving the mystery, I still had the question about why my site worked in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox 3.6. After asking around, the best answer that I received was from my colleague Tyler Doerksen. He said that IE9 likely depends on the server telling it what kind of file it is downloading rather than trying to read the metadata about the data it is trying to download before doing anything. I have no facts to back this up, but it makes sense to me. In a browser war where milliseconds can make your browser fall back a few places in the race for supremacy, maybe the IE team opted to depend on the server knowing what kind of content it is serving up. Makes sense to me. In any case, that is just an educated guess. If you have any comments, feel free to post on them below. This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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• Node.js Lockstep Multiplayer Architecture

  - by Wakaka

  Background I'm using the lockstep model for a multiplayer Node.js/Socket.IO game in a client-server architecture. User input (mouse or keypress) is parsed into commands like 'attack' and 'move' on the client, which are sent to the server and scheduled to be executed on a certain tick. This is in contrast to sending state data to clients, which I don't wish to use due to bandwidth issues. Each tick, the server will send the list of commands on that tick (possibly empty) to each client. The server and all clients will then process the commands and simulate that tick in exactly the same way. With Node.js this is actually quite simple due to possibility of code sharing between server and client. I'll just put the deterministic simulator in the /shared folder which can be run by both server and client. The server simulation is required so that there is an authoritative version of the simulation which clients cannot alter. Problem Now, the game has many entity classes, like Unit, Item, Tree etc. Entities are created in the simulator. However, for each class, it has some methods that are shared and some that are client-specific. For instance, the Unit class has addHp method which is shared. It also has methods like getSprite (gets the image of the entity), isVisible (checks if unit can be seen by the client), onDeathInClient (does a bunch of stuff when it dies only on the client like adding announcements) and isMyUnit (quick function to check if the client owns the unit). Up till now, I have been piling all the client functions into the shared Unit class, and adding a this.game.isServer() check when necessary. For instance, when the unit dies, it will call if (!this.game.isServer()) { this.onDeathInClient(); }. This approach has worked pretty fine so far, in terms of functionality. But as the codebase grew bigger, this style of coding seems a little strange. Firstly, the client code is clearly not shared, and yet is placed under the /shared folder. Secondly, client-specific variables for each entity are also instantiated on the server entity (like unit.sprite) and can run into problems when the server cannot instantiate the variable (it doesn't have Image class like on browsers). So my question is, is there a better way to organize the client code, or is this a common way of doing things for lockstep multiplayer games? I can think of a possible workaround, but it does have its own problems. Possible workaround (with problems) I could use Javascript mixins that are only added when in a browser. Thus, in the /shared/unit.js file in the /shared folder, I would have this code at the end: if (typeof exports !== 'undefined') module.exports = Unit; else mixin(Unit, LocalUnit); Then I would have /client/localunit.js store an object LocalUnit of client-side methods for Unit. Now, I already have a publish-subscribe system in place for events in the simulator. To remove the this.game.isServer() checks, I could publish entity-specific events whenever I want the client to do something. For instance, I would do this.publish('Death') in /shared/unit.js and do this.subscribe('Death', this.onDeathInClient) in /client/localunit.js. But this would make the simulator's event listeners list on the server and the client different. Now if I want to clear all subscribed events only from the shared simulator, I can't. Of course, it is possible to create two event subscription systems - one client-specific and one shared - but now the publish() method would have to do if (!this.game.isServer()) { this.publishOnClient(event); }. All in all, the workaround off the top of my head seems pretty complicated for something as simple as separating the client and shared code. Thus, I wonder if there is an established and simpler method for better code organization, hopefully specific to Node.js games.

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• Oracle RightNow CX for Good Customer Experiences

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Oracle RightNow CX is all about the customer experience, it’s about understanding what drives a good interaction and it’s about delivering a solution which works for our customers and by extension, their customers. One of the early guiding principles of Oracle RightNow was an 8-point strategy to providing good customer experiences. Establish a knowledge foundation Empowering the customer Empower employees Offer multi-channel choice Listen to the customer Design seamless experiences Engage proactively Measure and improve continuously The application suite provides all of the tools necessary to deliver a rewarding, repeatable and measurable relationship between business and customer. The Knowledge Authoring tool provides gap analysis, WYSIWIG editing (and includes HTML rich content for non-developers), multi-level categorisation, permission based publishing and Web self-service publishing. Oracle RightNow Customer Portal, is a complete web application framework that enables businesses to control their own end-user page branding experience, which in turn will allow customers to self-serve. The Contact Centre Experience Designer builds a combination of workspaces, agent scripting and guided assistances into a Desktop Workflow. These present an agent with the tools they need, at the time they need them, providing even the newest and least experienced advisors with consistently accurate and efficient information, whilst guiding them through the complexities of internal business processes. Oracle RightNow provides access points for customers to feedback about specific knowledge articles or about the support site in general. The system will generate ‘incidents’ based on the scoring of the comments submitted. This makes it easy to view and respond to customer feedback. It is vital, more now than ever, not to under-estimate the power of the social web – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – they have the ability to cause untold amounts of damage to businesses with a single post – witness musician Dave Carroll and his protest song on YouTube, posted in response to poor customer services from an American airline. The first day saw 150,000 views and is currently at 12,011,375. The Times reported that within 4 days of the post, the airline’s stock price fell by 10 percent, which represented a cost to shareholders of $180 million dollars. It is a universally acknowledged fact, that when customers are unhappy, they will not come back, and, generally speaking, it only takes one bad experience to lose a customer. The idea that customer loyalty can be regained by using social media channels was the subject of a 2011 Survey commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive. The survey discovered that 68% of customers who posted a negative review about a holiday on a social networking site received a response from the business. It further found that 33% subsequently posted a positive review and 34% removed the original negative review. Cloud Monitor provides the perfect mechanism for seeing what is being said about a business on public Facebook pages, Twitter or YouTube posts; it allows agents to respond proactively – either by creating an Oracle RightNow incident or by using the same channel as the original post. This leaves step 8 – Measuring and Improving: How does a business know whether it’s doing the right thing? How does it know if its customers are happy? How does it know if its staff are being productive? How does it know if its staff are being effective? Cue Oracle RightNow Analytics – fully integrated across the entire platform – Service, Marketing and Sales – there are in excess of 800 standard reports. If this were not enough, a large proportion of the database has been made available via the administration console, allowing users without any prior database experience to write their own reports, format them and schedule them for e-mail delivery to a distribution list. It handles the complexities of table joins, and allows for the manipulation of data with ease. Oracle RightNow believes strongly in the customer owning their solution, and to provide the best foundation for success, Oracle University can give you the RightNow knowledge and skills you need. This is a selection of the courses offered: RightNow Customer Service Administration Rel 12.02 (3 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course familiarises users with the tasks and concepts needed to configure and maintain their system. RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course introduces basic CP structure and how to make changes to the look, feel and behaviour of their self-service pages RightNow Analytics Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand (Release 11.11 is available as In Class and Live Virtual Class) This course equips users with the skills necessary to understand data supplied by standard reports and to create custom reports RightNow Integration and Customization For Developers Rel 12.02 (5-days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course is for experienced web developers and offers an introduction to Add-In development using the Desktop Add-In Framework and introduces the core knowledge that developers need to begin integrating Oracle RightNow CX with other systems A full list of courses offered can be found on the Oracle University website. For more information and course dates please get in contact with your local Oracle University team. On top of the Service components, the suite also provides marketing tools, complex survey creation and tracking and sales functionality. I’m a fan of the application, and I think I’ve made that clear: It’s completely geared up to providing customers with support at point of need. It can be configured to meet even the most stringent of business requirements. Oracle RightNow is passionate about, and committed to, providing the best customer experience possible. Oracle RightNow CX is the application that makes it possible. About the Author: Sarah Anderson worked for RightNow for 4 years in both in both a consulting and training delivery capacity. She is now a Senior Instructor with Oracle University, delivering the following Oracle RightNow courses: RightNow Customer Service Administration RightNow Analytics RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration RightNow Marketing and Feedback

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• Microsoft Build 2012 Day 1 Keynote Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  So I have finally dried the tears after watching the Keynote for Build 2012.  This wasn’t because it was an emotional presentation, but because for the second year I missed the goodies.  Each on site attendee got a Surface RT, a Lumia 920 and a voucher for 100GB of SkyDrive storage. The event was opened with the announcement that in the three days since the launch of Windows 8 over 4 million upgrades have been sold.  I don’t care who you are that is an impressive stat.  Ballmer then spent a fair amount of time remaking the case for the Windows and Windows Phone platforms similar to what we have heard over the last to launch events. There were some cool, but non-essential demos.  The one that was the most fun was the Perceptive Pixel 82” slate device.  At first glance I wondered why I would ever want such a device, but then Ballmer explained it’s possible use for schools and boardrooms.  The actually made sense. Then things got strange.  Steve started explaining features that developers could leverage.  Usually this type of information is left to the product leads.  He focused on the integration with the Charms features such as Search and Share. Steve “Guggs” Guggenheim showed off an app that would appeal to my kids from Disney called “Agent P” which is base on Phineas and Ferb.  Then he got to the meat of the presentation.  We found out that you could add a tile that can be used to sell ad space.  In the same vein we also found out that you could use Microsoft’s, Paypal’s or any commerce engine of your own creation or choosing. For those who are interested in sports and especially developing sports apps you would have found the small presentation from Michael Bayle of ESPN.  He introduced the ESPN app which has tons of features.  For the developers in the crowd he also mentioned that ESPN has an API available at developer.espn.com. During the launch events we were told apps were coming.  In this presentation we were actually shown a scrolling list of logos and told about a couple of them.  Ballmer mentioned specifically Twitter, SAP and DropBox.  These are impressive names that were just a couple of the list impressive names. Steve Ballmer addressed the question of why you should develop for the Windows 8 platform.  He feels that Microsoft has the best commercial terms for developers, a better way to build apps than other platforms and a variety of form factors.  His key point though was the available volume of customers given the current Windows install base and assuming even a flat growth of the platform.  This he backed with a promise that Microsoft is going to do better at marketing and you won’t be able to avoid the ads that they are bringing out. The last section of the key note was present by Kevin Gallo from the Windows Phone team.  This was the real reason I tuned into the webcast.  He impressed upon those watching that the strength of developing for the Microsoft platform is the common programming model that now exist.  While there are difference between form factor implementations you can leverage code across them. He claimed that 90% of developer requests for Windows Phone 8 had been implemented.  These include: More controls with better performance Better live tiles including lock screen integration Speech support in custom apps Easier submission to the market place App camera integration VOIP and chat support Bluetooth and NFC support Native C++ development Direct 3D development   The quote from Kevin that stood out for me was that “Take your Dramamine and buckle your seatbelt type of games are coming to Windows Phone 8”.  He back this up by displaying a list of game development frameworks and then having Unity come out and do a demo. Ok, almost done … The last two things of note for me were the announcement that the SDK is immediately available at dev.windowsphone.com and that they were reducing the cost of an individual developer account to $8 for the next 8 days. Let the development commence. del.icio.us Tags: Build 2012,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Windows Phone

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• How to ace Skype Interviews

  - by FelixWehmeyer

  Many companies these days opt to include a Skype interview in the recruitment process, as it comes close to a face-to-face interview without the time and costs involved for both the company and the candidate. In some cases during the recruitment process at Oracle you also might be asked to conduct a Skype interview. To help you get started with this, we researched some websites to give you several tips and tricks. What most of the bloggers say about this topic is collected in this article to help you prepare. It is all about Technology The bit that can make a Skype interview more complicated than a face-to-face or phone interview is the fact you are using additional technology. Always check the video and audio capabilities of your computer to make sure they work properly. Be prepared for connections to be limited during the interview. Using a webcam can also be confusing, if you do not have a lot of experience using it. Make sure you look at the camera and not the monitor to avoid the impression you are looking away. Practice If you do not feel comfortable using the camera, do a mock interview with a friend or family member before you have the actual interview. Be aware that facial impressions or reactions come across differently on a monitor, so make sure to practice how you  come across during the interview. Good lighting in the room also helps you make you look the best for the interviewer. You and your room Dress code, as in any face-to-face interview,is important to think about. Dress the same way as you would for face-to-face interviews and avoid patterns or informal clothing. Another tip,is to be aware of your surroundings. Make sure the room you use looks good on camera, making sure it is neat and tidy, also think about how the walls look behind you. Also make sure you do not get distracted during the interview by anyone or anything, as this will directly have an impact on your interview and your ability to focus and concentrate. What is in a name What goes for any account that you share during the recruitment process, either your email address or Skype name, is to make sure it comes across as professional. Try to avoid using nicknames or strange words in your accounts, stick to using a first name – last name or an abbreviation of the same. If you would like to read more about this topic, have a look at the links below which we used as inspiration for this blog article. 7 Deadly Skype Interview Sins is fun to read and to gives you some good advice to keep in mind. ·         http://www.inc.com/guides/201103/4-tips-for-conducting-a-job-interview-using-skype.html ·         http://blog.simplyhired.com/2012/05/5-tips-to-a-great-skype-interview.html ·         http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/07/11/skype.interview.tips.cb/index.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5648281_prepare-skype-interview.html

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• Removing Barriers to Create Effective Data Models

  After years of creating and maintaining data models, I have started to notice common barriers that decrease the accuracy and usefulness of models. In my opinion, the main causes of these barriers are the lack of knowledge and communication from within a company. The lack of knowledge in regards to data models or data modeling can take many forms. Company Culture Knowledge Whether documented or undocumented, existing business rules of a company can affect how data is modeled. For example, if a company only allows 1 assigned person per customer to be able to manipulate a customer’s record then then a data model that includes an associated table that joins customers and employee’s would be unneeded because that would allow for the possibility of multiple employees to handle a customer because of the potential for a many to many relationship between Customers and Employees. Technical Knowledge Depending on the data modeler’s proficiency in modeling data they can inadvertently cause issues and/or complications with a design without even noticing. It is important that companies share data modeling responsibilities so that the models are developed from multiple perspectives of a system, company and the original problem.  In addition, the tools that a company selects to create data models can also affect the accuracy of the model if designer are not familiar with the tools or the tools are too complex to use for the designer. Existing System Knowledge In order for a data modeler to model data for an existing system so that new changes can be applied to a system then they need to at least know the basic concepts of a system so that they can work within it. This will promote reusability of data and prevent the chance of duplicating data. Project Knowledge This should be pretty obvious, but it is very hard to create an accurate data model without knowing what data needs to be modeled. I have always found it strange that I have been asked to start modeling data prior to a client formalizing any requirements. Usually when this happens I have to make several iterations to a model, and the client still does not know exactly what they want.  In addition additional issues can arise when certain stakeholders of a project are not consulted prior to the design or after the project is over because it can cause miss understandings and confusion by the end user as well as possibly not solving the original problem for which a project is intended to solve. One common thread between each type of knowledge is that they can all be avoided through the use of good communication. For example, if a modeler is new to a company then they should ask older employees about any business specific rules that may be documented or undocumented that must be applied to projects in general. Furthermore, if a modeler is not really familiar with a specific data modeling software then they need to speak up and ask for help form other employees or their manager. This will not only help the modeler in the project, but also help them in future projects that they do for the company. Additionally, if a project is not clearly defined prior to a data modeler being assigned the modeling project then it is their responsibility to communicate with the other stakeholders to clarify any part of a project that is unclear so that the data model that is created is accurately aligned with a project.

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• Tessellation Texture Coordinates

  - by Stuart Martin

  Firstly some info - I'm using DirectX 11 , C++ and I'm a fairly good programmer but new to tessellation and not a master graphics programmer. I'm currently implementing a tessellation system for a terrain model, but i have reached a snag. My current system produces a terrain model from a height map complete with multiple texture coordinates, normals, binormals and tangents for rendering. Now when i was using a simple vertex and pixel shader combination everything worked perfectly but since moving to include a hull and domain shader I'm slightly confused and getting strange results. My terrain is a high detail model but the textured results are very large patches of solid colour. My current setup passes the model data into the vertex shader then through the hull into the domain and then finally into the pixel shader for use in rendering. My only thought is that in my hull shader i pass the information into the domain shader per patch and this is producing the large areas of solid colour because each patch has identical information. Lighting and normal data are also slightly off but not as visibly as texturing. Below is a copy of my hull shader that does not work correctly because i think the way that i am passing the data through is incorrect. If anyone can help me out but suggesting an alternative way to get the required data into the pixel shader? or by showing me the correct way to handle the data in the hull shader id be very thankful! cbuffer TessellationBuffer { float tessellationAmount; float3 padding; }; struct HullInputType { float3 position : POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; float3 tangent : TANGENT; float3 binormal : BINORMAL; float2 tex2 : TEXCOORD1; }; struct ConstantOutputType { float edges[3] : SV_TessFactor; float inside : SV_InsideTessFactor; }; struct HullOutputType { float3 position : POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; float3 tangent : TANGENT; float3 binormal : BINORMAL; float2 tex2 : TEXCOORD1; float4 depthPosition : TEXCOORD2; }; ConstantOutputType ColorPatchConstantFunction(InputPatch<HullInputType, 3> inputPatch, uint patchId : SV_PrimitiveID) { ConstantOutputType output; output.edges[0] = tessellationAmount; output.edges[1] = tessellationAmount; output.edges[2] = tessellationAmount; output.inside = tessellationAmount; return output; } [domain("tri")] [partitioning("integer")] [outputtopology("triangle_cw")] [outputcontrolpoints(3)] [patchconstantfunc("ColorPatchConstantFunction")] HullOutputType ColorHullShader(InputPatch<HullInputType, 3> patch, uint pointId : SV_OutputControlPointID, uint patchId : SV_PrimitiveID) { HullOutputType output; output.position = patch[pointId].position; output.tex = patch[pointId].tex; output.tex2 = patch[pointId].tex2; output.normal = patch[pointId].normal; output.tangent = patch[pointId].tangent; output.binormal = patch[pointId].binormal; return output; } Edited to include the domain shader:- [domain("tri")] PixelInputType ColorDomainShader(ConstantOutputType input, float3 uvwCoord : SV_DomainLocation, const OutputPatch<HullOutputType, 3> patch) { float3 vertexPosition; PixelInputType output; // Determine the position of the new vertex. vertexPosition = uvwCoord.x * patch[0].position + uvwCoord.y * patch[1].position + uvwCoord.z * patch[2].position; output.position = mul(float4(vertexPosition, 1.0f), worldMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, viewMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, projectionMatrix); output.depthPosition = output.position; output.tex = patch[0].tex; output.tex2 = patch[0].tex2; output.normal = patch[0].normal; output.tangent = patch[0].tangent; output.binormal = patch[0].binormal; return output; }

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• What to do after a servicing fails on TFS 2010

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  What do you do if you run a couple of hotfixes against your TFS 2010 server and you start to see seem odd behaviour? A customer of mine encountered that very problem, but they could not just, or at least not easily, go back a version.   You see, around the time of the TFS 2010 launch this company decided to upgrade their entire 250+ development team from TFS 2008 to TFS 2010. They encountered a few problems, owing mainly to the size of their TFS deployment, and the way they were using TFS. They were not doing anything wrong, but when you have the largest deployment of TFS outside of Microsoft you tend to run into problems that most people will never encounter. We are talking half a terabyte of source control in TFS with over 80 proxy servers. Its certainly the largest deployment I have ever heard of. When they did their upgrade way back in April, they found two major flaws in the product that meant that they had to back out of the upgrade and wait for a couple of hotfixes. KB983504 – Hotfix KB983578 – Patch KB2401992 -Hotfix In the time since they got the hotfixes they have run 6 successful trial migrations, but we are not talking minutes or hours here. When you have 400+ GB of data it takes time to copy it around. It takes time to do the upgrade and it takes time to do a backup. Well, last week it was crunch time with their developers off for Christmas they had a window of opportunity to complete the upgrade. Now these guys are good, but they wanted Northwest Cadence to be available “just in case”. They did not expect any problems as they already had 6 successful trial upgrades. The problems surfaced around 20 hours in after the first set of hotfixes had been applied. The new Team Project Collection, the only thing of importance, had disappeared from the Team Foundation Server Administration console. The collection would not reattach either. It would not even list the new collection as attachable! Figure: We know there is a database there, but it does not This was a dire situation as 20+ hours to repeat would leave the customer over time with 250+ developers sitting around doing nothing. We tried everything, and then we stumbled upon the command of last resort. TFSConfig Recover /ConfigurationDB:SQLServer\InstanceName;TFS_ConfigurationDBName /CollectionDB:SQLServer\instanceName;"Collection Name" -http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff407077.aspx WARNING: Never run this command! Now this command does something a little nasty. It assumes that there really should not be anything wrong and sets about fixing it. It ignores any servicing levels in the Team Project Collection database and forcibly applies the latest version of the schema. I am sure you can imagine the types of problems this may cause when the schema is updated leaving the data behind. That said, as far as we could see this collection looked good, and we were even able to find and attach the team project collection to the Configuration database. Figure: After attaching the TPC it enters a servicing mode After reattaching the team project collection we found the message “Re-Attaching”. Well, fair enough that sounds like something that may need to happen, and after checking that there was disk IO we left it to it. 14+ hours later, it was still not done so the customer raised a priority support call with MSFT and an engineer helped them out. Figure: Everything looks good, it is just offline. Tip: Did you know that these logs are not represented in the ~/Logs/* folder until they are opened once? The engineer dug around a bit and listened to our situation. He knew that we had run the dreaded “tfsconfig restore”, but was not phased. Figure: This message looks suspiciously like the wrong servicing version As it turns out, the servicing version was slightly out of sync with the schema. KB Schema Successful           KB983504 341 Yes   KB983578 344 sort of   KB2401992 360 nope   Figure: KB, Schema table with notation to its success The Schema version above represents the final end of run version for that hotfix or patch. The only way forward The problem was that the version was somewhere between 341 and 344. This is not a nice place to be in and the engineer give us the  only way forward as the removal of the servicing number from the database so that the re-attach process would apply the latest schema. if his sounds a little like the “tfsconfig recover” command then you are exactly right. Figure: Sneakily changing that 3 to a 1 should do the trick Figure: Changing the status and dropping the version should do it Now that we have done that we should be able to safely reattach and enable the Team Project Collection. Figure: The TPC is now all attached and running You may think that this is the end of the story, but it is not. After a while of mulling and seeking expert advice we came to the opinion that the database was, for want of a better term, “hosed”. There could well be orphaned data in there and the likelihood that we would have problems later down the line is pretty high. We contacted the customer back and made them aware that in all likelihood the repaired database was more like a “cut and shut” than anything else, and at the first sign of trouble later down the line was likely to split in two. So with 40+ hours invested in getting this new database ready the customer threw it away and started again. What would you do? Would you take the “cut and shut” to production and hope for the best?

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• Business School graduate joins Oracle

  - by jessica.ebbelaar(at)oracle.com

  My name is Mathias, I work as an Applications Inside Sales Rep for the French market, and I’d like to give you a brief snapshot of my experience at Oracle. First things first, how did you hear about Oracle? Where have you seen the sharp and recognizable red logo? Was it in Charles de Gaulle Airport when your eyes crossed the 20-metre banner with a picture of a strange big machine in the middle? Was it through reading the Forbes 10 top IT companies worldwide ranking? Or is it because IT is your thing and you cannot but know one of the “big four”? Meeting with a Grenoble Alumnus My story is a little different. My plan was to work in sales, in the IT industry. I had heard about Oracle, but my opinion at the time was that this kind of multinational company was way out of reach for a young graduate, even with high enthusiasm and great excitement to be (finally) on the job market. So, I was really surprised when I had an interesting conversation with a top alumnus of my business school. We were at the Grenoble Ecole de Management graduation ceremony (our graduation!), and before the party got really started, I got to chat with her. She told me of the great experience she was getting by living and working in Dublin. She had already figured it all out: “you work with another 100 young people from 10 different nationalities across Europe, you can be based in Dublin, but then once you work really hard you can move to Malaga Spain or other BUs around the world, you can work with different lines of business and learn about new “techy” and business oriented products, move to the field in your home country or elsewhere, etc.” What, what, what? Moving around Europe, trained by the best sales coaches in the world, acquiring strong IT knowledge and getting on board with one of fastest-growing and most watched companies in the world? Well, I was in. The next day (OK, 3 days after, the time to recover), I sent her my CV, and 3 months later I started as a Business Development Consultant at Oracle in Dublin, representing the latest cloud based CRM across the French market. That was 15 months ago. Since then, I moved line of business twice, I’m always learning new things and working with different and senior stakeholders; I have attended hundreds of hours of sales and product training (priceless when you come from a business background); I passed the Dublin Institute of Technology Sales Certification through different trainings given onsite within Oracle; I’ve led projects based around social media and I’ve gotten involved within various sales deals going on my market. Despite all of these great things, two will remain in my spirit: the multiculturalism that I experience every day in the office, and the American style of management - more direct and open than what you can find in “regular French companies”. Sales Progression Board In May 2012, I passed what we call a ‘Sales Progression Board’ to be promoted to an Inside Sales position. I am now in charge of generating revenue through the sale of Oracle applications on my specific territory. Always keeping in my mind my personal ambition: going to the field one day. Interested to join Oracle in the same role as Mathias? Visit http://campus.oracle.com.

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• Think before you animate

  - by David Paquette

  Animations are becoming more and more common in our applications.  With technologies like WPF, Silverlight and jQuery, animations are becoming easier for developers to use (and abuse).  When used properly, animation can augment the user experience.  When used improperly, animation can degrade the user experience.  Sometimes, the differences can be very subtle. I have recently made use of animations in a few projects and I very quickly realized how easy it is to abuse animation techniques.  Here are a few things I have learned along the way. 1) Don’t animate for the sake of animating We’ve all seen the PowerPoint slides with annoying slide transitions that animate 20 different ways.  It’s distracting and tacky.  The same holds true for your application.  While animations are fun and becoming easy to implement, resist the urge to use the technology just because you think the technology is amazing.   2) Animations should (and do) have meaning I recently built a simple Windows Phone 7 (WP7) application, Steeped (download it here).  The application has 2 pages.  The first page lists a number of tea types.  When the user taps on one of the tea types, the application navigates to the second page with information about that tea type and some options for the user to choose from.       One of the last things I did before submitting Steeped to the marketplace was add a page transition between the 2 pages.  I choose the Slide / Fade Out transition.  When the user selects a tea type, the main page slides to the left and fades out.  At the same time, the details page slides in from the right and fades in.  I tested it and thought it looked great so I submitted the app.  A few days later, I asked a friend to try the app.  He selected a tea type, and I was a little surprised by how he used the app.  When he wanted to navigate back to the main page, instead of pressing the back button on the phone, he tried to use a swiping gesture.  Of course, the swiping gesture did nothing because I had not implemented that feature.  After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the page transition I had chosen implied a particular behaviour.  As a user, if an action I perform causes an item (in this case the page) to move, then my expectation is that I should be able to move it back.  I have since added logic to handle the swipe gesture and I think the app flows much better now. When using animation, it pays to ask yourself:  What story does this animation tell my users?   3) Watch the replay Some animations might seem great initially but can get annoying over time.  When you use an animation in your application, make sure you try using it over and over again to make sure it doesn’t get annoying.  When I add an animation, I try watch it at least 25 times in a row.  After watching the animation repeatedly, I can make a more informed decision whether or not I should keep the animation.  Often, I end up shortening the length of the animations.   4) Don’t get in the users way An animation should never slow the user down.  When implemented properly, an animation can give a perceived bump in performance.  A good example of this is a the page transitions in most of the built in apps on WP7.  Obviously, these page animations don’t make the phone any faster, but they do provide a more responsive user experience.  Why?  Because most of the animations begin as soon as the user has performed some action.  The destination page might not be fully loaded yet, but the system responded immediately to user action, giving the impression that the system is more responsive.  If the user did not see anything happen until after the destination page was fully loaded, the application would feel clumsy and slow.  Also, it is important to make sure the animation does not degrade the performance (or perceived performance) of the application.   Jut a few things to consider when using animations.  As is the case with many technologies, we often learn how to misuse it before we learn how to use it effectively.

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• PanelGridLayout - A Layout Revolution

  - by Duncan Mills

  With the most recent 11.1.2 patchset (11.1.2.3) there has been a lot of excitement around ADF Essentials (and rightly so), however, in all the fuss I didn't want an even more significant change to get missed - yes you read that correctly, a more significant change! I'm talking about the new panelGridLayout component, I can confidently say that this one of the most revolutionary components that we've introduced in 11g, even though it sounds rather boring. To be totally accurate, panelGrid was introduced in 11.1.2.2 but without any presence in the component palette or other design time support, so it was largely missed unless you read the release notes. However in this latest patchset it's finally front and center. Its time to explore - we (really) need to talk about layout.  Let's face it,with ADF Faces rich client, layout is a rather arcane pursuit, once you are a layout master, all bow before you, but it's more of an art than a science, and it is often, in fact, way too difficult to achieve what should (apparently) be a pretty simple. Here's a great example, it's a homework assignment I set for folks I'm teaching this stuff to:  The requirements for this layout are: The header is 80px high, the footer is 30px. These are both fixed.  The first section of the header containing the logo is 180px wide The logo is centered within the top left hand corner of the header  The title text is start aligned in the center zone of the header and will wrap if the browser window is narrowed. It should be aligned in the center of the vertical space  The about link is anchored to the right hand side of the browser with a 20px gap and again is center aligned vertically. It will move as the browser window is reduced in width. The footer has a right aligned copyright statement, again middle aligned within a 30px high footer region and with a 20px buffer to the right hand edge. It will move as the browser window is reduced in width. All remaining space is given to a central zone, which, in this case contains a panelSplitter. Expect that at some point in time you'll need a separate messages line in the center of the footer.  In the homework assigment I set I also stipulate that no inlineStyles can be used to control alignment or margins and no use of other taglibs (e.g. JSF HTML or Trinidad HTML). So, if we take this purist approach, that basic page layout (in my stock solution) requires 3 panelStretchLayouts, 5 panelGroupLayouts and 4 spacers - not including the spacer I use for the logo and the contents of the central zone splitter - phew! The point is that even a seemingly simple layout needs a bit of thinking about, particulatly when you consider strechting and browser re-size behavior. In fact, this little sample actually teaches you much of what you need to know to become vaguely competant at layouts in the framework. The underlying result of "the way things are" is that most of us reach for panelStretchLayout before even finishing the first sip of coffee as we embark on a new page design. In fact most pages you will see in any moderately complex ADF page will basically be nested panelStretchLayouts and panelGroupLayouts, sometimes many, many levels deep. So this is a problem, we've known this for some time and now we have a good solution. (I should point out that the oft-used Trinidad trh tags are not a particularly good solution as you're tie-ing yourself to an HTML table based layout in that case with a host of attendent issues in resize and bi-di behavior, but I digress.) So, tadaaa, I give to you panelGridLayout. PanelGrid, as the name suggests takes a grid like (dare I say slightly gridbag-like) approach to layout, dividing your layout into rows and colums with margins, sizing, stretch behaviour, colspans and rowspans all rolled in, all without the use of inlineStyle. As such, it provides for a much more powerful and consise way of defining a layout such as the one above that is actually simpler and much more logical to design. The basic building blocks are the panelGridLayout itself, gridRow and gridCell. Your content sits inside the cells inside the rows, all helpfully allowing both streching, valign and halign definitions without the need to nest further panelGroupLayouts. So much simpler!  If I break down the homework example above my nested comglomorate of 12 containers and spacers can be condensed down into a single panelGrid with 3 rows and 5 cell definitions (39 lines of source reduced to 24 in the case of the sample). What's more, the actual runtime representation in the browser DOM is much, much simpler, and clean, with basically one DIV per cell (Note that just because the panelGridLayout semantics looks like an HTML table does not mean that it's rendered that way!) . Another hidden benefit is the runtime cost. Because we can use a single layout to achieve much more complex geometries the client side layout code inside the browser is having to work a lot less. This will be a real benefit if your application needs to run on lower powered clients such as netbooks or tablets. So, it's time, if you're on 11.1.2.2 or above, to smile warmly at your panelStretchLayouts, wrap the blanket around it's knees and wheel it off to the Sunset Retirement Home for a well deserved rest. There's a new kid on the block and it wants to be your friend. 

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• Keep a programming language backwards compatible vs. fixing its flaws

  - by Radu Murzea

  First, some context (stuff that most of you know anyway): Every popular programming language has a clear evolution, most of the time marked by its version: you have Java 5, 6, 7 etc., PHP 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 etc. Releasing a new version makes new APIs available, fixes bugs, adds new features, new frameworks etc. So all in all: it's good. But what about the language's (or platform's) problems? If and when there's something wrong in a language, developers either avoid it (if they can) or they learn to live with it. Now, the developers of those languages get a lot of feedback from the programmers that use them. So it kind of makes sense that, as time (and version numbers) goes by, the problems in those languages will slowly but surely go away. Well, not really. Why? Backwards compatibility, that's why. But why is this so? Read below for a more concrete situation. The best way I can explain my question is to use PHP as an example: PHP is loved thousands of people and hated by just as many thousands. All languages have flaws, but apparently PHP is special. Check out this blog post. It has a very long list of so called flaws in PHP. Now, I'm not a PHP developer (not yet), but I read through all of it and I'm sure that a big chunk of that list are indeed real issues. (Not all of it, since it's potentially subjective). Now, if I was one of the guys who actively develops PHP, I would surely want to fix those problems, one by one. However, if I do that, then code that relies on a particular behaviour of the language will break if it runs on the new version. Summing it up in 2 words: backwards compatibility. What I don't understand is: why should I keep PHP backwards compatible? If I release PHP version 8 with all those problems fixed, can't I just put a big warning on it saying: "Don't run old code on this version !"? There is a thing called deprecation. We had it for years and it works. In the context of PHP: look at how these days people actively discourage the use of the mysql_* functions (and instead recommend mysqli_* and PDO). Deprecation works. We can use it. We should use it. If it works for functions, why shouldn't it work for entire languages? Let's say I (the developer of PHP) do this: Launch a new version of PHP (let's say 8) with all of those flaws fixed New projects will start using that version, since it's much better, clearer, more secure etc. However, in order not to abandon older versions of PHP, I keep releasing updates to it, fixing security issues, bugs etc. This makes sense for reasons that I'm not listing here. It's common practice: look for example at how Oracle kept updating version 5.1.x of MySQL, even though it mostly focused on version 5.5.x. After about 3 or 4 years, I stop updating old versions of PHP and leave them to die. This is fine, since in those 3 or 4 years, most projects will have switched to PHP 8 anyway. My question is: Do all these steps make sense? Would it be so hard to do? If it can be done, then why isn't it done? Yes, the downside is that you break backwards compatibility. But isn't that a price worth paying ? As an upside, in 3 or 4 years you'll have a language that has 90 % of its problems fixed.... a language much more pleasant to work with. Its name will ensure its popularity. EDIT: OK, so I didn't expressed myself correctly when I said that in 3 or 4 years people will move to the hypothetical PHP 8. What I meant was: in 3 or 4 years, people will use PHP 8 if they start a new project.

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• OpenGL textures trigger error 1281 if SFML is not called

  - by user3714670

  I am using SOIL to apply textures to VBOs, without textures i could change the background and display black (default color) vbos easily, but now with textures, openGL is giving an error 1281, the background is black and some textures are not applied. but the first texture IS applied (nothing else is working though). The strange thing is : if i create a dummy texture with SFML in the same program, all other textures do work. So i guess there is something i forgot in the texture creation/application, if someone could enlighten me. Here is the code i use to load textures, once loaded it is kept in memory, it mostly comes from the example of SOIL : texture = SOIL_load_OGL_single_cubemap( filename, SOIL_DDS_CUBEMAP_FACE_ORDER, SOIL_LOAD_AUTO, SOIL_CREATE_NEW_ID, SOIL_FLAG_POWER_OF_TWO | SOIL_FLAG_MIPMAPS | SOIL_FLAG_DDS_LOAD_DIRECT ); if( texture > 0 ) { glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP ); glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S ); glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_GEN_T ); glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_GEN_R ); glTexGeni( GL_S, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_REFLECTION_MAP ); glTexGeni( GL_T, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_REFLECTION_MAP ); glTexGeni( GL_R, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_REFLECTION_MAP ); glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, texture ); std::cout << "the loaded single cube map ID was " << texture << std::endl; } else { std::cout << "Attempting to load as a HDR texture" << std::endl; texture = SOIL_load_OGL_HDR_texture( filename, SOIL_HDR_RGBdivA2, 0, SOIL_CREATE_NEW_ID, SOIL_FLAG_POWER_OF_TWO | SOIL_FLAG_MIPMAPS ); if( texture < 1 ) { std::cout << "Attempting to load as a simple 2D texture" << std::endl; texture = SOIL_load_OGL_texture( filename, SOIL_LOAD_AUTO, SOIL_CREATE_NEW_ID, SOIL_FLAG_POWER_OF_TWO | SOIL_FLAG_MIPMAPS | SOIL_FLAG_DDS_LOAD_DIRECT ); } if( texture > 0 ) { // enable texturing glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_2D ); // bind an OpenGL texture ID glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture ); std::cout << "the loaded texture ID was " << texture << std::endl; } else { glDisable( GL_TEXTURE_2D ); std::cout << "Texture loading failed: '" << SOIL_last_result() << "'" << std::endl; } } and how i apply it when drawing : GLuint TextureID = glGetUniformLocation(shaderProgram, "myTextureSampler"); if(!TextureID) cout << "TextureID not found ..." << endl; // glEnableVertexAttribArray(TextureID); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); if(SFML) sf::Texture::bind(sfml_texture); else { glBindTexture (GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture); // glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGB, 1024, 768, 0, GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, &texture); } glUniform1i(TextureID, 0); I am not sure that SOIL is adapted to my program as i want something as simple as possible (i used sfml's texture object which was the best but i can't anymore), but if i can get it to work it would be great.

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• Numerically stable(ish) method of getting Y-intercept of mouse position?

  - by Fraser

  I'm trying to unproject the mouse position to get the position on the X-Z plane of a ray cast from the mouse. The camera is fully controllable by the user. Right now, the algorithm I'm using is... Unproject the mouse into the camera to get the ray: Vector3 p1 = Vector3.Unproject(new Vector3(x, y, 0), 0, 0, width, height, nearPlane, farPlane, viewProj; Vector3 p2 = Vector3.Unproject(new Vector3(x, y, 1), 0, 0, width, height, nearPlane, farPlane, viewProj); Vector3 dir = p2 - p1; dir.Normalize(); Ray ray = Ray(p1, dir); Then get the Y-intercept by using algebra: float t = -ray.Position.Y / ray.Direction.Y; Vector3 p = ray.Position + t * ray.Direction; The problem is that the projected position is "jumpy". As I make small adjustments to the mouse position, the projected point moves in strange ways. For example, if I move the mouse one pixel up, it will sometimes move the projected position down, but when I move it a second pixel, the project position will jump back to the mouse's location. The projected location is always close to where it should be, but it does not smoothly follow a moving mouse. The problem intensifies as I zoom the camera out. I believe the problem is caused by numeric instability. I can make minor improvements to this by doing some computations at double precision, and possibly abusing the fact that floating point calculations are done at 80-bit precision on x86, however before I start micro-optimizing this and getting deep into how the CLR handles floating point, I was wondering if there's an algorithmic change I can do to improve this? EDIT: A little snooping around in .NET Reflector on SlimDX.dll: public static Vector3 Unproject(Vector3 vector, float x, float y, float width, float height, float minZ, float maxZ, Matrix worldViewProjection) { Vector3 coordinate = new Vector3(); Matrix result = new Matrix(); Matrix.Invert(ref worldViewProjection, out result); coordinate.X = (float) ((((vector.X - x) / ((double) width)) * 2.0) - 1.0); coordinate.Y = (float) -((((vector.Y - y) / ((double) height)) * 2.0) - 1.0); coordinate.Z = (vector.Z - minZ) / (maxZ - minZ); TransformCoordinate(ref coordinate, ref result, out coordinate); return coordinate; } // ... public static void TransformCoordinate(ref Vector3 coordinate, ref Matrix transformation, out Vector3 result) { Vector3 vector; Vector4 vector2 = new Vector4 { X = (((coordinate.Y * transformation.M21) + (coordinate.X * transformation.M11)) + (coordinate.Z * transformation.M31)) + transformation.M41, Y = (((coordinate.Y * transformation.M22) + (coordinate.X * transformation.M12)) + (coordinate.Z * transformation.M32)) + transformation.M42, Z = (((coordinate.Y * transformation.M23) + (coordinate.X * transformation.M13)) + (coordinate.Z * transformation.M33)) + transformation.M43 }; float num = (float) (1.0 / ((((transformation.M24 * coordinate.Y) + (transformation.M14 * coordinate.X)) + (coordinate.Z * transformation.M34)) + transformation.M44)); vector2.W = num; vector.X = vector2.X * num; vector.Y = vector2.Y * num; vector.Z = vector2.Z * num; result = vector; } ...which seems to be a pretty standard method of unprojecting a point from a projection matrix, however this serves to introduce another point of possible instability. Still, I'd like to stick with the SlimDX Unproject routine rather than writing my own unless it's really necessary.

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• Business Case for investing time developing Stubs and BizUnit Tests

  - by charlie.mott

  I was recently in a position where I had to justify why effort should be spent developing Stubbed Integration Tests for BizTalk solutions. These tests are usually developed using the BizUnit framework. I assumed that most seasoned BizTalk developers would consider this best practice. Even though Microsoft suggest use of BizUnit on MSDN, I've not found a single site listing the justifications for investing time writing stubs and BizUnit tests. Stubs Stubs should be developed to isolate your development team from external dependencies. This is described by Michael Stephenson here. Failing to do this can result in the following problems: In contract-first scenarios, the external system interface will have been defined.  But the interface may not have been setup or even developed yet for the BizTalk developers to work with. By the time you open the target location to see the data BizTalk has sent, it may have been swept away. If you are relying on the UI of the target system to see the data BizTalk has sent, what do you do if it fails to arrive? It may take time for the data to be processed or it may be scheduled to be processed later. Learning how to use the source\target systems and investigations into where things go wrong in these systems will slow down the BizTalk development effort. By the time the data is visible in a UI it may have undergone further transformations. In larger development teams working together, do you all use the same source and target instances. How do you know which data was created by whose tests? How do you know which event log error message are whose?  Another developer may have “cleaned up” your data. It is harder to write BizUnit tests that clean up the data\logs after each test run. What if your B2B partners' source or target system cannot support the sort of testing you want to do. They may not even have a development or test instance that you can work with. Their single test instance may be used by the SIT\UAT teams. There may be licencing costs of setting up an instances of the external system. The stubs I like to use are generic stubs that can accept\return any message type.  Usually I need to create one per protocol. They should be driven by BizUnit steps to: validates the data received; and select a response messages (or error response). Once built, they can be re-used for many integration tests and from project to project. I’m not saying that developers should never test against a real instance.  Every so often, you still need to connect to real developer or test instances of the source and target endpoints\services. The interface developers may ask you to send them some data to see if everything still works.  Or you might want some messages sent to BizTalk to get confidence that everything still works beyond BizTalk. Tests Automated “Stubbed Integration Tests” are usually built using the BizUnit framework. These facilitate testing of the entire integration process from source stub to target stub. It will ensure that all of the BizTalk components are configured together correctly to meet all the requirements. More fine grained unit testing of individual BizTalk components is still encouraged.  But BizUnit provides much the easiest way to test some components types (e.g. Orchestrations). Using BizUnit with the Behaviour Driven Development approach described by Mike Stephenson delivers the following benefits: source: http://biztalkbddsample.codeplex.com – Video 1. Requirements can be easily defined using Given/When/Then Requirements are close to the code so easier to manage as features and scenarios Requirements are defined in domain language The feature files can be used as part of the documentation The documentation is accurate to the build of code and can be published with a release The scenarios are effective to document the scenarios and are not over excessive The scenarios are maintained with the code There’s an abstraction between the intention and implementation of tests making them easier to understand The requirements drive the testing These same tests can also be used to drive load testing as described here. If you don't do this ... If you don't follow the above “Stubbed Integration Tests” approach, the developer will need to manually trigger the tests. This has the following risks: Developers are unlikely to check all the scenarios each time and all the expected conditions each time. After the developer leaves, these manual test steps may be lost. What test scenarios are there?  What test messages did they use for each scenario? There is no mechanism to prove adequate test coverage. A test team may attempt to automate integration test scenarios in a test environment through the triggering of tests from a source system UI. If this is a replacement for BizUnit tests, then this carries the following risks: It moves the tests downstream, so problems will be found later in the process. Testers may not check all the expected conditions within the BizTalk infrastructure such as: event logs, suspended messages, etc. These automated tests may also get in the way of manual tests run on these environments.

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• 2D isometric picking

  - by Bikonja

  I'm trying to implement picking in my isometric 2D game, however, I am failing. First of all, I've searched for a solution and came to several, different equations and even a solution using matrices. I tried implementing every single one, but none of them seem to work for me. The idea is that I have an array of tiles, with each tile having it's x and y coordinates specified (in this simplified example it's by it's position in the array). I'm thinking that the tile (0, 0) should be on the left, (max, 0) on top, (0, max) on the bottom and (max, max) on the right. I came up with this loop for drawing, which googling seems to have verified as the correct solution, as has the rendered scene (ofcourse, it could still be wrong, also, forgive the messy names and stuff, it's just a WIP proof of concept code) // Draw code int col = 0; int row = 0; for (int i = 0; i < nrOfTiles; ++i) { // XOffset and YOffset are currently hardcoded values, but will represent camera offset combined with HUD offset Point tile = IsoToScreen(col, row, TileWidth / 2, TileHeight / 2, XOffset, YOffset); int x = tile.X; int y = tile.Y; spriteBatch.Draw(_tiles[i], new Rectangle(tile.X, tile.Y, TileWidth, TileHeight), Color.White); col++; if (col >= Columns) // Columns is the number of tiles in a single row { col = 0; row++; } } // Get selection overlay location (removed check if selection exists for simplicity sake) Point tile = IsoToScreen(_selectedTile.X, _selectedTile.Y, TileWidth / 2, TileHeight / 2, XOffset, YOffset); spriteBatch.Draw(_selectionTexture, new Rectangle(tile.X, tile.Y, TileWidth, TileHeight), Color.White); // End of draw code public Point IsoToScreen(int isoX, int isoY, int widthHalf, int heightHalf, int xOffset, int yOffset) { Point newPoint = new Point(); newPoint.X = widthHalf * (isoX + isoY) + xOffset; newPoint.Y = heightHalf * (-isoX + isoY) + yOffset; return newPoint; } This code draws the tiles correctly. Now I wanted to do picking to select the tiles. For this, I tried coming up with equations of my own (including reversing the drawing equation) and I tried multiple solutions I found on the internet and none of these solutions worked. Trying out lots of solutions, I came upon one that didn't work, but it seemed like an axis was just inverted. I fiddled around with the equations and somehow managed to get it to actually work (but have no idea why it works), but while it's close, it still doesn't work. I'm not really sure how to describe the behaviour, but it changes the selection at wrong places, while being fairly close (sometimes spot on, sometimes a tile off, I believe never more off than the adjacent tile). This is the code I have for getting which tile coordinates are selected: public Point? ScreenToIso(int screenX, int screenY, int tileHeight, int offsetX, int offsetY) { Point? newPoint = null; int nX = -1; int nY = -1; int tX = screenX - offsetX; int tY = screenY - offsetY; nX = -(tY - tX / 2) / tileHeight; nY = (tY + tX / 2) / tileHeight; newPoint = new Point(nX, nY); return newPoint; } I have no idea why this code is so close, especially considering it doesn't even use the tile width and all my attempts to write an equation myself or use a solution I googled failed. Also, I don't think this code accounts for the area outside the "tile" (the transparent part of the tile image), for which I intend to add a color map, but even if that's true, it's not the problem as the selection sometimes switches on approx 25% or 75% of width or height. I'm thinking I've stumbled upon a wrong path and need to backtrack, but at this point, I'm not sure what to do so I hope someone can shed some light on my error or point me to the right path. It may be worth mentioning that my goal is to not only pick the tile. Each main tile will be divided into 5x5 smaller tiles which won't be drawn seperately from the whole main tile, but they will need to be picked out. I think a color map of a main tile with different colors for different coordinates within the main tile should take care of that though, which would fall within using a color map for the main tile (for the transparent parts of the tile, meaning parts that possibly belong to other tiles).

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• Resolving collisions between dynamic game objects

  - by TheBroodian

  I've been building a 2D platformer for some time now, I'm getting to the point where I am adding dynamic objects to the stage for testing. This has prompted me to consider how I would like my character and other objects to behave when they collide. A typical staple in many 2D platformer type games is that the player takes damage upon touching an enemy, and then essentially becomes able to pass through enemies during a period of invulnerability, and at the same time, enemies are able to pass through eachother freely. I personally don't want to take this approach, it feels strange to me that the player should receive arbitrary damage for harmless contact to an enemy, despite whether the enemy is attacking or not, and I would like my enemies' interactions between each other (and my player) to be a little more organic, so to speak. In my head I sort of have this idea where a game object (player, or non player) would be able to push other game objects around by manner of 'pushing' each other out of one anothers' bounding boxes if there is an intersection, and maybe correlate the repelling force to how much their bounding boxes are intersecting. The problem I'm experiencing is I have no idea what the math might look like for something like this? I'll show what work I've done so far, it sort of works, but it's jittery, and generally not quite what I would pass in a functional game: //Clears the anti-duplicate buffer collisionRecord.Clear(); //pick a thing foreach (GameObject entity in entities) { //pick another thing foreach (GameObject subject in entities) { //check to make sure both things aren't the same thing if (!ReferenceEquals(entity, subject)) { //check to see if thing2 is in semi-near proximity to thing1 if (entity.WideProximityArea.Intersects(subject.CollisionRectangle) || entity.WideProximityArea.Contains(subject.CollisionRectangle)) { //check to see if thing2 and thing1 are colliding. if (entity.CollisionRectangle.Intersects(subject.CollisionRectangle) || entity.CollisionRectangle.Contains(subject.CollisionRectangle) || subject.CollisionRectangle.Contains(entity.CollisionRectangle)) { //check if we've already resolved their collision or not. if (!collisionRecord.ContainsKey(entity.GetHashCode())) { //more duplicate resolution checking. if (!collisionRecord.ContainsKey(subject.GetHashCode())) { //if thing1 is traveling right... if (entity.Velocity.X > 0) { //if it isn't too far to the right... if (subject.CollisionRectangle.Contains(new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle(entity.CollisionRectangle.Right, entity.CollisionRectangle.Y, 1, entity.CollisionRectangle.Height)) || subject.CollisionRectangle.Intersects(new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle(entity.CollisionRectangle.Right, entity.CollisionRectangle.Y, 1, entity.CollisionRectangle.Height))) { //Find how deep thing1 is intersecting thing2's collision box; float offset = entity.CollisionRectangle.Right - subject.CollisionRectangle.Left; //Move both things in opposite directions half the length of the intersection, pushing thing1 to the left, and thing2 to the right. entity.Velocities.Add(new Vector2(-(((offset * 4) * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)), 0)); subject.Velocities.Add(new Vector2((((offset * 4) * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)), 0)); } } //if thing1 is traveling left... if (entity.Velocity.X < 0) { //if thing1 isn't too far left... if (entity.CollisionRectangle.Contains(new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle(subject.CollisionRectangle.Right, subject.CollisionRectangle.Y, 1, subject.CollisionRectangle.Height)) || entity.CollisionRectangle.Intersects(new Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Rectangle(subject.CollisionRectangle.Right, subject.CollisionRectangle.Y, 1, subject.CollisionRectangle.Height))) { //Find how deep thing1 is intersecting thing2's collision box; float offset = subject.CollisionRectangle.Right - entity.CollisionRectangle.Left; //Move both things in opposite directions half the length of the intersection, pushing thing1 to the right, and thing2 to the left. entity.Velocities.Add(new Vector2((((offset * 4) * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)), 0)); subject.Velocities.Add(new Vector2(-(((offset * 4) * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds)), 0)); } } //Make record that thing1 and thing2 have interacted and the collision has been solved, so that if thing2 is picked next in the foreach loop, it isn't checked against thing1 a second time before the next update. collisionRecord.Add(entity.GetHashCode(), subject.GetHashCode()); } } } } } } } } One of the biggest issues with my code aside from the jitteriness is that if one character were to land on top of another character, it very suddenly and abruptly resolves the collision, whereas I would like a more subtle and gradual resolution. Any thoughts or ideas are incredibly welcome and helpful.

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• Cannot get ATI Drivers installed

  - by bittoast67

  I am trying to install the Catalyst driver. The best I can get is a strange resolution problem and firefox acts all wonkt. The worst I have gotten is low graphics mode in which I just reinstall Ubuntu. I have a HP Pavilion Dv7 laptop. With Radeon 3200 HD. I plan to try again with a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.4.3 as I have heard its the most compatible. This is what I have done: I have tried just the easy way of going to synaptic and installing the drivers that way. the fglrx package (not the fglrx update). And if memory serves I think that boots me into low graphics mode. So, fresh install of Ubuntu and tried again. I have done everything a couple times from this site (http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Precise_Installation_Guide) following every instruction to a T. That gets me something, such as a lowered fan speed and a much cooler computer, but I also lose most of my resolution. And displays says its the best resolution I can get. I also have a very screwy firefox. Using this method I can see AMD Catalyst Control Center in my dash (two of them really one administrator and one not) but when I try to open it it says no amd driver detected. So again, ubuntu reinstall. I have tried the GUI method from the Legacy driver I got from AMD's site. It runs through smoothly and at the very end after I exit the installer it gives me an error. I have also tried various other methods using terminal, as well as various different drivers (the one from the amd's site and the one suggested in the above link for my graphics card) both to no avail. When I try the method in the link on number 2, and I get the super low res and screwy fire fox. I type in, fglrxinfo ,and get a badrequest error. I have yet to type in fglrxinfo and get anything like what I am supposed to. UPDATE: I am now currently reinstalling Ubuntu 12.4. I tried the above mentioned link - thank you very much!- just to see on the previously failed driver attempt by following the purge commands. And to no avail when typing fglrxinfo I still get the badrequest thing. I will update again after a try with a true fresh install. Thanks again!! UPDATE: Alright everyone. Still no go. I have done everything word per word in the provided tutorial. I have rebooted my computer again to a fucked up resolution and this is what I get when typing fglrxinfo: $ fglrxinfo X Error of failed request: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation) Major opcode of failed request: 153 (GLX) Minor opcode of failed request: 19 (X_GLXQueryServerString) Serial number of failed request: 12 Current serial number in output stream: 12 I would like to add that when installing this file: fglrx_8.970-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb I got this: Building initial module for 3.8.0-29-generic Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.8.0-29-generic (x86_64) Consult /var/lib/dkms/fglrx/8.970/build/make.log for more information. update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Processing triggers for ureadahead ... Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.8.0-29-generic Processing triggers for libc-bin ... ldconfig deferred processing now taking place Any ideas? Anyone? I cant for the life of me figure out what I am doing wrong.

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• Why is x=x++ undefined?

  - by ugoren

  It's undefined because the it modifies x twice between sequence points. The standard says it's undefined, therefore it's undefined. That much I know. But why? My understanding is that forbidding this allows compilers to optimize better. This could have made sense when C was invented, but now seems like a weak argument. If we were to reinvent C today, would we do it this way, or can it be done better? Or maybe there's a deeper problem, that makes it hard to define consistent rules for such expressions, so it's best to forbid them? So suppose we were to reinvent C today. I'd like to suggest simple rules for expressions such as x=x++, which seem to me to work better than the existing rules. I'd like to get your opinion on the suggested rules compared to the existing ones, or other suggestions. Suggested Rules: Between sequence points, order of evaluation is unspecified. Side effects take place immediately. There's no undefined behavior involved. Expressions evaluate to this value or that, but surely won't format your hard disk (strangely, I've never seen an implementation where x=x++ formats the hard disk). Example Expressions x=x++ - Well defined, doesn't change x. First, x is incremented (immediately when x++ is evaluated), then it's old value is stored in x. x++ + ++x - Increments x twice, evaluates to 2*x+2. Though either side may be evaluated first, the result is either x + (x+2) (left side first) or (x+1) + (x+1) (right side first). x = x + (x=3) - Unspecified, x set to either x+3 or 6. If the right side is evaluated first, it's x+3. It's also possible that x=3 is evaluated first, so it's 3+3. In either case, the x=3 assignment happens immediately when x=3 is evaluated, so the value stored is overwritten by the other assignment. x+=(x=3) - Well defined, sets x to 6. You could argue that this is just shorthand for the expression above. But I'd say that += must be executed after x=3, and not in two parts (read x, evaluate x=3, add and store new value). What's the Advantage? Some comments raised this good point. It's not that I'm after the pleasure of using x=x++ in my code. It's a strange and misleading expression. What I want is to be able to understand complicated expressions. Normally, a complicated expression is no more than the sum of its parts. If you understand the parts and the operators combining them, you can understand the whole. C's current behavior seems to deviate from this principle. One assignment plus another assignment suddenly doesn't make two assignments. Today, when I look at x=x++, I can't say what it does. With my suggested rules, I can, by simply examining its components and their relations.

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• Memory is full with vertex buffer

  - by Christian Frantz

  I'm having a pretty strange problem that I didn't think I'd run into. I was able to store a 50x50 grid in one vertex buffer finally, in hopes of better performance. Before I had each cube have an individual vertex buffer and with 4 50x50 grids, this slowed down my game tremendously. But it still ran. With 4 50x50 grids with my new code, that's only 4 vertex buffers. With the 4 vertex buffers, I get a memory error. When I load the game with 1 grid, it takes forever to load and with my previous version, it started up right away. So I don't know if I'm storing chunks wrong or what but it stumped me -.- for (int x = 0; x < 50; x++) { for (int z = 0; z < 50; z++) { for (int y = 0; y <= map[x, z]; y++) { SetUpVertices(); SetUpIndices(); cubes.Add(new Cube(device, new Vector3(x, map[x, z] - y, z), grass)); } } } vertexBuffer = new VertexBuffer(device, typeof(VertexPositionTexture), vertices.Count(), BufferUsage.WriteOnly); vertexBuffer.SetData<VertexPositionTexture>(vertices.ToArray()); indexBuffer = new IndexBuffer(device, typeof(short), indices.Count(), BufferUsage.WriteOnly); indexBuffer.SetData(indices.ToArray()); Thats how theyre stored. The array I'm reading from is a byte array which defines the coordinates of my map. Now with my old version, I used the same loading from an array so that hasn't changed. The only difference is the one vertex buffer instead of 2500 for a 50x50 grid. cubes is just a normal list that holds all my cubes for the vertex buffer. Another thing that just came to mind would be my draw calls. If I'm setting an effect for each cube in my cube list, that's probably going to take a lot of memory. How can I avoid doing this? I need the foreach method to set my cubes to the right position foreach (Cube block in cube.cubes) { effect.VertexColorEnabled = false; effect.TextureEnabled = true; Matrix center = Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-0.5f, -0.5f, -0.5f)); Matrix scale = Matrix.CreateScale(1f); Matrix translate = Matrix.CreateTranslation(block.cubePosition); effect.World = center * scale * translate; effect.View = cam.view; effect.Projection = cam.proj; effect.FogEnabled = false; effect.FogColor = Color.CornflowerBlue.ToVector3(); effect.FogStart = 1.0f; effect.FogEnd = 50.0f; cube.Draw(effect); noc++; }

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• Modern OpenGL context failure [migrated]

  - by user209347

  OK, I managed to create an OpenGL context with wglcreatecontextattribARB with version 3.2 in my attrib struct (So I have initialized a 3.2 opengl context). It works, but the strange thing is, when I use glBindBuffer e,g. I still get unreferenced linker error, shouldn't a newer context prevent this? I'm on windows BTW, Linux doesn't have to deal with older and newer contexts (it directly supports the core of its version). The code: PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR pfd; HGLRC tmpRC; int iFormat; if (!(hDC = GetDC(hWnd))) { CMsgBox("Unable to create a device context. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } ZeroMemory(&pfd, sizeof(pfd)); pfd.nSize = sizeof(pfd); pfd.nVersion = 1; pfd.dwFlags = PFD_DRAW_TO_WINDOW | PFD_SUPPORT_OPENGL | PFD_DOUBLEBUFFER; pfd.iPixelType = PFD_TYPE_RGBA; pfd.cColorBits = attribs->colorbits; pfd.cDepthBits = attribs->depthbits; pfd.iLayerType = PFD_MAIN_PLANE; if (!(iFormat = ChoosePixelFormat(hDC, &pfd))) { CMsgBox("Unable to find a suitable pixel format. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } if (!SetPixelFormat(hDC, iFormat, &pfd)) { CMsgBox("Unable to initialize the pixel formats. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } if (!(tmpRC=wglCreateContext(hDC))) { CMsgBox("Unable to create a rendering context. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } if (!wglMakeCurrent(hDC, tmpRC)) { CMsgBox("Unable to activate the rendering context. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } strncpy(vers, (char*)glGetString(GL_VERSION), 3); vers[3] = '\0'; if (sscanf(vers, "%i.%i", &glv, &glsubv) != 2) { CMsgBox("Unable to retrieve the OpenGL version. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } hRC = NULL; if (glv > 2) // Have OpenGL 3.+ support { if ((wglCreateContextAttribsARB = (PFNWGLCREATECONTEXTATTRIBSARBPROC)wglGetProcAddress("wglCreateContextAttribsARB"))) { int attribs[] = {WGL_CONTEXT_MAJOR_VERSION_ARB, glv, WGL_CONTEXT_MINOR_VERSION_ARB, glsubv,WGL_CONTEXT_FLAGS_ARB, 0,0}; hRC = wglCreateContextAttribsARB(hDC, 0, attribs); wglMakeCurrent(NULL, NULL); wglDeleteContext(tmpRC); if (!wglMakeCurrent(hDC, hRC)) { CMsgBox("Unable to activate the rendering context. Program will now close.", "Error"); return false; } moderncontext = true; } } if (hRC == NULL) { hRC = tmpRC; moderncontext = false; }

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