Search Results

Search found 12766 results on 511 pages for 'genetic programming'.

Page 253/511 | < Previous Page | 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260  | Next Page >

• What is the breakdown of jobs in game development?

  - by Destry Ullrich

  There's a project I'm trying to start for Indie Game Development; specifically, it's going to be a social networking website that lets developers meet through (It's a secret). One of the key components is showing what skills members have. Question: I need to know what MAJOR game development roles are not represented in the following list, keeping in mind that many specialist roles are being condensed into more broad, generalist roles: Art Animator (Characters, creatures, props, etc.) Concept Artist (2D scenes, environments, props, silhouettes, etc.) Technical Artist (UI artists, typefaces, graphic designers, etc.) 3D Artist (Modeling, rigging, texture, lighting, etc.) Audio Composer (Scores, music, etc.) Sound Engineer (SFX, mood setting, audio implementation, etc.) Voice (Dialog, acting, etc.) Design Creative Director (Initial direction, team management, communications, etc.) Gameplay Designer (Systems, mechanics, control mapping, etc.) World Designer (Level design, aesthetics, game progression, events, etc.) Writer (Story, mythos, dialog, flavor text, etc.) Programming Engine Programming (Engine creation, scripting, physics, etc.) Graphics Engineer (Sprites, lighting, GUI, etc.) Network Engineer (LAN, multiplayer, server support, etc.) Technical Director (I don't know what a technical director would even do.) Post Script: I have an art background, so i'm not familiar with what the others behind game creation actually do. What's missing from this list, and if you feel some things should be changed around how so?

  Read the article

• What patterns book for iOS development contains this specific information? [closed]

  - by Brett Ryan

  I've read several books on iOS development and Objective-C, however what a lot of them teach is how to work with interfaces and all contain the model inside the view controller, i.e. a UITableViewController based view will simply have an NSArray as it's model. I'm interested in what the best practices are for designing the structure of an application. Specifically I'm interested in best practices for the following: How to separate a model from the view controller. I think I know how to do this by simply replacing the NSArray style example with a specific model object, however what I do not know how to do is alert the view when the model changes. For example in .NET I would solve this by conforming to INotifyPropertyChanged and databinding, and similarly with Java I would use PropertyChangeListener. How to create a service model for my domain objects. For example I want to learn the best way to create a service for a hypothetical Widget object to manage an internal DB and also services for communicating with remote endpoints. I need to learn the best ways to do this in a way that interface components can subscribe to events such as widgetUpdated. These services should be singleton classes and some how dependency injected into model/controller objects. Books I've read so far are: Programming in Objective-C (4th Edition) Beginning iOS 5 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK The iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook: Expanded Electronic Edition: Essentials and Advanced Recipes for iOS Programmers Learn Objective-C on the Mac: For OS X and iOS I've also purchased the following updated books but not yet read them. The Core iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook (4th edition Programming in Objective-C (5th Edition) I come from a Java and C# background with 15 years experience, I understand that many of the ways I would do things in these languages may not fit to the ObjC way of developing applications. Would someone be able to provide me with the book on this topic containing this specific subject matter?

  Read the article

• During interviews, how do I gauge a company's respect for my position?

  - by Bluu

  I'm a web developer who previously joined a software company not knowing their value and respect went to big data analysis, not their website. Sure, they needed a public-facing website, but I eventually found that the most exciting, valued projects there went to data teams. Realizing this, members of the web team were picked off and switched teams, making it hard for those left behind to keep up the work load, and making us look bad. At times it seemed the company culture sneered at us, wondering, "What does that team even do here?" A friend of mine had the opposite problem at another software company. All he wanted to do was crunch big numbers. However he complained that the rest of the company wouldn't shut up about developing the usability of their website. Meanwhile his analytics team languished. I've also heard of salespeople getting love at a company, while engineering as a whole is undervalued, or vice versa. As for my story, if I could have known the company was like that, I might have avoided the job in the first place. So, before I join a new company, how do I gauge its actual respect for my programming role? For its other roles? I want to avoid companies that aren't serious about my particular focus in programming, or, perhaps bigger picture, companies that don't value everybody who works there. (Note I think gauging the company's attitude toward the basic needs of its programmers is covered by these related questions.)

  Read the article

• An entry-level programmer's best option [on hold]

  - by user134409

  I am facing a puzzle and I am not sure the best way to make a decision. In my spare time besides playing video games I got around to develop some games, nothing fancy, just small projects to get a better grasp at programming. After I finished college and got my BA in Computer Science, I got a job as web developer at a small firm. The next few months were very stressful as I had no previous experience and tried my best to make up for it. But after 6 months my boss told me I was inefficient and not very independent and let me go. To my credit, the help from the senior was very limited, I did learn a lot but I have learned by myself. For example they told me to do a UI in BackboneJS and I took me a while but I got it working (even if it was poorly designed). But I managed to do it all by myself because my senior was very busy and he did not have time even for my questions. Now I have found a new job again in web development but I am very afraid of what is going to happen next. I am afraid because I don't want to take the job and then be fired again after a couple of months, I get the feeling that this will be very bad on my CV, job hopping is like a red flag. They want to hire me but I am aware that they are working with new technologies and maybe I will end up not coping with it. So the question is: Should a entry-level programmer be better off with a starting job in QA, testing and work his way from there? I did learn allot from my first job but it was a moral blow when they decided to fire me. I do have a low self-esteem and I know my skills as a programmer are not that great. But I like programming and want to get better and I want to have a long career in it so that basically my pickle. Thank you in advance for the answers.

  Read the article

• Is it possible to use 3G internet for a TCP/IP game server?

  - by Amit Ofer

  I'm working on a turned based multiplayer android game with a friend. I started working on the game server and client using socket programming. I found a few tutorials on how to implement a basic chat on android and I started extending that example to suit my needs. Basically the game is really simple and the communication only include sending a few string from the client to the server every turn and sending the calculated scores back to all the clients after each turn. the idea is that one of the players creates the game and thus initialize the server, and each player connects to this client using ip. I tried this solution and it seems to work great when all the players are using the same wifi connection or by using router port forwarding. The problem is when trying to use 3G internet for the server, I guess the problem is that 3G ip address isn't global and you can't use port forwarding there, correct me if I'm wrong here. Is there a way to overcome this issue? or the only solution is to limit my game to wifi only or think of a different solution than the standard socket programming solution? I.E web server etc. what do you think would be the best approach here? Thanks.

  Read the article

• As a programmer, what's the most valuable non-English (human) language to learn?

  - by Andrew M

  I was thinking that with my developer skills, learning new languages like French, German etc. might be easier for me now. I could setup the verbs as objects in Python and use dir(verb) to find its methods, tenses and stuff ;-) But seriously, if you're a professional developer, in my case in the UK, what's the best foreign language to learn from an employment perspective? I'm thinking, like Hindi - if all our programming jobs are getting outsourced to India, might as well position yourself to be the on-site, go-between guy. Mandarin - if the Chinese become the pre-eminent economy, the new USA, in ten or twenty years, then speaking their language would open up a huge market to you. Russian - maybe another major up-and-comer, but already closer to Western standards. More IT-sector growth here than anywhere else in the coming years? Japanese - drivers of global technology, being able to speak their language could give you a big competitive advantage over other Westerners But I'm just guessing/musing with all these points. If you have an opinion, or even better, some evidence, I'd like to hear it. If the programming things falls through then at least it'll make for more interesting holidays.

  Read the article

• I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?

  - by not-my-real-name

  A lot of blogs and advice on the web seem to suggest that in order to become a great developer, doing just your day job is not enough. For example, you should contribute to open source projects in your spare time, write smartphone apps, etc. In fact a lot of this advice seems to suggest that if you don't love programming enough to do it all day long then you're probably in the wrong career. That doesn't ring true with me. I enjoy my work, but when I come home from the office I'm not in the mood to jump straight back onto the computer and start coding away until bedtime. I only have a certain number of hours free time each day, and I'd rather spend them on other hobbies, seeing friends or going outside than in front of the computer. I do get a kick out of programming, and do hack around outside of work occasionally. I'm committed to my personal development and spend time reading tech blogs and books as a way to keep learning and becoming better. But that doesn't extend so far as to my wanting to use all my spare time for coding. Does this mean I'm not a 'true' software developer at heart? Is it possible to become a good software developer without doing extra outside your job? I'd be very interested to hear what you think.

  Read the article

• What is an appropriate language for expressing initial stages of algorithm refinement?

  - by hydroparadise

  First, this is not a homework assignment, but you can treat it as such ;). I found the following question in the published paper The Camel Has Two Humps. I was not a CS major going to college (I majored in MIS/Management), but I have a job where I find myself coding quite often. For a non-trivial programming problem, which one of the following is an appropriate language for expressing the initial stages of algorithm refinement? (a) A high-level programming language. (b) English. (c) Byte code. (d) The native machine code for the processor on which the program will run. (e) Structured English (pseudocode). What I do know is that you usually want to start your design implementation by writing down pseuducode and then moving/writing in the desired technology (because we all do that, right?) But I never thought about it in terms of refinement. I mean, if you were the original designer, then you might have access to the original pseudocode. But realisticly, when I have to maintain/refactor/refine somebody elses code, I just keep trucking with the language it currently resides in. Anybody have a definitive answer to this? As a side note, I did a quick scan of the paper as I havn't read every single detail. It presents various score statistics, can't find where the answers are with the paper.

  Read the article

• can I achieve my dreams without a degree? [closed]

  - by Dhananjay

  It's really giving me a lot stress as my parents saying me to join college but I don't want. I know I can learn all programming by self studying but they keep saying join college otherwise no one will give you job. I always think positive but sometimes I also start thinking like them (what if my life will be spoiled if I do not go to college) There are so much things on internet. I can learn c++, objective c, java, AI, html, php all through internet (at least I think that I can learn whole by self studying and I can give 10 hour/day easily for studying) and I will keep practicing and become a good programmer in 2 years and then try to do some job for experience so no need to waste 4 years just for studying things which I can learn in 2 years and no need to waste money on college because they teach physics, chemistry all in first 2 years and I only want to study comp. Science. But now again I am thinking negative that what will happen if I do not get degree and what will I do after learning programming if I don't get job? Please suggest what should I do? Should I join college? or self study? Can I achieve my dreams without a degree if I study hard and learn many things? I have full confidence that I can self teach myself better than they will teach in college. I will open my app company and many more. But maybe I am over confident because I don't know what happens in real world. How they treat a person without degree, etc. Anyone of you had gone through this condition? What did you do?

  Read the article

• Layers - Logical seperation vs physical

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  Some programmers recommend logical seperation of layers over physical. For example, given a DL, this means we create a DL namespace not a DL assembly. Benefits include: faster compilation time simpler deployment Faster startup time for your program Less assemblies to reference Im on a small team of 5 devs. We have over 50 assemblies to maintain. IMO this ratio is far from ideal. I prefer an extreme programming approach. Where if 100 assemblies are easier to maintain than 10,000...then 1 assembly must be easier than 100. Given technical limits, we should strive for < 5 assemblies. New assemblies are created out of technical need not layer requirements. Developers are worried for a few reasons. A. People like to work in their own environment so they dont step on eachothers toes. B. Microsoft tends to create new assemblies. E.G. Asp.net has its own DLL, so does winforms. Etc. C. Devs view this drive for a common assembly as a threat. Some team members Have a tendency to change the common layer without regard for how it will impact dependencies. My personal view: I view A. as silos, aka cowboy programming and suggest we implement branching to create isolation. C. First, that is a human problem and we shouldnt create technical work arounds for human behavior. Second, my goal is not to put everything in common. Rather, I want partitions to be made in namespaces not assemblies. Having a shared assembly doesnt make everything common. I want the community to chime in and tell me if Ive gone off my rocker. Is a drive for a single assembly or my viewpoint illogical or otherwise a bad idea?

  Read the article

• Who wants to keep developing?

  - by wcm

  I'm a bit older than most of my peers, having come into programming in my mid 30's. The thing is, I love what I do. Most of my project managers and bosses are my age or younger. I'm really OK with that. I, however, have no desire to climb the company ladder. While I regularly take on the responsibility of making sure that projects get done and my peers often look to me for programming and architectural guidance, I just like writing code and want to keep doing it for as long as possible. Honestly, my only real goal is grow into being a crusty old tech lead until I retire. IF I retire. I would so much rather learn the latest and greatest new technology than PMP my resume. Are there others out there who feel like this because I often feel rather alone in my pathology? EDIT Something I didn't make clear is that I really like helping and mentoring other developers. It makes me feel good and useful and (to be brutaly honest) important.

  Read the article

• Shoring up deficiencies in a "home grown" programmer?

  - by JohnP

  I started out by teaching myself BASIC on a Vic 20, and in college (mid 80's) I had Fortran, Pascal, limited C, machine and assembler (With a smattering of COBOL). I didn't touch programming from approx 1989 to 1999. At that point, I was lucky enough to get hired as a Clipper programmer. Took me about 6 months to learn most of it, and by now (13 yrs) I'm pretty expert in it. I have also picked up Cold Fusion, some C#, some ASP, SQL, etc. I know programming structures, but in most languages I'm missing the esoterics, and I know my code could be much tighter. The problem is that I've learned what I needed to, to get the job done. This results in a lot of gaps in practical knowledge. I am also missing out on a TON of theory. Things like SRP, Refactoring, etc are alien terms. (Although I grok the intent after a short read). In addition, I am in the position now of teaching junior programmers the company and our software, and I don't want to pass on the knowledge gaps. I know this is somewhat of a subjective question and may be closed, but how do you go back and pick up what you've missed?

  Read the article

• Learning curve for web development

  - by refro

  At the moment our team has a huge challenge, we're being asked to deliver a new GUI for an embedded controller. The deadline is very tight and is set on April 2013. Our team is very diverse, some people are on the level of functional programming (mostly C), others (including myself) have mastered object oriented programming (C++, C#). We built a prototype for Android, although it has its quirks, it is mostly just OO. For the future there is a wish to support multiple platforms (Windows, Android, iOS). In my opinion a HTML5 app with a native app shell is the way to go. When gathering more information on the frameworks to use etc., it became obvious to me a paradigm shift is needed. None of us have a web background so we need to learn from the ground up. The shift from functional to OO took us about 6 months to become productive (and some of the early subsystems were rewritten because they were a total mess). Can we expect the learning curve to be similar? Can this be pulled off with a web app? (My feeling says it will already be hard to pull off as a native app which is at the edge of our comfort zone).

  Read the article

• What should a programmer's yearly routine be to maximize their technical skills?

  - by sguptaet

  2 years ago I made a big career change into programming. I learned various technologies on my own without any prior experience. I really love it and feel lucky with all the resources around us to help us learn. Books, courses, open-source, etc. There are so many avenues. I'm wondering what a good routine would be to follow to maximize my software development skills. I don't believe just building software is the way, because that leaves no time for learning new concepts or technologies. I'm looking for an answer like this: Take a new concept sabbatical/workshop 2 weeks per year. Read 1 theoretical and 1 practical programming book per year. Learn 1 additional language every 2 years. Take a 1 week vacation every 6 months. Etc. I realize that the above might sound naive and unrealistic as there are so many factors. But I'd like to know the "recipe" that you think is best that will serve as a guide for people.

  Read the article

• Does lesser wide screen fit better than a large one?

  - by artaxerxe

  About 3 weeks ago I changed my job. At the former workplace, I had 2 monitors for doing programming (GUI and core programming). Here, at the place where I am, the administrators gave me a laptop (15.6 inch) and wanted to provide me a wider screen additional to the laptop's one. I said that for now I want to test as it is, with the laptop's screen. I also want to mention, that in the current job I'm not targeted for GUI development. My feeling until now (but it can be just a feeling) is that working on this single not so wide screen, I'm not so weary after a full day work as I was with 2 wide monitors. Does anyone have any recommendations on this problem? Does lesser screens (in my case exclusively 15.6 inch vs 20 inch screens) affect your eyes? If anyone have any knowledge about, please feel free to say what's your opinion. P.S. I think that's a good site for this kind of question. Otherwise, please guide me on what site from StackExchange should I put it. Thanks.

  Read the article

• tips, guidelines, points to remember for rendering professional code?

  - by ronnieaka

  I'm talking about giving clients professional looking code. The whole nine yards, everything you hardcore professional highly experienced programmers here probably do when coding freelance or for the company you work in. I'm fresh out of college and I'm going into freelance. I just want to be sure that my first few projects leave a good after-taste of professionalism imprinted on the clients' minds. When I Googled what i'm asking here, I was given pages that showed various websites and tools that let you make flashy websites and templates etc. The $N package and such stuff. I can't recall the word experts use for it. Standard, framework [i know that's not it]. English isn't my first language so I'm sorry I don't really don't know the exact phrase for it. That abstract way of writing code so that you don't come across as a sloppy programmer. That above mentioned way for programming websites and desktop software [in python/C/C++/Java]. EDIT: i can work on the accruing vast knowledge and know-how and logic building etc. what i'm asking for is the programming standard/guidelines you guys follow so that the client on seeing code feels that its a professional solution. Like comment blocks, a particular indentation style something like that. Is there any book on it or specific list of points for enterprise type coding by them? Especially here as in my case, for building websites [php for now..], and desktop software [c/c++/java/python]

  Read the article

• JQueryMobile - Problems with dialog boxes [closed]

  - by Richard van Hees

  I'm programming in JQueryMobile, but I can't seem to get some things as I want. First it's good to tell I am mostly programming in a multi-page template. I have a login function in the web based app. The idea is that the user sees he's not logged in and the user can click on the button to log in. A dialog box pops up, in which the user can enter his credentials. This dialog box is in front of the previous page, in my case just index.php. The page for profile is at profile.php#profile. In this case the url for the dialog box is index.php#profile&ui-state=dialog. Don't ask me why, that's how JQueryMobile works, I guess. Anyway, after the user clicks on 'Login' in the pop-up, I want a new dialog to pop-up in which it says you are logged in and I want the content of the page behind it (index.php#profile) to refresh. Of course I want this all to move very smooth and no refreshing of the whole page, to prevent loading time and thus a blank screen for a second. In short: User not logged in Clicks on login Dialog pops up with form Clicks login New dialog pops up with 'success' (or whatever) in the same style as the previous dialog Clicks ok Page behind the dialogues has been refreshed without user noticing Also another thing that doesn't really work out for me: I can't seem to get a dialog to pop up, triggered by an action in another dialog. It just appears as a normal page.

  Read the article

• Been doing .NET for several years and am thinking about a platform change. Where do people suggest I go?

  - by rsteckly

  Hi, I've been programming in .NET for several years now and am thinking maybe its time to do a platform switch. Any suggestions about which platform would be the best to learn? I've been thinking about going back to C++ development or just focusing on T-SQL within the Microsoft stack. I'm thinking of switching because: a) I feel that the .NET platform is increasingly becoming commodified--meaning that its more about learning a GUI and certain things to click around than really understanding programming. I'm concerned that this will lend itself to making developers on that stack increasingly paid less. b) It's very frustrating to spend your entire day essentially debugging something that should work but doesn't. Usually, Microsoft releases something that suggests anyone can just click here and there and poof there's your application. Most of the time it doesn't work and winds up sucking so much more time than it was supposed to save. c) I recently led a team in a small startup to build a WPF application. We were really hit hard with people complaining about having to download the runtime. Our code was also not portable to any other platform. Added to which, the ram usage and slowness to load of the app was remarkable for its size. I researched it and we could not find a way to optimize it. d) I'm a little concerned about being wedded to the Windows platform. What are the pros and cons of adding another platform and which platform do people suggest? Thanks!

  Read the article

• Steering evaluate fitness

  - by Vodemki

  I've made a simple game with a steering model that manage a crowd of agents. I use an genetic algorithm to find the best parameters to use in my system but I need to determine a fitness for each simulation. I know it's something like that: number of collisions * time to reach goal * effort But I don't know how to calculate the effort, is there a special way to do that ? Here is what I've done so far: // Evaluate the distance from agents to goal Real totalDistance(0.0); for (unsigned i=0; i<_agents.size(); i++) { totalDistance += _agents[i]->position().distance(_agents[i]->_goal->position()); } Real totalWallsCollision(0.0); for (unsigned i=0; i<_agents.size(); i++) { for (unsigned j=0; j<walls.size(); j++) { if ( walls[j]->inside(_agents[i]->position()) ) { totalCollision += 1.0; } } } return totalDistance + totalWallsCollision; Thanks for your help.

  Read the article

• Now that Apple's intending to deprecate Java on OS X, what language should I focus on?

  - by Smalltown2000

  After getting shot down on SO, I'll try this here: I'm sure you'll all know of Apple's recent announcement to deprecate Java on OS X (such as discussed here). I've recently come back to programming in the last year or so since I originally learnt on ye olde BASIC many years ago. I have a Mac at home and a PC at work and whilst I have got Windows and Ubuntu installed on my Mac as VMs, I chose to focus my "relearning" on VB first (as it was closest to BASIC) and then rapidly moved to Java as it was cross platform (with minimal effort) and so it was easiest to work on code from both OSes. So my question, if the winds of change on Mac are blowing away from Java and in this post-Sun era, what would be the best language to focus my new efforts on? Please note, this isn't a general "which language is better?" thread and or an opportunity for the associated flame-war. There's plenty of those and it's not the point. I realise that in the long term one shouldn't be allegiant to an individual language so, taking this as an excuse, the question is specifically which is going to be the most quick to be productive on given the background whilst bearing in mind minimum portability rewrites (aspiration rather then requirement) and with a long term value of usage. To that I see the main options as: C# - Closest in "style" to Java but M$ dependent (unless you consider Mono of course) C++ - Hugely complex but if even slightly conquered, then a win? Is it worth the climb up the learning curve? VB.Net - Already have background so easiest to go back to but who uses VB for .Net these days? Surely if using a CLI language I should use C#... Python - Cross-platform but what about UI for the end-user? EDIT: As a usage priority, I envision desktop application programming. Though the ability to branch in the future is always desirable. I guess graphics are the next direction once basics are in place.

  Read the article

• 2 year cis degree and in school for computer science what can I do?

  - by chame1eon

  Hi I am 29 and have a recent 2 cis year degree from a community college , an A+ certification , and meager experience with web stuff ( Java , Javascript , php ) while in my 1 year help desk internship. In all the programming classes I was able to blow through the homework easily even while other students were panicking and dropping. I think I have managed to avoid the most atrocious noob/self taught mistakes ( spaghetti code etc) by just doing research before starting something and trying to keep good design in mind. Even so I'd have to make heavy use of references to crawl through even simple projects that would result in fully finished useful applications. I need a job now and I am tired of the slow pace of the classes and would love to get any kind of practical experience I could. The problem is that I am not sure what I should be trying to do. I have a very strong preference for application programming or at least anything light on design and preferably pretty low level. If I can't do that then anything technology related , for example help desk would be better than nothing. I live near Raleigh NC. Am I qualified for anything that could contribute to coding (C++ or Java ) experience or even web development though I don't really like it. Would web development experience help. If not is there anything I could read or do that could help? Is the help desk my only choice? If it is, are there any relatively quick certifications or anything similar that would help while I am waiting? Sorry about the long multi-part question. Thanks for reading.

  Read the article

• The best programmer is N times more effective than the worst? Who Cares?

  - by StevenWilkins

  There is a latent belief in programming that the best programmer is N times more effective than the worst. Where N is usually between 10 and 100. Here are some examples: http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity-factor/ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html http://haacked.com/archive/2007/06/25/understanding-productivity-differences-between-developers.aspx There is some debate as to whether or not it's been proven: http://morendil.github.com/folklore.html I'm confident in the accuracy of these statements: The best salesmen in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst The best drivers in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst The best soccer players in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst The best CEOs in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst In some cases, I'm sure the difference is greater. In fact, you could probably say that The best [insert any skilled profession here] in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst We don't know what N is for the rest of these professions, so why concern ourselves with what the actual number is for programming? Can we not just say that the number is large enough so that it's very important to hire the best people and move on already?

  Read the article

• Discrete Math and Computing Course

  - by ShrimpCrackers

  I was recently admitted into a Computing and Software Systems program (basically software engineering) and one of the first courses I'll be taking is called Mathematical Principles of Computing. The course description: "Integrating mathematical principles with detailed instruction in computer programming. Explores mathematical reasoning and discrete structures through object-oriented programming. Includes algorithm analysis, basic abstract data types, and data structures." I'm not a fan of math, but I've been doing well in all my math classes mostly A's and B's ever since I started two years ago, and I've been doing math every quarter - never took a quarter without math - so I've been doing it all in sequence without gaps. However, I'm worried about this class. I've read briefly on what discrete math is and from what my advisor told me, its connection with computer science is that it has alot to do with proving algorithms. One thing that my instructors briefly touched on and never went into detail was proving algorithms, and when I tried, I just wasn't very good at mathematical induction. It's one of the things that I ignored every time it showed up in a homework problem (usually in Calculus III which I'm finishing up right now). Questions: 1. What can I expect from this class? 2. How can I prepare myself for this class? 3. Other tips? Thank you.

  Read the article

• Windows Phone 7 v. Windows 8 Metro &ldquo;Same but Different&rdquo;

  - by ryanabr

  I have been doing development on both the Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 Metro style applications over the past month and have really been enjoying doing both. What is great is that Silverlight is used for both development platforms. What is frustrating is the "Same but Different" nature of both platforms. Many similar services and ways of doing things are available on both platforms, but the objects, namespaces, and ways of handling certain cases are different. I almost had a heart attack when I thought that XmlDocument had been removed from the new WinRT. I was relived (but a little annoyed)  when I found out that it had shifted from the "System.Xml" namespace to the "Windows.Data.Xml.Dom" namespace. In my opinion this is worse than deprecating and reintroducing it since there isn't the lead time to know that the change is coming, maker changes and adjust. I also think the breaks the compatibility that is advertised between the WinRT and .NET framework from a programming perspective, as the code base will have to be physically different if compiled for one platform versus the other. Which brings up another issue, the need for separate DLLs with for the different platforms that contain the same C# code behind them which seems like the beginning of a code maintenance headache. Historically, I have kept source files "co-located" with the projects that they are compiled into. After doing some research, I think I will end up keeping "common" files that need to be compiled in to DLLs for the different platforms in a seperate location in TFS, not directly included in any one Visual Studio project, but added as links in the project that would get compiled into the windows 7 phone, or Windows 8. This will work fine, except for the case where dependencies don't line up for each platform as described above, but will work fine for base classes that do the raw work at the most basic programming level.

  Read the article

• On Developing Web Services with Global State

  - by user74418

  I'm new to web programming. I'm more experienced and comfortable with client-side code. Recently, I've been dabbling in web programming through Python's Google App Engine. I ran into some difficulty while trying to write some simple apps for the purposes of learning, mainly involving how to maintain some kind of consistent universally-accessible state for the application. I tried to write a simple queueing management system, the kind you would expect to be used in a small clinic, or at a cafeteria. Typically, this is done with hardware. You take a number from a ticketing machine, and when your number is displayed or called you approach the counter for service. Alternatively, you could be given a small pager, which will beep or vibrate when it is your turn to receive service. The former is somewhat better in that you have an idea of how many people are still ahead of you in the queue. In this situation, the global state is the last number in queue, which needs to be updated whenever a request is made to the server. I'm not sure how to best to store and maintain this value in a GAE context. The solution I thought of was to keep the value in the Datastore, attempt to query it during a ticket request, update the value, and then re-store it with put. My problem is that I haven't figured out how to lock the resource so that other requests do not check the value while it is in the middle of being updated. I am concerned that I may end up ticket requests that have the same queue number. Also, the whole solution feels awkward to me. I was wondering if there was a more natural way to accomplish this without having to go through the Datastore. Can anyone with more experience in this domain provide some advice on how to approach the design of the above application?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260  | Next Page >