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• Sound in Ubuntu 12.10 on Chromebook

  - by Paul Mennega

  I've got an HP Chromebook 14 that I've rooted and installed Ubuntu via Crouton (upgraded to 12.10) and most things are working nicely. One issue that I am having trouble solving relates to sound. I've got sound output that I can control via the individual app (e.g. Youtube), but when trying to control the volume via the built-in xfce4-mixer, I get the following error: GStreamer was unable to detect any sound devices. Some sound system specific GStreamer packages may be missing. It may also be a permissions problem. Opening a terminal, I can run the alsamixer and control the volume levels. It is reporting back that the card is CRAS. I'd love to be able to do it from XFCE and the built-in mixer. I've tried re-installing the GStreamer packages, but no luck. It seems like I am close but not sure where to go from here. On a maybe unrelated note, plugging headphones into the headphone jack in Ubuntu also does not stop the sound from coming from the speakers and nothing comes through the headphones. Switching back to ChromeOs, everything works as expected, so I think that it's a driver issue.

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• Thinking skills to be a good programmer

  - by Paul

  I have been programming for last 15 years with non-CS degree. Main reason I got into programming was that I liked to learn new things and apply them to my work. And I was able to find and fix programming errors and their causes faster than others. But I never find myself a a guru or an expert, maybe due to my non-CS major. And when I saw great programmers, I observed they are very good, much better than me of course, at solving problems. One skill I found good in my mid-career is thinking of requirements and tasks in a reverse order and in abstract. In that way, I can see what is really required for me to do without detail and can quickly find parts of solution that already exist. So I wonder if there are other thinking skills to be a good programmer. I've followed Q&As below and actually read some of books recommended there. But I couldn't really pickup good methods directly applicable for my programming work. What non-programming books should a programmer read to help develop programming/thinking skills? Skills and habits to develop to be good at programming (I'm a newbie)

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• XNA 4.0 2D sidescroller variable terrain heightmap for walking/collision

  - by JiminyCricket

  I've been fooling around with moving on sloped tiles in XNA and it is semi-working but not completely satisfactory. I also have been thinking that having sets of predetermined slopes might not give me terrain that looks "organic" enough. There is also the problem of having to construct several different types of tile for each slope when they're chained together (only 45 degree tiles will chain perfectly as I understand it). I had thought of somehow scanning for connected chains of sloped tiles and treating it as a new large triangle, as I was having trouble with glitching at the edges where sloped tiles connect. But, this leads back to the problem of limiting the curvature of the terrain. So...what I'd like to do now is create a simple image or texture of the terrain of a level (or section of the level) and generate a simple heightmap (of the Y's for each X) for the terrain. The player's Y position would then just be updated based on their X position. Is there a simple way of doing this (or a better way of solving this problem)? The main problem I can see with this method is the case where there are areas above the ground that can be walked on. Maybe there is a way to just map all walkable ground areas? I've been looking at this helpful bit of code: http://thirdpartyninjas.com/blog/2010/07/28/sloped-platform-collision/ but need a way to generate the actual points/vectors.

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• Ubuntu 12.04 Precise on Dell Inspirion Duo

  - by Roman M. Kos

  I installed 12.04 version of Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron Duo. After installing with help of program like UNetBootIn or smth like that. ( Besides i have no problem with kernel panic on chargin on/off like in 11.10. ) After that i followed with steps from here, in the first post here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1658635 There left one big problem with touchscreen: When i whant to drag with touchscreen like i`m doing it with mouse (for ex. selecting multile files with mouse) the selectable rectangular doesnot shows while im dragging, when dragging was finished (i put my finger off) it shows the rectangular and hides it. This thing disables all my tries to drag a window or smth else.... Also some time after using touchscreen such things are disabeling: - Often - click from a mouse (after keyboard using functinality restores) - less often - mouse movement disables (sometimes restores sometimes not) - lesser than other - keyboards works but no sygnals accepting (keyoards has indicator, so thay react, mouse of course not) The test from eTouchU utility passes perfeclty. Any idia for solving this problem? P.S.: Im from Ukraine, so sorry if my possible grammar mistakes. P.P.S.: Besides how to know the physicall position of my tabled mode? For automaticall rotating. Like on each rotation do some script.

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• Ubuntu 12.10: Installing proprietary Nvidia driver causes freeze at boot

  - by Greg

  Ok, so I just installed Ubuntu on my laptop, and I immediately encountered an issue: the HDMI audio output won't work. Yes, I know about the sound settings thing where you have to select the HDMI option, but even when it's selected I get no sound out of the TV I'm hooking it up to. This is a dealbreaker for me, because my laptop speakers are terrible, it's one of the big reasons I use my TV monitor. So I decided to work on solving the problem by upgrading my Nvidia drivers. I switched to one of the propriety drivers offered in that software updating utility that comes with the OS, the one option that said (tested). Viola, sound over the HDMI is now working. Unfortunately, this now brings me to my next problem: when I reboot Ubuntu with this or any other proprietary driver installed, it freezes when it tries to load my desktop. As in I can see my wallpaper, but no icons or options of any kind. The system is totally frozen, and gives me one of those "we've experienced an error, do you want to report it messages." So there's my bind. I need HDMI audio out, that's a total dealbreaker for me, but installing the drivers that give me that capability crash the system. Does anyone have any idea what's causing this

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• Failed to load session gnome-fallback, after messing with metacity

  - by Carlito

  I am using Ubuntu 12.04 with gnome-session-fallback (Gnome Classic in the login menu). I wanted to remove window borders from metacity and stumbled across this post which basically changes window->mwm_decorated from TRUE to FALSE, which should remove the window borders in metacity. I know that it is also possible to change your GTK theme to one without window borders, but I wanted to try this solution. So I downloaded the source from my current metacity version (2.34.1) and changed that row. After compiling (./configure && make) I ran checkinstall which generates a .deb file from the source (had to change the version a bit to match the current one exactly). But after installing and loging out and back in, I couldn't load Gnome Classic. I get the error Failed to load session gnome-fallback. I could reinstall the old metacity which was still saved in /var/cache/apt/archives/, so everything is back where it was before. But I would like to mess around with metacity. Have I installed it correctly or did I forgot something? Are there any log files that I should check for solving this error? Thanks in advance!

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• The best way to learn how to extend Orchard

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  We do have tutorials on the Orchard site, but we can't cover all topics, and recently I've found myself more and more responding to forum questions by pointing people to an existing module that was solving a similar problem to the one the question was about. I really like this way of learning by example and from the expertise of others. This is one of the reasons why we decided that modules would by default come in source code form that we compile dynamically. it makes them easy to understand and easier to modify for your own purposes. Hackability FTW! But how do you crack open a module and look at what's inside? You can do it in two different ways. First, you can just install the module from the gallery, directly from your Orchard instance's admin panel. Once you've done that, you can just look into your Modules directory under the web site. There is now a subfolder with the name of the new module that contains a csproj that you can open in Visual Studio or add to your Orchard solution. Second, you can simply download the package (it's NuGet) and rename it to a .zip extension. NuGet being based on Zip, this will open just fine in Windows Explorer: What you want to dig into is the Content/Modules/[NameOfTheModule] folder, which is where the actual code is. Thanks to Jason Gaylord for the idea for this post.

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• Game Review: Monument Valley

  Once again, it was a tweet that caught my attention... and the official description on the Play Store sounds good, too. "In Monument Valley you will manipulate impossible architecture and guide a silent princess through a stunningly beautiful world. Monument Valley is a surreal exploration through fantastical architecture and impossible geometry. Guide the silent princess Ida through mysterious monuments, uncovering hidden paths, unfolding optical illusions and outsmarting the enigmatic Crow People." So, let's check it out. What an interesting puzzle game Once again, I left some review on the Play Store: "Beautiful but short distraction Woohoo, what a great story behind the game. Using optical illusions and impossible geometries in this fantastic adventure of the silent princess just puts all the pieces perfectly together. Walking the amazing paths in the various levels and solving the riddles gives some decent hours of distraction but in the end you might have the urge to do more..." I can't remember exactly when and who tweeted about the game but honestly it caught my attention based on the simplicity of the design and the aspect that it seems to be an isometric design. The game relies heavily on optical illusions in order to guide to the silent princess Ida through her illusory adventure of impossible architecture and forgiveness. The game is set like a clockwork and you are turning, flipping and switching elements on the paths between the doors. Unfortunately, there aren't many levels and the game play lasted only some hours. Maybe there are more astonishing looking realms and interesting gimmicks in future versions. Play Store: Monument Valley Also, check out the latest game updates on the official web site of ustwo BTW, the game is also available on the Apple App Store and on Amazon Store for the Kindle Fire.

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• Algorithm for detecting windows in a room

  - by user2733436

  I am dealing with the following problem and i was looking to write a Pseudo-code for developing an algorithm that can be generic for such a problem. Here is what i have come up with thus far. STEP 1 In this step i try to get the robot where it maybe placed to the top left corner. Turn Left - If no window or Wall detected keep going forward 1 unit.. if window or wall detected -Turn right -- if no window or Wall detected keep going forward.. if window or wall detected then top left corner is reached. STEP 2 (We start counting windows after we get to this stage to avoid miscounting) I would like to declare a variable called turns as it will help me keep track if robot has gone around entire room. Turns = 4; Now we are facing north and placed on top left corner. while(turns0){ If window or wall detected (if window count++) Turn Right Turn--; While(detection!=wall || detection!=window){ move 1 unit forward Turn left (if window count++) Turn right } } I believe in doing so the robot will go around the entire room and count windows and it will stop once it has gone around the entire room as the turns get decremented. I don't feel this is the best solution and would appreciate suggestions on how i can improve my Pseudo-code. I am not looking for any code just a algorithm on solving such a problem and that is why i have not posted this in stack overflow. I apologize if my Pseudo-code is poorly written please make suggestions if i can improve that as i am new to this. Thanks.

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• How do I disable touchpad tap to click?

  - by AWE

  You've heard this a million times but the "tap to click" is a pain in the behind and I want to disable it. There is no touchpad in gpointing-device-settings and neither in mouse and touchpad in system settings. I've tried some commands in terminal but it's all crap. Dconf-editor doesn't react. How about solving this once and for all? xinput list: ? Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ? ? Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ? ? PS/2 Generic Mouse id=13 [slave pointer (2)] ? Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)] ? Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Video Bus id=8 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Power Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Sleep Button id=10 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_HD id=11 [slave keyboard (3)] ? AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=12 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Dell WMI hotkeys id=14 [slave keyboard (3)]

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• What are some Java patterns well-suited for fast, algorithmic coding?

  - by Casey Chu

  I'm in college, and I've recently started competing in programming competitions with my friends. These competitions involve solving algorithmic problems quickly. It's a lot of fun, but there's one problem: I'm forced to use Java. (My teammates use Java.) Background: I'm a self-taught JavaScript programmer, and it hurts to write Java code. I find it very verbose and inflexible, and I feel slowed down when having to declare types and decide which of the eighty list data structure to use. I'm also frustrated about the lack of functional programming features and how verbose using regular expressions, arrays, and dictionaries are. As an example, consider the problem of finding the length of the longest string of consecutive characters in a given string. So the string XX22BBBBccXX222 would give 4, for the string of four Bs. In Java, I'd have to loop through and manually count characters and manually keep track of the maximum. (That's at least as far as I'm aware -- I'm not as familiar with Java as I am with JavaScript.) In JavaScript, I'd find it like this: var max = Math.max.apply(Math, str.match(/(.)\1*/g).map(function (s) { return s.length; })); Much quicker and simpler, in my book. The question: what are some Java features, techniques, or patterns well-suited for fast, algorithmic coding?

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• Ubuntu server 11.04 recognize only 1 core instead of 4

  - by Kreker

  I searched for other questions and googled a lot but I don't find a solution for solving this problem. Ubuntu Server 11.04 64bit installed on Dell Poweredge with Intel Xeon X5450. He only recognize 1 of the 4 cores I have. Tried to modify the GRUB config but didn't work. IN the machine BIOS I didn't find anything useful. CPU root@darwin:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 23 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5450 @ 3.00GHz stepping : 10 cpu MHz : 2992.180 cache size : 6144 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 1 core id : 0 cpu cores : 1 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority bogomips : 5984.36 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: GRUB root@darwin:~# cat /etc/default/grub # If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update # /boot/grub/grub.cfg. # For full documentation of the options in this file, see: # info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration' GRUB_DEFAULT=0 #GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true GRUB_TIMEOUT=2 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian` GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="noapic nolapic" #was with acpi=off # Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs # This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains # the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...) #GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef" # Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only) #GRUB_TERMINAL=console # The resolution used on graphical terminal # note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE # you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo' #GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 # Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux #GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true # Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries #GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true" # Uncomment to get a beep at grub start #GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1" Complete dmesg Too long, posted on pastebin http://pastebin.com/bsKPBhzu

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• Can Dungeons & Dragons Make You More Successful? [Video]

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Dungeons & Dragons gets a bit of a bad rap in popular culture, but in this video treatise from Idea Channel, they propose that Dungeons & Dragons wires players for success. There are some deeply ingrained stereotypes about Dungeons & Dragons, and those stereotypes usually begin and end with people shouting “NERD!!!” But the reality of the D&D universe is a whole lot more complex. Rather than being an escape from reality, D&D is actually a way to enhance some important real life skillz! It’s a chance to learn problem solving, visualization, interaction, organization, people management… the list could go on and on. Plus, there are some very famous non-nerds who have declared an affinity for D&D, so best stop criticizing and join in if you want to be a successful at the game of life. While we’re trying not to let our love of all things gaming cloud our judgement, we’re finding it difficult to disagree with the premise that open-ended play fosters creative and adaptive thinking. Can Dungeons & Dragons Make You A Confident & Successful Person? [via Boing Boing] HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference How To Troubleshoot Internet Connection Problems

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• UNESCO, J-ISIS, and the JavaFX 2.2 WebView

  - by Geertjan

  J-ISIS, which is the newly developed Java version of the UNESCO generalized information storage and retrieval system for bibliographic information, continues to be under heavy development and code refactoring in its open source repository. Read more about J-ISIS and its NetBeans Platform basis here. Soon a new version will be available for testing and it would be cool to see the application in action at that time. Currently, it looks as follows, though note that the menu bar is under development and many menus you see there will be replaced or removed soon: About one aspect of the application, the browser, which you can see above, Jean-Claude Dauphin, its project lead, wrote me the following: The DJ-Native Swing JWebBrowser has been a nice solution for getting a Java Web Browser for most popular platforms. But the Java integration has always produced from time to time some strange behavior (like losing the focus on the other components after clicking on the Browser window, overlapping of windows, etc.), most probably because of mixing heavyweight and lightweight components and also because of our incompetency in solving the issues. Thus, recently we changed for the JavaFX 2.2 WebWiew. The integration with Java is fine and we have got rid of all the DJ-Native Swing problems. However, we have lost some features which were given for free with the native browsers such as downloading resources in different formats and opening them in the right application. This is a pretty cool step forward, i.e., the JavaFX integration. It also confirms for me something I've heard other people saying too: the JavaFX WebView component is a perfect low threshold entry point for Swing developers feeling their way into the world of JavaFX.

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• Help parsing long (3.5mil lines) text file, line by line and storing data, need a strategy

  - by Jarrod

  This is a question about solving a particular problem I am struggling with, I am parsing a long list of text data, line by line for a business app in PHP (cron script on the CLI). The file follows the format: HD: Some text here {text here too} DC: A description here DC: the description continues here DC: and it ends here. DT: 2012-08-01 HD: Next header here {supplemental text} ... this repeats over and over for a few hundred megs I have to read each line, parse out the HD: line and grab the text on this line. I then compare this text against data stored in a database. When a match is found, I want to then record the following DC: lines that succeed the matched HD:. Pseudo code: while ( the_file_pointer_isnt_end_of_file) { line = getCurrentLineFromFile title = parseTitleFrom(line) matched = searchForMatchInDB(line) if ( matched ) { recordTheDCLines // <- Best way to do this? } } My problem is that because I am reading line by line, what is the best way to trigger the script to start saving DC lines, and then when they are finished save them to the database? I have a vague idea, but have yet to properly implement it. I would love to hear the communities ideas\suggestions! Thank you.

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• Need advice on framework design: how to make extending easy

  - by beginner_

  I'm creating a framework/library for a rather specific use-case (data type). It uses diverse spring components, including spring-data. The library has a set of entity classes properly set up and according service and dao layers. The main work or main benefit of the framework lies in the dao and service layer. Developers using the framework should be able to extend my entity classes to add additional fields they require. Therefore I made dao and service layer generic so it can be used by such extended entity classes. I now face an issue in the IO part of the framework. It must be able to import the according "special data type" into the database. In this part I need to create a new entity instance and hence need the actual class used. My current solution is to configure in spring a bean of the actual class used. The problem with this is that an application using the framework could only use 1 implementation of the entity (the original one from me or exactly 1 subclass but not 2 different classes of the same hierarchy. I'm looking for suggestions / desgins for solving this issue. Any ideas?

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• Learning node.js

  - by john smith

  I am not sure if this is the right place to ask but, I thought this was the most suitable. I recently graduated from university. Learned the full php stack; basically all the LAMP stuff, obviously without counting all the other subjects. Not even got my degree and this whole node.js booming out of nowhere. You can imagine how one can feel about this, the story is always the same: you never end learning, and studying. So I recently got my hands on node.js; reading books, tutorials, and everything imaginable on the internet. The problem is one and simple: this is nowhere near to having a teacher standing near you helping you understanding and solving your problems, especially when all you can do is post your doubts on a website and patiently wait for replies. It's not that it isn't good, it's just much slower than what I just expressed above. So, in short words: is there a place where one can find someone willing to teach you about such contents? This would obviously done via remote means, like skype and such. Can anyone here point me into the right direction? Or just downvote me for being in the wrong website? Thanks in advance.

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• Ninject/DI: How to correctly pass initialisation data to injected type at runtime

  - by MrLane

  I have the following two classes: public class StoreService : IStoreService { private IEmailService _emailService; public StoreService(IEmailService emailService) { _emailService = emailService; } } public class EmailService : IEmailService { } Using Ninject I can set up bindings no problem to get it to inject a concrete implementation of IEmailService into the StoreService constructor. StoreService is actually injected into the code behind of an ASP.NET WebForm as so: [Ninject.Inject] public IStoreService StoreService { get; set; } But now I need to change EmailService to accept an object that contains SMTP related settings (that are pulled from the ApplicationSettings of the Web.config). So I changed EmailService to now look like this: public class EmailService : IEmailService { private SMTPSettings _smtpSettings; public void SetSMTPSettings(SMTPSettings smtpSettings) { _smtpSettings = smtpSettings; } } Setting SMTPSettings in this way also requires it to be passed into StoreService (via another public method). This has to be done in the Page_Load method in the WebForms code behind (I only have access to the Settings class in the UI layer). With manual/poor mans DI I could pass SMTPSettings directly into the constructor of EmailService and then inject EmailService into the StoreService constructor. With Ninject I don't have access to the instances of injected types outside of the objects they are injected to, so I have to set their data AFTER Ninject has already injected them via a separate public setter method. This to me seems wrong. How should I really be solving this scenario?

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• The Start of a Blog

  - by dbradley

  So, here's my new blog up and running, who am I and what am I planning to write here?First off - here's a little about me:I'm a recent graduate from university (coming up to a year ago since I finished) studying Software Engineering on a four year course where the third year was an industrial placement. During the industrial placement I went to work for a company called Adfero in a "Technical Consultant" role as well as a junior "Information Systems Developer". Once I completed my placement I went back to complete my final year but also continued in my developer role 2/3 days a week with the company.Working part time while at uni always seems like a great idea until you get half way through the year. For me the problem was not so much having a lack of time, but rather a lack of interest in the course content having got a chance at working on real projects in a live environment. Most people who have been graduated a little while also find this - when looking back at uni work, it seem to be much more trivial from a problem solving point of view which I found to be true and I found key to uni work to actually be your ability to prove though how you talk about something that you comprehensively understand the basics.After completing uni I then returned full time to Adfero purely in the developer role which is where I've now been for almost a year and have now also taken on the title of "Information Systems Architect" where I'm working on some of the more high level design problems within the products.What I'm wanting to share on this blog is some of the interesting things I've learnt myself over the last year, the things they don't teach you in uni and pretty much anything else I find interesting! My personal favorite areas are text indexing, search and particularly good software engineering design - good design combined with good code makes the first step towards a well-written, maintainable piece of software.Hopefully I'll also be able to share a few of the products I've worked on, the mistake I've made and the software problems I've inherited from previous developers and had to heavily re-factor.

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• Is it better to specialize in a single field I like, or expand into other fields to broaden my horizons?

  - by Oak

  This is a dilemma about which I have been thinking for quite a while. I'm a graduate student and my topics of interest are programming language design, code analysis, compilation, etc. So far, this field has been very interesting and rewarding for me, so I was thinking about finding a job in that field and continuing to specialize in it. I feel like it's a relatively solid field which won't "get out of style" anytime soon. I've always thought that in such complex fields it's better to be a real expert than just another guy who superficially understand what the experts are talking about. On the other hand, I feel that by specializing this way I really limit my future option. I have always been a strong believer in multidisciplinary approaches to problems. Maybe I should go search for a general programming job in which I could gain experience in other fields, as well as occasionally apply my favorite field for solving problems. Specializing in only one or two fields can prevent me from thinking outside the box and cause stagnation. I would really like to hear more opinions about this choice. The truth is I'm already leaning towards one of the choices, so basic psychology says nothing will change my mind, but I would still love to hear some feedback.

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• How to manage Areas/Levels in an RPG?

  - by Hexlan

  I'm working on an RPG and I'm trying to figure out how to manage the different levels/areas in the game. Currently I create a new state (source file) for every area, defining its unique aspects. My concern is that as the game grows the number of class files will become unmanageable with all the towns, houses, shops, dungeons, etc. that I need to keep track of. I would also prefer to separate my levels from the source code because non-programmer members of the team will be creating levels, and I would like the engine to be as free from game specific code as possible. I'm thinking of creating a class that provides all the functions that will be the same between all the levels/areas with a unique member variable that can be used to look up level specifics from data. This way I only need to define level/area once in the code, but can create multiple instances each with its own unique aspects provided by data. Is this a good way to go about solving the issue? Is there a better way to handle a growing number of levels?

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• Uses of persistent data structures in non-functional languages

  - by Ray Toal

  Languages that are purely functional or near-purely functional benefit from persistent data structures because they are immutable and fit well with the stateless style of functional programming. But from time to time we see libraries of persistent data structures for (state-based, OOP) languages like Java. A claim often heard in favor of persistent data structures is that because they are immutable, they are thread-safe. However, the reason that persistent data structures are thread-safe is that if one thread were to "add" an element to a persistent collection, the operation returns a new collection like the original but with the element added. Other threads therefore see the original collection. The two collections share a lot of internal state, of course -- that's why these persistent structures are efficient. But since different threads see different states of data, it would seem that persistent data structures are not in themselves sufficient to handle scenarios where one thread makes a change that is visible to other threads. For this, it seems we must use devices such as atoms, references, software transactional memory, or even classic locks and synchronization mechanisms. Why then, is the immutability of PDSs touted as something beneficial for "thread safety"? Are there any real examples where PDSs help in synchronization, or solving concurrency problems? Or are PDSs simply a way to provide a stateless interface to an object in support of a functional programming style?

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• Effective handling of variables in non-object oriented programming

  - by srnka

  What is the best method to use and share variables between functions in non object-oriented program languages? Let's say that I use 10 parameters from DB, ID and 9 other values linked to it. I need to work with all 10 parameters in many functions. I can do it next ways: 1. call functions only with using ID and in every function get the other parameters from DB. Advantage: local variables are clear visible, there is only one input parameter to function Disadvantage: it's slow and there are the same rows for getting parameters in every function, which makes function longer and not so clear 2. call functions with all 10 parameters Advantage: working with local variables, clear function code Disadvantage: many input parameters, what is not nice 3. getting parameters as global variables once and using them everywhere Advantage - clearer code, shorter functions, faster processing Disadvantage - global variables - loosing control of them, possibility of unwanted overwriting (Especially when some functions should change their values) Maybe there is some another way how to implement this and make program cleaner and more effective. Can you say which way is the best for solving this issue?

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• Algorithm to shoot at a target in a 3d game

  - by Sebastian Bugiu

  For those of you remembering Descent Freespace it had a nice feature to help you aim at the enemy when shooting non-homing missiles or lasers: it showed a crosshair in front of the ship you chased telling you where to shoot in order to hit the moving target. I tried using the answer from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4107403/ai-algorithm-to-shoot-at-a-target-in-a-2d-game?lq=1 but it's for 2D so I tried adapting it. I first decomposed the calculation to solve the intersection point for XoZ plane and saved the x and z coordinates and then solving the intersection point for XoY plane and adding the y coordinate to a final xyz that I then transformed to clipspace and put a texture at those coordinates. But of course it doesn't work as it should or else I wouldn't have posted the question. From what I notice the after finding x in XoZ plane and the in XoY the x is not the same so something must be wrong. float a = ENG_Math.sqr(targetVelocity.x) + ENG_Math.sqr(targetVelocity.y) - ENG_Math.sqr(projectileSpeed); float b = 2.0f * (targetVelocity.x * targetPos.x + targetVelocity.y * targetPos.y); float c = ENG_Math.sqr(targetPos.x) + ENG_Math.sqr(targetPos.y); ENG_Math.solveQuadraticEquation(a, b, c, collisionTime); First time targetVelocity.y is actually targetVelocity.z (the same for targetPos) and the second time it's actually targetVelocity.y. The final position after XoZ is crossPosition.set(minTime * finalEntityVelocity.x + finalTargetPos4D.x, 0.0f, minTime * finalEntityVelocity.z + finalTargetPos4D.z); and after XoY crossPosition.y = minTime * finalEntityVelocity.y + finalTargetPos4D.y; Is my approach of separating into 2 planes and calculating any good? Or for 3D there is a whole different approach? sqr() is square not sqrt - avoiding a confusion.

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• Where can I find design exercises to work on?

  - by Oak

  I feel it's important to continue practicing my problem-solving skills. Writing my own mini-projects is one way, but another is to try and solve problems posted online. It's easy to find interesting programming quizzes online that require applying clever algorithms to solve - Project Euler is one well-known example. However, in a lot of real-life projects the design of the software - especially in the initial phases - has a large impact and at later stages it cannot be tweaked as easily as plain algorithms. In order to improve these skills, I'm looking for any collection of design problems. When I say "design", I mean the abstract design of a software solution - for example what modules will there be and what are the dependencies between them, how data will flow in the program, what sort of data needs to be saved in the database, etc. Design problems are those problems that are critical to solve in the early stages of any project, but their solution is a whiteboard diagram without a single line of code. Of course these sort of problems do not have a single correct solution, but I'll be especially happy with any place that also displays pros and cons of the typical solutions that might be used to approach the problem.

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