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• Silverlight Cream for February 17, 2011 -- #1048

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Oren Gal, Andrea Boschin(-2-), Kevin Hoffman, Rudi Grobler(-2-, -3-), Michael Crump, Yochay Kiriaty, Peter Kuhn, Loek van den Ouweland, Jeremy Likness, Jesse Liberty, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Multiple page printing in Silverlight4 - Part 2 - preview before printing" Oren Gal WP7: "Windows Phone 7 Tombstoning with MVVM and Sterling" Jeremy Likness XNA: "XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 4 - Animation (frame-based)" Peter Kuhn From SilverlightCream.com: Multiple page printing in Silverlight4 - Part 2 - preview before printing Oren Gal has part 2 of his Printing with Silverlight 4 series up, and this time he's putting up a preview... how cool is that? Inject ApplicationServices with MEF reloaded: supporting recomposition Andrea Boschin revisited his Inject ApplicationServices with MEF post because of feedback, and took it from the realm of an interesting example to a useful solution. Windows Phone 7 - Part #5: Panorama and Pivot controls Andrea Boschin also has part 5 of his WP7 series up at SilverlightShow... want a good demo of both the panorama and the pivot controls... here it is all in one tutorial WP7 for iPhone and Android Developers - Introduction to C# This should be good.. a 12-part series on SilverlightShow by Kevin Hoffman on porting your iPhone/Android app to WP7... this first part an intro to C# Balls of Steel Rudi Grobler discusses the upcoming (?) release of 'Duke Nukem Forever', and has a 'soundboard' for WP7 to celebrate the event... get your Duke Nukem on with these sounds! Moonlight 4 (Preview) is here Rudi Grobler also has a post up about the release of Moonlight by Novel for Silverlight 4!... explanation and links on his post. WP7 Podcasts Rudi Grobler highlights two WP7 Podcasts that are putting out good material... check them out if you haven't already. Having Fun with Coding4Fun’s Windows Phone 7 Controls Michael Crump takes a look at his WP7 app and uses the Coding4Fun project toolset while doing so... getting the tools, setting them up, and consuming them. Windows Phone Silverlight Application Faster Load Time Yochay Kiriaty has a good long discussion up about how to get faster load time out of your WP7 apps... good useful external links throughout. XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 4 - Animation (frame-based) Peter Kuhn's part 4 of his XNA for Silverlight devs is up at Silverlightshow and is a great tutorial on frame-based animation. Windows Phone SoundEffect clipping Loek van den Ouweland has some good information about soudn clips on WP7... the solutions aren't always code solutions.... good to know info. Windows Phone 7 Tombstoning with MVVM and Sterling Jeremy Likness is discussing Tombstoning via MVVM and Sterling... read on how Sterling gives you a leg up on the Tombstone express. Video: Reactive Phone Programming For Windows Phone 7 Fitting in nicely with his podcast on Reactive Programming, Jesse Liberty releases a video on Reactive Programming for WP7. Talking about Data Binding in WP7 | Coding4fun TextBoxBinding helper in depth WindowsPhoneGeek's latest post walks through WP7 databinding in detail with lots of good external links, then follows up with a discussion of the Coding4Fun Binding Helpers Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Developer Profile: Marcelo Quinta

  - by Tori Wieldt

  As the Java developer community lead for Oracle, the best part of my job is going to conferences and meeting Java developers. I’ve had the pleasure to meet men and women who are smart, fun and passionate about Java—they make the Java community happen. The current issue of Java Magazine provides profiles of other young Java developers around the world. Subscribe to read them! Marcelo Quinta Age: 24Occupation: Professor, Federal University of GoiasLocation: Goias, Brazil Twitter: @mrquinta Marcelo (white polo shirt, center) and class OTN: When did you realize that you were good at programming? When I was in graduate school, I developed a Java system that displayed worked out the logics of getting the maximum coverage using the fewest resources (for example, the minimum number of soldiers [and positions] needed for a battlefield. It may seems not difficult, but it's a hard problem to solve, mathematically. Here I was, a freshman, who came up with an app  "solving" it. Some Master's students use my software today. It was then I began to believe in what I could do.OTN: What most inspires you about programming?I'm really inspired by the challenges and tension that comes from solving a complicated problems. Lately, I've been doing a new system focused on education and digital inclusion and was very gratifying to see it working and the results. I felt useful for the community. OTN: What are some things you would like to accomplish using Java?Java is a very strong platform and that gives us power to develop applications for different devices and purposes, from home automation with little microcontrollers to systems in big servers. I would like to build more systems that integrate the people life or different business contexts, from PCs to cell phones and tablets, ubiquitously. I think IT has reached a level where the current challenge is to make systems that leverage existing technologies that are present in daily life. Java gives us a very interesting set of options to put it into practice, especially in systems that require more strength.OTN: What technical insights into Java technology have been most important to you?I have really enjoyed the way that Java has evolved with Oracle, with new features added, many of them which were suggested by the community. Java 7 came with substantial improvements in the language syntax and it seems that Java 8 takes it even further. I also made some applications in JavaFX and liked the new version. The Java GUI is on a higher level than is offered out there. I saw some JavaFX prototypes running in modern tablets and I got excited. OTN: What would you like to be doing 10 years from now?I want my work to make a difference for individuals or an institution. It would be interesting to be improving one of the systems that I am making today. Recently I've been mixing my hobbies and work, playing with Arduino and home automation. The JHome project, winner of the Duke's Choice Award in 2011, is very interesting to me.OTN: Do you listen to music when you write code? If so, what kind?Absolutely! I usually listen to electronic music (Prodigy, Fatboy Slim and Paul Oakenfold), rock (Metallica, Strokes, The Black Keys) and a bit of local alternative music. I live in Goiânia, "The Brazilian Seattle" and I profit from it very well. OTN: What do you do when you're not programming?I like to play guitar and to fish. Last year I sold my economy car and bought a old jeep. Some people called me crazy, but since then I've been having a great time and having adventures on the backroads of Brazil. Once I broke my glasses in a funny game involving my car's suspension and the airbags. OTN: Does your girlfriend think you are crazy?Crazy is someone who doesn't have courage to do strange things! My girlfriend likes my style. =D Subscribe to the free Java Magazine to read profiles of other young Java developers. Visit the Java channel on YouTube to see a video of Marcelo in action.

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• Where to start with game development?

  - by steven_desu

  I asked this earlier in this thread at stackoverflow.com. One of the early comments redirected me here to gamedev.stackexchange.com, so I'm reposting here. Searching for related questions I found a number of very specific questions, but I'm afraid the specifics have proved fruitless for me and after 4 hours on Google I'm no closer than I started, so I felt reaching out to a community might be in order. First, my goal: I've never made a game before, although I've muddled over the possibility several times. I decided to finally sit down and start learning how to code games, use game engines, etc. All so that one day (hopefully soon) I'll be able to make functional (albeit simple) games. I can start adding complexity later, for now I'd be glad to have a keyboard-controlled camera moving in a 3D world with no interaction beyond that. My background: I've worked in SEVERAL programming languages ranging from PHP to C++ to Java to ASM. I'm not afraid of any challenges that come with learning the new syntax or limitations inherent in a new language. All of my past programming experience, however, has been strictly non-graphical and usually with little or extremely simple interaction during execution. I've created extensive and brilliant algorithms for solving logical and mathematical problems as well as graphing problems. However in every case input was either defined in a file, passed form an HTML form, or typed into the console. Real-time interaction with the user is something with which I have no experience. My question: Where should I start in trying to make games? Better yet- where should I start in trying to create a keyboard-navigable 3D environment? In searching online I've found several resources linking to game engines, graphics engines, and physics engines. Here's a brief summary of my experiences with a few engines I tried: Unreal SDK: The tutorial videos assume that you already have in-depth knowledge of 3D modeling, graphics engines, animations, etc. The "Getting Started" page offers no formal explanation of game development but jumps into how Unreal can streamline processes it assumes you're already familiar with. After downloading the SDK and launching it to see if the tools were as intuitive as they claimed, I was greeted with about 60 buttons and a blank void for my 3D modeling. Clicking on "add volume" (to attempt to add a basic cube) I was met with a menu of 30 options. Panicking, I closed the editor. Crystal Space: The website seemed rather informative, explaining that Crystal Space was just for graphics and the companion software, CEL, provided entity logic for making games. A demo game was provided, which was built using "CELStart", their simple tool for people with no knowledge of game programming. I launched the game to see what I might look forward to creating. It froze several times, the menus were buggy, there were thousands of graphical glitches, enemies didn't respond to damage, and when I closed the game it locked up. Gave up on that engine. IrrLicht: The tutorial assumes I have Visual Studio 6.0 (I have Visual Studio 2010). Following their instructions I was unable to properly import the library into Visual Studio and unable to call any of the functions that they kept using. Manually copying header files, class files, and DLLs into my project's folder - the project failed to properly compile. Clearly I'm not off to a good start and I'm going in circles. Can someone point me in the right direction? Should I start by downloading a program like Blender and learning 3D modeling, or should I be learning how to use a graphics engine? Should I look for an all-inclusive game engine, or is it better to try and code my own game logic? If anyone has actually made their own games, I would prefer to hear how they got their start. Also- taking classes at my school is not an option. Nothing is offered.

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• Where to start with game development?

  - by steven_desu

  Searching for related questions I found a number of very specific questions, but I'm afraid the specifics have proved fruitless for me and after 4 hours on Google I'm no closer than I started, so I felt reaching out to a community might be in order. First, my goal: I've never made a game before, although I've muddled over the possibility several times. I decided to finally sit down and start learning how to code games, use game engines, etc. All so that one day (hopefully soon) I'll be able to make functional (albeit simple) games. I can start adding complexity later, for now I'd be glad to have a keyboard-controlled camera moving in a 3D world with no interaction beyond that. My background: I've worked in SEVERAL programming languages ranging from PHP to C++ to Java to ASM. I'm not afraid of any challenges that come with learning the new syntax or limitations inherent in a new language. All of my past programming experience, however, has been strictly non-graphical and usually with little or extremely simple interaction during execution. I've created extensive and brilliant algorithms for solving logical and mathematical problems. However in every case input was either defined in a file, passed form an HTML form, or typed into the console. Real-time interaction with the user is something with which I have no experience. My question: Where should I start in trying to make games? Better yet- where should I start in trying to create a keyboard-navigable 3D environment? In searching online I've found several resources linking to game engines, graphics engines, and physics engines. Here's a brief summary of my experiences with a few engines I tried: Unreal SDK: The tutorial videos assume that you already have in-depth knowledge of 3D modeling, graphics engines, animations, etc. The "Getting Started" page offers no formal explanation of game development but jumps into how Unreal can streamline processes it assumes you're already familiar with. After downloading the SDK and launching it to see if the tools were as intuitive as they claimed, I was greeted with about 60 buttons and a blank void for my 3D modeling. Clicking on "add volume" (to attempt to add a basic cube) I was met with a menu of 30 options. Panicking, I closed the editor. Crystal Space: The website seemed rather informative, explaining that Crystal Space was just for graphics and the companion software, CEL, provided entity logic for making games. A demo game was provided, which was built using "CELStart", their simple tool for people with no knowledge of game programming. I launched the game to see what I might look forward to creating. It froze several times, the menus were buggy, there were thousands of graphical glitches, enemies didn't respond to damage, and when I closed the game it locked up. Gave up on that engine. IrrLicht: The tutorial assumes I have Visual Studio 6.0 (I have Visual Studio 2010). Following their instructions I was unable to properly import the library into Visual Studio and unable to call any of the functions that they kept using. Manually copying header files, class files, and DLLs into my project's folder - the project failed to properly compile. Clearly I'm not off to a good start and I'm going in circles. Can someone point me in the right direction? Should I start by downloading a program like Blender and learning 3D modeling, or should I be learning how to use a graphics engine? Should I look for an all-inclusive game engine, or is it better to try and code my own game logic? If anyone has actually made their own games, I would prefer to hear how they got their start. Also- taking classes at my school is not an option. Nothing is offered.

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• C# 5 Async, Part 2: Asynchrony Today

  - by Reed

  The .NET Framework has always supported asynchronous operations.  However, different mechanisms for supporting exist throughout the framework.  While there are at least three separate asynchronous patterns used through the framework, only the latest is directly usable with the new Visual Studio Async CTP.  Before delving into details on the new features, I will talk about existing asynchronous code, and demonstrate how to adapt it for use with the new pattern. The first asynchronous pattern used in the .NET framework was the Asynchronous Programming Model (APM).  This pattern was based around callbacks.  A method is used to start the operation.  It typically is named as BeginSomeOperation.  This method is passed a callback defined as an AsyncCallback, and returns an object that implements IAsyncResult.  Later, the IAsyncResult is used in a call to a method named EndSomeOperation, which blocks until completion and returns the value normally directly returned from the synchronous version of the operation.  Often, the EndSomeOperation call would be called from the callback function passed, which allows you to write code that never blocks. While this pattern works perfectly to prevent blocking, it can make quite confusing code, and be difficult to implement.  For example, the sample code provided for FileStream’s BeginRead/EndRead methods is not simple to understand.  In addition, implementing your own asynchronous methods requires creating an entire class just to implement the IAsyncResult. Given the complexity of the APM, other options have been introduced in later versions of the framework.  The next major pattern introduced was the Event-based Asynchronous Pattern (EAP).  This provides a simpler pattern for asynchronous operations.  It works by providing a method typically named SomeOperationAsync, which signals its completion via an event typically named SomeOperationCompleted. The EAP provides a simpler model for asynchronous programming.  It is much easier to understand and use, and far simpler to implement.  Instead of requiring a custom class and callbacks, the standard event mechanism in C# is used directly.  For example, the WebClient class uses this extensively.  A method is used, such as DownloadDataAsync, and the results are returned via the DownloadDataCompleted event. While the EAP is far simpler to understand and use than the APM, it is still not ideal.  By separating your code into method calls and event handlers, the logic of your program gets more complex.  It also typically loses the ability to block until the result is received, which is often useful.  Blocking often requires writing the code to block by hand, which is error prone and adds complexity. As a result, .NET 4 introduced a third major pattern for asynchronous programming.  The Task<T> class introduced a new, simpler concept for asynchrony.  Task and Task<T> effectively represent an operation that will complete at some point in the future.  This is a perfect model for thinking about asynchronous code, and is the preferred model for all new code going forward.  Task and Task<T> provide all of the advantages of both the APM and the EAP models – you have the ability to block on results (via Task.Wait() or Task<T>.Result), and you can stay completely asynchronous via the use of Task Continuations.  In addition, the Task class provides a new model for task composition and error and cancelation handling.  This is a far superior option to the previous asynchronous patterns. The Visual Studio Async CTP extends the Task based asynchronous model, allowing it to be used in a much simpler manner.  However, it requires the use of Task and Task<T> for all operations.

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• Is inconsistent formatting a sign of a sloppy programmer?

  - by dreza

  I understand that everyone has their own style of programming and that you should be able to read other people's styles and accept it for what it is. However, would one be considered a sloppy programmer if one's style of coding was inconsistent across whatever standard they were working against? Some example of inconsistencies might be: Sometimes naming private variables with _ and sometimes not Sometimes having varying indentations within code blocks Not aligning braces up i.e. same column if using start using new line style Spacing not always consistent around operators i.e. p=p+1, p+=1 vs other times p =p+1 or p = p + 1 etc Is this even something that as a programmer I should be concerned with addressing? Or is it such a minor nit picking thing that at the end of the day I should just not worry about it and worry about what the end user sees and whether the code works rather than how it looks while working? Is it sloppy programming or just over obsessive nit picking? EDIT: After some excellent comments I realized I may have left out some information in my question. This question came about after reviewing another colleagues code check-in and noticing some of these things and then realizing that I've seen these kind of in-consistencies in previous check-ins. It then got me thinking about my code and whether I do the same things and noticed that I typically don't etc I'm not suggesting his technique is either bad or good in this question or whether his way of doing things is right or wrong. EDIT: To answer some queries to some more good feed back. The specific instance this review occurred in was using Visual Studio 2010 and programming in c# so I don't think the editor would cause any issues. In fact it should only help I would hope. Sorry if I left that piece of info out and it effects any current answers. I was trying to be a bit more generic in understanding if this would be considered sloppy etc. And to add an even more specific example of a code piece I saw during reading of the check-in: foreach(var block in Blocks) { // .. some other code in here foreach(var movement in movements) { movement.Moved.Zero(); } // the un-formatted brace } Such a minor thing I know, but many small things add up(???), and I did have to double glance at the code at the time to see where everything lined up I guess. Please note this code was formatted appropriately before this check-in. EDIT: After reading some great answers and varying thoughts, the summary I've taken from this was. It's not necessarily a sign of a sloppy programmer however as programmers we have a duty (to ourselves and other programmers) to make the code as readable as possible to assist in further ongoing development. However it can hint at inadequacies which is something that is only possible to review on a case by case (person by person) basis. There are many reasons why this might occur. They should be taken in context and worked through with the person/people involved if reasonable. We have a duty to try and help all programmers become better programmers! In the good old days when development was done using good old notepad (or other simple text editing tool) this occurred much more frequently. However we have the assistance of modern IDE's now so although we shouldn't necessarily become OTT about this, it should still probably be addressed to some degree. We as programmers vary in our standards, styles and approaches to solutions. However it seems that in general we all take PRIDE in our work and as a trait it is something that can stand programmers apart. Making something to the best of our abilities both internal (code) and external (end user result) goes along way to giving us that big fat pat on the back that we may not go looking for but swells our heart with pride. And finally to quote CrazyEddie from his post below. Don't sweat the small stuff

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• Disneyland Inside Out on iPhone and Android

  - by Ryan Cain

  It's hard to believe October was the last time I was over here on my blog.  Ironically after getter the developer phone from Microsoft I have been knee deep in iPhone programming and for the past few weeks Android programming again.  This time I've spent all my non-working hours programming a fun project for my "other" website, Disneyland Inside Out.  Disneyland Inside Out, a vacation planning site for Disneyland in California, has been around in various forms since June 1996.  It has always been a place for me to explore new technologies and learn about some of the new trends on the web.  I recently migrated the site over to DotNetNuke and have been building out custom modules for DNN.  I've also been hacking things together w/ the URLRewrite module in IIS 7.5 to provide strong SEO optimized URLs.  I can't say all that has really stuck within the DNN model of doing things, but it has worked pretty well. As part of my learning process, I spent most of the Fall bringing Disneyland Inside Out to the iPhone.  I will post more details on my development experiences later.  But this project gave me a really great opportunity to get a good feel for Objective-C development.  After 3 months I actually feel somewhat competent in the language and iPhone SDK, instead of just floundering around getting things to work.  The project also gave me a chance to play with some new frameworks on the iPhone and really dig into the Facebook SDK.  I also dug into some of the Gowalla REST api's as well.  We've been live with the app in iTunes for just about 10 days now, and have been sitting in the top 200 of free travel apps for the past few days.  You can get more info and the direct iTunes download link on our site: Disneyland Inside Out for iPhone Since launching the iPhone version I have gotten back into Android development, porting the Disneyland Inside Out app over to Android.  As I said in my first review of iPhone vs. Android, coming from a managed code background, Android is much easier to get going with.  I just about 3 weeks total I will have about 85 - 90% of the functionality up and running in the Android app, that took probably 1.5 - 2x's that time for iPhone.  That isn't a totally fair comparison as I am much more comfortable w/ Xcode and Objective-C today and can get some of the basic stuff done much faster than I could in the fall.  Though I'd say some of the hardest code to debug is still the null pointer issues on objects that were dealloc'd too early in Objective-C.  This isn't too bad with the NSZoombies enabled for synchronous code, but when you have a lot of async, which my app does, it can be hairy at times to track exactly what was causing the issue.   I will post more details later, as I am trying to wrap up a beta of the Android app today.  But in the meantime, if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad head on over to the site and take a look at my app.

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• Communication between state machines with hidden transitions

  - by slartibartfast

  The question emerged for me in embedded programming but I think it can be applied to quite a number of general networking situations e.g. when a communication partner fails. Assume we have an application logic (a program) running on a computer and a gadget connected to that computer via e.g. a serial interface like RS232. The gadget has a red/green/blue LED and a button which disables the LED. The LEDs color can be driven by software commands over the serial interface and the state (red/green/blue/off) is read back and causes a reaction in the application logic. Asynchronous behaviour of the application logic with regard to the LED color down to a certain delay (depending on the execution cycle of the application) is tolerated. What we essentially have is a resource (the LED) which can not be reserved and handled atomically by software because the (organic) user can at any time press the button to interfere/break the software attempt to switch the LED color. Stripping this example from its physical outfit I dare to say that we have two communicating state machines A (application logic) and G (gadget) where G executes state changes unbeknownst to A (and also the other way round, but this is not significant in our example) and only A can be modified at a reasonable price. A needs to see the reaction and state of G in one piece of information which may be (slightly) outdated but not inconsistent with respect to the short time window when this information was generated on the side of G. What I am looking for is a concise method to handle such a situation in embedded software (i.e. no layer/framework like CORBA etc. available). A programming technique which is able to map the complete behaviour of both participants on classical interfaces of a classical programming language (C in this case). To complicate matters (or rather, to generalize), a simple high frequency communication cycle of A to G and back (IOW: A is rapidly polling G) is out of focus because of technical restrictions (delay of serial com, A not always active, etc.). What I currently see as a general solution is: the application logic A as one thread of execution an adapter object (proxy) PG (presenting G inside the computer), together with the serial driver as another thread a communication object between the two (A and PG) which is transactionally safe to exchange The two execution contexts (threads) on the computer may be multi-core or just interrupt driven or tasks in an RTOS. The com object contains the following data: suspected state (written by A): effectively a member of the power set of states in G (in our case: red, green, blue, off, red_or_green, red_or_blue, red_or_off...etc.) command data (written by A): test_if_off, switch_to_red, switch_to_green, switch_to_blue operation status (written by PG): operation_pending, success, wrong_state, link_broken new state (written by PG): red, green, blue, off The idea of the com object is that A writes whichever (set of) state it thinks G is in, together with a command. (Example: suspected state="red_or_green", command: "switch_to_blue") Notice that the commands issued by A will not work if the user has switched off the LED and A needs to know this. PG will pick up such a com object and try to send the command to G, receive its answer (or a timeout) and set the operation status and new state accordingly. A will take back the oject once it is no longer at operation_pending and can react to the outcome. The com object could be separated of course (into two objects, one for each direction) but I think it is convenient in nearly all instances to have the command close to the result. I would like to have major flaws pointed out or hear an entirely different view on such a situation.

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• Move on and look elsewhere, or confront the boss?

  - by Meister

  Background: I have my Associates in Applied Science (Comp/Info Tech) with a strong focus in programming, and I'm taking University classes to get my Bachelors. I was recently hired at a local company to be a Software Engineer I on a team of about 8, and I've been told they're looking to hire more. This is my first job, and I was offered what I feel to be an extremely generous starting salary ($30/hr essentially + benefits and yearly bonus). What got me hired was my passion for programming and a strong set of personal projects. Problem: I had no prior experience when I interviewed, so I didn't know exactly what to ask them about the company when I was hired. I've spotted a number of warning signs and annoyances since then, such as: Four developers when I started, with everyone talking about "Ben" or "Ryan" leaving. One engineer hired thirty days before me, one hired two weeks after me. Most of the department has been hiring a large number of people since I started. Extremely limited internet access. I understand the idea from an IT point of view, but not only is Facebook blocked, but so it Youtube, Twitter, and Pandora. I've also figured out that they block all access to non-DNS websites (http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/) and strangely enough Miranda-IM. Low cubicles. Which is fine because I like my immediate coworkers, but they put the developers with the customer service, customer training, and QA department in a huge open room. Noise, noise, noise, and people stop to chitchat all day long. Headphones only go so far. Several emails have been sent out by my boss since I started telling us programmers to not talk about non-work-related-things like Video Games at our cubicles, despite us only spending maybe five minutes every few hours doing so. Further digging tells me that this is because someone keeps complaining that the programmers are "slacking off". People are looking over my shoulder all day. I was in the Freenode webchat to get help with a programming issue, and within minutes I had an email from my boss (to all the developers) telling us that we should NOT be connected to any outside chat servers at work. Version control system from 2005 that we must access with IE and keep the Java 1.4 JRE installed to be able to use. I accidentally updated to Java 6 one day and spent the next two days fighting with my PC to undo this "problem". No source control, no comments on anything, no standards, no code review, no unit testing, no common sense. I literally found a problem in how they handle string resource translations that stems from the simple fact that they don't trim excess white spaces, leading to developers doing: getResource("Date: ") instead of: getResource("Date") + ": ", and I was told to just add the excess white spaces back to the database instead of dealing with the issue directly. Some of these things I'd like to try to understand, but I like having IRC open to talk in a few different rooms during the day and keep in touch with friends/family over IM. They don't break my concentration (not NEARLY as much as the lady from QA stopping by to talk about her son), but because people are looking over my shoulder all day as they walk by they complain when they see something that's not "programmer-looking work". I've been told by my boss and QA that I do good, fast work. I should be judged on my work output and quality, not what I have up on my screen for the five seconds you're walking by So, my question is, even though I'm just barely at my 90 days: How do you decide to move on from a job and looking elsewhere, or when you should start working with your boss to resolve these issues? Is it even possible to get the boss to work with me in many of these things? This is the only place I heard back from even though I sent out several resume's a day for several months, and this place does pay well for putting up with their many flaws, but I'm just starting to get so miserable working here already. Should I just put up with it?

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• Software and/(x)or Hardware Projects for Pre-School Kids

  - by haylem

  I offered to participate at my kid's pre-school for various activities (yes, I'm crazy like that), and one of them is to help them discover extra-curricular (big word for a pre-school, but by lack of a better one... :)) hobbies, which may or may not relate to a professional activity. At first I thought that it wouldn't be really easy to have pre-schoolers relate to programming or the internal workings of a computer system in general (and I'm more used to teaching middle-school to university-level students), but then I thought there must be a way. So I'm trying to figure out ways to introduce very young kids (3yo) to computer systems in a fun and preferably educational way. Of course, I don't expect them to start smashing the stack for fun and profit right away (or at least not voluntarily, though I could use the occasion for some toddler tests...), but I'm confident there must be ways to get them interested in both: using the systems, becoming curious about understanding what they do, interacting with the systems to modify them. I guess this setting is not really relevant after all, it's pretty much the same as if you were aiming to achieve the same for your own kids at home. Ideas Considering we're talking 3yo pre-schoolers here, and that at this age some kids are already quite confident using a mouse (some even a keyboard, if not for typing, at least to press some buttons they've come to associate with actions) while others have not yet had any interaction with computers of any kind, it needs to be: rather basic, demonstrated and played with in less then 5 or 10 minutes, doable in in groups or alone, scalable and extendable in complexity to accommodate their varying abilities. The obvious options are: basic smallish games to play with, interactive systems like LOGO, Kojo, Squeak and clones (possibly even simpler than that), or thngs like Lego Systems. I guess it can be a thing to reflect on both at the software and the hardware levels: it could be done with a desktop or laptop machine, a tablet, a smartphone (or a crap-phone, for that matter, as long as you can modify it), or even get down to building something from scratch (Raspberry Pi and Arduino being popular options at the moment). I can probably be in the form of games, funny visualizations (which are pretty much games) w/ Prototype, virtual worlds to explore. I also thought on the moment (and I hope this won't offend anyone) that some approaches to teaching pets could work (reward systems, haptic feedback and such things could quickly point a kid in the right direction to understanding how things work, in a similar fashion - I'm not suggesting to shock the kids!). Hmm, Is There an Actual Question in There? What type of systems do you think might be a good fit, both in terms of hardware and software? Do you have seen such systems, or have anything in mind to work on? Are you aware of some research in this domain, with tangible results? Any input is welcome. It's not that I don't see options: there are tons, but I have a harder time pinpointing a more concrete and definite type of project/activity, so I figure some have valuable ideas or existing ones. Note: I am not advocating that every kid should learn to program, be interested in computer systems, or that all of them in a class would even care enough to follow such an introduction with more than a blank stare. I don't buy into the "everybody would benefit from learning to program" thing. Wouldn't hurt, but not necessary in any way. But if I can walk out of there with a few of them having smiled using the thing (or heck, cried because others took them away from them), that'd be good enough. Related Questions I've seen and that seem to complement what I'm looking for, but not exactly for the same age groups or with the same goals: Teaching Programming to Kids Recommendations for teaching kids math concepts & skills for programming?

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• Concurrent Affairs

  - by Tony Davis

  I once wrote an editorial, multi-core mania, on the conundrum of ever-increasing numbers of processor cores, but without the concurrent programming techniques to get anywhere near exploiting their performance potential. I came to the.controversial.conclusion that, while the problem loomed for all procedural languages, it was not a big issue for the vast majority of programmers. Two years later, I still think most programmers don't concern themselves overly with this issue, but I do think that's a bigger problem than I originally implied. Firstly, is the performance boost from writing code that can fully exploit all available cores worth the cost of the additional programming complexity? Right now, with quad-core processors that, at best, can make our programs four times faster, the answer is still no for many applications. But what happens in a few years, as the number of cores grows to 100 or even 1000? At this point, it becomes very hard to ignore the potential gains from exploiting concurrency. Possibly, I was optimistic to assume that, by the time we have 100-core processors, and most applications really needed to exploit them, some technology would be around to allow us to do so with relative ease. The ideal solution would be one that allows programmers to forget about the problem, in much the same way that garbage collection removed the need to worry too much about memory allocation. From all I can find on the topic, though, there is only a remote likelihood that we'll ever have a compiler that takes a program written in a single-threaded style and "auto-magically" converts it into an efficient, correct, multi-threaded program. At the same time, it seems clear that what is currently the most common solution, multi-threaded programming with shared memory, is unsustainable. As soon as a piece of state can be changed by a different thread of execution, the potential number of execution paths through your program grows exponentially with the number of threads. If you have two threads, each executing n instructions, then there are 2^n possible "interleavings" of those instructions. Of course, many of those interleavings will have identical behavior, but several won't. Not only does this make understanding how a program works an order of magnitude harder, but it will also result in irreproducible, non-deterministic, bugs. And of course, the problem will be many times worse when you have a hundred or a thousand threads. So what is the answer? All of the possible alternatives require a change in the way we write programs and, currently, seem to be plagued by performance issues. Software transactional memory (STM) applies the ideas of database transactions, and optimistic concurrency control, to memory. However, working out how to break down your program into sufficiently small transactions, so as to avoid contention issues, isn't easy. Another approach is concurrency with actors, where instead of having threads share memory, each thread runs in complete isolation, and communicates with others by passing messages. It simplifies concurrent programs but still has performance issues, if the threads need to operate on the same large piece of data. There are doubtless other possible solutions that I haven't mentioned, and I would love to know to what extent you, as a developer, are considering the problem of multi-core concurrency, what solution you currently favor, and why. Cheers, Tony.

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• curl http_code of 000

  - by Mikkel Paulson

  I have a shell script that I use to monitor loading times and response codes on my live server cluster. It runs a total of 250 iterations every 5 minutes, distributed across 10 servers and 6 sites. It uses curl with the -w flag to return pertinent information which is then parsed by my shell script: curl -svw 'monitor_load_times %{time_total} %{http_code}' -b 'server=$server' -m 15 -o /dev/null $url 2>&1 This information is then parsed by a graphing script that can display a number of different responses. However, curl will occasionally return a response code of "000". When this happens, it seems to happen multiple times at once despite being distributed over many iterations: What I'm trying to work out is if this is a client-side issue that's skewing my results or if it's actually indicative of a server-side problem affecting my entire cluster. Does 000 mean that the connection was dropped? Database entries corresponding to curl iterations with that response code return "0.000" for the time_total value. All of the search results I've found for curl returning a code of 000 are related to HTTPS being unsupported, but all of my test URLs are HTTP. (The spike in 500 errors is a completely unrelated issue that affected my servers last night.)

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• GlusterFS on VMWare ESXi 5

  - by Dharmavir

  I want to build network file system on top of my VMWare ESXi based virtual nodes which are running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I am evalaluating options and found that GlusterFS (http://www.gluster.org/) can turn out to be a good choice. Purpose: I have about 2 dozen VM nodes with different configurations, on 2 physical nodes which has following configuration: 16 core Intel Xeon 1 TB 48 GB RAM Now as I said earlier each Physical server has about 1TB hdd and I can increase if I want additional so for now I have 2TB disk space available, these space is distributed in VM nodes I have created on which about 2 dozen VM nodes live. Now some of them being application server and mgmt server, they have plenty of free disk space which I want to utilize for some heavy storage which I can not design if I do that individually on single VM node. This way if my storage is distributed between dozens of VM nodes and about 2 or more physical nodes I have some sort of backup as well. I do not mind if data gets stored redundently but per my knowledge it might hapeen that individual VM nodes will not be able to store all of the data because complete data size for example if we take 100GB will exceed VM disk size of 70GB and then VM will also have system and program files on it. I need some suggestion that will GlusterFS be the solution for which I am looking forward to or I should go with something like hadoop? I am not too sure. But yes, I would like to utilize my free space on each VM node and while doing that if I get store data redundently I am okay because it will give me data security.

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• Request bursting from web application Load Tests

  - by MaseBase

  I'm migrating our web and database hosting to a new environment on all new machines. I've recently performed a Load Test using WAPT to generate load from multiple distributed clients. The server has plenty of room to handle the traffic load, but I'm seeing an odd pattern of incoming traffic during the load tests. Here is the gist of our setup: Firewall server running MS Forefront TMG 2010 on Win 2k8 server Request routing done by IIS Application Request Routing on firewall machine Web server is a Hyper-V VM on the Database server (which is the host OS) These machines are hefty with dual-CPU's with six cores (12 total procs) Web server running IIS 7.5 Web applications built in ASP.NET 2.0, with 1 ISAPI filter (Url Rewrite) in front What I'm seeing during the load tests is that the requests all come through in bursts. Even though I have 7 different distributed clients sending traffic loads, the requests come through about 300-500 requests at a time. The performance monitor shows nearly all of the counters moving through this pattern, where a burst of requests comes in the req/sec jumps to 70, the queued requests jumps to 500, the current requests jumps up, the CPU jumps up, everything. Then once it's handled that group of requests, it has a lull for nearly 10 seconds where nearly nothing is happening. 0-5 req/sec, 0 queued requests, minimal CPU usage. Then after 10 seconds of inactivity, another burst comes through, spiking all of the counters once again. What I can't figure out is why the requests are coming through in bursts when I know that the load being generated is not sent that way, especially considering the various load-generating clients sending traffic all in different intervals with random think time's between each request. Is there something in the layers between Hyper-V or perhaps in the hardware which might cause this coalesce of requests together? Here is what i'm looking at, the highlighted metric is Requests/sec, but the others critical counter go with it: Requests Queued (which I'd obviously like to keep as close to 0 as possible). Any ideas on this?

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• Very uneven CPU utilization with SQL Server 2012 on 2 processor computer with 16 cores / processor

  - by cooplarsh

  After installing SQL Server Enterprise 2012 with the Server + Cal license model, on a computer with 2 processors each with 16 cores (and no hyperthreading involved) and putting the server under extremely heavy load the 16 cores on the first processor were very underutilized, the first 4 cores on the 2nd CPU were heavily utilized, and the last 12 cores were not used at all (because of the 20 core limit for this sql server version). Total CPU utilization was displaying as around 25%. Unfortunately, the server suffered from extremely poor performance even though if the tasks were evenly distributed across the 20 cores it wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad. The Windows Server was running on a VMWare virtual image under ESX Server, but all of the CPU was allocated to the windows server. We tried changing affinity settings (e.g., allocating most cores to CPU and the others to I/O), but that didn't help solve the performance problems. Upgrading the product edition to SQL Server Enterprise Core 2012 not only allowed the SQL Server to utilize the 12 previously unused cores on the 2nd processor, but it also resulted in a much more even distribution of tasks across all of the processors. To get through the backlog of requests cpU utilization jumped to around 90%, and then came down to around 33% once it was caught up, but performance improved dramatically since we failed over to the newly updated version And the performance issues went away. I was wondering if anyone knows what might cause SQL Server to unevenly distribute the load, relying almost exclusively on the first 4 cores of the 2nd processor that had 12 cores idle, and allocate only a few tasks to each of the 16 cores on the first processor. Also, is there any way we could have more evenly distributed the load across the 20 cores that were being used without the product edition upgrade? The flip side of that question is what did the product upgrade do that caused SQL Server to start evenly distributing the load across all of the cores that it recognized? Thanks to any insight to answer these questions and/or links that might help me better understand how to make sense of what was happenings.

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• Requests per second slower when using nginx for load balancing

  - by Ed Eliot

  I've set up nginx as a load balancer that reverse proxies requests to 2 Apache servers. I've benchmarked the setup with ab and am getting approx 35 requests per second with requests distributed between the 2 backend servers (not using ip_hash). What is confusing me is that if I query either of the backend servers directly via ab I get around 50 requests per second. I've experimented with a number of different values in ab the most common being 1000 requests with 100 concurrent connections. Any idea why traffic distributed across 2 servers would result in fewer requests per second than hitting either directly? Additional info: I've experimented with worker_processes values of between 1 and 8, worker_connections between 1024 and 8092 and have also tried keepalive 0 and 65. My main conf currently looks like this: user www-data; worker_processes 1; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; worker_rlimit_nofile 8192; events { worker_connections 2048; use epoll; } http { include /etc/nginx/mime.types; sendfile on; keepalive_timeout 0; tcp_nodelay on; gzip on; gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)"; include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; } I've got one virtual host (in sites available) that redirects everything under / to 2 backends across a local network.

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• Android: trouble updating to Android SDK Tools, revision 7.

  - by Arhimed

  Currently I have Android SDK 2.1 (+ tools revision 4). I'd like to upgrade to Android SDK 2.2. When I try to do it I'm informed I need to upgrade Android SDK Tools to revision 7 first. So I agree, the process starts and then I get an error: -= warning! =- A folder failed to be renamed or moved. On Windows this typically means that a program Is using that Folder (for example Windows Explorer or your anti-virus software.) Please momentarily deactivate your anti-virus software. Please also close any running programs that may be accessing the directory 'D:\Install\Programming\android-sdk-working-dir\android-sdk_r04-windows\android-sdk-windows\too!s'. When ready, press YES to try again. Downloading Android SDK Tools, revision 7 Installing Android SDK Tools, revision 7 Failed to rename directory D:\Install\Programming\android-sdk-working-dir\android-sdk_r04-windows\android-sdk-windows\tools to D:\Install\Programming\android-sdk-working-dir\android-sdk_r04-windows\android-sdk-windows\temp\ToolPackage.old01. I am aware of http/https and antivirus issues. So I disactivated my AV. I also closed any application that might hold a handle to the folder. Eclipse is also closed (I start the manager via command line). However I still get the same error. Looks like the only app that can hold a handle to the folder is the manager itself, because its starting directory is the one the error complains about ('\tools'). I am on Win XP Pro + SP3. Does anyone have an idea?

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• Newbie, deciding Python or Erlang

  - by Joe

  Hi Guys, I'm a Administrator (unix, Linux and some windows apps such as Exchange) by experience and have never worked on any programming language besides C# and scripting on Bash and lately on powershell. I'm starting out as a service provider and using multiple network/server monitoring tools based on open source (nagios, opennms etc) in order to monitor them. At this moment, being inspired by a design that I came up with, to do more than what is available with the open source at this time, I would like to start programming and test some of these ideas. The requirement is that a server software that captures a stream of data and store them in a database(CouchDB or MongoDB preferably) and the client side (agent installed on a server) would be sending this stream of data on a schedule of every 10 minutes or so. For these two core ideas, I have been reading about Python and Erlang besides ruby. I do plan to use either Amazon or Rackspace where the server platform would run. This gives me the scalability needed when we have more customers with many servers. For that reason alone, I thought Erlang was a better fit(I could be totally wrong, new to this game) and I understand that Erlang has limited support in some ways compared to Ruby or Python. But also I'm totally new to the programming realm of things and any advise would be appreciated grately. Jo

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• Status of VB6/ Best Desktop Application Language with Native Compilation

  - by Sandeep Jindal

  I was looking for a Desktop Application Programming Language with one of the biggest constraint: - “I need to output as native executable”. I explored multiple options: Java is not a very good option for desktop programming, but still you can use it. But Java to Exe is a problem. Only GCJ and Excelsior-Jet provides this. .Net platform does not support native compilation. Only very few expensive tools are available which can do the job. Python is not an option for native compilation. Right? VB6 is the option I am left with. From the above list, if I am correct, VB6 is the only and probably the best option I have. But VB6 itself has issues like: It is no more under development since There are questions on support of VB6 IDE with Vista Thus my questions are: From the list of programming language options, do you want to add any more? If VB6 is good/best option, looking at its development status, would you suggest using VB6 in this era?

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• Python PyQt Timer Firmata

  - by George Cullins

  Hello. I am pretty new to python and working with firmata I am trying to play around with an arduino . Here is what I want to happen: Set arduino up with an LED as a digital out Set potentiometer to analog 0 Set PyQt timer up to update potentiometer position in application Set a threshold in PyQt to turn LED on (Analog in has 1024bit resolution, so say 800 as the threshold) I am using this firmata library : Link Here is the code that I am having trouble with: import sys from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui from firmata import * # Arduino setup self.a = Arduino('COM3') self.a.pin_mode(13, firmata.OUTPUT) # Create timer self.appTimer = QtCore.QTimer(self) self.appTimer.start(100) self.appTimer.event(self.updateAppTimer()) def updateAppTimer(self): self.analogPosition = self.a.analog_read(self, 0) self.ui.lblPositionValue.setNum() I am getting the error message: Traceback (most recent call last): File "D:\Programming\Eclipse\IO Demo\src\control.py", line 138, in myapp = MainWindow() File "D:\Programming\Eclipse\IO Demo\src\control.py", line 56, in init self.appTimer.event(self.updateAppTimer()) File "D:\Programming\Eclipse\IO Demo\src\control.py", line 60, in updateAppTimer self.analogPosition = self.a.analog_read(self, 0) TypeError: analog_read() takes exactly 2 arguments (3 given) If I take 'self' out I get the same error message but that only 1 argument is given What is python doing implicitly that I am not aware of? Blockquote

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• Decisions in teaching someone else to program: language selection

  - by Dinah

  My friend would like for me to guide her into learning programming. She's already proven enormous aptitude for thinking like a programmer but is scared of the idea of programming since in her mind it's relegated to some magical realm accessible only to smart people and trained computer scientists (ironically, I am neither but that's beside the point). My main question is the age-old and irritating question: which language should I chose? I've limited it down to these: PHP: dead simple to start with and I remember enough of the language to answer all novice questions. However, I can think of a million reasons why I wouldn't recommend this as a first language. The most diplomatic of which is that there's no desktop app option to which I would feel comfortable subjecting a novice. Python: supposed to be wonderful for beginners and generally everything I've heard about it screams that this is the correct choice. That's the problem: everything I've heard about it. I don't know it yet and have a lot of projects going on right now so I don't feel like learning it yet -- but I'm going to be the tech-support when any little thing goes wrong. I know there are tons of online resources but in the frustration of the moment, it's always going to be just me. C#: this is the language I'm most comfortable with so I know I can be good tech support. I also love this language and its versatility and community. The big drawback here is that I remember when I first learned it after doing mainly PHP, Perl, and JavaScript and I found the experience overwhelming. You are simultaneously learning: programming concepts, C# syntax, strong typing, OOP, and a complex powerful IDE with a bazillion options and buttons all over it.

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• What is the best "forgot my password" method?

  - by Edward Tanguay

  I'm programming a community website. I want to build a "forgot my password" feature. Looking around at different sites, I've found they employ one of three options: send the user an email with a link to a unique, hidden URL that allows him to change his password (Gmail and Amazon) send the user an email with a new, randomly generated password (Wordpress) send the user his current password (www.teach12.com) Option #3 seems the most convenient to the user but since I save passwords as an MD5 hash, I don't see how option #3 would be available to me since MD5 is irreversible. This also seems to be insecure option since it means that the website must be saving the password in clear text somewhere, and at the least the clear-text password is being sent over insecure e-mail to the user. Or am I missing something here? So if I can't do option #1, option #2 seems to be the simplest to program since I just have to change the user's password and send it to him. Although this is somewhat insecure since you have to have a live password being communicated via insecure e-mail. However, this could also be misused by trouble-makers to pester users by typing in random e-mails and constantly changing passwords of various users. Option #1 seems to be the most secure but requires a little extra programming to deal with a hidden URL that expires etc., but it seems to be what the big sites use. What experience have you had using/programming these various options? Are there any options I've missed?

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• Implementing arrays using a stack

  - by Zack

  My programming language has no arrays, no lists, no pointers, no eval and no variable variables. All it has: Ordinary variables like you know them from most programming languages: They all have an exact name and a value. One stack. Functions provided are: push (add element to top), pop (remove element from top, get value) and empty (check if stack is empty) My language is turing-complete. (Basic arithmetics, conditional jumps, etc implemented) That means, it must be possible to implement some sort of list or array, right? But I have no idea how... What I want to achieve: Create a function which can retrieve and/or change an element x of the stack. I could easily add this function in the implementation of my language, in the interpreter, but I want to do it in my programming language. "Solution" one (Accessing an element x, counting from the stack top) Create a loop. Pop off the element from the stack top x times. The last element popped of is element number x. I end up with a destroyed stack. Solution two: Do the same as above, but store all popped off values in a second stack. Then you could move all elements back after you are done. But you know what? I don't have a second stack!

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• How do you pass .net objects values around in F#?

  - by Russell

  I am currently learning F# and functional programming in general (from a C# background) and I have a question about using .net CLR objects during my processing. The best way to describe my problem will be to give an example: let xml = new XmlDocument() |> fun doc -> doc.Load("report.xml"); doc let xsl = new XslCompiledTransform() |> fun doc -> doc.Load("report.xsl"); doc let transformedXml = new MemoryStream() |> fun mem -> xsl.Transform(xml.CreateNavigator(), null, mem); mem This code transforms an XML document with an XSLT document using .net objects. Note XslCompiledTransform.Load works on an object, and returns void. Also the XslCompiledTransform.Transform requires a memorystream object and returns void. The above strategy used is to add the object at the end (the ; mem) to return a value and make functional programming work. When we want to do this one after another we have a function on each line with a return value at the end: let myFunc = new XmlDocument("doc") |> fun a -> a.Load("report.xml"); a |> fun a -> a.AppendChild(new XmlElement("Happy")); a Is there a more correct way (in terms of functional programming) to handle .net objects and objects that were created in a more OO environment? The way I returned the value at the end then had inline functions everywhere feels a bit like a hack and not the correct way to do this. Any help is greatly appreciated!

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• If I wanted to make a Pac-Man Game?

  - by SoulBeaver

  I am immediately placing this as a community wiki thing. I don't want to ask for help in programming yet or have even a specific question about programming, but rather the process and the resources needed to make such a game. To put it simply: My college friend and I decided to give ourselves a really big challenge to further our skills in programming. In six months time we want to show ourselves a Pac-Man game. Pac-Man will be AI-controlled like the Ghosts and whichever Pac-Man lives the longest after a set of tries wins. This isn't like anything we've done so far. The goal here, for me, isn't to create a perfect game, but to try and complete it, learn a whole bunch in the process. Even if I don't finish in the time, which is a good possibility, I would want to have at least tried this. So my question is this: How should I start preparing myself? I already have started vector math, matrices, all that fun stuff. My desired platform would be DirectX 9.0c; is that advisable? Keep in mind that this is not a preference just for this project, but I wish to have some kind of future in graphics develepment, so I want to pick a platform that is future-safe. As for the game development in general, what should I take into consideration? I have never done a real game before, so any and all advise to development of mid-scale projects( if this would be a mid-scale project ) is greatly appreciated. My main concerns are the pit-falls and demotivators. Sorry if the question is so vague. If it doesn't belong here, then I will remove it. Otherwise, any and all advise regarding making larger projects is greatly appreciated.

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