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• Is anyone doing "real" TDD with Visual-C++, and if yes, how do they do it?

  - by Martin

  Test Driven Development implies writing the test before the code and following a certain cycle: Write Test Check Test (run) Write Production Code Check Test (run) Clean up Production Code Check test (run) As far as I'm concerned, this is only possible if your development solution allows you to very quickly switch between the production and test code, and to execute the test for a certain production code part extremely quickly. Now, while there exist lots of Unit Testing Frameworks for C++ (I'm using Bost.Test atm.) it does seem that there doesn't really exist any decent (for native C++) Visual Studio (Plugin) solution that makes the TDD cycle bearable regardless of framework used. "Bearable" means that it's a one-click action to run a test for a certain cpp file without having to manually set up a separate testing project etc. "Bearable" also means that a simple test starts (linking!) and runs very quickly. So, what tools (plugins) and techniques are out there that make the TDD cycle possible for native C++ development with Visual Studio? Note: I'm fine with free or "commercial" tools. Please: No framework recommendations. (Unless the framework has a dedicated Visual Studio plugin and you want to recommend the plugin.) Edit Note: The answers so far have provided links on how to integrate a Unit Testing framework into Visual Studio. The resources more or less describe how to get the UT framework to compile and get your first Tests running. This is not what this question is about. I'm of the opinion that to really work productively, having the Unit Tests in a manually maintained(!), separate vcproj from your production classes will add so much overhead that TDD "isn't possible". As far as I am aware, you do not add extra "projects" to a Java or C# thing to enable Unit Tests and TDD, and for a good reason. This should be possible with C++ given the right tools, but it seems (this question is about) that there are very little tools for TDD/C++/VS. Googling around, I've found one tool, VisualAssert, that seems to aim in the right direction. However, afaiks, it doesn't seem to be in widespread use (compared to CppUnit, Boost.Test etc.). Edit: I would like to add a comment to the context for this question. I think it does a good summary of outlining (part of) the problem: (comment by Billy ONeal) Visual Studio does not use "build scripts" that are reasonably editable by the user. One project produces one binary. Moreover, Java has the property that Java never builds a complete binary -- the binary you build is just a ZIP of the class files. Therefore it's possible to compile separately then JAR together manually (using e.g. 7z). C++ and C# both actually link their binaries, so generally speaking you can't write a script like that. The closest you can get is to compile everything separately and then do two linkings (one for production, one for testing).

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• Function Folding in #PowerQuery

  - by Darren Gosbell

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/darrengosbell/archive/2014/05/16/function-folding-in-powerquery.aspxLooking at a typical Power Query query you will noticed that it's made up of a number of small steps. As an example take a look at the query I did in my previous post about joining a fact table to a slowly changing dimension. It was roughly built up of the following steps: Get all records from the fact table Get all records from the dimension table do an outer join between these two tables on the business key (resulting in an increase in the row count as there are multiple records in the dimension table for each business key) Filter out the excess rows introduced in step 3 remove extra columns that are not required in the final result set. If Power Query was to execute a query like this literally, following the same steps in the same order it would not be overly efficient. Particularly if your two source tables were quite large. However Power Query has a feature called function folding where it can take a number of these small steps and push them down to the data source. The degree of function folding that can be performed depends on the data source, As you might expect, relational data sources like SQL Server, Oracle and Teradata support folding, but so do some of the other sources like OData, Exchange and Active Directory. To explore how this works I took the data from my previous post and loaded it into a SQL database. Then I converted my Power Query expression to source it's data from that database. Below is the resulting Power Query which I edited by hand so that the whole thing can be shown in a single expression: let     SqlSource = Sql.Database("localhost", "PowerQueryTest"),     BU = SqlSource{[Schema="dbo",Item="BU"]}[Data],     Fact = SqlSource{[Schema="dbo",Item="fact"]}[Data],     Source = Table.NestedJoin(Fact,{"BU_Code"},BU,{"BU_Code"},"NewColumn"),     LeftJoin = Table.ExpandTableColumn(Source, "NewColumn"                                   , {"BU_Key", "StartDate", "EndDate"}                                   , {"BU_Key", "StartDate", "EndDate"}),     BetweenFilter = Table.SelectRows(LeftJoin, each (([Date] >= [StartDate]) and ([Date] <= [EndDate])) ),     RemovedColumns = Table.RemoveColumns(BetweenFilter,{"StartDate", "EndDate"}) in     RemovedColumns If the above query was run step by step in a literal fashion you would expect it to run two queries against the SQL database doing "SELECT * …" from both tables. However a profiler trace shows just the following single SQL query: select [_].[BU_Code],     [_].[Date],     [_].[Amount],     [_].[BU_Key] from (     select [$Outer].[BU_Code],         [$Outer].[Date],         [$Outer].[Amount],         [$Inner].[BU_Key],         [$Inner].[StartDate],         [$Inner].[EndDate]     from [dbo].[fact] as [$Outer]     left outer join     (         select [_].[BU_Key] as [BU_Key],             [_].[BU_Code] as [BU_Code2],             [_].[BU_Name] as [BU_Name],             [_].[StartDate] as [StartDate],             [_].[EndDate] as [EndDate]         from [dbo].[BU] as [_]     ) as [$Inner] on ([$Outer].[BU_Code] = [$Inner].[BU_Code2] or [$Outer].[BU_Code] is null and [$Inner].[BU_Code2] is null) ) as [_] where [_].[Date] >= [_].[StartDate] and [_].[Date] <= [_].[EndDate] The resulting query is a little strange, you can probably tell that it was generated programmatically. But if you look closely you'll notice that every single part of the Power Query formula has been pushed down to SQL Server. Power Query itself ends up just constructing the query and passing the results back to Excel, it does not do any of the data transformation steps itself. So now you can feel a bit more comfortable showing Power Query to your less technical Colleagues knowing that the tool will do it's best fold all the  small steps in Power Query down the most efficient query that it can against the source systems.

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• Unable to boot ubuntu 11.10 from external usb drive

  - by user45006

  I'm new to Ubuntu (and actually all things Linux) as of this morning, so please excuse any stupid mistakes I may be making. I recently bought an external hard drive for my newly built PC (that is running windows 7 if it matters). I would like to install Ubuntu onto the external drive and boot from there. I downloaded Ubuntu 11.10 and made a bootable cd, unplugged my internal HDDs, plugged in the external drive, installed Ubuntu 11.10 on the external drive via the installer, and replugged in my internal HDDs. Then I set my bios boot order to: Boot from USB-HDD - Boot from Hard Disk - Boot from CD/DVD. Now when I restart I get the message "Starting Operating System..." (or something like that, I forget exactly what it says) that lingers on the screen for a moment and then windows starts. Any idea what the problem may be? ~Relevant info~ BIOS version: Award Software International, Inc. F2, 2/22/2011 Ubuntu Version: 11.10 External Hard Drive: Western Digital My Passport Essential 500GB Portable Hard Drive (Black) ~Things I've already tried~ 1) Unplug internal HDDs so that only external drive was plugged in via usb. Same thing happened only obviously my BIOS could not detect any hard drives besides the external one. When booting received error "Could not detect operating system" 2) Formatted external hard drive and re installed. It didn't make a difference, however interestingly when I booted from cd the ubuntu installer said it detected ubuntu 11.10 on the external hard drive. 3) Within BIOS I've messed around with every boot order combo I could think of both in the "Hard Disk boot order" screen and the "Boot order" screen. I'm a little confused of why there are two screens for this. 4) Held F12 during startup which opens (what I think is) the one time boot screen and it gave me the options "Hard Drive", "cd/dvd", "USB-FDD", "USB-cdrom", "USB-HDD", and "USB-something else I can't remember what it was". I tried all of them, but the same thing as before happened each time. ~References~ I noticed several people on askubuntu have tried to do something similar if not the exact same. In fact, I even found a post that pretty much outlines step by step exactly what I did... only their's worked. /jealous. Linky: Install Ubuntu or Kubuntu on a External USB Drive I'm willing to try a different version of ubuntu - it's not like my heart is set on 11.10, but it's a pain to open my case and unplug my internal hard drives so I'd prefer not to do this unless someone is reasonably confident it'll work. Thank you for all of your help in advance! I'm really looking forward to exploring Ubuntu!

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• Why is Double.Parse so slow?

  - by alexhildyard

  I was recently investigating a bottleneck in one of my applications, which read a CSV file from disk using a TextReader a line at a time, split the tokens, called Double.Parse on each one, then shunted the results into an object list. I was surprised to find it was actually the Double.Parse which seemed to be taking up most of the time.Googling turned up this, which is a little unfocused in places but throws out some excellent ideas:It makes more sense to work with binary format directly, rather than coerce strings into doublesThere is a significant performance improvement in composing doubles directly from the byte stream via long intermediariesString.Split is inefficient on fixed length recordsIn fact it turned out that my problem was more insidious and also more mundane -- a simple case of bad data in, bad data out. Since I had been serialising my Doubles as strings, when I inadvertently divided by zero and produced a "NaN", this of course was serialised as well without error. And because I was reading in using Double.Parse, these "NaN" fields were also (correctly) populating real Double objects without error. The issue is that Double.Parse("NaN") is incredibly slow. In fact, it is of the order of 2000x slower than parsing a valid double. For example, the code below gave me results of 357ms to parse 1000 NaNs, versus 15ms to parse 100,000 valid doubles.            const int invalid_iterations = 1000;            const int valid_iterations = invalid_iterations * 100;            const string invalid_string = "NaN";            const string valid_string = "3.14159265";            DateTime start = DateTime.Now;                        for (int i = 0; i < invalid_iterations; i++)            {                double invalid_double = Double.Parse(invalid_string);            }            Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} iterations of invalid double, time taken (ms): {1}",                invalid_iterations,                ((TimeSpan)DateTime.Now.Subtract(start)).Milliseconds            ));            start = DateTime.Now;            for (int i = 0; i < valid_iterations; i++)            {                double valid_double = Double.Parse(valid_string);            }            Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} iterations of valid double, time taken (ms): {1}",                valid_iterations,                ((TimeSpan)DateTime.Now.Subtract(start)).Milliseconds            )); I think the moral is to look at the context -- specifically the data -- as well as the code itself. Once I had corrected my data, the performance of Double.Parse was perfectly acceptable, and while clearly it could have been improved, it was now sufficient to my needs.

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• How to handle interruptions in developer work without losing concentration? [closed]

  - by tomaszs

  I work as a developer for some years now. Mainly the issue why it's antisocial work is because you need to spend much time programming. I've been always the kind of developer who likes to cut off from any sources of distraction and spend several hours on project because in this way i (as i hope) do it faster. There are also other kinds of developers, more social that can chat, read, watch movies while development and they are ok with this and don't hesitate to be interrupted in their work in any time and come back to the project without any problem. For me any distraction is source of frustration because i need to spend substantial time to load my mind with all info about the project and to concentrate back on the tasks. I always thought it's better to do this that way because project is completed faster. But it makes some things difficult: it's hard to chat with someone who needs to have some important info: because you are a bit frustrated when you know you loose your Zen. And sometimes its more important to chat with someone than to loose Zen. Well.. mostly in any other kind of work the ability to be "multitask" is very important. But as a developer and as a person it's also very important to stay social. And i see now that the problem of concentration makes it difficult to make the right chose: the cost of maintaining concentration is just sometimes so damn high! So is it only me that i have so little concentration skills so any interruption is for me a big deal? Maybe it's just i have so bad memory so that i dont remember all issues of a project so long? Or maybe i develop the project in a fashion that requires me to store so much info on my mind only to be able to start working with code? Or should i just accept that being more social will make me finish project slower and in the fashion that i personally consider non 100% productive? And it's just normal thing and i should just accept it and start to live like any other person who has many works and don't assume that programming is in any case other than any other work and i just do fuzz about the whole concentration thing? This is question for mid-pro developers. I think you was having the same dillema in your life. I would be glad if you could help me take the right road here because it's just driving me and i suppose people i work with crazy for years.

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• Understanding clojure keywords

  - by tjb1982

  I'm taking my first steps with Clojure. Otherwise, I'm somewhat competent with JavaScript, Python, Java, and a little C. I was reading this artical that describes destructuring vectors and maps. E.g. => (def point [0 0]) => (let [[x y] point] => (println "the coordinates are:" x y)) the coordinates are: 0 0 but I'm having a difficult time understanding keywords. At first glance, they seem really simple, as they just evaluate to themselves: => :test :test But they seem to be used is so many different ways and I don't understand how to think about them. E.g., you can also do stuff like this: => (defn full-name [& {first :first last :last}] => (println first last)) => (full-name :first "Tom" :last "Brennan") Tom Brennan nil This doesn't seem intuitive to me. I would have guessed the arguments should have been something more like: (full-name {:first "Tom" :last "Brennan"}) because it looks like in the function definition that you're saying "no required arguments, but a variable number of arguments comes in the form of a single map". But it seems more like you're saying "no required arguments, but a variable number of arguments comes which should be a list of alternating keywords and values... ?" I'm not really sure how to wrap my brain around this. Also, things like this confuse me too: => (def population {:humans 5 :zombies 1000}) => (:zombies population) 1000 => (population :zombies) 1000 How do maps and keywords suddenly become functions? If I could get some clarification on the use of keywords in these two examples, that would be really helpful. Update I've also seen http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3337888/clojure-named-arguments and while the accepted answer is a great demonstration of how to use keywords with destructuring and named arguments, I'm really looking more for understanding how to think about them--why the language is designed this way and how I can best internalize their use.

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• Started wrong with a project. Should I start over?

  - by solidsnake

  I'm a beginner web developer (one year of experience). A couple of weeks after graduating, I got offered a job to build a web application for a company whose owner is not much of a tech guy. He recruited me to avoid theft of his idea, the high cost of development charged by a service company, and to have someone young he can trust onboard to maintain the project for the long run (I came to these conclusions by myself long after being hired). Cocky as I was back then, with a diploma in computer science, I accepted the offer thinking I can build anything. I was calling the shots. After some research I settled on PHP, and started with plain PHP, no objects, just ugly procedural code. Two months later, everything was getting messy, and it was hard to make any progress. The web application is huge. So I decided to check out an MVC framework that would make my life easier. That's where I stumbled upon the cool kid in the PHP community: Laravel. I loved it, it was easy to learn, and I started coding right away. My code looked cleaner, more organized. It looked very good. But again the web application was huge. The company was pressuring me to deliver the first version, which they wanted to deploy, obviously, and start seeking customers. Because Laravel was fun to work with, it made me remember why I chose this industry in the first place - something I forgot while stuck in the shitty education system. So I started working on small projects at night, reading about methodologies and best practice. I revisited OOP, moved on to object-oriented design and analysis, and read Uncle Bob's book Clean Code. This helped me realize that I really knew nothing. I did not know how to build software THE RIGHT WAY. But at this point it was too late, and now I'm almost done. My code is not clean at all, just spaghetti code, a real pain to fix a bug, all the logic is in the controllers, and there is little object oriented design. I'm having this persistent thought that I have to rewrite the whole project. However, I can't do it... They keep asking when is it going to be all done. I can not imagine this code deployed on a server. Plus I still know nothing about code efficiency and the web application's performance. On one hand, the company is waiting for the product and can not wait anymore. On the other hand I can't see myself going any further with the actual code. I could finish up, wrap it up and deploy, but god only knows what might happen when people start using it. What do you think I should do?

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• Black screen on latest Nvidia Cards when starting LightDM/Ubuntu

  - by Luis Alvarado

  Today I installed an Nvidia GT440 on my computer, changing the one that existed there, an Nvidia 9500GT. After changing it I started getting a problem where the screen just went black when loading the lightdm login screen (Where I punt my user and password). The thing is, if I disconnect the VGA cable and connect it again I get to see the lightdm greeter and everything works perfect. The problem is that I have to connect/disconnect every time I reboot the PC. I tried installing the 285.xx drivers. Same problem. I removed the Nvidia drivers installed with Jockey, rebooted, same problem. I install the current 280.xx again, same problem. After all that I installed a fresh install of Ubuntu, selected to install the Nvidia drivers while installing it from the livecd. After booting the same problem appeared. Dmesg does not say anything wrong about it. Same goes for the log from Jockey. What else should I check or what to do to solve it. Just to clarify, this does not happen BEFORE the lightdm greeter appears. Am guessing before the actual use of the video card with X starts with all the 2D/3D stuff that is used in ligthdm and unity. I can use any tty and even see the Ubuntu logo when starting. UPDATE: When I open a game in fullscreen the problem appears again. I have to unplug the monitor cable and plug it back in to see the game. Then when I quit the game I have to do it again to see the desktop. UPDATE 2: Today I bought a HDMI cable, connected the video card to the TV am testing it with and it actually did log in correctly without any black screen but it shows the resolution a little over the actual size of the screen. So I see only half of the launcher since the left side of it is hidden outside of the real resolution and the top bar is beyond the resolution. So the black screen is related to the VGA connection.

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• SEO to ensure visibility for a narrow, non-competitive, non-commercial site

  - by hen3ry

  I'm webmaster of a non-commercial site in English. A non-native-English speaker asked me why our site doesn't produce hits in Google searches she conducts for relevant keywords in her native language. I asked her for a list of keywords in her native language, and I naively tried inserting those into the META info in the page headers and waited a couple of weeks. No help. A little searching informed me that Google doesn't use the META info, and has not done so for a very long time. D'oh! To be entirely concrete, suppose the StackExchange folks want Russian speakers to find this site, Pro Webmasters. The direct translation in Russian of "webmaster" --thanks, Google Translator-- is: "?????????". (Not sure this will render properly, but that's not essential to my question.) Assuming Pro Webmasters has a common template for all pages it generates, inserting "?????????" into the Keywords META for that template won't help, it seems. What could StackExchange do to make this site visible to users searching with the Russian keyword "?????????" ? Pretty much all the advice I've seen boils down to this, if I understand correctly: use the desired search term often (but not too often) among site content, and the problem will be solved. That's great, but I don't think sprinkling "?????????" visibly all over Pro Webmasters is going to fly. Just for completeness, crawlers must be long immune to the invisible-to-visitors scheme, e.g, format "?????????" in a tiny text size in a color the same as an existing background, e.g. white-over-white. Or, put that text inside a div styled: ' style="visibility: hidden" '. Probably some other equivalents. I can only think of one slightly effective method, along these lines: place an unobtrusive link on the common template to a page titled "for international users" , and on that page list desired synonyms for "webmaster" in various languages on that page. A test case --admittedly, just one-- using my site implies that a Google search for "international users" ????????? will produce a hit for this page, and thus make the site minimally visible, despite the fact that the page will almost never be visited. At the moment, anyway. Note: All the SEO discussions I have found so far are about competitive and --almost certainly-- commercial sites. To repeat: my site is non-commercial, and it is about an obscure, narrow topic that is of interest to only a small number of people worldwide. This isn't about clawing our way to the top of competitive rankings, just making this content minimally visible to interested non-native-English speakers. Ideas? TIA

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• Multiple country-specific domains or one global domain [closed]

  - by CJM

  Possible Duplicate: How should I structure my urls for both SEO and localization? My company currently has its main (English) site on a .com domain with a .co.uk alias. In addition, we have separate sites for certain other countries - these are also hosted in the UK but are distinct sites with a country-specific domain names (.de, .fr, .se, .es), and the sites have differing amounts of distinct but overlapping content, For example, the .es site is entirely in Spanish and has a page for every section of the UK site but little else. Whereas the .de site has much more content (but still less than the UK site), in German, and geared towards our business focus in that country. The main point is that the content in the additional sites is a subset of the UK, is translated into the local language, and although sometimes is simply only a translated version of UK content, it is usually 'tweaked' for the local market, and in certain areas, contains unique content. The other sites get a fraction of the traffic of the UK site. This is perfectly understandable since the biggest chunk of work comes from the UK, and we've been established here for over 30 years. However, we are wanting to build up our overseas business and part of that is building up our websites to support this. The Question: I posed a suggestion to the business that we might consider consolidating all our websites onto the .com domain but with /en/de/fr/se/etc sections, as plenty of other companies seem to do. The theory was that the non-english sites would benefit from the greater reputation of the parent .com domain, and that all the content would be mutually supporting - my fear is that the child domains on their own are too small to compete on their own compared to competitors who are established in these countries. Speaking to an SEO consultant from my hosting company, he feels that this move would have some benefit (for the reasons mentioned), but they would likely be significantly outweighed by the loss of the benefits of localised domains. Specifically, he said that since the Panda update, and particularly the two sets of changes this year, that we would lose more than we would gain. Having done some Panda research since, I've had my eyes opened on many issues, but curiously I haven't come across much that mentions localised domain names, though I do question whether Google would see it as duplicated content. It's not that I disagree with the consultant, I just want to know more before I make recommendations to my company. What is the prevailing opinion in this case? Would I gain anything from consolidating country-specific content onto one domain? Would Google see this as duplicate content? Would there be an even greater penalty from the loss of country-specific domains? And is there anything else I can do to help support the smaller, country-specific domains?

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• Disqus integration in website.. what is wrong??

  - by Thieme Hennis

  hi, I try to embed a disqus forum in a website I created. I used the exact code and instructions they give on the installation instructions. I just don't get it. Not much on Google either. Is something wrong in the code? Should I change anything? <!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="../favicon.ico"> <title>Little Louie | Hennis &amp; Blaisse Lovers Productions</title> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="some,tags"> <link href="../style2.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> </head> <body> <p><b>Some text</p> <p> <div id="disqus_thread"></div> <script type="text/javascript"> (function() { var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = 'http://littelouie.disqus.com/embed.js'; (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq); })(); </script> <noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href="http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript=littelouie">comments powered by Disqus.</a></noscript> <a href="http://disqus.com" class="dsq-brlink">blog comments powered by <span class="logo-disqus">Disqus</span></a> </p> <p> <script type="text/javascript"> var disqus_shortname = 'littelouie'; (function () { var s = document.createElement('script'); s.async = true; s.src = 'http://disqus.com/forums/littelouie/count.js'; (document.getElementsByTagName('HEAD')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('BODY')[0]).appendChild(s); }()); </script> </p> </body> </html>

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• Using jQuery to Make a Field Read Only in SharePoint

  - by Mark Rackley

  Okay… this will be my shortest blog post EVER. Very little rambling.. I promise, and I’m sure this has been blogged more than once, so I apologize for adding to the noise, but like I always say, I blog for myself so I have a global bookmark. So,let’s say you have a field on a SharePoint Form and you want to make it read only. You COULD just open it up in SPD and easily make it read only, but some people are purists and don’t like use SPD or modify the default new/edit/disp forms. Put me in the latter camp, I try to avoid modifying these forms and it seemed like such a simple task that I didn’t want to create a new un-ghosted form.  So.. how do you do it? It’s only one line of jQuery. All you need to do is find the id for your input field and capture the keypress on it so that it cannot be modified (you should probably capture clicks for dropdowns/checkboxes/etc. but I didn’t need to).  Anyway, here’s the entire script: <script src="jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> jQuery(document).ready(function($){ //capture keypress on our read only field and return false $('#idOfInputField').keypress(function() { return false; }); }) </script>   You can find the ID of your input field by viewing the source, this ID stays consistent as long as you don’t muck with the list or form in the wrong way.  Please note, you CANNOT disable the input field as an alternative to capturing the keypress. If you do this and save the form, any data in the disabled fields will be wiped out. There are probably a dozen ways to make a field read-only and if all you are using jQuery for is to make a field read-only, then you might want to question your use of adding the overhead (although it’s really not that much). Hey.. it’s another tool for your tool belt.

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• Workflow 4.5 is Awesome, cant wait for 5.0!

  - by JoshReuben

  About 2 years ago I wrote a blog post describing what I would like to see in Workflow vnext: http://geekswithblogs.net/JoshReuben/archive/2010/08/25/workflow-4.0---not-there-yet.aspx At the time WF 4.0 was a little rough around the edges – the State Machine was on codeplex and people were simulating state machines with Flowcharts. Last year I built a near- realtime machine management system using WF 4.0.1 – its managing the internal operations of this device: http://landanano.com/products/commercial   Well WF 4.5 has come a long way – many of my gripes have been addressed: C# expressions - no more VB 'AndAlso' clauses state machine awesomeness - can query current state many designer improvements - Document Outline is so much more succinct than Designer! Separate WCF Service Contract interfaces and ability to generate activities from contract operations ability to rehydrate to updated flow definitions via DynamicUpdateMap and WorkflowIdentity you can read about the new features here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh305677(VS.110).aspx   2013 could be the year of Workflow evangelism for .NET, as it comes together as the DSL language. Eg on Azure it could be used to graphically orchestrate between WebRoles, WorkerRoles and AppFabric Queues and the ServiceBus – that would be grand.   Here’s a list of things I’d like to see in Workflow 5.0: Stronger Parallelism support for true multithreaded workflows . A Workflow executes on a single thread – wouldn’t it be great if we had the ability to model TPL DataFlow? Parallel is not really parallel, just allows AsyncCodeActivity.     support for recursion an ExpressionTree activity with an editor design surface a math activity pack return of application level protocol (3.51 WF services) – automatically expose a state machine as a WCF service with bookmark Receive activities generated from OperationContract automatically placed in state transition triggers. A new HTML5 ActivityDesigner control – support with different CSS3  skinnable hooks,  remote connectivity (had to roll my own) A data flow view – crucial to understanding the big picture Ability to refactor a Sequence to custom activity in a separate .xaml file – like Expression Blend does for UserControl state machine global error handling - if all states goto an error state, you quickly get visual spagetti. Now you could nest a state machine, but what if you want an application level protocol whereby each state exposes certain WCF ops. DSL RAD editing - Make the Document Outline into a DSL editor for adding activities  – For WF to really succeed as a higher level of abstraction, It needs to be more productive than raw coding - drag & drop on the designer is currently too slow compared to just typing code. Extensible Wizard API - for pluggable WF editor experience other execution models beyond Sequence, Flowchart & StateMachine: SSIS, Behavior Trees,  Wolfram Model tool – surprise us! improvements to Designer debugging API - SourceLocation is tied to XAML file line number and char position, and ModelService access seems convoluted - why not leverage WPF LogicalTreeHelper / VisualTreeHelper ? Workflow Team , keep on rocking!

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• What does the Spring framework do? Should I use it? Why or why not?

  - by sangfroid

  So, I'm starting a brand-new project in Java, and am considering using Spring. Why am I considering Spring? Because lots of people tell me I should use Spring! Seriously, any time I've tried to get people to explain what exactly Spring is or what it does, they can never give me a straight answer. I've checked the intros on the SpringSource site, and they're either really complicated or really tutorial-focused, and none of them give me a good idea of why I should be using it, or how it will make my life easier. Sometimes people throw around the term "dependency injection", which just confuses me even more, because I think I have a different understanding of what that term means. Anyway, here's a little about my background and my app : Been developing in Java for a while, doing back-end web development. Yes, I do a ton of unit testing. To facilitate this, I typically make (at least) two versions of a method : one that uses instance variables, and one that only uses variables that are passed in to the method. The one that uses instance variables calls the other one, supplying the instance variables. When it comes time to unit test, I use Mockito to mock up the objects and then make calls to the method that doesn't use instance variables. This is what I've always understood "dependency injection" to be. My app is pretty simple, from a CS perspective. Small project, 1-2 developers to start with. Mostly CRUD-type operations with a a bunch of search thrown in. Basically a bunch of RESTful web services, plus a web front-end and then eventually some mobile clients. I'm thinking of doing the front-end in straight HTML/CSS/JS/JQuery, so no real plans to use JSP. Using Hibernate as an ORM, and Jersey to implement the webservices. I've already started coding, and am really eager to get a demo out there that I can shop around and see if anyone wants to invest. So obviously time is of the essence. I understand Spring has quite the learning curve, plus it looks like it necessitates a whole bunch of XML configuration, which I typically try to avoid like the plague. But if it can make my life easier and (especially) if make it can make development and testing faster, I'm willing to bite the bullet and learn Spring. So please. Educate me. Should I use Spring? Why or why not?

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• Reporting on common code smells : A POC

  - by Dave Ballantyne

  Over the past few blog entries, I’ve been looking at parsing TSQL scripts in a variety of ways for a variety of tasks.  In my last entry ‘How to prevent ‘Select *’ : The elegant way’, I looked at parsing SQL to report upon uses of SELECT *.  The obvious question leading on from this is, “Great, what about other code smells ?”  Well, using the language service parser to do that was turning out to be a bit of a hard job,  sure I was getting tokens but no real context.  I wasn't even being told when an end of statement had been reached. One of the other parsing options available from Microsoft is exposed in the assembly ‘Microsoft.SqlServer.TransactSql.ScriptDom’,  this is ,I believe, installed with the client development tools with SQLServer.  It is much more feature rich than the original parser I had used and breaks a TSQL script into intuitive classes for analysis. So, what sort of smells can I now find using it ?  Well, for an opening gambit quite a nice little list. Use of NOLOCK Set of READ UNCOMMITTED Use of SELECT * Insert without column references Explicit datatype conversion on Sargs Cross server selects Non use of two-part naming convention Table and Query hint usage Changes in set options Use of single line comments Use of ordinal column positions in ORDER BY clause Now, lets not argue the point that “It depends” as smells on some of these, but as an academic exercise it is quite interesting.  The code is available from this link :https://www.dropbox.com/s/rfk32sou4fzl2cw/TSQLDomTest.zip  All the usual disclaimers apply to this code, I cannot be held responsible for anything ranging from mild annoyance through to universe destruction due to the use of this code or examples. The zip file contains a powershell script and my test cases.  The assembly used requires .Net 4 to run, which means that you will need powershell 3 ( though im running through PowerGUI and all works ok ) .  The code searches for all .sql files in the folder hierarchy for the workingpath,  you can override this if you want by simply changing the $Folder variable, and processes each in turn for the smells.  Feedback is not great at the moment, all it does is output to an xml file (Smells.xml) the offset position and a description of the smell found. Right now, I am interested in your feedback.  What do you think ?  Is this (or should it be) more than an academic exercise ?  Can tooling such as this be used as some form of code quality measure ?  Does it Work ? Do you have a case listed above which is not being reported ? Do you have a case that you would love to be reported ? Let me know , please mailto: [email protected]. Thanks

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• Would someone please explain Octree Collisions to me?

  - by A-Type

  I've been reading everything I can find on the subject and I feel like the pieces are just about to fall into place, but I just can't quite get it. I'm making a space game, where collisions will occur between planets, ships, asteroids, and the sun. Each of these objects can be subdivided into 'chunks', which I have implemented to speed up rendering (the vertices can and will change often at runtime, so I've separated the buffers). These subdivisions also have bounding primitives to test for collision. All of these objects are made of blocks (yeah, it's that kind of game). Blocks can also be tested for rough collisions, though they do not have individual bounding primitives for memory reasons. I think the rough testing seems to be sufficient, though. So, collision needs to be fairly precise; at block resolution. Some functions rely on two blocks colliding. And, of course, attacking specific blocks is important. Now what I am struggling with is filtering my collision pairs. As I said, I've read a lot about Octrees, but I'm having trouble applying it to my situation as many tutorials are vague with very little code. My main issues are: Are Octrees recalculated each frame, or are they stored in memory and objects are shuffled into different divisions as they move? Despite all my reading I still am not clear on this... the vagueness of it all has been frustrating. How far do Octrees subdivide? Planets in my game are quite large, while asteroids are smaller. Do I subdivide to the size of the planet, or asteroid (where planet is in multiple divisions)? Or is the limit something else entirely, like number of elements in the division? Should I load objects into the octrees as 'chunks' or in the whole, then break into chunks later? This could be specific to my implementation, I suppose. I was going to ask about how big my root needed to be, but I did manage to find this question, and the second answer seems sufficient for me. I'm afraid I don't really get what he means by adding new nodes and doing subdivisions upon adding new objects, probably because I'm confused about whether the tree is maintained in memory or recalculated per-frame.

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• How to become a good team player?

  - by Nick

  I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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• Java Embedded Releases

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Oracle today announced a new product in its Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) product portfolio, Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2, a complete client Java runtime Optimized for resource-constrained, connected, embedded systems.  Also, Oracle is releasing Oracle Java Wireless Client 3.2, Oracle Java ME Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.2. Oracle also announced Oracle Java Embedded Suite 7.0 for larger embedded devices, providing a middleware stack for embedded systems. Small is the new big! Introducing Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2  Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is designed and optimized to meet the unique requirements of small embedded, low power devices such as micro-controllers and other resource-constrained hardware without screens or user interfaces. These include: On-the-fly application downloads and updates Remote operation, often in challenging environments Ability to add new capabilities without impacting the existing functions Support for hardware with as little as 130 kB RAM and 350 kB ROM Oracle Java Wireless Client 3.2 Oracle Java Wireless Client 3.2 is built around an optimized Java ME implementation that delivers a feature-rich application environment for mass-market mobile devices. This new release: Leverages standard JSRs, Oracle optimizations/APIs and a flexible porting layer for device specific customizations, which are tuned to device/chipset requirements Supports advanced tooling functions, such as memory and network monitoring and on-device tooling Offers new support for dual SIM functionality, which is highly useful for mass-market devices supported by multiple carriers with multiple phone connections Oracle Java ME SDK 3.2 Oracle Java ME SDK 3.2 provides a complete development environment for both Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 and Oracle Java Wireless Client 3.2. Available for download from OTN, The latest version includes: Small embedded device support In-field and remote administration and debugging Java ME SDK plug-ins for Eclipse and the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE), enabling more application development environments for Java ME developers. A new device skin creator that developers can use to generate their custom device skins for testing their applications. Oracle Embedded Suite 7.0 The Oracle Java Embedded Suite is a new packaged solution from Oracle (including Java DB, GlassFish for Embedded Suite, Jersey Web Services Framework, and Oracle Java SE Embedded 7 platform), created to provide value added services for collecting, managing, and transmitting data to and from other embedded devices.The Oracle Java Embedded Suite is a complete device-to-data center solution subset for embedded systems.  See Java Me and Java Embedded in Action Java ME and Java Embedded technologies will be showcased for developers at JavaOne 2012 in over 60 conference sessions and BOFs, as well as in the JavaOne Exhibition Hall. For business decision makers, the new event Java Embedded @ JavaOne you learn more about Java Embedded technologies and solutions.

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• Lock mouse in center of screen, and still use to move camera Unity

  - by Flotolk

  I am making a program from 1st person point of view. I would like the camera to be moved using the mouse, preferably using simple code, like from XNA var center = this.Window.ClientBounds; MouseState newState = Mouse.GetState(); if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyUp(Keys.Escape)) { Mouse.SetPosition((int)center.X, (int)center.Y); camera.Rotation -= (newState.X - center.X) * 0.005f; camera.UpDown += (newState.Y - center.Y) * 0.005f; } Is there any code that lets me do this in Unity, since Unity does not support XNA, I need a new library to use, and a new way to collect this input. this is also a little tougher, since I want one object to go up and down based on if you move it the mouse up and down, and another object to be the one turning left and right. I am also very concerned about clamping the mouse to the center of the screen, since you will be selecting items, and it is easiest to have a simple cross-hairs in the center of the screen for this purpose. Here is the code I am using to move right now: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; [AddComponentMenu("Camera-Control/Mouse Look")] public class MouseLook : MonoBehaviour { public enum RotationAxes { MouseXAndY = 0, MouseX = 1, MouseY = 2 } public RotationAxes axes = RotationAxes.MouseXAndY; public float sensitivityX = 15F; public float sensitivityY = 15F; public float minimumX = -360F; public float maximumX = 360F; public float minimumY = -60F; public float maximumY = 60F; float rotationY = 0F; void Update () { if (axes == RotationAxes.MouseXAndY) { float rotationX = transform.localEulerAngles.y + Input.GetAxis("Mouse X") * sensitivityX; rotationY += Input.GetAxis("Mouse Y") * sensitivityY; rotationY = Mathf.Clamp (rotationY, minimumY, maximumY); transform.localEulerAngles = new Vector3(-rotationY, rotationX, 0); } else if (axes == RotationAxes.MouseX) { transform.Rotate(0, Input.GetAxis("Mouse X") * sensitivityX, 0); } else { rotationY += Input.GetAxis("Mouse Y") * sensitivityY; rotationY = Mathf.Clamp (rotationY, minimumY, maximumY); transform.localEulerAngles = new Vector3(-rotationY, transform.localEulerAngles.y, 0); } while (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Space) == true) { Screen.lockCursor = true; } } void Start () { // Make the rigid body not change rotation if (GetComponent<Rigidbody>()) GetComponent<Rigidbody>().freezeRotation = true; } } This code does everything except lock the mouse to the center of the screen. Screen.lockCursor = true; does not work though, since then the camera no longer moves, and the cursor does not allow you to click anything else either.

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• Motivating yourself to actually write the code after you've designed something

  - by dpb

  Does it happen only to me or is this familiar to you too? It's like this: You have to create something; a module, a feature, an entire application... whatever. It is something interesting that you have never done before, it is challenging. So you start to think how you are going to do it. You draw some sketches. You write some prototypes to test your ideas. You are putting different pieces together to get the complete view. You finally end up with a design that you like, something that is simple, clear to everybody, easy maintainable... you name it. You covered every base, you thought of everything. You know that you are going to have this class and that file and that database schema. Configure this here, adapt this other thingy there etc. But now, after everything is settled, you have to sit down and actually write the code for it. And is not challenging anymore.... Been there, done that! Writing the code now is just "formalities" and makes it look like re-iterating what you've just finished. At my previous job I sometimes got away with it because someone else did the coding based on my specifications, but at my new gig I'm in charge of the entire process so I have to do this too ('cause I get payed to do it). But I have a pet project I'm working on at home, after work and there is just me and no one is paying me to do it. I do the creative work and then when time comes to write it down I just don't feel like it (lets browse the web a little, see what's new on P.SE, on SO etc). I just want to move to the next challenging thing, and then to the next, and the next... Does this happen to you too? How do you deal with it? How do you convince yourself to go in and write the freaking code? I'll take any answer.

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• What to use C++ for?

  - by futlib

  I really love C++. However, I'm struggling to find good uses for it lately. It is still the language to use if you're building huge systems with huge performance requirements. Like backend/infrastructure code at Google and Facebook, or high-end games. But I don't get to do stuff like that. It's also a good choice for code that runs close to the hardware. I'd like to do more low-level stuff, but it isn't part of my job, and I can't think of useful private projects that would involve that. Traditionally, C++ was also a good choice for rich client applications, but those are mostly written in C# and Obj-C lately - and aren't really that important anymore, with everything being a web app. Or a mobile app, which are mostly written in Obj-C and Java. And of course, web-based desktop and mobile apps are quite prominent, too. At my job, I work mostly on web applications, using Java, JavaScript and Groovy. Java is a good/popular choice for non-Google-scale backends, Groovy (or Python, or Ruby or Node.js) is pretty good for the server-side of web apps and JavaScript is the only real choice for the client-side. Even the little games I'm writing in my spare time are lately mostly written in JavaScript, so they can run in the browser. So what would you suggest I could use C++ for? I'm aware that this question is very similar. However, I don't want to learn C++, I was a professional C++ programmer for years. I want to keep doing it and find good new use cases for it. I know that I can use C++ for web apps/games. I could even compile C++ to JavaScript with Emscripten. However, it doesn't seem like a good idea. I'm looking for something C++ is really good at to stay competent in the language. If your answer is: Just give up and forget C++, you'll probably never need it again, so be it.

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• What Counts for a DBA: Passion

  - by drsql

  One of my first questions, when interviewing for a DBA/Programmer position, is always: “Why do you want this job?” The answers I receive range from cheesy hyperbole (“I want to enhance your services with my vast knowledge”) to deadpan realism (“I have N kids who all have a hole in the front of their face where food goes"). Both answers are fine in their own way, at least displaying some self-confidence, humour and honesty, but once in a while, I'll hear the answer that is music to me ears... “I LOVE DATABASES!” Whenever I hear it, my nerves tingle in hopeful anticipation; have I found someone for whom working with database isn't just a job, but a passion? Inevitably, I'm often disappointed. What initially seemed like passion turns out to be rather shallow enthusiasm; the person is enthusiastic about working with databases in the same way he or she might be about eating a bag of Cajun spiced kettle chips; enjoyable, but not something to think about too deeply or take too seriously. Enthusiasm comes, and enthusiasm goes. I've seen countless technical forum users burst onto the scene in a blaze of frantic question-answering, only to fade away within days, never to be heard from again. Passion, however, is more of a longstanding commitment. The biographies of the great technologists and authors of the recent past are full of the sort of passion and engrossment that lead a person to write a novel non-stop for a fortnight with no sleep and only dog food to eat (Philip K. Dick), or refuse to leave the works of the first tunnel under the Thames, even though it was flooded (Brunel). In a similar (though more modest) way, my passion for working with databases has led me to acts that might cause someone for whom it was "just a job" to roll their eyes in disbelief. Most evenings you're more likely to find me reading a database book than watching TV. I've spent hundreds of hours of my spare time writing blogs and articles (some of which are only read by tens of people); I've spent hundreds of dollars travelling to conferences, paying my own flight and hotel expenses, so that I can share a little of what I know, and mix with some like-minded people. And I know I'm far from alone in this, in the SQL Server community. Passion isn't everything, of course, and it isn't always accompanied by any great skill, but in almost every case, that skill can be cultivated over time. If you are doing what you are passionate about, work turns into more than just a way to feed your kids; it becomes your hobby, entertainment, and preoccupation. And it is this passion that gives a DBA the obsessive stubbornness, the refusal to be beaten by even the most difficult problem, which is often so crucial. A final word of warning though: passion without limits can turn weird. Never let it get in the way of your wife, kids, bills, or personal hygiene.

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• SQL Saturday 43 (Redmond, WA) Review

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Saturday (June 12th) we held a “SQL Saturday” (more about those here) event in Redmond, Washington. The event was held at the Microsoft campus, at the Mixer in our new location called the “Commons”. This is a mall-like area that we have on campus, and the Mixer is a large building with lots of meeting rooms, so it made a perfect location for the event. There was a sign to find the parking, and once there they had a sign to show how to get to the building. Since it’s a secure facility, Greg Larsen and crew had a person manning the door so that even late arrivals could get in. We had about 400 sign up for the event, and a little over 300 attend (official numbers later). I think we would have had a lot more, but the sun was out – and you just can’t underestimate the effect of that here in the Pacific Northwest. We joke a lot about not seeing the sun much, but when a day like what we had on Saturday comes around, and on a weekend at that, you’d cancel your wedding to go outside to play in the sun. And your spouse would agree with you for doing it. We had some top-notch speakers, including Clifford Dibble and Kalen Delany. The food was great, we had multiple sponsors (including Confio who seems to be at all of these) and the attendees were from all over the professional spectrum, from developers to BI to DBA’s. Everyone I saw was very engaged, and when I visited room-to-room I saw almost no one in the halls – everyone was in the sessions. I also saw a much larger Microsoft presence this year, especially from Dan Jones’ team. I had a great turnout at my session, and yes, I was wearing an Oracle staff shirt. I did that because I wanted to show that the session I gave on “SQL Server for the Oracle DBA” was non-marketing – I couldn’t exactly bash Oracle wearing their colors! These events are amazing. I can’t emphasize enough how much I appreciate the volunteers and how much work they put into these events, and to you for coming. If you’re reading this and you haven’t attended one yet, definitely find out if there is one in your area – and if not, start one. It’s a lot of work, but it’s totally worth it.       Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• LWJGL - Mixing 2D and 3D

  - by nathan

  I'm trying to mix 2D and 3D using LWJGL. I have wrote 2D little method that allow me to easily switch between 2D and 3D. protected static void make2D() { glEnable(GL_BLEND); GL11.glMatrixMode(GL11.GL_PROJECTION); GL11.glLoadIdentity(); glOrtho(0.0f, SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f); GL11.glMatrixMode(GL11.GL_MODELVIEW); GL11.glLoadIdentity(); } protected static void make3D() { glDisable(GL_BLEND); GL11.glMatrixMode(GL11.GL_PROJECTION); GL11.glLoadIdentity(); // Reset The Projection Matrix GLU.gluPerspective(45.0f, ((float) SCREEN_WIDTH / (float) SCREEN_HEIGHT), 0.1f, 100.0f); // Calculate The Aspect Ratio Of The Window GL11.glMatrixMode(GL11.GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); } The in my rendering code i would do something like: make2D(); //draw 2D stuffs here make3D(); //draw 3D stuffs here What i'm trying to do is to draw a 3D shape (in my case a quad) and i 2D image. I found this example and i took the code from TextureLoader, Texture and Sprite to load and render a 2D image. Here is how i load the image. TextureLoader loader = new TextureLoader(); Sprite s = new Sprite(loader, "player.png") And how i render it: make2D(); s.draw(0, 0); It works great. Here is how i render my quad: glTranslatef(0.0f, 0.0f, 30.0f); glScalef(12.0f, 9.0f, 1.0f); DrawUtils.drawQuad(); Once again, no problem, the quad is properly rendered. DrawUtils is a simple class i wrote containing utility method to draw primitives shapes. Now my problem is when i want to mix both of the above, loading/rendering the 2D image, rendering the quad. When i try to load my 2D image with the following: s = new Sprite(loader, "player.png); My quad is not rendered anymore (i'm not even trying to render the 2D image at this point). Only the fact of creating the texture create the issue. After looking a bit at the code of Sprite and TextureLoader i found that the problem appears after the call of the glTexImage2d. In the TextureLoader class: glTexImage2D(target, 0, dstPixelFormat, get2Fold(bufferedImage.getWidth()), get2Fold(bufferedImage.getHeight()), 0, srcPixelFormat, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, textureBuffer); Commenting this like make the problem disappear. My question is then why? Is there anything special to do after calling this function to do 3D? Does this function alter the render part, the projection matrix?

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• 5 ways to stop code thrashing&hellip;

  - by MarkPearl

  A few days ago I was programming on a personal project and hit a roadblock. I was applying the MVVM pattern and for some reason my view model was not updating the view when the state changed??? I had applied this pattern many times before and had never had this problem. It just didn’t make sense. So what did I do… I did what anyone would have done in my situation and looked to pass the blame to someone or something else. I tried to blame one of the inherited base classes, but it looked fine, then to Visual Studio, but it seemed to be fine and eventually to any random segment of code I came across. My elementary problem had now mushroomed into one that had lost any logical basis and I was in thrashing mode! So what to do when you begin to thrash? 1) Do a general code cleanup – Now there is a difference between cleaning code and changing code . When you thrash you change code and you want to avoid this. What you really want to do is things like rename variables to have better meaning and go over your comments. 2) Do a proof of concept – if cleaning code doesn’t help. The  you want to isolate the problem and identify the key concepts. When you isolate code you ideally want it to be in a totally separate project with as little complexity as possible. Make the building blocks and try and replicate the functionality that you are getting in your current application. 3) Phone a friend – I have found speaking to someone else about the problem generally helps me solve any thrashing issues I am having. Usually they don’t even have to say anything to solve the problem, just you talking them through the problem helps you get clarity of mind. 4) Let the dust settle – Sometimes time is the best solution. I have had a few problems that no matter who I discussed them with and no matter how much code cleaning I had done I just couldn’t seem to fix it. My brain just seemed to be going in circles. A good nights rest has always helped and often just the break away from the problem has helped me find a solution. 5) Stack overflow it – So similar to phone a friend. I am really surprised to see what a melting pot stack overflow has been and what a help it has been in solving technology specific problems. Just be considerate to those using the site and explain clearly exactly what problem you are having and the technologies you are using or else you will probably not get any useful help…

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