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• Do other developers feel that as they get better, it becomes harder to get jobs?

  - by nbv4

  When I was starting out, it seemed I had a much better time getting interviews and passing them. But now that I'm more experienced, I'm finding that its harder and harder to find a job. Do other developers out there feel the same way? I'll give you an example. I did an interview last Wednesday. It was a small start-up with only one other engineer and the CEO. They flew me in from Ohio (they are SF based). When I got there, they had me write them a link shortener, which took me about 10 minutes to write. I was supposed to be there all day working on this. When I finished it early, the interviewer seemed kind of shocked. After that, we were talking, and I asked him what they use to store data. He told me Mongo. I ask why he decided to use mongo. He then stammered and mumbled his answer, which basically boiled down to "We're using it because Mongo is a the trendy database technology and we don't want to be left out", which I've found is pretty much most common reason people use NoSQL these days. The interviewer quickly ended the interview and pretty much shoved me out the door. I was supposed to have lunch with the CEO, but I he kicked me out before I had a chance. The intervier wasn't mean or rude, (and neither was I). After I got back to Ohio, I got an email from them saying "I wasn't a fit". This sot of thing happens to me all the time. I'm starting to think "not a fit" can sometimes mean "are too high of a skill level that we are". Is this all in my head, or do other experienced developers notice the same thing happening? Back when I used to struggle with coding problems, I would work with the interviewer and it would be a positive thing and I'd get hired. But now I usually blow through the coding part, and the interviewer being left speechless is working against me. Should I feign struggling with coding problems?

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• Modelling highly specific business requirements

  - by AndyBursh

  How can one go about modelling highly specific business requirements, which have no precedent in the system? Take for example the following requirement: When a purchase order contains N lines, is over X value in total and is being recorded against project Y, an email needs to be sent to persons A and B with the details This requirement supplements other requirements surrounding purchase orders, but comes in at a much later date in response to some ongoing problem elsewhere in the business. Persons A and B are not part of any role or group in the system, and don't hold any specific responsibility; they are simply the two people the business has appointed to receive these emails in this very specific case. Projects are also data driven, so project Y has no special properties to distinguish it from any other project. The only way to identify it is to compare its identifier to a magic number. How can one go about modelling this kind of case without introducing too much additional complexity? That I can think of right now, there are a couple of options. Perform the checks and actions inline with the existing code. Here we find the correct spot in the code, check the conditions in the requirement and send the emails to hardcoded addresses. Of course this is fraught with issues. At the very least it stops working if one of these people leaves or changes their email address. At worst you have to ensure that any tests and test data are aware that additional actions are taken for a specific set of criteria. Introduce some form of events system. Here we introduce an eventing system, so that we might react to some event, and fulfil the requirement outside of the usual path of execution. This sounds like a cleaner solution than option 1, but the work involved is ultimately probably slightly overkill for this one small requirement. That said, having it in place does allow the system to handle these kinds of specific requirements consistently and easily in the future. Are there any other (good/better) ways of handling highly specific requirements? I mean other than telling the other parts of the business no!

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• New Features Of WordPress 3.3 You Must Know

  - by Gopinath

  After months of beta testing, WordPress 3.3 version is going to be released at the end of this month. There are several new features packed in the new version and few of them are going to excite WordPress admins. In this post we are going to discuss about the exciting new features. 1. Drag and Drop Media Uploads One of the biggest improvements in this version of WordPress is it’s all new media uploader. Now you can upload multiple files by just dragging & dropping, instantly resize  the images and filter files by their type. The media upload sports a brand new look WordPress adopted the Pupload plugin to power its media uploader component and it’s written by the same team who created the popular TinyMCE editor plugin. 2. Improved Admin Bar(Toolbar) The admin bar or newly called toolbar has got handful of makeovers. The not so much used items like Search box and other elements are removed to make sure that the bar is not clumsy. The user menu and the related options are moved to the right like how we see in Google’s user bar. Also there are few changes to the colour of the bar to make it more eye friendly. 3. Fly out Admin Menus All the left side bar menus of WordPress admin are now sports a fly out menu style to save a click. In the previous versions if you want to access a sub menu on the left side bar, you need to first click on the category and then choose the menu item from the expanded list. Now on just mouse over you will see a flyout of menu items. 4. Adaptive Admin – Layout Auto Adjust To Fit Various Devices If you own an iPad or any other so called tablets then you are going to love this feature. The admin site of WordPress has got a lot more friendly with tablets and smartphones. WordPress now auto adjusts layout to fit the device through which you are accessing the admin site.  Accessing admin dashboard on your tablets is going to be more fun. 5. Other Features Now that we have read the most useful 4 features here is a small list of other features that may interest you Nice Tooltips are displayed where ever possible to help the newbies to understand the usage of admin site Responsive Layouts jQuery 1.7 and jQuery UI 1.8.16 are the power horses of WordPress Performance improvements This article titled,New Features Of WordPress 3.3 You Must Know, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Should I continue to pursue programming based on my experience?

  - by El Be

  The reason I ask this question is because I am not sure my troubles come from a lack of confidence, or something much deeper like lack of passion. I'm hoping experienced programmers and developers can help identify the cause of my troubles. To be brief my undergraduate major was in Computer Science, but in a small school and I had the highest gpa in my year in computer science. The first time I ever programmed was once in the 5th grade (using logo) and when I was a freshman in college. I enjoyed programming when I was in school. Then I did an internships where I was expected to produce image processing software and program microchips. I was unsuccessful and produced little results and I hated the job, because I had to figure out everything for myself, did not have any help, and there was a lot of pressure to produce results. Although I tried I could not figure out what to do and was stuck all the time and made me dislike the job. When the internship ended I went to a PhD program for computer science at a prestigious computer science school. I had a very hard time with the course, met people who have been programming since they were 6 and made plenty of applications in their spare time (which I never did, although I tried). I even met many sophomores who understood more than I did. The combination of this and other things have made me feel that programming is not for me, but sometimes I consider a career in programming. I still consider programming as a career because of the career potential (not only just because of money). Based on my experience do you believe my confidence has just been shaken and I should continue to prepare for a programming career, or do you see a lack of passion and it would make it tough to continue programming. thank you for reading and for your advice Thank you for everyone's advice so far! Also: I dropped out of the ph.D program for computer science and switched to a master's in computer graphics. Its more applied, but I still find it hard to be motivated (due to either lack of confidence or passion), but since programming is such a big field I am looking for that niche area that I feel good programming in.

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• Changing jobs and leaving a project without a leader (aka, me)

  - by AnonUntilAfterTheEvent

  I'm the lead on a project that has been underway for about a year and a half. Two of us have been working on it. One is the database guy. I'm the javascript/ui guy. Which is to say, essentially no overlap in code knowledge. Here's the thing. Someone is about to offer me a sweet job with a nearly 30% bump in pay. Though I am perfectly happy with my current job and love the project, the new one would be better and I can't imagine saying no. The big problem is that my project is supposed to go into production starting in a few weeks. I will consider the new guys to have disqualified the new job by being bad people who would ruin my life if they won't cooperate and let me start after deployment. Since they seem like decent, ethical people, I don't expect that to be a problem. The current project will be brutalized by my absence. I take some comfort in the fact that I have emphatically requested an understudy for at least six months. That puts a little of the responsibility on the boss's head, but still, it's going to be a really bad thing. What do others of you do when you are a critical to a project when it's time to move on? Do I owe any obligation to stick around even though something better shows up? I know my spouse would object if I found someone else. Does that apply to work? I do have an understudy now, though he's fresh out of college. He's not going to replace me anytime soon. It's a small shop and the boss is going to be crushed. I am traumatized in anticipation of telling him and feel guilty about the practical consequences. I'm looking for some solace and some strategy about how to deal with this transition. Thank you for listening. =========================Subsequent notes ========================= @ChaosPandion, Chance: No, I can't stay to finish the project. I will insist on a compromise where I finish the current sprint (about a month from now) but there is at least a half year, probably a year of solid, full-time, work still to be done. I wouldn't expect the new employer to hold the job that long.

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• How to Send the Contents of the Clipboard to a Text File via the Send to Menu

  - by Jason Faulkner

  We have previously covered how to send the contents of a text file to the Windows Clipboard with a simple Send To shortcut, but what if you want to do the opposite? That is: send the contents of the clipboard to a text file with a simple shortcut. No problem. Here’s how. Copy the ClipOut Utility While Windows offers the command line tool ‘clip’ as a way to direct console output to the clipboard, it does not have a tool to direct the clipboard contents to the console. To do this, we are going to use a small utility named ClipOut (download link at the bottom). Simply download and extract this file to a location in your Windows PATH variable (if you don’t know what this means, just extract the EXE to your C:\Windows folder) and you are ready to go. Add the Send To Shortcut Open your Send To folder location by going to Run > shell:sendto Create a new shortcut with the command: CMD /C ClipOut > Note the above command will overwrite the contents of the selected file. If you would like to append to the contents of the selected file, use this command instead: CMD /C ClipOut >> Of course, you could make shortcuts for both. Give a descriptive name to the shortcut. You’re finished. Using this shortcut will now send the text contents copied to your Windows Clipboard to the selected file. It is important to note that the ClipOut tool only supports outputting text. If you had binary data copied to your clipboard, then the output would be empty. Changing the Icon By default, the icon for the shortcut will appear as a command prompt, but you can easily change this by editing the properties of the shortcut and clicking the Change Icon button. We used an icon located in “%SystemRoot%\System32\shell32.dll”, but any icon of your liking will do. As an additional tweak, you can set the properties of the shortcut to run minimized. This will prevent the command window from “blinking” when the send to command is run (instead it will blink in your taskbar, which is hardly noticeable). Links Download ClipOut Utility     

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• Should accessible members of an internal class be internal too?

  - by Jeff Mercado

  I'm designing a set of APIs for some applications I'm working on. I want to keep the code style consistent in all the classes I write but I've found that there are a few inconsistencies that I'm introducing and I don't know what the best way to resolve them is. My example here is specific to C# but this would apply to any language with similar mechanisms. There are a few classes that I need for implementation purposes that I don't necessarily want to expose in the API so I make them internal whereever needed. Generally what I would do is design the class as I normally would (e.g., make members public/protected/private where necessary) and change the visibility level of the class itself to internal. So I might have a few classes that look like this: internal interface IMyItem { ItemSet AddTo(ItemSet set); } internal class _SmallItem : IMyItem { private readonly /* parameters */; public _SmallItem(/* small item parameters */) { /* ... */ } public ItemSet AddTo(ItemSet set) { /* ... */ } } internal abstract class _CompositeItem: IMyItem { private readonly /* parameters */; public _CompositeItem(/* composite item parameters */) { /* ... */ } public abstract object UsefulInformation { get; } protected void HelperMethod(/* parameters */) { /* ... */ } } internal class _BigItem : _CompositeItem { private readonly /* parameters */; public _BigItem(/* big item parameters */) { /* ... */ } public override object UsefulInformation { get { /* ... */ } } public ItemSet AddTo(ItemSet set) { /* ... */ } } In another generated class (part of a parser/scanner), there is a structure that contains fields for all possible values it can represent. The class generated is internal too but I have control over the visibility of the members and decided to make them internal as well. internal partial struct ValueType { internal string String; internal ItemSet ItemSet; internal IMyItem MyItem; } internal class TokenValue { internal static int EQ(ItemSetScanner scanner) { /* ... */ } internal static int NAME(ItemSetScanner scanner, string value) { /* ... */ } internal static int VALUE(ItemSetScanner scanner, string value) { /* ... */ } //... } To me, this feels odd because the first set of classes, I didn't necessarily have to make some members public, they very well could have been made internal. internal members of an internal type can only be accessed internally anyway so why make them public? I just don't like the idea that the way I write my classes has to change drastically (i.e., change all uses of public to internal) just because the class is internal. Any thoughts on what I should do here? It makes sense to me that I might want to make some members of a class declared public, internal. But it's less clear to me when the class is declared internal.

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• How to make sprint planning fun

  - by Jacob Spire

  Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful. The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer). The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings. Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority story is taken apart to tasks tasks are estimated in hours repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong. How can we make the meetings more enjoyable? ... Some more details, in response to requests for more information: Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff? User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question. Why are developers complaining? Meetings are long. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have two?! Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark! To sum up the question: What are we doing wrong? What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable?

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• Complete Beginner to Game Programming and Unreal Engine 4, Looking For Advice [on hold]

  - by onemic

  I am currently a 2nd year programming student(Just finished my first year so I will be starting my second year in September) and have mainly learned C and C++ in my classes. In terms of what I know of C++, I know about general inheritance, polymorphism, overloading operators, iterators, a little bit about templates(only class and function templates) etc. but not of the more advanced topics like linked lists and other sequential containers(containers in general I guess), enumerations, most of the standard library(other than like strings and vectors), and probably a bunch of other stuff I dont even know about yet. I subscribed to Unreal Engine 4 as I was very intrigued by their Unreal Tournament announcement earlier this month, especially after hearing that UE4 is going completely C++. Of course my end goal in doing this programming program is to eventually go into game/graphics programming. Since it's my summer off, I thought what better way then to actually apply some of my skills to a personal project so I actually have a firmer understanding of C++ past what my professors tell me. My questions are this: What would be the best way to start off making a small personal game in UE4 as a project for the summer? What should I be aiming for, especially for someone that is still learning C++? Should I focus on making a simple 2D game rather than a 3D one to get started? Seeing the Flappy Chicken showcase intrigued me because before I thought the UE engine was pretty much pigeonholed into being for FPS games What should my expectations be going into UE4 and a game engine for the first time?(UE4 will be my first foray into making a game) What can I expect to gain from making things in UE4, in terms of making games and in terms of further fleshing out my knowledge of C++? Would you recommend I start off 100% using C++ for scripting or using the visual blueprints? Since I'm not a designer, how would I be able to add objects and designs to my game? For someone at my level is retaining the UE4 subscription worth it or is it better to cancel and resub when I learn enough about UE4 and C++? Lastly is there anything to be gained in terms of knowledge/insight through me looking at the source code for UE4? I opened it in VS2013, but noticed that most of the files were C# files and not cpp's. Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer.

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• Where does a "Technical Programmer" fit in, and what does the title mean? [closed]

  - by Mike E

  Was: "What is a 'Technical Programmer'"? I've noticed in job posting boards a few postings, all from European companies in the games industry, for a "Technical Programmer". The job description was similar, having to do with tools development, 3d graphics programming, etc. It seems to be somewhere between a Technical Artist who's more technical than artist or who can code, and a Technical Director but perhaps without the seniority/experience. Information elsewhere on the position is sparse. The title seems redundant and I haven't seen any American companies post jobs by that name, exactly. One example is this job posting on gamedev.net which isn't exactly thorough. In case the link dies: Subject: Technical Programmer Frictional Games, the creators of Amnesia: The Dark Descent and the Penumbra series, are looking for a talented programmer to join the company! You will be working for a small team with a big focus on finding new and innovating solutions. We want you who are not afraid to explore uncharted territory and constantly learn new things. Self-discipline and independence are also important traits as all work will be done from home. Some the things you will work with include: 3D math, rendering, shaders and everything else related. Console development (most likely Xbox 360). Hardware implementations (support for motion controls, etc). All coding is in C++, so great skills in that is imperative. Revised Summarised Question: So, where does a programmer of this nature fit in to software development team? If I had these on my team, what tasks am I expecting them to complete? Can I ask one to build a new level editor, or optimize the rendering engine? It doesn't seem to be a "tools programmer" which focuses on producing artist tools, often in high-level languages like C#, Python, or Java. Nor does it seem to be working directly on the engine, nor a graphics programmer, as such. Yet, a strong C++ requirement, which was mirrored in other postings besides this one I quoted. Edited To Add As far as it being a low-level programmer, I had considered that but lacking from the posting was a requirement of Assembly. Instead, they tend to require familiarity with higher-level hardware APIs such as DirectX, or DirectInput. I wasn't fully clear in my original post. I think, however, that Mathew Foscarini has it right in his answer, so barring someone who definitely works with or as a "Technical Programmer" stepping in to provide a clearer explanation, I'll go with that. A generalist, which also fits the description of a more-technical-than-artist TA.

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• Specifying and applying broad changes to a program

  - by Victor Nicollet

  How do you handle incomplete feature requests, when the ones asking for the feature cannot possibly write a complete request? Consider an imaginary situation. You are a tech lead working on a piece of software that revolves around managing profiles (maybe they're contacts in a CRM-type application, or employees in an HR application), with many operations being directly or indirectly performed on those profiles — edit fields, add comments, attach documents, send e-mail... The higher-ups decide that a lock functionality should be added whereby a profile can be locked to prevent anyone else from doing any operations on it until it's unlocked — this feature would be used by security agents to prevent anyone from touching a profile pending a security audit. Obviously, such a feature interacts with many other existing features related to profiles. For example: Can one add a comment to a locked profile? Can one see e-mails that were sent by the system to the owner of a locked profile? Can one see who recently edited a locked profile? If an e-mail was in the process of being sent when the lock happened, is the e-mail sending canceled, delayed or performed as if nothing happened? If I just changed a profile and click the "cancel" link on the confirmation, does the lock prevent the cancel or does it still go through? In all of these cases, how do I tell the user that a lock is in place? Depending on the software, there could be hundreds of such interactions, and each interaction requires a decision — is the lock going to apply and if it does, how will it be displayed to the user? And the higher-ups asking for the feature probably only see a small fraction of these, so you will probably have a lot of questions coming up while you are working on the feature. How would you and your team handle this? Would you expect the higher-ups to come up with a complete description of all cases where the lock should apply (and how), and treat all other cases as if the lock did not exist? Would you try to determine all potential interactions based on existing specifications and code, list them and ask the higher-ups to make a decision on all those where the decision is not obvious? Would you just start working and ask questions as they come up? Would you try to change their minds and settle on a more easily described feature with similar effects? The information about existing features is, as I understand it, in the code — how do you bridge the gap between the decision-makers and that information they cannot access?

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• JavaOne 2013: (Key) Notes of a conference – State of the Java platform and all the roadmaps by Amis

  - by JuergenKress

  Last week’s JavaOne conference provided insights in the roadmap of the Java platform as well as in the current state of things in the Java community. The close relationship between Oracle and IBM concerning Java, the (continuing) lack of such a relationship with Google, the support from Microsoft for Java applications on its Azure cloud and the vibrant developer community – with over 200 different Java User Groups in many countries of the world. There were no major surprises or stunning announcements. Java EE 7 (release in June) was celebrated, the progress of Java 8 SE explained as well as the progress on Java Embedded and ME. The availability of NetBeans 7.4 RC1 and JDK 8 Early Adopters release as well as the open sourcing of project Avatar probably were the only real news stories. The convergence of JavaFX and Java SE is almost complete; the upcoming alignment of Java SE Embedded and Java ME is the next big consolidation step that will lead to a unified platform where developers can use the same skills, development tools and APIs on EE, SE, SE Embedded and ME development. This means that anything that runs on ME will run on SE (Embedded) and EE – not necessarily the reverse because not all SE APIs are part of the compact profile or the ME environment. However, the trimming down of the SE libraries and the increased capabilities of devices mean that a pretty rich JVM runs on many devices – such as JavaFX 8 on the Raspberry PI. The major theme of the conference was Internet of Things. A world of things that are smart and connected, devices like sensors, cameras and equipment from cars, fridges and television sets to printers, security gates and kiosks that all run Java and are all capable of sending data over local network connections or directly over the internet. The number of devices that has these capabilities is rapidly growing. This means that the number of places where Java programs can help program the behavior of devices is growing too. It also means that the volume of data generated is expanding and that we have to find ways to harvest that data, possibly do a local pre-processing (filter, aggregate) and channel the data to back end systems. Terms typically used are edge devices (small, simple, publishing data), gateways (receiving data from many devices, collecting and consolidating, pre-processing, sending onwards to back end – typically using real time event processing) and enterprise services – receiving the data-turned-information from the gateways to further consolidate, distribute and act upon. A cheap device like the Raspberry PI is a perfect way to get started as a Java developer with what embedded (device) programming means and how interaction with physical input and output takes place. Roadmaps The over all progress on Java is visualized in this overview: Read the full article here. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: Amis,OOW,Oracle OpenWorld,JavaOne,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Best way to determine surface normal for a group of pixels?

  - by Paul Renton

  One of my current endeavors is creating a 2D destructible terrain engine for iOS Cocos2D (See https://github.com/crebstar/PWNDestructibleTerrain ). It is in an infant stages no doubt, but I have made significant progress since starting a couple weeks ago. However, I have run into a bit of a performance road block with calculating surface normals. Note: For my destructible terrain engine, an alpha of 0 is considered to not be solid ground. The method posted below works just great given small rectangles, such as n < 30. Anything above 30 causes a dip in the frame rate. If you approach 100x100 then you might as well read a book while the sprite attempts to traverse the terrain. At the moment this is the best I can come up with for altering the angle on a sprite as it roams across terrain (to get the angle for a sprite's orientation just take dot product of 100 * normal * (1,0) vector). -(CGPoint)getAverageSurfaceNormalAt:(CGPoint)pt withRect:(CGRect)area { float avgX = 0; float avgY = 0; ccColor4B color = ccc4(0, 0, 0, 0); CGPoint normal; float len; for (int w = area.size.width; w >= -area.size.width; w--) { for (int h = area.size.height; h >= -area.size.height; h--) { CGPoint pixPt = ccp(w + pt.x, h + pt.y); if ([self pixelAt:pixPt colorCache:&color]) { if (color.a != 0) { avgX -= w; avgY -= h; } // end inner if } // end outer if } // end inner for } // end outer for len = sqrtf(avgX * avgX + avgY * avgY); if (len == 0) { normal = ccp(avgX, avgY); } else { normal = ccp(avgX/len, avgY/len); } // end if return normal; } // end get My problem is I have sprites that require larger rectangles in order for their movement to look realistic. I considered doing a cache of all surface normals, but this lead to issues of knowing when to recalculate the surface normals and these calculations also being quite expensive (also how large should the blocks be?). Another smaller issue is I don't know how to properly treat the case when length is = 0. So I am stuck... Any advice from the community would be greatly appreciated! Is my method the best possible one? Or should I rethink the algorithm? I am new to game development and always looking to learn new tips and tricks.

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• Are these non-standard applications of rendering practical in games?

  - by maul

  I've recently got into 3D and I came up with a few different "tricky" rendering techniques. Unfortunately I don't have the time to work on this myself, but I'd like to know if these are known methods and if they can be used in practice. Hybrid rendering Now I know that ray-tracing is still not fast enough for real-time rendering, at least on home computers. I also know that hybrid rendering (a combination of rasterization and ray-tracing) is a well known theory. However I had the following idea: one could separate a scene into "important" and "not important" objects. First you render the "not important" objects using traditional rasterization. In this pass you also render the "important" objects using a special shader that simply marks these parts on the image using a special color, or some stencil/depth buffer trickery. Then in the second pass you read back the results of the first pass and start ray tracing, but only from the pixels that were marked by the "important" object's shader. This would allow you to only ray-trace exactly what you need to. Could this be fast enough for real-time effects? Rendered physics I'm specifically talking about bullet physics - intersection of a very small object (point/bullet) that travels across a straight line with other, relatively slow-moving, fairly constant objects. More specifically: hit detection. My idea is that you could render the scene from the point of view of the gun (or the bullet). Every object in the scene would draw a different color. You only need to render a 1x1 pixel window - the center of the screen (again, from the gun's point of view). Then you simply check that central pixel and the color tells you what you hit. This is pixel-perfect hit detection based on the graphical representation of objects, which is not common in games. Afaik traditional OpenGL "picking" is a similar method. This could be extended in a few ways: For larger (non-bullet) objects you render a larger portion of the screen. If you put a special-colored plane in the middle of the scene (exactly where the bullet will be after the current frame) you get a method that works as the traditional slow-moving iterative physics test as well. You could simulate objects that the bullet can pass through (with decreased velocity) using alpha blending or some similar trick. So are these techniques in use anywhere, and/or are they practical at all?

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• How can we unify business goals and technical goals?

  - by BAM

  Some background I work at a small startup: 4 devs, 1 designer, and 2 non-technical co-founders, one who provides funding, and the other who handles day-to-day management and sales. Our company produces mobile apps for target industries, and we've gotten a lot of lucky breaks lately. The outlook is good, and we're confident we can make this thing work. One reason is our product development team. Everyone on the team is passionate, driven, and has a great sense of what makes an awesome product. As a result, we've built some beautiful applications that we're all proud of. The other reason is the co-founders. Both have a brilliant business sense (one actually founded a multi-million dollar company already), and they have close ties in many of the industries we're trying to penetrate. Consequently, they've brought in some great business and continue to keep jobs in the pipeline. The problem The problem we can't seem to shake is how to bring these two awesome advantages together. On the business side, there is a huge pressure to deliver as fast as possible as much as possible, whereas on the development side there is pressure to take your time, come up with the right solution, and pay attention to all the details. Lately these two sides have been butting heads a lot. Developers are demanding quality while managers are demanding quantity. How can we handle this? Both sides are correct. We can't survive as a company if we build terrible applications, but we also can't survive if we don't sell enough. So how should we go about making compromises? Things we've done with little or no success: Work more (well, it did result in better quality and faster delivery, but the dev team has never been more stressed out before) Charge more (as a startup, we don't yet have the credibility to justify higher prices, so no one is willing to pay) Extend deadlines (if we charge the same, but take longer, we'll end up losing money) Things we've done with some success: Sacrifice pay to cut costs (everyone, from devs to management, is paid less than they could be making elsewhere. In return, however, we all have creative input and more flexibility and freedom, a typical startup trade off) Standardize project management (we recently started adhering to agile/scrum principles so we can base deadlines on actual velocity, not just arbitrary guesses) Hire more people (we used to have 2 developers and no designers, which really limited our bandwidth. However, as a startup we can only afford to hire a few extra people.) Is there anything we're missing or doing wrong? How is this handled at successful companies? Thanks in advance for any feedback :)

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• Understanding the levels of computing

  - by RParadox

  Sorry, for my confused question. I'm looking for some pointers. Up to now I have been working mostly with Java and Python on the application layer and I have only a vague understanding of operating systems and hardware. I want to understand much more about the lower levels of computing, but it gets really overwhelming somehow. At university I took a class about microprogramming, i.e. how processors get hard-wired to implement the ASM codes. Up to now I always thought I wouldn't get more done if learned more about the "low level". One question I have is: how is it even possible that hardware gets hidden almost completely from the developer? Is it accurate to say that the operating system is a software layer for the hardware? One small example: in programming I have never come across the need to understand what L2 or L3 Cache is. For the typical business application environment one almost never needs to understand assembler and the lower levels of computing, because nowadays there is a technology stack for almost anything. I guess the whole point of these lower levels is to provide an interface to higher levels. On the other hand I wonder how much influence the lower levels can have, for example this whole graphics computing thing. So, on the other hand, there is this theoretical computer science branch, which works on abstract computing models. However, I also rarely encountered situations, where I found it helpful thinking in the categories of complexity models, proof verification, etc. I sort of know, that there is a complexity class called NP, and that they are kind of impossible to solve for a big number of N. What I'm missing is a reference for a framework to think about these things. It seems to me, that there all kinds of different camps, who rarely interact. The last few weeks I have been reading about security issues. Here somehow, much of the different layers come together. Attacks and exploits almost always occur on the lower level, so in this case it is necessary to learn about the details of the OSI layers, the inner workings of an OS, etc.

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• Is this an effective monetization method for an Android game? [on hold]

  - by Matthew Page

  The short version: I plan to make an Android puzzle game where the user tries to get 3-6 numbers to their predetermined goal numbers. The free version of the app will have three predetermined levels (easy, medium, hard). The full version ($0.99, probably) will have a level generator where there will be unlimited easy, medium, or hard levels, as well as a custom difficulty option where users can set specific vales to the number of numbers to equate to their goal, the number of buttons to use, etc. Users will also have the option to get a one-time "hint" for a fee of $0.49, or unlimited hints for a one-time fee of $2.99. The long version: Mechanics of Game and Victory The application is a number puzzle. When the user begins a new game, depending on the input by the user, between 3 and 6 numbers show up on the top of the screen, and between 3 and 6 buttons show up on the bottom of the screen. The buttons all have two options: to increase every number the same way, or decrease every number the same way. The buttons either use addition / subtraction, multiplication / division, or exponents / roots, all depending on the number displayed on the button. Addition buttons are green, multiplication buttons are blue, and exponential buttons are red. The user wins when all of the numbers displayed on the screen equate to their goal number, displayed below each number. Monetization If the user is playing the full (priced) version of the app, upon the start of the game, the user will be confronted with a dialogue asking for the number of buttons and the number of numbers to equate in the game. Then, based on the user input, a random puzzle will be generated. If the user is playing the free version of the app, the user will be asked to either play an “easy”, “hard”, or “expert” puzzle. A pre-determined puzzle from each category will be used in the game. If the user has played that puzzle before, a dialogue will show saying this to the user and advertising the full version of the app. The full version of the app will also be advertised upon the successful or in successful completion of a puzzle. Upon exiting this advertisement, another full screen advertisement will appear from a third party. Also, the solution to the puzzle should be stored by the program, and if the user pays a small fee, he/she can see a hint to the solution to the program. In the free version of the app, the user may use their first hint for free. Also, the user can use unlimited hints for a slightly larger fee. Is this an effective monetization method?

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• BoundingBox Intersection Problems

  - by Deukalion

  When I try to render two cubes, same sizes, one beside the other. With the same proportions (XYZ). My problem is, why do a Box1.BoundingBox.Contains(Box2.BoundingBox) == ContaintmentType.Intersects - when it clearly doesn't? I'm trying to place objects with BoundingBoxes as "intersection" checking, but this simple example clearly shows that this doesn't work. Why is that? I also try checking height of the next object to be placed, by checking intersection, adding each boxes height += (Max.Y - Min.Y) to a Height value, so when I add a new Box it has a height value. This works, but sometimes due to strange behavior it adds extra values when there isn't anything there. This is an example of what I mean: BoundingBox box1 = GetBoundaries(new Vector3(0, 0, 0), new Vector3(128, 64, 128)); BoundingBox box2 = GetBoundaries(new Vector3(128, 0, 0), new Vector3(128, 64, 128)); if (box1.Contains(box2) == ContainmentType.Intersects) { // This will be executed System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("Intersects = True"); } if (box1.Contains(box2) == ContainmentType.Disjoint) { System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("Disjoint = True"); } if (box1.Contains(box2) == ContainmentType.Contains) { System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("Contains = True"); } Test Method: public BoundingBox GetBoundaries(Vector3 position, Vector3 size) { Vector3[] vertices = new Vector3[8]; vertices[0] = position + new Vector3(-0.5f, 0.5f, -0.5f) * size; vertices[1] = position + new Vector3(-0.5f, 0.5f, 0.5f) * size; vertices[2] = position + new Vector3(0.5f, 0.5f, -0.5f) * size; vertices[3] = position + new Vector3(0.5f, 0.5f, 0.5f) * size; vertices[4] = position + new Vector3(-0.5f, -0.5f, -0.5f) * size; vertices[5] = position + new Vector3(-0.5f, -0.5f, 0.5f) * size; vertices[6] = position + new Vector3(0.5f, -0.5f, -0.5f) * size; vertices[7] = position + new Vector3(0.5f, -0.5f, 0.5f) * size; return BoundingBox.CreateFromPoints(vertices); } Box 1 should start at x -64, Box 2 should start at x 64 which means they never overlap. If I add Box 2 to 129 instead it creates a small gap between the cubes which is not pretty. So, the question is how can I place two cubes beside eachother and make them understand that they do not overlap or actually intersect? Because this way I can never automatically check for intersections or place cube beside eachother.

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• JCP.next.3: time to get to work

  - by Patrick Curran

  As I've previously reported in this blog, we planned three JSRs to improve the JCP’s processes and to meet our members’ expectations for change. The first - JCP.next.1, or more formally JSR 348: Towards a new version of the Java Community Process - was completed in October 2011. This focused on a small number of simple but important changes to make our process more transparent and to enable broader participation. We're already seeing the benefits of these changes as new and existing JSRs adopt the new requirements. However, because we wanted to complete this JSR quickly we deliberately postponed a number of more complex items, including everything that would require modifying the JSPA (the legal agreement that members sign when they join the organization) to a follow-on JSR. The second JSR (JSR 355: JCP Executive Committee Merge) is in progress now and will complete later this year. This JSR is even simpler than the first, and is focused solely on merging the two Executive Committees into one for greater efficiency and to encourage synergies between the Java ME and Java SE platforms. Continuing the momentum to move Java and the JCP forward we have just filed the third JSR (JCP.next.3) as JSR 358: A major revision of the Java Community Process. This JSR will modify the JSPA as well as the Process Document, and will tackle a large number of complex issues, many of them postponed from JSR 348. For these reasons we expect to spend a considerable amount of time working on it - at least a year, and probably more. The current version of the JSPA was created back in 2002, although some minor changes were introduced in 2005. Since then the organization and the environment in which we operate have changed significantly, and it is now time to revise our processes to ensure that they meet our current needs. We have a long list of topics to be considered, including the role of independent implementations (those not derived from the Reference Implementation), licensing and open source, ensuring that our new transparency requirements are implemented correctly, compatibility policy and TCKs, the role of individual members, patent policy, and IP flow. The Expert Group for JSR 358, as with all process-change JSRs, consists of all members of the Executive Committees. Even though the JSR has just been filed we started discussions on the various topics several months ago (see the EC's meeting minutes for details) and our EC members - including the new members who joined within the last year or two - are actively engaged. Now it's your opportunity to get involved. As required by version 2.8 of our Process (introduced with JSR 348) we will conduct all our business in the open. We have a public java.net project where you can follow and participate in our work. All of our deliberations will be copied to a public Observer mailing list, we'll track our issues on a public Issue Tracker, and all our documents (meeting agendas and minutes, task lists, working drafts) will be published in our Document Archive. We're just getting started, but we do want your input. Please visit us on java.net where you can learn how to participate. Let's get to work...

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• Melhoria de Performance no .NET 4.5: Multicore Just-in-Time (JIT).

  - by anobre

  Olá pessoal! Dando uma lida nas melhorias de performance da plataforma .NET 4.5, me deparei com algo extremamente interessante: Multicore Just-in-Time (JIT). A teoria é muito simples: por que não utilizar vários núcleos para a compilação JIT? Além disto, será que seria possível compilar os métodos em uma determinada ordem, onde os primeiros fossem aqueles com maior probabilidade de execução? Isto parece meio loucura mas é o que o Multicore Just-in-Time (JIT) faz. E o melhor de tudo, de uma forma extremamente simples. As aplicações ASP.NET 4.5 já o fazem por default. Em outras ocasiões, basta executar duas linhas de código: uma indicando a pasta onde o arquivo que armazenará o profile ficará, e a outra para iniciar o procedimento. Este profile é o arquivo responsável por armazenar a ordem de compilação dos métodos, para que aqueles com maior chance de serem executados mais cedo sejam compilados antes. Código para este processo: ProfileOptimization.SetProfileRoot(@"C:\ProfileRoot"); ProfileOptimization.StartProfile("profile"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Esta otimização na compilação só será notada após a criação do profile. Portanto, na primeira vez nada será percebido. Ao final do processo, um arquivo com o nome escolhido (no caso profile) será criado, na pasta indicada como root: Fica a dica! Abraços!

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• What is the most appropriate testing method in this scenario?

  - by Daniel Bruce

  I'm writing some Objective-C apps (for OS X/iOS) and I'm currently implementing a service to be shared across them. The service is intended to be fairly self-contained. For the current functionality I'm envisioning there will be only one method that clients will call to do a fairly complicated series of steps both using private methods on the class, and passing data through a bunch of "data mangling classes" to arrive at an end result. The gist of the code is to fetch a log of changes, stored in a service-internal data store, that has occurred since a particular time, simplify the log to only include the last applicable change for each object, attach the serialized values for the affected objects and return this all to the client. My question then is, how do I unit-test this entry point method? Obviously, each class would have thorough unit tests to ensure that their functionality works as expected, but the entry point seems harder to "disconnect" from the rest of the world. I would rather not send in each of these internal classes IoC-style, because they're small and are only made classes to satisfy the single-responsibility principle. I see a couple possibilities: Create a "private" interface header for the tests with methods that call the internal classes and test each of these methods separately. Then, to test the entry point, make a partial mock of the service class with these private methods mocked out and just test that the methods are called with the right arguments. Write a series of fatter tests for the entry point without mocking out anything, testing the entire functionality in one go. This looks, to me, more like "integration testing" and seems brittle, but it does satisfy the "only test via the public interface" principle. Write a factory that returns these internal services and take that in the initializer, then write a factory that returns mocked versions of them to use in tests. This has the downside of making the construction of the service annoying, and leaks internal details to the client. Write a "private" initializer that take these services as extra parameters, use that to provide mocked services, and have the public initializer back-end to this one. This would ensure that the client code still sees the easy/pretty initializer and no internals are leaked. I'm sure there's more ways to solve this problem that I haven't thought of yet, but my question is: what's the most appropriate approach according to unit testing best practices? Especially considering I would prefer to write this test-first, meaning I should preferably only create these services as the code indicates a need for them.

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• How to deal with fellow programmer who likes to delegate task with lack any support from boss [closed]

  - by Rudy

  I have a problem with my fellow programmer. We are currently working together in a small project that need to be shipped every 2 weeks. She has a tendency to ask for help for every issues that she is facing. Whether it's a compile error, algorithm problem or even sync/merge issue that caused by herself. She does not even bother to check Google or try to find out by herself. I can be asked to help her for 5-10 times a day. Everyday her husband keeps calling (4-6 times a day), and most of the code that has been delivered by her are actually incorrect. Today she framed me for sending the wrong delivery product. She went home after lunch on the delivery day without telling PM and other team member on that day and her code she commited does not work at all. It's not even tested. I have no choice to roll back her code and cleaning her code just for sake to able to run the product. I have warned her about her defective codes for almost 3 iterations. She said when she was not around I should be able to test her module for her. I snapped and yelled that I am not her slave and directly reported to my boss. However, my boss is not a person that can manage and care about software quality. What is the most important thing to my boss is delivery of product, whether it tested or not. He can even asked us to deliver something that not even tested by QA to the client, on the next day. Most of our suggestion is not followed by him. He even asked me to apologize to her because I snapped. I am tired of the whole situation. This kind of thing keeps repeated. I do have saving to be able to survive for 6 months and the idea of resigning is keep haunting. There is nothing else that can be learned in my current job and I had been in a better environment than this. What should I do with the situation?

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• Could I be going crazy with Event Handlers? Am I going the "wrong way" with my design?

  - by sensae

  I guess I've decided that I really like event handlers. I may be suffering a bit from analysis paralysis, but I'm concerned about making my design unwieldy or running into some other unforeseen consequence to my design decisions. My game engine currently does basic sprite-based rendering with a panning overhead camera. My design looks a bit like this: SceneHandler Contains a list of classes that implement the SceneListener interface (currently only Sprites). Calls render() once per tick, and sends onCameraUpdate(); messages to SceneListeners. InputHandler Polls the input once per tick, and sends a simple "onKeyPressed" message to InputListeners. I have a Camera InputListener which holds a SceneHandler instance and triggers updateCamera(); events based on what the input is. AgentHandler Calls default actions on any Agents (AI) once per tick, and will check a stack for any new events that are registered, dispatching them to specific Agents as needed. So I have basic sprite objects that can move around a scene and use rudimentary steering behaviors to travel. I've gotten onto collision detection, and this is where I'm not sure the direction my design is going is good. Is it a good practice to have many, small event handlers? I imagine going the way I am that I'd have to implement some kind of CollisionHandler. Would I be better off with a more consolidated EntityHandler which handles AI, collision updates, and other entity interactions in one class? Or will I be fine just implementing many different event handling subsystems which pass messages to each other based on what kind of event it is? Should I write an EntityHandler which is simply responsible for coordinating all these sub event handlers? I realize in some cases, such as my InputHandler and SceneHandler, those are very specific types of events. A large portion of my game code won't care about input, and a large portion won't care about updates that happen purely in the rendering of the scene. Thus I feel my isolation of those systems is justified. However, I'm asking this question specifically approaching game logic type events.

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• Best practice for organizing/storing character/monster data in an RPG?

  - by eclecto

  Synopsis: Attempting to build a cross-platform RPG app in Adobe Flash Builder and am trying to figure out the best class hierarchy and the best way to store the static data used to build each of the individual "hero" and "monster" types. My programming experience, particularly in AS3, is embarrassingly small. My ultra-alpha method is to include a "_class" object in the constructor for each instance. The _class, in turn, is a static Object pulled from a class created specifically for that purpose, so things look something like this: // Character.as package { public class Character extends Sprite { public var _strength:int; // etc. public function Character(_class:Object) { _strength = _class._strength; // etc. } } } // MonsterClasses.as package { public final class MonsterClasses extends Object { public static const Monster1:Object={ _strength:50, // etc. } // etc. } } // Some other class in which characters/monsters are created. // Create a new instance of Character var myMonster = new Character(MonsterClasses.Monster1); Another option I've toyed with is the idea of making each character class/monster type its own subclass of Character, but I'm not sure if it would be efficient or even make sense considering that these classes would only be used to store variables and would add no new methods. On the other hand, it would make creating instances as simple as var myMonster = new Monster1; and potentially cut down on the overhead of having to read a class containing the data for, at a conservative preliminary estimate, over 150 monsters just to fish out the one monster I want (assuming, and I really have no idea, that such a thing might cause any kind of slowdown in execution). But long story short, I want a system that's both efficient at compile time and easy to work with during coding. Should I stick with what I've got or try a different method? As a subquestion, I'm also assuming here that the best way to store data that will be bundled with the final game and not read externally is simply to declare everything in AS3. Seems to me that if I used, say, XML or JSON I'd have to use the associated AS3 classes and methods to pull in the data, parse it, and convert it to AS3 object(s) anyway, so it would be inefficient. Right?

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• Play Framework Plugin for NetBeans IDE (Part 2)

  - by Geertjan

  After I published part 1 of this series, the first external contribution (i.e., not by me) to the NetBeans plugin for Play Framework 2 was committed today. Yann D'Isanto added support for creating new Play projects: That completely solves a problem I was working on, in a different way altogether. I was working on creating a new wizard that would call "play new" on the command line and pass into the command line the entered name and application type (1 for Java and 2 for Scala). However, Yann's solution is better, at least in the sense in that it works, as opposed to mine which didn't, because of problems I continually had with the command line, since one needs to press Enter multiple times on the Play command line when creating new projects, which I wasn't able to simulate in my new wizard. Yann's approach is simply to follow the approach taken in the Project Type Module Tutorial, which explains how to register a project sample in the IDE. I was inspired by Yann's contribution, especially when he mentioned that one needs to build Play projects on the command line. So, I added a new menu item on the right-click of a project for building Play projects, which simply passes "play compile" to the command line for the current project: Via the IDE's main menu bar, you can also Build and Run the application, though the code for the Clean function needs to be added still, which would be a cool thing for anyone out there to add, by using all the existing code and then passing "play clean compile" to the command line. Something else that Yann added is an Options Window extension, thanks to the Options Window Module Tutorial, for registering the Play installation, which is a step forward from my hard coded solution. I changed things slightly so that, when Build or Run are selected, without a Play installation being defined, the Options window opens, displaying the tab that Yann created, shown below. Notice that there's no Browse button, which would be a simple next step for anyone else to contribute. A small tip is to use the FileChooserBuilder from the NetBeans IDE APIs when working on the Browse button: Looking forward to more contributions to the Play Framework 2 plugin for NetBeans IDE. Just leave a message here with your ideas, with your java.net name, and then I'll add you to the project on java.net, where I very much look forward to your contributions: http://java.net/projects/nbplay/sources/nbplay

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