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• Announcement: Employee Info Starter Kit (v5.0) is Released

  - by Mohammad Ashraful Alam

  Ever wanted to have a simple jQuery menu bound with ASP.NET web site map file? Ever wanted to have cool css design stuffs implemented on your ASP.NET data bound controls? Ever wanted to let Visual Studio generate logical layers for you, which can be easily tested, customized and bound with ASP.NET data controls? If your answers with respect to above questions are ‘yes’, then you will probably happy to try out latest release (v5.0) of Employee Starter Kit, which is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, the current release illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 Web Form Data Controls, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context. Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule, where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. This project template is titled as “Employee Info Starter Kit”, which was initially hosted on Microsoft Code Gallery and been downloaded 1, 50,000+ of copies afterword.  The latest version of this starter kit is hosted in Codeplex. Release Highlights User End Functional Specification The user end functionalities of this starter kit are pretty simple and straight forward that are focused in to perform CRUD operation on employee records as described below. Creating a new employee record Read existing employee records Update an existing employee record Delete existing employee records Architectural Overview Simple 3 layer architecture (presentation, business logic and data access layer) ASP.NET web form based user interface Built-in code generators for logical layers, implemented in Visual Studio default template engine (T4) Built-in Entity Framework entities as business entities (aka: data containers) Data Mapper design pattern based Data Access Layer, implemented in C# and Entity Framework Domain Model design pattern based Business Logic Layer, implemented in C# Object Model for Cross Cutting Concerns (such as validation, logging, exception management) Minimum System Requirements Visual Studio 2010 (Web Developer Express Edition) or higher Sql Server 2005 (Express Edition) or higher Technology Utilized Programming Languages/Scripts Browser side: JavaScript Web server side: C# Code Generation Template: T-4 Template Frameworks .NET Framework 4.0 JavaScript Framework: jQuery 1.5.1 CSS Framework: 960 grid system .NET Framework Components .NET Entity Framework .NET Optional/Named Parameters (new in .net 4.0) .NET Tuple (new in .net 4.0) .NET Extension Method .NET Lambda Expressions .NET Anonymous Type .NET Query Expressions .NET Automatically Implemented Properties .NET LINQ .NET Partial Classes and Methods .NET Generic Type .NET Nullable Type ASP.NET Meta Description and Keyword Support (new in .net 4.0) ASP.NET Routing (new in .net 4.0) ASP.NET Grid View (CSS support for sorting - (new in .net 4.0)) ASP.NET Repeater ASP.NET Form View ASP.NET Login View ASP.NET Site Map Path ASP.NET Skin ASP.NET Theme ASP.NET Master Page ASP.NET Object Data Source ASP.NET Role Based Security Getting Started Guide To see Employee Info Starter Kit in action is pretty easy! Download the latest version. Extract the file. From the extracted folder click the C# project file (Eisk.Web.csproj) to open it in Visual Studio 2010 Hit Ctrl+F5! The current release (v5.0) of Employee Info Starter Kit is properly packaged, fully documented and well tested. If you want to learn more about it in details, just check the following links: Release Home Page Installation Walkthrough Hand on Coding Walkthrough Technical Reference Enjoy!

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• Doing your first mock with JustMock

  - by mehfuzh

  In this post, i will start with a  more traditional mocking example that  includes a fund transfer scenario between two different currency account using JustMock.Our target interface that we will be mocking looks similar to: public interface ICurrencyService {     float GetConversionRate(string fromCurrency, string toCurrency); } Moving forward the SUT or class that will be consuming the  service and will be invoked by user [provided that the ICurrencyService will be passed in a DI style] looks like: public class AccountService : IAccountService         {             private readonly ICurrencyService currencyService;               public AccountService(ICurrencyService currencyService)             {                 this.currencyService = currencyService;             }               #region IAccountService Members               public void TransferFunds(Account from, Account to, float amount)             {                 from.Withdraw(amount);                 float conversionRate = currencyService.GetConversionRate(from.Currency, to.Currency);                 float convertedAmount = amount * conversionRate;                 to.Deposit(convertedAmount);             }               #endregion         }   As, we can see there is a TransferFunds action implemented from IAccountService  takes in a source account from where it withdraws some money and a target account to where the transfer takes place using the provided conversion rate. Our first step is to create the mock. The syntax for creating your instance mocks is pretty much same and  is valid for all interfaces, non-sealed/sealed concrete instance classes. You can pass in additional stuffs like whether its an strict mock or not, by default all the mocks in JustMock are loose, you can use it as default valued objects or stubs as well. ICurrencyService currencyService = Mock.Create<ICurrencyService>(); Using JustMock, setting up your expectations and asserting them always goes with Mock.Arrang|Assert and this is pretty much same syntax no matter what type of mocking you are doing. Therefore,  in the above scenario we want to make sure that the conversion rate always returns 2.20F when converting from GBP to CAD. To do so we need to arrange in the following way: Mock.Arrange(() => currencyService.GetConversionRate("GBP", "CAD")).Returns(2.20f).MustBeCalled(); Here, I have additionally marked the mock call as must. That means it should be invoked anywhere in the code before we do Mock.Assert, we can also assert mocks directly though lamda expressions  but the more general Mock.Assert(mocked) will assert only the setups that are marked as "MustBeCalled()”. Now, coming back to the main topic , as we setup the mock, now its time to act on it. Therefore, first we create our account service class and create our from and to accounts respectively. var accountService = new AccountService(currencyService);   var canadianAccount = new Account(0, "CAD"); var britishAccount = new Account(0, "GBP"); Next, we add some money to the GBP  account: britishAccount.Deposit(100); Finally, we do our transfer by the following: accountService.TransferFunds(britishAccount, canadianAccount, 100); Once, everything is completed, we need to make sure that things were as it is we have expected, so its time for assertions.Here, we first do the general assertions: Assert.Equal(0, britishAccount.Balance); Assert.Equal(220, canadianAccount.Balance); Following, we do our mock assertion,  as have marked the call as “MustBeCalled” it will make sure that our mock is actually invoked. Moreover, we can add filters like how many times our expected mock call has occurred that will be covered in coming posts. Mock.Assert(currencyService); So far, that actually concludes our  first  mock with JustMock and do stay tuned for more. Enjoy!!

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• Unit Testing DateTime – The Crazy Way

  - by João Angelo

  We all know that the process of unit testing code that depends on DateTime, particularly the current time provided through the static properties (Now, UtcNow and Today), it’s a PITA. If you go ask how to unit test DateTime.Now on stackoverflow I’ll bet that you’ll get two kind of answers: Encapsulate the current time in your own interface and use a standard mocking framework; Pull out the big guns like Typemock Isolator, JustMock or Microsoft Moles/Fakes and mock the static property directly. Now each alternative has is pros and cons and I would have to say that I glean more to the second approach because the first adds a layer of abstraction just for the sake of testability. However, the second approach depends on commercial tools that not every shop wants to buy or in the not so friendly Microsoft Moles. (Sidenote: Moles is now named Fakes and it will ship with VS 2012) This tends to leave people without an acceptable and simple solution so after reading another of these types of questions in SO I came up with yet another alternative, one based on the first alternative that I presented here but tries really hard to not get in your way with yet another layer of abstraction. So, without further dues, I present you, the Tardis. The Tardis is single section of conditionally compiled code that overrides the meaning of the DateTime expression inside a single class. You still get the normal coding experience of using DateTime all over the place, but in a DEBUG compilation your tests will be able to mock every static method or property of the DateTime class. An example follows, while the full Tardis code can be downloaded from GitHub: using System; using NSubstitute; using NUnit.Framework; using Tardis; public class Example { public Example() : this(string.Empty) { } public Example(string title) { #if DEBUG this.DateTime = DateTimeProvider.Default; this.Initialize(title); } internal IDateTimeProvider DateTime { get; set; } internal Example(string title, IDateTimeProvider provider) { this.DateTime = provider; #endif this.Initialize(title); } private void Initialize(string title) { this.Title = title; this.CreatedAt = DateTime.UtcNow; } private string title; public string Title { get { return this.title; } set { this.title = value; this.UpdatedAt = DateTime.UtcNow; } } public DateTime CreatedAt { get; private set; } public DateTime UpdatedAt { get; private set; } } public class TExample { public void T001() { // Arrange var tardis = Substitute.For<IDateTimeProvider>(); tardis.UtcNow.Returns(new DateTime(2000, 1, 1, 6, 6, 6)); // Act var sut = new Example("Title", tardis); // Assert Assert.That(sut.CreatedAt, Is.EqualTo(tardis.UtcNow)); } public void T002() { // Arrange var tardis = Substitute.For<IDateTimeProvider>(); var sut = new Example("Title", tardis); tardis.UtcNow.Returns(new DateTime(2000, 1, 1, 6, 6, 6)); // Act sut.Title = "Updated"; // Assert Assert.That(sut.UpdatedAt, Is.EqualTo(tardis.UtcNow)); } } This approach is also suitable for other similar classes with commonly used static methods or properties like the ConfigurationManager class.

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• BlueTooth not working on my HP Probook 4720s

  - by mtrento

  the blue tooth on my ubuntu 11.10 does not work. When i try to ad a device it scans indefinitely and never find anything. Wireless is working perfeclty and with windows 7 it is detected. As i read somewhere , the bluetooth is not listed in the usb devices. Is it supported under ubuntu? here are the output of the various debug command i tested : hciconfig -a hci0: Type: BR/EDR Bus: USB BD Address: E0:2A:82:7A:8B:04 ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8 UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN RX bytes:1895 acl:0 sco:0 events:70 errors:0 TX bytes:1986 acl:0 sco:0 commands:64 errors:0 Features: 0xff 0xff 0x8f 0xfe 0x9b 0xff 0x59 0x83 Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3 Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT Name: 'PC543host-0' Class: 0x5a0100 Service Classes: Networking, Capturing, Object Transfer, Telephony Device Class: Computer, Uncategorized HCI Version: 2.1 (0x4) Revision: 0x149c LMP Version: 2.1 (0x4) Subversion: 0x149c Manufacturer: Cambridge Silicon Radio (10) hcitool scan hcitool scan Scanning ... lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04f2:b1ac Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Bus 002 Device 003: ID 413c:3010 Dell Computer Corp. Optical Wheel Mouse Bus 002 Device 004: ID 148f:1000 Ralink Technology, Corp. lsmod | grep -i bluetooth bluetooth 166112 23 bnep,rfcomm,btusb dmesg | grep -i bluetooth [ 18.543947] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16 [ 18.544017] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized [ 18.544020] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized [ 18.544021] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized [ 18.545469] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized [ 18.548890] Bluetooth: Generic Bluetooth USB driver ver 0.6 [ 30.204776] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized [ 30.204782] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized [ 30.204784] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11 [ 30.247291] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3 [ 30.247295] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 02) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 05) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 05) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series] 01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan HDMI Audio [Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series] 44:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe 45:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03) ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02) ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02) ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02) ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02) ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) rfkill list 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 3: hp-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

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• JustMock is here !!

  - by mehfuzh

  As announced earlier by Hristo Kosev at Telerik blogs , we have started giving out JustMock builds from today. This is the first of early builds before the official Q2 release and we are pretty excited to get your feedbacks. Its pretty early to say anything on it. It actually depends on your feedback. To add few, with JustMock we tried to build a mocking tool with simple and intuitive syntax as possible excluding more and more noises and avoiding any smell that can be made to your code [We are still trying everyday] and we want to make the tool even better with your help. JustMock can be used to mock virtually anything. Moreover, we left an option open that it can be used to reduce / elevate the features  just though a single click. We tried to make a strong API and make stuffs fluent and guided as possible so that you never have the chance to get de-railed. Our syntax is AAA (Arrange – Act – Assert) , we don’t believe in Record – Reply model which some of the smarter mocking tools are planning to remove from their coming release or even don’t have [its always fun to lean from each other]. Overall more signals equals more complexity , reminds me of 37 signals :-). Currently, here are the things you can do with JustMock ( will cover more in-depth in coming days) Proxied mode Mock interfaces and class with virtuals Mock properties that includes indexers Set raise event for specific calls Use matchers to control mock arguments Assert specific occurrence of a mocked calls. Assert using matchers Do recursive mocks Do Sequential mocking ( same method with argument returns different values or perform different tasks) Do strict mocking (by default and i prefer loose , so that i can use it as stubs) Elevated mode Mock static calls Mock final class Mock sealed classes Mock Extension methods Partially mock a  class member directly using Mock.Arrange Mock MsCorlib (we will support more and more members in coming days) , currently we support FileInfo, File and DateTime. These are few, you need to take a look at the test project that is provided with the build to find more [Along with the document]. Also, one of feature that will i will be using it for my next OS projects is the ability to run it separately in  proxied mode which makes it easy to redistribute and do some personal development in a more DI model and my option to elevate as it go.   I’ve surely forgotten tons of other features to mention that i will cover time but  don’t for get the URL : www.telerik.com/justmock   Finally a little mock code:   var lvMock = Mock.Create<ILoveJustMock>();    // set your goal  Mock.Arrange(() => lvMock.Response(Arg.Any<string>())).Returns((int result) => result);    //perform  string ret =  lvMock.Echo("Yes");    Assert.Equal(ret, "Yes");  // make sure everything is fine  Mock.Assert(() => lvMock.Echo("Yes"), Occurs.Once());   Hope that helps to get started,  will cover if not :-).

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• Design suggestions needed to create a MathBuilder framework

  - by Darf Zon

  Let explain what I'm trying to create. I'm creating a framework, the idea is to provide base classes to generate a math problem. Why do I need this framework? Because at first time, I realized when I create a new math problem I always do the same steps. Configuration settings such range numbers. For example if I'm developing multiplications, in beginner level only generate the first number between 2-5 or in advanced level, the first number will be between 6- 9, for example. Generate problem method. All the time I need to invoke a method like this to generate the problem. This one receives the configuration settings and generate the number according to them. And generate the object with the respective data. Validate the problem. Sometimes the problem generated is not valid. For example, supposed I'm creating fractions in most simplified, if I receive 2/4, the program should detect that this is not valid and must generate another like this one, 1/4. Load the view. All of them, have a custom view (please watch below the images). All of the problems must know how to CHECK if the user result is correct. All of this problems has answers. Some of them just require one answer, anothers may require more than one, so I guess a way to maintain flexibility to the developer has all the answers he wanna used. At the beginning I started using PRISM. Generate modules for each math problem was the idea and load it in the main system. I guess are the most important things of this idea. Let me showing some problems which I create in a WPF standalone program. Here I have a math problem about areas. When I generate the problem a set to the view the object and it draw it. In beginner level, I set in the configuration settings that just load square types. But in advance level, can load triangles and squares randomly. In this another, generate a binary problem like addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. Above just generate a single problem. The idea of this is to show a test o quiz, I mean get a worksheet (this I call as a collection of problems) where the user can answer it. I hope gets the idea with my ugly drawing. How to load this math problems? As I said above, I started using PRISM, and each module contains a math problem kind. This is a snapshot of my first demo. Below show the modules loaded, and center the respective configurations or levels. Until momment, I have no idea to start creating this software. I just know that I need a question | problem class, response class, user class. But I get lost about what properties should have to contain in it. Please give a little hand of this framework. I put much effort on this question, so if any isn't clear, let me know to clarify it.

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• Starting to create a MathBuilder framework, help to start creating the design

  - by Darf Zon

  Let explain what I'm trying to create. I'm creating a framework, the idea is to provide base classes to generate a math problem. Why do I need this framework? Because at first time, I realized when I create a new math problem I always do the same steps. Configuration settings such range numbers. For example if I'm developing multiplications, in beginner level only generate the first number between 2-5 or in advanced level, the first number will be between 6- 9, for example. Generate problem method. All the time I need to invoke a method like this to generate the problem. This one receives the configuration settings and generate the number according to them. And generate the object with the respective data. Validate the problem. Sometimes the problem generated is not valid. For example, supposed I'm creating fractions in most simplified, if I receive 2/4, the program should detect that this is not valid and must generate another like this one, 1/4. Load the view. All of them, have a custom view (please watch below the images). All of the problems must know how to CHECK if the user result is correct. All of this problems has answers. Some of them just require one answer, anothers may require more than one, so I guess a way to maintain flexibility to the developer has all the answers he wanna used. At the beginning I started using PRISM. Generate modules for each math problem was the idea and load it in the main system. I guess are the most important things of this idea. Let me showing some problems which I create in a WPF standalone program. Here I have a math problem about areas. When I generate the problem a set to the view the object and it draw it. In beginner level, I set in the configuration settings that just load square types. But in advance level, can load triangles and squares randomly. In this another, generate a binary problem like addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. Above just generate a single problem. The idea of this is to show a test o quiz, I mean get a worksheet (this I call as a collection of problems) where the user can answer it. I hope gets the idea with my ugly drawing. How to load this math problems? As I said above, I started using PRISM, and each module contains a math problem kind. This is a snapshot of my first demo. Below show the modules loaded, and center the respective configurations or levels. Until momment, I have no idea to start creating this software. I just know that I need a question | problem class, response class, user class. But I get lost about what properties should have to contain in it. Please give a little hand of this framework. I put much effort on this question, so if any isn't clear, let me know to clarify it.

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• Implementing features in an Entity System

  - by Bane

  After asking two questions on Entity Systems (1, 2), and reading some articles on them, I think that I understand them much better than before. But, I still have some uncertainties, and mainly they are about building a Particle Emitter, an Input system, and a Camera. I obviously still have some problems understanding Entity Systems, and they might apply to a whole other range of objects, but I chose these three because they are very different concepts and should cover a pretty big ground, and help me understand Entity Systems and how to handle problems like these myself, as they come along. I am building an engine in Javascript, and I've implemented most of the core features, which include: input handling, flexible animation system, particle emitter, math classes and functions, scene handling, a camera and a render, and a whole bunch of other things that engines usually support. Then, I read Byte56's answer that got me interested into making the engine into an Entity System one. It would still remain an HTML5 game engine with the basic Scene philosophy, but it should support dynamic creation of entities from components. These are some of the definitions from the previous questions, updated: An Entity is an identifier. It doesn't have any data, it's not an object, it's a simple id that represents an index in the Scene's list of all entities (which I actually plan to implement as a component matrix). A Component is a data holder, but with methods that can operate on that data. The best example is a Vector2D, or a "Position" component. It has data: x and y, but also some methods that make operating on the data a bit easier: add(), normalize(), and so on. A System is something that can operate on a set of entities that meet the certain requirements, usually they (the entities) need to have a specified (by the system itself) set of components to be operated upon. The system is the "logic" part, the "algorithm" part, all the functionality supplied by components is purely for easier data management. The problem that I have now is fitting my old engine concept into this new programming paradigm. Lets start with the simplest one, a Camera. The camera has a position property (Vector2D), a rotation property and some methods for centering it around a point. Each frame, it is fed to a renderer, along with a scene, and all the objects are translated according to it's position. Then the scene is rendered. How could I represent this kind of an object in an Entity System? Would the camera be an entity or simply a component? A combination (see my answer)? Another issues that is bothering me is implementing a Particle Emitter. For what exactly I mean by that, you can check out my video of it: http://youtu.be/BObargIMQsE. The problem I have with this is, again, what should be what. I'm pretty sure that particles themselves shouldn't be entities, as I want to support 10k+ of them, and creating that much entities would be a heavy blow on my performance, I believe. Or maybe not? Depends on the implementation, but anyone with experience: please, do answer. The last bit I wan't to talk about, which is also bugging me the most, is how input should be handled. In my current version of the engine, there is a class called Input. It's a handler that subscribes to browser's events, such as keypresses, and mouse position changes, and also it maintains an internal state. Then, the player class has a react() method, which accepts an input object as an argument. The advantage of this is that the input object could be serialized into JSON and then shared over the network, allowing for smooth multiplayer simulations. But how does this translate into an Entity System?

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• Sorry about the wait.

  - by Ratman21

  In the last two days have been trying remove “Iolo System Mechanic Professional” (With anti-virus and FireWall) from 3 of the 5 pc’s we have (3 lap tops and two Desk tops) as it was going to expire on the 13th.   So I could replace them with a free anti-virus (AVG) and just use the windows fire wall. I have been using the same set up on one of my desk tops (XP Pro) for 8 months and one of the Lap tops (Vista) for 5 months.   The problem was that System Mechanic did not want to go. Even after using the uninstall option on the desk top (my main PC, well its that because has the larger of all the PC’s hard drives but, is the oldest and runs XP home) and using Ccleaner to try and remove it.  It was still showing up as there and after I went a head and tried installing AVG and ran it. I found that the TCP/IP module was missing.  So no internet, I had to restore the PC back to the 1st to get the module back and then install AVG (after making sure window firewall was back on. I didn’t check that on the first try). Got the PC back to normal, very late last night. Only one of the two lap tops was easy but, even at that there are still some parts of System Mechanic on it but, AVG and firewall are working.   I may try an hunt down parts of System Mechanic on it and delete them on this lap top. Which was what finally had to do on the one of the Lap tops (also XP Home) as it would not uninstall after I restored the PC back to the 4th. So delete, delete, delete and Ccleaner (one dl file would not delete though). And I just finish installing AVG and now running a scan on the lap top. So all of this took two days (well three counting today). I started late Friday night and just finishing up now.   I only started this switch over after I had finished my Job search for day on Friday.   As for blogging on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I was busy and by the end of the day was too tired to blog, that and was hung up still on that 2nd dare of The Love Dare. So I cleaned the house, while she was out of the house. I mean, I cleaned, not just vacuumed house I cleaned the kitchen counter tops and the sinks. Did the dishes and some of the laundry over two of the those days.   As to the third day of Love Dare which is “Love is not selfish” and the dare “Whatever you put your time, energy, and money into will become more important to you. It’s hard to care for something you are not investing in. Along with restraining from negative comments, buy your spouse something that says, I was thinking of you today.”   Being on a very limited income, a lot of normal guy buying for girls is out (for one thing, the comment why did you waste our money on flowers, etc, etc, would come up. Not from me though). So that one is on hold till money issues are not a problem (no that does not mean never). The 4th day “Love is thoughtful” and the dare “Contact your spouse sometime during the business of the day. Have no agenda other than asking how he or she is doing and if there is anything you could do for them”.   I did this dare while I was still working with census last week and trying to do the dares. Well I start my CCNA classes Monday the 15th and I move on to the next Love Dare day “Love is not rude”.

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• Combining template method with strategy

  - by Mekswoll

  An assignment in my software engineering class is to design an application which can play different forms a particular game. The game in question is Mancala, some of these games are called Wari or Kalah. These games differ in some aspects but for my question it's only important to know that the games could differ in the following: The way in which the result of a move is handled The way in which the end of the game is determined The way in which the winner is determined The first thing that came to my mind to design this was to use the strategy pattern, I have a variation in algorithms (the actual rules of the game). The design could look like this: I then thought to myself that in the game of Mancala and Wari the way the winner is determined is exactly the same and the code would be duplicated. I don't think this is by definition a violation of the 'one rule, one place' or DRY principle seeing as a change in rules for Mancala wouldn't automatically mean that rule should be changed in Wari as well. Nevertheless from the feedback I got from my professor I got the impression to find a different design. I then came up with this: Each game (Mancala, Wari, Kalah, ...) would just have attribute of the type of each rule's interface, i.e. WinnerDeterminer and if there's a Mancala 2.0 version which is the same as Mancala 1.0 except for how the winner is determined it can just use the Mancala versions. I think the implementation of these rules as a strategy pattern is certainly valid. But the real problem comes when I want to design it further. In reading about the template method pattern I immediately thought it could be applied to this problem. The actions that are done when a user makes a move are always the same, and in the same order, namely: deposit stones in holes (this is the same for all games, so would be implemented in the template method itself) determine the result of the move determine if the game has finished because of the previous move if the game has finished, determine who has won Those three last steps are all in my strategy pattern described above. I'm having a lot of trouble combining these two. One possible solution I found would be to abandon the strategy pattern and do the following: I don't really see the design difference between the strategy pattern and this? But I am certain I need to use a template method (although I was just as sure about having to use a strategy pattern). I also can't determine who would be responsible for creating the TurnTemplate object, whereas with the strategy pattern I feel I have families of objects (the three rules) which I could easily create using an abstract factory pattern. I would then have a MancalaRuleFactory, WariRuleFactory, etc. and they would create the correct instances of the rules and hand me back a RuleSet object. Let's say that I use the strategy + abstract factory pattern and I have a RuleSet object which has algorithms for the three rules in it. The only way I feel I can still use the template method pattern with this is to pass this RuleSet object to my TurnTemplate. The 'problem' that then surfaces is that I would never need my concrete implementations of the TurnTemplate, these classes would become obsolete. In my protected methods in the TurnTemplate I could just call ruleSet.determineWinner(). As a consequence, the TurnTemplate class would no longer be abstract but would have to become concrete, is it then still a template method pattern? To summarize, am I thinking in the right way or am I missing something easy? If I'm on the right track, how do I combine a strategy pattern and a template method pattern? This is part of a homework assignment but I'm not looking to be gifted the answer, I have deliberately been very verbose in my question to show that I have thought about it before coming here to ask a question

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• WebGrid Helper and Complex Types

  - by imran_ku07

      Introduction:           WebGrid helper makes it very easy to show tabular data. It was originally designed for ASP.NET Web Pages(WebMatrix) to display, edit, page and sort tabular data but you can also use this helper in ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. When using this helper, sometimes you may run into a problem if you use complex types in this helper. In this article, I will show you how you can use complex types in WebGrid helper.       Description:             Let's say you need to show the employee data and you have the following classes,   public class Employee { public string Name { get; set; } public Address Address { get; set; } public List<string> ContactNumbers { get; set; } } public class Address { public string City { get; set; } }               The Employee class contain a Name, an Address and list of ContactNumbers. You may think that you can easily show City in WebGrid using Address.City, but no. The WebGrid helper will throw an exception at runtime if any Address property is null in the Employee list. Also, you cannot directly show ContactNumbers property. The easiest way to show these properties is to add some additional properties,   public Address NotNullableAddress { get { return Address ?? new Address(); } } public string Contacts { get { return string.Join("; ",ContactNumbers); } }               Now you can easily use these properties in WebGrid. Here is the complete code of this example,  @functions{ public class Employee { public Employee(){ ContactNumbers = new List<string>(); } public string Name { get; set; } public Address Address { get; set; } public List<string> ContactNumbers { get; set; } public Address NotNullableAddress { get { return Address ?? new Address(); } } public string Contacts { get { return string.Join("; ",ContactNumbers); } } } public class Address { public string City { get; set; } } } @{ var myClasses = new List<Employee>{ new Employee { Name="A" , Address = new Address{ City="AA" }, ContactNumbers = new List<string>{"021-216452","9231425651"}}, new Employee { Name="C" , Address = new Address{ City="CC" }}, new Employee { Name="D" , ContactNumbers = new List<string>{"045-14512125","21531212121"}} }; var grid = new WebGrid(source: myClasses); } @grid.GetHtml(columns: grid.Columns( grid.Column("NotNullableAddress.City", header: "City"), grid.Column("Name"), grid.Column("Contacts")))                    Summary:           You can use WebGrid helper to show tabular data in ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Forms and  ASP.NET Web Pages. Using this helper, you can also show complex types in the grid. In this article, I showed you how you use complex types with WebGrid helper. Hopefully you will enjoy this article too.  

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• Best Design Pattern for Coupling User Interface Components and Data Structures

  - by szahn

  I have a windows desktop application with a tree view. Due to lack of a sound data-binding solution for a tree view, I've implemented my own layer of abstraction on it to bind nodes to my own data structure. The requirements are as follows: Populate a tree view with nodes that resemble fields in a data structure. When a node is clicked, display the appropriate control to modify the value of that property in the instance of the data structure. The tree view is populated with instances of custom TreeNode classes that inherit from TreeNode. The responsibility of each custom TreeNode class is to (1) format the node text to represent the name and value of the associated field in my data structure, (2) return the control used to modify the property value, (3) get the value of the field in the control (3) set the field's value from the control. My custom TreeNode implementation has a property called "Control" which retrieves the proper custom control in the form of the base control. The control instance is stored in the custom node and instantiated upon first retrieval. So each, custom node has an associated custom control which extends a base abstract control class. Example TreeNode implementation: //The Tree Node Base Class public abstract class TreeViewNodeBase : TreeNode { public abstract CustomControlBase Control { get; } public TreeViewNodeBase(ExtractionField field) { UpdateControl(field); } public virtual void UpdateControl(ExtractionField field) { Control.UpdateControl(field); UpdateCaption(FormatValueForCaption()); } public virtual void SaveChanges(ExtractionField field) { Control.SaveChanges(field); UpdateCaption(FormatValueForCaption()); } public virtual string FormatValueForCaption() { return Control.FormatValueForCaption(); } public virtual void UpdateCaption(string newValue) { this.Text = Caption; this.LongText = newValue; } } //The tree node implementation class public class ExtractionTypeNode : TreeViewNodeBase { private CustomDropDownControl control; public override CustomControlBase Control { get { if (control == null) { control = new CustomDropDownControl(); control.label1.Text = Caption; control.comboBox1.Items.Clear(); control.comboBox1.Items.AddRange( Enum.GetNames( typeof(ExtractionField.ExtractionType))); } return control; } } public ExtractionTypeNode(ExtractionField field) : base(field) { } } //The custom control base class public abstract class CustomControlBase : UserControl { public abstract void UpdateControl(ExtractionField field); public abstract void SaveChanges(ExtractionField field); public abstract string FormatValueForCaption(); } //The custom control generic implementation (view) public partial class CustomDropDownControl : CustomControlBase { public CustomDropDownControl() { InitializeComponent(); } public override void UpdateControl(ExtractionField field) { //Nothing to do here } public override void SaveChanges(ExtractionField field) { //Nothing to do here } public override string FormatValueForCaption() { //Nothing to do here return string.Empty; } } //The custom control specific implementation public class FieldExtractionTypeControl : CustomDropDownControl { public override void UpdateControl(ExtractionField field) { comboBox1.SelectedIndex = comboBox1.FindStringExact(field.Extraction.ToString()); } public override void SaveChanges(ExtractionField field) { field.Extraction = (ExtractionField.ExtractionType) Enum.Parse(typeof(ExtractionField.ExtractionType), comboBox1.SelectedItem.ToString()); } public override string FormatValueForCaption() { return string.Empty; } The problem is that I have "generic" controls which inherit from CustomControlBase. These are just "views" with no logic. Then I have specific controls that inherit from the generic controls. I don't have any functions or business logic in the generic controls because the specific controls should govern how data is associated with the data structure. What is the best design pattern for this?

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• Hello, T4MVC &ndash; Goodbye, ASP.NET MVC &ldquo;magic strings&rdquo;

  - by Brian Schroer

  I’m working on my first ASP.NET MVC project, and I really, really like MVC. I hate all of the “magic strings”, though: <div id="logindisplay"> <% Html.RenderPartial("LogOnUserControl"); %> </div> <div id="menucontainer"> <ul id="menu"> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Find Dinner", "Index", "Dinners")%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Host Dinner", "Create", "Dinners")%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home")%></li> </ul> </div> They’re prone to misspelling (causing errors that won’t be caught until runtime), there’s duplication, there’s no Intellisense, and they’re not friendly to refactoring tools.   I had started down the path of creating static classes with constants for the strings, e.g.: <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Find Dinner", DinnerControllerActions.Index, Controllers.Dinner)%></li> …but that was pretty tedious.   Then I discovered T4MVC (http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=T4MVC). Just add its T4MVC.tt and T4MVC.settings.t4 files to the root of your MVC application, and it magically (and this time, it’s good magic) generates code that allows you to replace the first code sample above with this: <div id="logindisplay"> <% Html.RenderPartial(MVC.Shared.Views.LogOnUserControl); %> </div> <div id="menucontainer"> <ul id="menu"> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Find Dinner", MVC.Dinners.Index())%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Host Dinner", MVC.Dinners.Create())%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("About", MVC.Home.About())%></li> </ul> </div> It gives you a strongly-typed alternative to magic strings for all of these scenarios: Html.Action Html.ActionLink Html.RenderAction Html.RenderPartial Html.BeginForm Url.Action Ajax.ActionLink view names inside controllers But wait, there’s more! It even gives you static helpers for image and script links, e.g.: <img src="<%= Links.Content.nerd_jpg %>" />   <script src="<%= Links.Scripts.Map_js %>" type="text/javascript"></script> …instead of: <img src="/Content/nerd.jpg" />   <script src="/Scripts/Map.js" type="text/javascript"></script>   Thanks to David Ebbo for creating this great tool. You can watch an eight and a half minute video about T4MVC on Channel 9 via this link: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jongalloway/Jon-Takes-Five-with-David-Ebbo-on-T4MVC/. You can download T4MVC from its CodePlex page: http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=T4MVC.

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• Silverlight Cream for June 01, 2010 -- #874

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Alan Beasley and Michael Washington, Miroslav Miroslavov, Max Paulousky, Teresa and Ronald Burger, Laurent Duveau, Tim Heuer, Jeff Brand, Mike Snow, and John Papa. Shoutouts: To pay homage to the Advanced Options button in Expression Blend, Adam Kinney posted: Expression Blend Advanced Options square wallpaper SilverLaw stood his drag and drop ripple on it's head for this one: Silver Soccer - A Case Study for the Flexible Surface Effect (Silverlight 4) From SilverlightCream.com: Expression Blend DataStore - A Powerful Tool For Designers Michael Washington dug into the documentation and with some Microsoft assistance has figured out how to use the SetDataStoreAction in SketchFlow... good tutorial and a game to demonstrate it's use. Windows Phone 7 View Model Style Video Player Alan Beasley and Michael Washington teamed up again to produce a ViewModel-Style Video Player for WP7 ... very nice interface I might add... very detailed tutorial and all the code... oh, and did you notice it uses MVVMLight... on WP7? ... just thought I'd mention that :) Navigation in 3D world of 2D objects In part 7 of the CompleteIT code explenation, Miroslav Miroslavov is discussing some of the very cool animation they did... 3D, moving camera... cool stuff! Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Silverlight Applications. Part 2 Max Paulousky has part 2 of his Silverlight 4 and SEO series up. In part 2 he's discussing sitemaps and html content providing. He also has good links showing where to submit your sitemaps and information. Mousin’ down the PathListBox Teresa and Ronald Burger (not sure which) has a post up about the PathListBox and how they drew the path that they ended up using, and the code used to enable animation. Dynamically apply and change Theme with the Silverlight Toolkit We've all had fun playing with themes, but Laurent Duveau has an example up of letting your users change the theme at run-time. Microsoft Translator client library for Silverlight Tim Heuer has been playing with the Microsoft Translator for Silverlight and he has a "Works on My Machine" license on what he's making available .. but considering his access to resources... I'd say go for it :) Custom Per-Page Transitions in Windows Phone 7 Jeff Brand has a follow-on to his other WP7 post about page transitions and is now discussing per-page transitions Silverlight Tip of the Day #26 – Changing the Startup Class Mike Snow's latest 'tip' is a little more involved than a tip ... changing the startup class and actually removing (in his example), the page and app classes... code and xaml! I've seen this before but never explained as clean... fun stuff. Behaviors in Blend 4 (Silverlight TV #30) Episode 30 of Silverlight TV (now a tag at Silverlight Cream) finds John Papa talking to Adam Kinney about Behaviors in Blend 4... not only using them but creating a custom one. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Where to start with game development?

  - by steven_desu

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

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• Where to start with game development?

  - by steven_desu

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

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• AppKata - Enter the next level of programming exercises

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Doing CodeKatas is all the rage lately. That´s great since widely accepted exercises are important to further the art. They provide a means of communication across platforms and allow to compare results which is part of any deliberate practice. But CodeKatas suffer from their size. They are intentionally small, so they can be done again and again. Repetition helps to build habit and to dig deeper. Over time ever new nuances of the problem or one´s approach become visible. On the other hand, though, their small size limits the methods, techniques, technologies that can be applied. To improve your TDD skills doing CodeKatas might be enough. But what about other skills? Developing on a software in a team, designing larger pieces of software, iteratively releasing software… all this and more is kinda hard to train using the tiny CodeKata problems. That´s why I´d like to present here another kind of kata I call Application Kata (or just AppKata). AppKatas are larger programming problems. They require the development of “whole” applications, i.e. not just one class or method, but bunches of classes accessible through a user interface. Also AppKata problems always are split into iterations. To get the most out of them, just look at the requirements of one iteration at a time. This way you´re closer to reality where requirements evolve in unexpected ways. So if you´re looking for more of a challenge for your software development skills, check out these AppKatas – or invent your own. AppKatas are platform independent like CodeKatas. Use whatever programming language and IDE you like. Also use whatever approach to software development you like. Just be sensitive to how easy it is to evolve your code across iterations. Reflect on what went well and what not. Compare your solutions with others. Or – for even more challenge – go for the “Coding Carousel” (see below). CSV Viewer An application to view CSV files. Sounds easy, but watch out! Requirements sometimes drastically change if the customer is happy with what you delivered. Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3 Iteration 4 Iteration 5 (to come) Questionnaire If you like GUI programming, this AppKata might be for you. It´s about an app to let people fill out questionnaires. Also this problem might be interestin for you, if you´re into DDD. Iteration 1 Iteration 2 (to come) Iteration 3 (to come) Iteration 4 (to come) Tic Tac Toe For developers who like game programming. Although Tic Tac Toe is a trivial game, this AppKata poses some interesting infrastructure challenges. The GUI, however, stays simple; leave any 3D ambitions at home ;-) Iteration 1 Iteration 2 (to come) Iteration 3 (to come) Iteration 4 (to come) Iteration 5 (to come) Coding Carousel There are many ways you can do AppKatas. Work on them alone or in a team, pitch several devs against each other in an AppKata contest – or go around in a Coding Carousel. For the Coding Carousel you need at least 3 dev teams (regardless of size). All teams work on the same iteration at the same time. But here´s the trick: After each iteration the teams swap their code. Whatever they did for iteration n will be the basis for changes another team has to apply in iteration n+1. The code is going around the teams like in a carousel. I promise you, that´s gonna be fun! :-)

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• Python Coding standards vs. productivity

  - by Shroatmeister

  I work for a large humanitarian organisation, on a project building software that could help save lives in emergencies by speeding up the distribution of food. Many NGOs desperately need our software and we are weeks behind schedule. One thing that worries me in this project is what I think is an excessive focus on coding standards. We write in python/django and use a version of PEP0008, with various modifications e.g. line lengths can go up to 160 chars and all lines should go that long if possible, no blank lines between imports, line wrapping rules that apply only to certain kinds of classes, lots of templates that we must use, even if they aren't the best way to solve a problem etc. etc. One core dev spent a week rewriting a major part of the system to meet the then new coding standards, throwing away several suites of tests in the process, as the rewrite meant they were 'invalid'. We spent two weeks rewriting all the functionality that was lost, and fixing bugs. He is the lead dev and his word carries weight, so he has convinced the project manager that these standards are necessary. The junior devs do as they are told. I sense that the project manager has a strong feeling of cognitive dissonance about all this but nevertheless agrees with it vehemently as he feels unsure what else to do. Today I got in serious trouble because I had forgotten to put some spaces after commas in a keyword argument. I was literally shouted at by two other devs and the project manager during a Skype call. Personally I think coding standards are important but also think that we are wasting a lot of time obsessing with them, and when I verbalized this it provoked rage. I'm seen as a troublemaker in the team, a team that is looking for scapegoats for its failings. Since the introduction of the coding standards, the team's productivity has measurably plummeted, however this only reinforces the obsession, i.e. the lead dev simply blames our non-adherence to standards for the lack of progress. He believes that we can't read each other's code if we don't adhere to the conventions. This is starting to turn sticky. Now I am trying to modify various scripts, autopep8, pep8ify and PythonTidy to try to match the conventions. We also run pep8 against source code but there are so many implicit amendments to our standard that it's hard to track them all. The lead dev simple picks faults that the pep8 script doesn't pick up and shouts at us in the next stand-up meeting. Every week there are new additions to the coding standards that force us to rewrite existing, working, tested code. Thank heavens we still have tests, (I reverted some commits and fixed a bunch of the ones he removed). All the while there is increasing pressure to meet the deadline. I believe a fundamental issue is that the lead dev and another core dev refuse to trust other developers to do their job. But how to deal with that? We can't do our job because we are too busy rewriting everything. I've never encountered this dynamic in a software engineering team. Am I wrong to question their adherence to coding standards? Has anyone else experienced a similar situation and how have they dealt with it successfully? (I'm not looking for a discussion just actual solutions people have found)

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• Adding custom interfaces to your mock instance.

  - by mehfuzh

  Previously, i made a post  showing how you can leverage the dependent interfaces that is implemented by JustMock during the creation of mock instance. It could be a informative post that let you understand how JustMock behaves internally for class or interfaces implement other interfaces into it. But the question remains, how you can add your own custom interface to your target mock. In this post, i am going to show you just that. Today, i will not start with a dummy class as usual rather i will use two most common interfaces in the .NET framework  and create a mock combining those. Before, i start i would like to point out that in the recent release of JustMock we have extended the Mock.Create<T>(..) with support for additional settings though closure. You can add your own custom interfaces , specify directly the real constructor that should be called or even set the behavior of your target. Doing a fast forward directly to the point,  here goes the test code for create a creating a mock that contains the mix for ICloneable and IDisposable using the above mentioned changeset. var myMock = Mock.Create<IDisposable>(x => x.Implements<ICloneable>()); var myMockAsClonable = myMock as ICloneable; bool isCloned = false;   Mock.Arrange(() => myMockAsClonable.Clone()).DoInstead(() => isCloned = true);   myMockAsClonable.Clone();   Assert.True(isCloned);   Here, we are creating the target mock for IDisposable and also implementing ICloneable. Finally, using the “as” for getting the ICloneable reference accordingly arranging it, acting on it and asserting if the expectation is met properly. This is a very rudimentary example, you can do the same for a given class: var realItem = Mock.Create<RealItem>(x => {     x.Implements<IDisposable>();     x.CallConstructor(() => new RealItem(0)); }); var iDispose = realItem as IDisposable;     iDispose.Dispose(); Here, i am also calling the real constructor for RealItem class.  This is to mention that you can implement custom interfaces only for non-sealed classes or less it will end up with a proper exception. Also, this feature don’t require any profiler, if you are agile or running it inside silverlight runtime feel free to try it turning off the JM add-in :-). TIP :  Ability to  specify real constructor could be a useful productivity boost in cases for code change and you can re-factor the usage just by one click with your favorite re-factor tool.   That’s it for now and hope that helps Enjoy!!

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• Duke's Choice Award Ceremony

  - by Tori Wieldt

  The 2012 Duke's Choice Awards winners and their creative, Java-based technologies and Java community contributions were honored after the Sunday night JavaOne keynotes. Sharat Chander, Group Director for Java Technology Outreach, presented the awards. "Having the community participate directly in both submission and selection truly shows how we are driving exposure of the innovation happening in the Java community," he said. Apache Software Foundation Hadoop Project The Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop project, written in Java, provides a framework for distributed processing of big data sets across clusters of computers, ranging from a few servers to thousands of machines. This harnessing of large data pools allows organizations to better understand and improve their business. AgroSense Project Improving farming methods to feed a hungry world is the goal of AgroSense, an open source farm information management system built in Java and the NetBeans platform. AgroSense enables farmers, agribusinesses, suppliers and others to develop modular applications that will easily exchange information through a common underlying NetBeans framework. JDuchess Rather than focus on a specific geographic area like most Java User Groups (JUGs), JDuchess fosters the participation of women in the Java community worldwide. The group has more than 500 members in 60 countries, and provides a platform through which women can connect with each other and get involved in all aspects of the Java community. Jelastic, Inc. Moving existing Java applications to the cloud can be a daunting task, but startup Jelastic, Inc. offers the first all-Java platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that enables existing Java applications to be deployed in the cloud without code changes or lock-in. Liquid Robotics Robotics – Liquid Robotics is an ocean data services provider whose Wave Glider technology collects information from the world’s oceans for application in government, science and commercial applications. The organization features the “father of Java” James Gosling as its chief software architect. London Java Community The second user group receiving a Duke’s Choice Award this year, the London Java Community (LJC) and its users have been active in the OpenJDK, the Java Community Process (JCP) and other efforts within the global Java community. NATO The first-ever Community Choice Award goes to the MASE Integrated Console Environment (MICE) in use at NATO. Built in Java on the NetBeans platform, MICE provides a high-performance visualization environment for conducting air defense and battle-space operations. Parleys.com E-learning specialist Parleys.com, based in Brussels, Belgium, uses Java technologies to bring online classes and full IT conferences to desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. Parleys.com has hosted more than 1,700 conferences—including Devoxx and JavaOne—for more than 800,000 unique visitors. Student Nokia Developer Group This year’s student winner, Ram Kashyap, is the founder and president of the Nokia Student Network, and was profiled in the “The New Java Developers” feature in the March/April 2012 issue of Java Magazine. Since then, Ram has maintained a hectic pace, graduating from the People’s Education Society Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, while working on a Java mobile startup and training students on Java ME. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is on the front lines of crises around the world, from civil wars to natural disasters. To help facilitate its mission of humanitarian relief, the UNHCR has developed a light-client Java application on the NetBeans platform. The Level One registration tool enables the UNHCR to collect information on the number of refugees and their water, food, housing, health, and other needs in the field, and combines that with geocoding information from various sources. This enables the UNHCR to deliver the appropriate kind and amount of assistance where it is needed. You can read more about the winners in the current issue of Java Magazine.

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• Dark Sun Dispatch 001

  - by Chris Williams

  If you aren't into tabletop (aka pen & paper) RPGs, you might as well click to the next post now... Still here? Awesome. I've recently started running a new D&D 4.0 Dark Sun campaign. If you don't know anything about Dark Sun, here's a quick intro: The campaign take place on the world of Athas, formerly a lush green world that is now a desert wasteland. Forests are rare in the extreme, as is water and metal. Coins are made of ceramic and weapons are often made of hardened wood, bone or obsidian. The green age of Athas was centuries ago and the current state was brought about through the reckless use of sorcerous magic. (In this world, you can augment spells by drawing on the life force of the world & people around you. This is called defiling. Preserving magic draws upon the casters life force and does not damage the surrounding world, but it isn't as powerful.) Humans are pretty much unchanged, but the traditional fantasy races have changed quite a bit. Elves don't live in the forest, they are shifty and untrustworthy desert traders known for their ability to run long distances through the wastes. Halflings are not short, fat, pleasant little riverside people. Instead they are bloodthirsty feral cannibals that roam the few remaining forests and ride reptilians beasts akin to raptors. Gnomes are extinct, as are orcs. Dwarves are mostly farmers and gladiators, and live out in the sun instead of staying under the mountains. Goliaths are half-giants, not known for their intellect. Muls are a Dwarf & Human crossbreed that displays the best traits of both races (human height and dwarven stoutness.) Thri-Kreen are sentient mantis people that are extremely fast. Most of the same character classes are available, with a few new twists. There are no divine characters (such as Priests, Paladins, etc) because the gods are gone. Nobody alive today can remember a time when they were still around. Instead, some folks worship the elemental forces (although they don't give out spells.) The cities are all ruled by Sorcerer King tyrants (except one city: Tyr) who are hundreds of years old and still practice defiling magic whenever they please. Serving the Sorcerer Kings are the Templars, who are also defilers and psionicists. Crossing them is as bad, in many cases, as crossing the Kings themselves. Between the cities you have small towns and trading outposts, and mostly barren desert with sometimes 4-5 days on foot between towns and the nearest oasis. Being caught out in the desert without adequate supplies and protection from the elements is pretty much a death sentence for even the toughest heroes. When you add in the natural (and unnatural) predators that roam the wastes, often in packs, most people don't last long alone. In this campaign, the adventure begins in the (small) trading fortress of Altaruk, a couple weeks walking distance from the newly freed city of Tyr. A caravan carrying trade goods from Altaruk has not made it to Tyr and the local merchant house has dispatched the heroes to find out what happened and to retrieve the goods (and drivers) if possible. The unlikely heroes consist of a human shaman, a thri-kreen monk, a human wizard, a kenku assassin and a (void aspect) genasi swordmage. Gathering up supplies and a little liquid courage, they set out into the desert and manage to find the northbound tracks of the wagon. Shortly after finding the tracks, they are ambushed by a pack of silt-runners (small lizard people with very large teeth and poisoned pointy spears.) The party makes short work of the creatures, taking a few minor wounds in the process. Proceeding onward without resting, they find the remains of the wagon and manage to sneak up on a pack of Kruthiks picking through the rubble and spilled goods. Unfortunately, they failed to take advantage of the opportunity and had a hard fight ahead of them. The party defeated the kruthiks, but took heavy damage (and almost lost a couple of their own) in the process. Once the kruthiks were dispatched, they followed a set of tracks further north to a ruined tower...

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• HTTP Module in detail

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  I know this post may sound like very beginner level. But I have already posted two topics regarding HTTP Handler and HTTP module and this will explain how http module works in the system. I have already posted What is the difference between HttpModule and HTTPHandler here. Same way I have posted about an HTTP Handler example here as people are still confused with it. In this post I am going to explain about HTTP Module in detail. What is HTTP Module As we all know that when ASP.NET Runtimes receives any request it will execute a series of HTTP Pipeline extensible objects. HTTP Module and HTTP handler play important role in extending this HTTP Pipelines. HTTP Module are classes that will pre and post process request as they pass into HTTP Pipelines.  So It’s one kind of filter we can say which will do some procession on begin request and end request. If we have to create HTTP Module we have to implement System.Web.IHttpModule interface in our custom class. An IHTTP Module contains two method dispose where you can write your clean up code and another is Init where your can write your custom code to handle request. Here you can your event handler that will execute at the time of begin request and end request. Let’s create an HTTP Module which will just print text in browser with every request. Here is the code for that. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; namespace Experiment { public class MyHttpModule:IHttpModule { public void Dispose() { //add clean up code here if required } public void Init(HttpApplication context) { context.BeginRequest+=new EventHandler(context_BeginRequest); context.EndRequest+=new EventHandler(context_EndRequest); } public void context_BeginRequest(object o, EventArgs args) { HttpApplication app = (HttpApplication)o; if (app != null) { app.Response.Write("<h1>Begin Request Executed</h1>"); } } public void context_EndRequest(object o, EventArgs args) { HttpApplication app = (HttpApplication)o; if (app != null) { app.Response.Write("<h1>End Request Executed</h1>"); } } } } Here in above code you can see that I have created two event handler context_Beginrequest and context_EndRequest which will execute at begin request and end request when request are processed. In this event handler I have just written a code to print text on browser. Now In order enable this HTTP Module in HTTP pipeline we have to put a settings in web.config  HTTPModules section to tell which HTTPModule is enabled. Below is code for HTTPModule. <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> <httpModules> <add name="MyHttpModule" type="Experiment.MyHttpModule,Experiment"/> </httpModules> </system.web> </configuration> Now I just have created a sample webform with following code in HTML like following. <form id="form1" runat="server"> <B>test of HTTP Module</B> </form> Now let’s run this web form in browser and you can see here it the output as expected.   Technorati Tags: HTTPModule,ASP.NET,Request

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• How should an object that uses composition set its composed components?

  - by Casey

  After struggling with various problems and reading up on component-based systems and reading Bob Nystrom's excellent book "Game Programming Patterns" and in particular the chapter on Components I determined that this is a horrible idea: //Class intended to be inherited by all objects. Engine uses Objects exclusively. class Object : public IUpdatable, public IDrawable { public: Object(); Object(const Object& other); Object& operator=(const Object& rhs); virtual ~Object() =0; virtual void SetBody(const RigidBodyDef& body); virtual const RigidBody* GetBody() const; virtual RigidBody* GetBody(); //Inherited from IUpdatable virtual void Update(double deltaTime); //Inherited from IDrawable virtual void Draw(BITMAP* dest); protected: private: }; I'm attempting to refactor it into a more manageable system. Mr. Nystrom uses the constructor to set the individual components; CHANGING these components at run-time is impossible. It's intended to be derived and be used in derivative classes or factory methods where their constructors do not change at run-time. i.e. his Bjorne object is just a call to a factory method with a specific call to the GameObject constructor. Is this a good idea? Should the object have a default constructor and setters to facilitate run-time changes or no default constructor without setters and instead use a factory method? Given: class Object { public: //...See below for constructor implementation concerns. Object(const Object& other); Object& operator=(const Object& rhs); virtual ~Object() =0; //See below for Setter concerns IUpdatable* GetUpdater(); IDrawable* GetRenderer(); protected: IUpdatable* _updater; IDrawable* _renderer; private: }; Should the components be read-only and passed in to the constructor via: class Object { public: //No default constructor. Object(IUpdatable* updater, IDrawable* renderer); //...remainder is same as above... }; or Should a default constructor be provided and then the components can be set at run-time? class Object { public: Object(); //... SetUpdater(IUpdater* updater); SetRenderer(IDrawable* renderer); //...remainder is same as above... }; or both? class Object { public: Object(); Object(IUpdater* updater, IDrawable* renderer); //... SetUpdater(IUpdater* updater); SetRenderer(IDrawable* renderer); //...remainder is same as above... };

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• Lessons Building KeyRef (a .NET developer learning Rails)

  - by Liam McLennan

  Just because I like to build things, and I like to learn, I have been working on a keyboard shortcut reference site. I am using this as an opportunity to improve my ruby and rails skills. The first few days were frustrating. Perhaps the learning curve of all the fun new toys was a bit excessive. Finally tonight things have really started to come together. I still don’t understand the rails built-in testing support but I will get there. Interesting Things I Learned Tonight RubyMine IDE Tonight I switched to RubyMine instead of my usual Notepad++. I suspect RubyMine is a powerful tool if you know how to use it – but I don’t. At the moment it gives me errors about some gems not being activated. This is another one of those things that I will get to. I have also noticed that the editor functions significantly differently to the editors I am used to. For example, in visual studio and notepad++ if you place the cursor at the start of a line and press left arrow the cursor is sent to the end of the previous line. In RubyMine nothing happens. Haml Haml is my favourite view engine. For my .NET work I have been using its non-union Mexican CLR equivalent – nHaml. Multiple CSS Classes To define a div with more than one css class haml lets you chain them together with a ‘.’, such as: .span-6.search_result contents of the div go here Indent Consistency I also learnt tonight that both haml and nhaml complain if you are not consistent about indenting. As a consequence of the move from notepad++ to RubyMine my haml views ended up with some tab indenting and some space indenting. For the view to render all of the indents within a view must be consistent. Sorting Arrays I guessed that ruby would be able to sort an array alphabetically by a property of the elements so my first attempt was: Application.all.sort {|app| app.name} which does not work. You have to supply a comparer (much like .NET). The correct sort is: Application.all.sort {|a,b| a.name.downcase <=> b.name.downcase} MongoMapper Find by Id Since document databases are just fancy key-value stores it is essential to be able to easily search for a document by its id. This functionality is so intrinsic that it seems that the MongoMapper author did not bother to document it. To search by id simply pass the id to the find method: Application.find(‘4c19e8facfbfb01794000002’) Rails And CoffeeScript I am a big fan of CoffeeScript so integrating it into this application is high on my priorities. My first thought was to copy Dr Nic’s strategy. Unfortunately, I did not get past step 1. Install Node.js. I am doing my development on Windows and node is unix only. I looked around for a solution but eventually had to concede defeat… for now. Quicksearch The front page of the application I am building displays a list of applications. When the user types in the search box I want to reduce the list of applications to match their search. A quick googlebing turned up quicksearch, a jquery plugin. You simply tell quicksearch where to get its input (the search textbox) and the list of items to filter (the divs containing the names of applications) and it just works. Here is the code: $('#app_search').quicksearch('.search_result'); Summary I have had a productive evening. The app now displays a list of applications, allows them to be sorted and links through to an application page when an application is selected. Next on the list is to display the set of keyboard shortcuts for an application.

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• When to use Aspect Oriented Architecture (AOA/AOD)

  When is it appropriate to use aspect oriented architecture? I think the only honest answer to this question is that it depends on the context for which the question is being asked. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding the selection of an architectural model(s) for a project because each model provides good and bad benefits. Every system is built with a unique requirements and constraints. This context will dictate when to use one type of architecture over another or in conjunction with others. To me aspect oriented architecture models should be a sub-phase in the architectural modeling and design process especially when creating enterprise level models. Personally, I like to use this approach to create a base architectural model that is defined by non-functional requirements and system quality attributes.   This general model can then be used as a starting point for additional models because it is targets all of the business key quality attributes required by the system.Aspect oriented architecture is a method for modeling non-functional requirements and quality attributes of a system known as aspects. These models do not deal directly with specific functionality. They do categorize functionality of the system. This approach allows a system to be created with a strong emphasis on separating system concerns into individual components. These cross cutting components enables a systems to create with compartmentalization in regards to non-functional requirements or quality attributes.  This allows for the reduction in code because an each component maintains an aspect of a system that can be called by other aspects. This approach also allows for a much cleaner and smaller code base during the implementation and support of a system. Additionally, enabling developers to develop systems based on aspect-oriented design projects will be completed faster and will be more reliable because existing components can be shared across a system; thus, the time needed to create and test the functionality is reduced.   Example of an effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureIn my experiences, aspect oriented architecture can be very effective with large or more complex systems. Typically, these types of systems have a large number of concerns so the act of defining them is very beneficial for reducing the system’s complexity because components can be developed to address each concern while exposing functionality to the other system components. The benefits to using the aspect oriented approach as the starting point for a system is that it promotes communication between IT and the business due to the fact that the aspect oriented models are quality attributes focused so not much technical understanding is needed to understand the model.An example of this can be in developing a new intranet website. Common Intranet Concerns: Error Handling Security Logging Notifications Database connectivity Example of a not as effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureAgain in my experiences, aspect oriented architecture is not as effective with small or less complex systems in comparison.  There is no need to model concerns for a system that has a limited amount of them because the added overhead would not be justified for the actual benefits of creating the aspect oriented architecture model.  Furthermore, these types of projects typically have a reduced time schedule and a limited budget.  The creation of the Aspect oriented models would increase the overhead of a project and thus increase the time needed to implement the system. An example of this is seen by creating a small application to poll a network share for new files and then FTP them to a new location.  The two primary concerns for this project is to monitor a network drive and FTP files to a new location.  There is no need to create an aspect model for this system because there will never be a need to share functionality amongst either of these concerns.  To add to my point, this system is so small that it could be created with just a few classes so the added layer of componentizing the concerns would be complete overkill for this situation. References:Brichau, Johan; D'Hondt, Theo. (2006) Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) - An Introduction. Retreived from: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~jbrichau/courses/introductionToAOSD.pdf

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