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  • Interactive Data Language, IDL: Does anybody care?

    - by Alex
    Anyone use a language called Interactive Data Language, IDL? It is popular with scientists. I think it is a poor language because it is proprietary (every terminal running it has to have an expensive license purchased) and it has minimal support (try searching for IDL, the language, right now on stack) . I am trying to convince my colleagues to stop using it and learn C/C++/Python/Fortran/Java/Ruby. Does anybody know about or even care about IDL enough to have opinions on it? What do you think of it? Should I tell my colleagues to stop wasting their time on it now? How can I convince them? Edit: People are getting the impression that I don't know or use IDL. Also, I said IDL has minimal support which is true in one sense, so I must clarify that the scientific libraries are indeed large. I use IDL all the time, but this is exactly the problem: I am only using IDL because colleagues use it. There is a file format IDL uses, the .sav, which can only be opened in IDL. So I must use IDL to work with this data and transfer the data back to colleagues, but I know I would be more efficient in another language. This is like someone sending you a microsoft word file in an email attachment and if you don't understand how wrong that is then you probably write too many words not enough code and you bought microsoft word. Edit: As an alternative to IDL Python is popular. Here is a list of The Pros of IDL (and the cons) from AstroBetter: Pros of IDL Mature many numerical and astronomical libraries available Wide astronomical user base Numerical aspect well integrated with language itself Many local users with deep experience Faster for small arrays Easier installation Good, unified documentation Standard GUI run/debug tool (IDLDE) Single widget system (no angst about which to choose or learn) SAVE/RESTORE capability Use of keyword arguments as flags more convenient Cons of IDL Narrow applicability, not well suited to general programming Slower for large arrays Array functionality less powerful Table support poor Limited ability to extend using C or Fortran, such extensions hard to distribute and support Expensive, sometimes problem collaborating with others that don’t have or can’t afford licenses. Closed source (only RSI can fix bugs) Very awkward to integrate with IRAF tasks Memory management more awkward Single widget system (useless if working within another framework) Plotting: Awkward support for symbols and math text Many font systems, portability issues (v5.1 alleviates somewhat) not as flexible or as extensible plot windows not intrinsically interactive (e.g., pan & zoom) Pros of Python Very general and powerful programming language, yet easy to learn. Strong, but optional, Object Oriented programming support Very large user and developer community, very extensive and broad library base Very extensible with C, C++, or Fortran, portable distribution mechanisms available Free; non-restrictive license; Open Source Becoming the standard scripting language for astronomy Easy to use with IRAF tasks Basis of STScI application efforts More general array capabilities Faster for large arrays, better support for memory mapping Many books and on-line documentation resources available (for the language and its libraries) Better support for table structures Plotting framework (matplotlib) more extensible and general Better font support and portability (only one way to do it too) Usable within many windowing frameworks (GTK, Tk, WX, Qt…) Standard plotting functionality independent of framework used plots are embeddable within other GUIs more powerful image handling (multiple simultaneous LUTS, optional resampling/rescaling, alpha blending, etc) Support for many widget systems Strong local influence over capabilities being developed for Python Cons of Python More items to install separately Not as well accepted in astronomical community (but support clearly growing) Scientific libraries not as mature: Documentation not as complete, not as unified Not as deep in astronomical libraries and utilities Not all IDL numerical library functions have corresponding functionality in Python Some numeric constructs not quite as consistent with language (or slightly less convenient than IDL) Array indexing convention “backwards” Small array performance slower No standard GUI run/debug tool Support for many widget systems (angst regarding which to choose) Current lack of function equivalent to SAVE/RESTORE in IDL matplotlib does not yet have equivalents for all IDL 2-D plotting capability (e.g., surface plots) Use of keyword arguments used as flags less convenient Plotting: comparatively immature, still much development going on missing some plot type (e.g., surface) 3-d capability requires VTK (though matplotlib has some basic 3-d capability)

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  • Is there a measure of code rot?

    - by DarenW
    I'm dealing, again, with a messy C++ application, tons of classes with confusing names, objects have pointers into each other and all over, longwinded Boost and STL data types, etc. (Pause and consider your favorite terror of messy legacy code. We probably have it.) The phrase "code rot" oft comes to mind when I work on this project. Is there a quantitative way to measure code rot? I wouldn't expect anything highly meaningful or scientific, since no other measure of code productivity or quality is so fine. I'm not looking for a mere opposite of measures of code quality, but specifically a measure of how many bad things happened after a series of maintenance software "engineers" have had turns hacking at the code. A general measure applying to any language, or many languages, would be great. If there's no such thing, at least for C++, which is a better than average language for creating messes. Maybe something involving a measure of topology of how objects connect during runtime, a count of chunks of commented out code, how mane files a typical variable's usage is scattered over, I don't know... but surely now, a decade into the 21st Century, someone has attempted to define some sort of rot measure. It would be especially interesting to automate a series of svn checkouts, measure the "rottenosity" of each, and plot the decay over time.

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  • New META TAGS with positive effects for seo ranking in 2011 and beyond

    - by Sam
    Hi all, im trying to make an up to date chart of meta tags, for all of us, with their purposes, their use and their good (or bad) effects on search engines/being found. Also any body knows new/promising meta tags? I will add yours into my list so this chart is a result of live discussion and up to date. Also, it would be creative to invent your own useful meta, because we are the ones making the web, or aren't we? LEGEND P PURPOSE? What does this meta tag do in 2011, if anything N NECESSARY? Does every site really needs it or not? G GOOD wether it will have a good effect for your site to be found I INVENTED meta tag, who knows it will be accepted in a year! META "METANAME" = PURPOSE? - NECESSARY? - GOOD EFFECT? #### important meta "title" = P consice summary + teaser - N very - G extremely meta "description" = P description + teaser - N yes - G very meta "robots" = P if needed, to skip default dmoz/yahoodir listing - N no - G? #### new & promising! Thanks for input (John, ) meta "original-source" P url of whoever broke the news gets credits - N? - G? meta "syndication-source" P url for syndication of published news - N? - G? meta "canonical" P? - N? - G? #### seems obsolete meta "keywords" = P some keywords - N+G not for google but yahoo likes them meta "language" = P overrule guesswork by defining language - N no - G? meta "page-topic" = P topic/theme - N? - G? meta "abstract" = P short summary - N? - G? meta "copyright" = ? #### invented by me meta "audience" = P filteres audience: "+seniors, +parents, -children, -youth" meta "mood" = P specifies textual style: "discussion, informative, commercial, sexual, fictional, scientific, romantic, therapeutic, technical"

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  • Good ruby book with exercises? [closed]

    - by watabou
    I find that I learn the best with a book that has a number of exercises at the end of each chapters. A great example of this is C++ Primer Plus by Stephen Prata or Scientific Programming with Python or the Horstmann Java books. All of those books have a number of programming exercises at the end tailored to that specific chapter. I love the styles of those book and was wondering if there is anything similar for Ruby. I've extensively searched google for this and people have been suggesting different stuff like different websites like Ruby Koans and LRTHW but honestly, I've tried those and they aren't for me. I taught myself Python with the the Hard Way book and to be honest, it's not for me. Now, forgive me if I'm blunt but does anyone have a Ruby programming BOOK (i.e. not a website), that has EXERCISES in it? I do NOT want a website, unless the book is only or is freely available online by the author, similar to the Hard Way books. I would say that I'm a intermediate level programmer with only some Ruby experience but if you know of a beginner book on Ruby, that is fine too. Thanks in advance, I would really really appreciate the help.

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  • Teaching myself, as a physicist, to become a better programmer

    - by user787267
    I've always liked physics, and I've always liked coding, so when I got the offer for a PhD position doing numerical physics (details are not relevant, it's mostly parallel programming for a cluster) at a university, it was a no-brainer for me. However, as most physicists, I'm self taught. I don't have broad background knowledge about how to code in an object oriented way, or the name of that specific algorithm that optimizes the search in some kD tree. Since all my work so far has been more concerned about the physics and the scientific results, I undoubtedly have some bad habits - more so because my coding is my own, and not really teamwork. I have mostly used C since it is very straightforward and "what you write is what you get" - no need for fancy abstractions. However, I have recently switched to C++ since I'd like to learn more about the power that comes with abstraction, and it's pretty C-like (syntax-wise at least). How do I teach myself to code in a good, abstract way like a graduate in computer science? I know my code is efficient, but I want it to be elegant as well, and readable. Keep in mind that I don't have time to read several 1000-page tomes about abstract programming. I need to spend time on actual, physics related research (my supervisor would laugh at me if he knew I spent time thinking about how to program elegantly). How do I assess if my work is also good from a programmer's perspective?

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  • See the Lord of the Rings Epic from the Perspective of Mordor [eBook]

    - by ETC
    Much like the wildly popular book “Wicked” mixed up the good/bad dichotomy in the Wizard of Oz, “The Last Ring-Bearer” shows us the Mordor’s take on the Lord of the Rings. The work of a Russian paleontologist, Kirill Yeskov, “The Last Ring-Bearer” frames the conflict in the Lord of the Rings from the perspective of the citizens of Mordor. Salon magazine offers this summary, as part of their larger review: In Yeskov’s retelling, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science “destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men!” He’s in cahoots with the elves, who aim to become “masters of the world,” and turn Middle-earth into a “bad copy” of their magical homeland across the sea. Barad-dur, also known as the Dark Tower and Sauron’s citadel, is, by contrast, described as “that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic.” Hit up the link below to grab a PDF of the official English translation of Yeskov’s work. The Last Ring-Bearer [via Salon] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Lucky Kid Gets Playable Angry Birds Cake [Video] See the Lord of the Rings Epic from the Perspective of Mordor [eBook] Smart Taskbar Is a Thumb Friendly Android Task Launcher Comix is an Awesome Comics Archive Viewer for Linux Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free Need Tech Support? Call the Star Wars Help Desk! [Video Classic]

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  • Four Proven Advantages of Online Learning | Outside Cost, Accessibility or Flexibility

    - by Mohit Phogat
    Coursera believes that online courses complement and supplement traditional education (versus a common misconception online will “replace” traditional.) Our research shows that Coursera’s platform, when used concurrently with a traditional classroom setup, is ideal for “blended learning” (i.e., students watch lectures pre-class, then class-time focuses on interactive work and discussion.) Additionally, we agree with Brad Zomick of SkilledUp—an online learning aggregator—who acknowledges an online course “isn’t an alternative at all but rather a different path with its own rewards.” The advantages of Coursera and our apps for mobile were straightforward and conspicuous from the start: we’re free, open, and flexible to learners’ unique needs and style. Over the past two years, however, the evidence proves there are many more tangible benefits to open, online learning. In SkilledUp’s “The Advantages of Online Courses [Infographic]”–crafted from findings of leading educational research–four observations stand out from the overt characteristics: Speedier Learning - “Research shows that online students achieve same or better learning results in about half the time as those in traditional courses” More Active, Engaged & Motivated - Learners thrive “when working with coursework that is challenging but within their capacity to master.” Tangible Skill Building - with an “improved attitude toward learning” Better Teaching Quality - Courses are taught by experts, with various multimedia and cutting-edge technology, and “are usually better organized than traditional courses” This is only the beginning, Courserians! Everyday we hear your incredible stories on how open online courses enrich your lives and enhance your careers. Meanwhile we study the steady stream of scientific, big-data research proving their worth on a large-scale (such as UPenn’s latest research on the welcomed diversity in Coursera-hosted Wharton MBA courses.) Our motto “Learning without Limits” reminds us that open, online courses give tremendous opportunity to those that might not otherwise have access (or time, or money) to study at a high-caliber institution. Source: Coursera

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  • Are there any "best practices" on cross-device development?

    - by vstrien
    Developing for smartphones in the way the industry is currently doing is relatively new. Of course, there has been enterprise-level mobile development for several decades. The platforms have changed, however. Think of: from stylus-input to touch-input (different screen res, different control layout etc.) new ways of handling multi-tasking on mobile platforms (e.g. WP7's "tombstoning") The way these platforms work aren't totally new (iPhone has been around for quite awhile now for example), but at the moment when developing a functionally equal application for both desktop and smartphone it comes down to developing two applications from ground up. Especially with the birth of Windows Phone with the .NET-platform on board and using Silverlight as UI-language, it's becoming appealing to promote the re-use of (parts of the UI). Still, it's fairly obvious that the needs of an application on a smartphone (or tablet) are very different compared to the needs of a desktop application. An (almost) one-on-one conversion will therefore be impossible. My question: are there "best practices", pitfalls etc. documented about developing "cross-device" applications (for example, developing an app for both the desktop and the smartphone/tablet)? I've been looking at weblogs, scientific papers and more for a week or so, but what I've found so far is only about "migratory interfaces".

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  • The Science Behind Salty Airline Food

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    In this collection, Artist Signe Emma combines a scientific overview of the role salt plays in airline food with electron microscope scans of salt crystals arranged to look like the views from an airplane–a rather clever and visually stunning way to deliver the message. Attached to the collection is this explaination of why airlines load their snacks and meals with salt: White noise consists of a random collection of sounds at different frequencies and scientists have demonstrated that it is capable of diminishing the taste of salt. At low-pressure conditions, higher taste and odour thresholds of flavourings are generally observed. At 30.000 feet the cabin humidity drops by 15%, and the lowered air pressure forces bodily fluids upwards. With less humidity, people have less moisture in their throat, which slows the transport of odours to the brains smell and taste receptors. That means that if a meal should taste the same up in the air, as on ground it needs 30% of extra salt. To combat the double assault on our sense of taste, the airlines boost the salt content to compensate. For more neat microscope scans as high-altitude view photographs, hit up the link below. How to Play Classic Arcade Games On Your PC How to Use an Xbox 360 Controller On Your Windows PC Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8

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  • How do you name/brand software?

    - by JasCav
    I am working on an application that is brand new. We have been using an internal name up to this point, but it's not very imaginative and is definitely not good from a branding standpoint. I have been tasked to come up with a name for the software. I am really struggling with this as every name I have thought about really doesn't seem to do the software justice. I have tried acronyms, mythology names, scientific names, etc. I may be being a bit picky, but I feel like the name should just hit me when its right. Here are my requirements: The name has to be easy to say (and hopefully catchy). The name has to relate back to what the software does. The name has to be able to be branded. (For example, vivid imagery, tagline, etc.) So, although I can't give the specifics of the software, I was hoping the brains here could provide some insight as to how I should go about naming/branding a piece of software?

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  • Does F# kill C++?

    - by MarkPearl
    Okay, so the title may be a little misleading… but I am currently travelling and so have had very little time and access to resources to do much fsharping – this has meant that I am right now missing my favourite new language. I was interested to see this post on Stack Overflow this evening concerning the performance of the F# language. The person posing the question asked 8 key points about the F# language, namely… How well does it do floating-point? Does it allow vector instructions How friendly is it towards optimizing compilers? How big a memory foot print does it have? Does it allow fine-grained control over memory locality? Does it have capacity for distributed memory processors, for example Cray? What features does it have that may be of interest to computational science where heavy number processing is involved? Are there actual scientific computing implementations that use it? Now, I don’t have much time to look into a decent response and to be honest I don’t know half of the answers to what he is asking, but it was interesting to see what was put up as an answer so far and would be interesting to get other peoples feedback on these questions if they know of anything other than what has been covered in the answer section already.

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  • Is there such thing as a "theory of system integration"?

    - by Jeff
    There is a plethora of different programs, servers, and in general technologies in use in organizations today. We, programmers, have lots of different tools at our disposal to help solve various different data, and communication challenges in an organization. Does anyone know if anyone has done an serious thinking about how systems are integrated? Let me give an example: Hypothetically, let's say I own a company that makes specialized suits a'la Iron Man. In the area of production, I have CAD tools, machining tools, payroll, project management, and asset management tools to name a few. I also have nice design space, where designers show off their designs on big displays, some touch, some traditional. Oh, and I also have one of these new fangled LEED Platinum buildings and it has number of different computer controlled systems, like smart window shutters that close when people are in the room, a HVAC system that adjusts depending on the number of people in the building, etc. What I want to know is if anyone has done any scientific work on trying to figure out how to hook all these pieces together, so that say my access control system is hooked to my payroll system, and my phone system allowing my never to swipe a time card, and to have my phone follow me throughout the building. This problem is also more than a technology challenge. Every technology implementation enables certain human behaviours, so the human must also be considered as a part of the system. Has anyone done any work in how effectively weave these components together? FYI: I am not trying to build a system. I want to know if anyone has thoroughly studied the process of doing a large integration project, how they develop their requirements, how they studied the human behaviors, etc.

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  • Looking for a small, light scene graph style abstraction lib for shader based OpenGL

    - by Pris
    I'm looking for a 'lean and mean' c/c++ scene graph library for OpenGL that doesn't use any deprecated functionality. It should be cross platform (strictly speaking I just dev on Linux so no love lost if it doesn't work on Windows), and it should be possible to deploy to mobile targets (ie OpenGLES2, and no crazy mandatory dependencies that wouldn't port well to modern mobile frameworks like iOS, Android, etc), with a license that's compatible with closed source software (LGPL or more liberal). Specific nice-to-haves would be: Cameras and Viewers (trackball, fly-by, etc) Object transform hierarchies (if B is a child of A, and you move A, B has the same transform applied to it) Simple animation Scene optimization (frustum culling, use VBOs, minimize state changes, etc) Text I've played around with OpenSceneGraph a lot and it's pretty amazing for fixed function pipeline stuff, but I've had a few of problems using it with the programmable pipeline and after going through their mailing list, it seems several people have had similar issues (going back years). Kitware's VES looks neat (http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VES), but VES + VTK is pretty heavy. VTK is also typically for analyzing scientific data and I've read that it's not that appropriate for a general use case (not that great at rendering a lot of objects on scene,etc) I'm currently looking at VisualizationLibrary (http://www.visualizationlibrary.org/documentation/pag_gallery.html) which looks like it offers some of the functionality I'd like, but it doesn't explicitly support mobile targets. Other solutions like Ogre, Horde3D, Irrlicht, etc tend to be full on game engines and that's not really what I'm looking for. I'd like some suggestions for other libraries that I may have missed... please note I'm not willing to roll my own solution from scratch.

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  • Understanding and memorizing git rebase parameters

    - by Robert Dailey
    So far the most confusing portion of git is rebasing onto another branch. Specifically, it's the command line arguments that are confusing. Each time I want to rebase a small piece of one branch onto the tip of another, I have to review the git rebase documentation and it takes me about 5-10 minutes to understand what each of the 3 main arguments should be. git rebase <upstream> <branch> --onto <newbase> What is a good rule of thumb to help me memorize what each of these 3 parameters should be set to, given any kind of rebase onto another branch? Bear in mind I have gone over the git-rebase documentation again, and again, and again, and again (and again), but it's always difficult to understand (like a boring scientific white-paper or something). So at this point I feel I need to involve other people to help me grasp it. My goal is that I should never have to review the documentation for these basic parameters. I haven't been able to memorize them so far, and I've done a ton of rebases already. So it's a bit unusual that I've been able to memorize every other command and its parameters so far, but not rebase with --onto.

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  • Memory limiting solutions for greedy applications that can crash OS?

    - by Hooked
    I use my computer for scientific programming. It has a healthy 8GB of RAM and 12GB of swap space. Often, as my problems have gotten larger, I exceed all of the available RAM. Rather than crashing (which would be preferred), it seems Ubuntu starts loading everything into swap, including Unity and any open terminals. If I don't catch a run-away program in time, there is nothing I can do but wait - it takes 4-5 minutes to switch to a command prompt eg. Ctrl-Alt-F2 where I can kill the offending process. Since my own stupidity is out of scope of this forum, how can I prevent Ubuntu from crashing via thrashing when I use up all of the available memory from a single offending program? At-home experiment*! Open a terminal, launch python and if you have numpy installed try this: >>> import numpy >>> [numpy.zeros((10**4, 10**4)) for _ in xrange(50)] * Warning: may have adverse effects, monitor the process via iotop or top to kill it in time. If not, I'll see you after your reboot.

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  • Implementing new required feature after software release

    - by TiagoBrenck
    Fake Scenario There is a software that was released 1 year ago. The software is to map and register all kind of animals on our planet. When the software was released, the client only needed to know the scientific name of the animal, a flag if it is in risk of extinction and a scale of dangerous(that is a fake software and specification, I don't want to discuss this here). There are already 100.000 animals records saved on DB. New Feature One year later, the client wants a new feature. It is really important to him to know the animals classes, and this is a required field. So he asks me to put a field to input the animal class, and this field is required. Or maybe where this animal was discovered. Problem I have already 100.000 recorded animals without a class or where it was discovered, but I need to insert a new column to storage this information and this column can't be null. I don't have a default value for this situation (there isn't a default animal class or where it was discovered). I don't want to keep the requirement rule only on my software, my DB must have this requirement too(I like to keep business rules on DB too). What are the alternatives to solve this situation? I am on a situation that this new feature cannot be previewed or reviewed for the existing records. The time already passed and I can't go back on time to get it

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  • What to learn after standard C++?

    - by Luca Cerone
    I switched to C++ a few months ago, learning its syntax, the main features of the STL and what you can usually find in a "learn C++" manual. Now I would like to go further. What would be your recommendations? I would like to know what to learn next (not only about the language, but also debugging, frameworks etc. etc.) I know probably the answer depends on the specific needs of each user, so here is a list of mine: Cross Platform development Developing GUI for my programs Develop extendible software, allowing the use of plugins Use of scientific libraries Interact with databases (mainly MySQL) Having server/client functionalities (I'd like users of my programs to interact through internet.. as you might have guessed I am not a programmer by training so I might have used the wrong terms.. if so I apologize for that). Of course I know it takes time, but I would like to have a good list of references and resources to start (both books and websites are ok). Thanks a lot for your help!

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  • Is Apple getting out of the general purpose development platform business?

    - by Charles E. Grant
    I've been doing general ANSI C/Console C++/Java/Web development on Mac hardware for about ten years. I make no claims of objective superiority over other platforms, it just satisfies my personal tastes. With the success of the iPhone and the related App store there was some speculation that Apple would get out of the general purpose computer market, and become a closed software ecosystem, focusing on consumer appliances. I pooh-poohed the speculation at the time, but this week Apple announced that a) they were opening an App store for the Mac, b) Java applications would not be eligible for the App store, c) the Apple JVM was being deprecated and might not be available for future releases of OS X. I'm not a Java developer per se, but I work in a research lab that occasionally writes Java applications, and also depends on tools written Java. This has the potential to be a huge pain in the butt for us. As of now, there is no other JVM for OS X that we can point our end users to. Soy Latte and OpenJDK might be appropriate for developers, but the complexity of the installation makes them inappropriate for end users. Eventually I expect Oracle/SUN will produce a replacement JVM for OS X. More worrisome to me is that Apple used to specifically advertise that it was an excellent platform for scientific development, because they supported all major language platforms. Is the deprecation of their JVM a sign that this market no longer interests them?

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  • Hobbyist transitioning to earn money on paid work?

    - by Chelonian
    I got into hobbyist Python programming some years ago on a whim, having never programmed before other than BASIC way back when, and little by little have cobbled together a, in my opinion, nice little desktop application that I might try to get out there in some fashion someday. It's roughly 15,000 logical lines of code, and includes use of Python, wxPython, SQLite, and a number of other libraries, works on Win and Linux (maybe Mac, untested) and I've gotten some good feedback about the application's virtues from non-programmer friends. I've also done a small application for data collection for animal behavior experiments, and an ad hoc tool to help generate a web page...and I've authored some tutorials. I consider my Python skills to be appreciably limited, my SQL skills to be very limited, but I'm not totally out to sea, either (e.g. I did FizzBuzz in a few minutes, did a "Monty Hall Dilemma" simulator in some minutes, etc.). I also put a strong premium on quality user experience; that is, the look and feel matters much to me and the software looks quite good, I feel. I know no other programming languages yet. I also know the basics of HTML/CSS (not considering them programming languages) and have created an artist's web page (that was described by a friend as "incredibly slick"...it's really not, though), and have a scientific background. I'm curious: Aside from directly selling my software, what's roughly possible--if anything--in terms of earning either side money on gigs, or actually getting hired at some level in the software industry, for someone with this general skill set?

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  • Effective and simple matching for 2 unequal small-scale point sets

    - by Pavlo Dyban
    I need to match two sets of 3D points, however the number of points in each set can be different. It seems that most algorithms are designed to align images and trimmed to work with hundreds of thousands of points. My case are 50 to 150 points in each of the two sets. So far I have acquainted myself with Iterative Closest Point and Procrustes Matching algorithms. Implementing Procrustes algorithms seems like a total overkill for this small quantity. ICP has many implementations, but I haven't found any readily implemented version accounting for the so-called "outliers" - points without a matching pair. Besides the implementation expense, algorithms like Fractional and Sparse ICP use some statistics information to cancel points that are considered outliers. For series with 50 to 150 points statistic measures are often biased or statistic significance criteria are not met. I know of Assignment Problem in linear optimization, but it is not suitable for cases with unequal sets of points. Are there other, small-scale algorithms that solve the problem of matching 2 point sets? I am looking for algorithm names, scientific papers or C++ implementations. I need some hints to know where to start my search.

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  • Designing communications for extensibility

    - by Thomas S.
    I am working on the design stages of an application that will a) collect data from various sources (in my case that's scientific data from serial ports), keeping track of the age of the data, b) generate real-time statistics (e.g. running averages) c) display, record, and otherwise handle the data (and statistics). I anticipate that I will be adding both data producers and consumers over time, and would like to design this application abstractly so that I will be able to trivially add functionality with a small amount of interface code. What I'm stumbling on is deciding what communication infrastructure I should use to handle the interfaces. In particular, how should I make the processed data and statistics available to multiple consumers? Some things I've considered: Writing to several named pipes (variable number). Each consumer reads from one of them. Using FUSE to make a userspace filesystem where a read() returns the latest line of data even if another process has already read it. Making a TCP server, and having consumers connect and request data individually. Simply writing the consumers as part of the same program that aggregates the data. So I would like to hear your all's advice on deciding how to interface these functions in the best way to keep them separate and allow room for extenstions.

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  • Can you use programming for a greater good? [closed]

    - by jdoig
    What are the paths one could take to use their programming skills to benefit mankind (good causes, scientific or medical advancement, etc)? Problem: I dropped out of school, learnt programming, on my own, from text books and the internet. I have 7+ years of commercial experience from web applications to big data to mobile apps. But all I seem to do is make rich people richer with the vain hope that one day I'll be the guy with the good idea using other people to make myself richer. I googled for simular posts on the subject and saw a lot of people saying... "Just do your 9-5 job and donate a lot to charity"... I'm sorry to sound selfish but thats not what makes me tick; I need to be invested in and excited about the project at hand; it's not only got to be for a greater good but it's got to kick arse and feel good doing it too... Does that kind of job exist? Does it involve programming? What other skills do I need? (Apologies if this question is too 'fluffy' or 'wishy-washy', but if it is a pointer to where else I could ask it would be appreciated)

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  • Testing my model for hybrid scheduling in Embedded Systems

    - by markusian
    I am working on a project for school, where I have to analyze the performances of a few fixed-priority servers algorithms (polling server, deferrable server, priority exchange) using a simulator in the case of hybrid scheduling, where we have both hard periodic tasks and soft aperiodic tasks. In my model I consider that: the hard tasks have a period equal to their deadline, with a known worst case execution time (wcet). The actual execution time could be smaller than the wcet. the soft tasks have a known wcet and random interarrival times. The actual execution time could be smaller than the wcet. In order to test those algorithms I need realistic case studies. For this reason I'm digging in the scientific literature but I am facing different problems: Sometimes I find a list of hard tasks with wcet, but it is not specified how the soft tasks parameters are found. Given the wcet of a task, how can I model its actual execution time? This means, what random distribution should I use considering the wcet? How can I model the random interarrival times of soft aperiodic tasks?

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  • Effective optimization strategies on modern C++ compilers

    - by user168715
    I'm working on scientific code that is very performance-critical. An initial version of the code has been written and tested, and now, with profiler in hand, it's time to start shaving cycles from the hot spots. It's well-known that some optimizations, e.g. loop unrolling, are handled these days much more effectively by the compiler than by a programmer meddling by hand. Which techniques are still worthwhile? Obviously, I'll run everything I try through a profiler, but if there's conventional wisdom as to what tends to work and what doesn't, it would save me significant time. I know that optimization is very compiler- and architecture- dependent. I'm using Intel's C++ compiler targeting the Core 2 Duo, but I'm also interested in what works well for gcc, or for "any modern compiler." Here are some concrete ideas I'm considering: Is there any benefit to replacing STL containers/algorithms with hand-rolled ones? In particular, my program includes a very large priority queue (currently a std::priority_queue) whose manipulation is taking a lot of total time. Is this something worth looking into, or is the STL implementation already likely the fastest possible? Along similar lines, for std::vectors whose needed sizes are unknown but have a reasonably small upper bound, is it profitable to replace them with statically-allocated arrays? I've found that dynamic memory allocation is often a severe bottleneck, and that eliminating it can lead to significant speedups. As a consequence I'm interesting in the performance tradeoffs of returning large temporary data structures by value vs. returning by pointer vs. passing the result in by reference. Is there a way to reliably determine whether or not the compiler will use RVO for a given method (assuming the caller doesn't need to modify the result, of course)? How cache-aware do compilers tend to be? For example, is it worth looking into reordering nested loops? Given the scientific nature of the program, floating-point numbers are used everywhere. A significant bottleneck in my code used to be conversions from floating point to integers: the compiler would emit code to save the current rounding mode, change it, perform the conversion, then restore the old rounding mode --- even though nothing in the program ever changed the rounding mode! Disabling this behavior significantly sped up my code. Are there any similar floating-point-related gotchas I should be aware of? One consequence of C++ being compiled and linked separately is that the compiler is unable to do what would seem to be very simple optimizations, such as move method calls like strlen() out of the termination conditions of loop. Are there any optimization like this one that I should look out for because they can't be done by the compiler and must be done by hand? On the flip side, are there any techniques I should avoid because they are likely to interfere with the compiler's ability to automatically optimize code? Lastly, to nip certain kinds of answers in the bud: I understand that optimization has a cost in terms of complexity, reliability, and maintainability. For this particular application, increased performance is worth these costs. I understand that the best optimizations are often to improve the high-level algorithms, and this has already been done.

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  • How can I better manage far-reaching changes in my code?

    - by neuviemeporte
    In my work (writing scientific software in C++), I often get asked by the people who use the software to get their work done to add some functionality or change the way things are done and organized right now. Most of the time this is just a matter of adding a new class or a function and applying some glue to do the job, but from time to time, a seemingly simple change turns out to have far-reaching consequences that require me to redesign a substantial amount of existing code, which takes a lot of time and effort, and is difficult to evaluate in terms of time required. I don't think it has as much to do with inter-dependence of modules, as with changing requirements (admittedly, on a smaller scale). To provide an example, I was thinking about the recently-added multi-user functionality in Android. I don't know whether they planned to introduce it from the very beginning, but assuming they didn't, it seems hard to predict all the areas that will be affected by the change (apps preferences, themes, need to store account info somehow, etc...?), even though the concept seems simple enough, and the code is well-organized. How do you deal with such situations? Do you just jump in to code and then sort out the cruft later like I do? Or do you do a detailed analysis beforehand of what will be affected, what needs to be updated and how, and what has to be rewritten? If so, what tools (if any) and approaches do you use?

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