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• How to focus on one topic? [closed]

  - by Brian

  I have a huge problem while reading computer books. Every couple pages I'll end up googling something I want to learn more about, but then I'll find something on that page that I'll want to learn more about and google that (sometimes programming related, sometime hardware related). Normally after wasting around 3 hours going into different subjects I'll return to the original text only to repeat the process a few pages later. Any advice for sticking to one subject and learning that in-depth? I have tons of programming books I've read half-way through since I'll become interested in other languages/topics (not that I'm not interested in the books I've started). Also, what would be worth focusing on in depth? I've gone into Python in the most depth but for classes I'm learning Java and assembly (ARM and Motorola 68000). Also, I've taken a class on C++. Lately I've been spending most of my time learning about Linux instead of programming though. I'm not sure what would be worth focusing on the most to get a job. In other words, how can you focus on one topic and not let curiosity about everything else get in the way? Thanks in advance, Brian

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• XNA 2D Board game - trouble with the cursor

  - by Adorjan

  I just have started making a simple 2D board game using XNA, but I got stuck at the movement of the cursor. This is my problem: I have a 10x10 table on with I should use a cursor to navigate. I simply made that table with the spriteBatch.Draw() function because I couldn't do it on another way. So here is what I did with the cursor: public override void LoadContent() { ... mutato.Position = new Vector2(X, Y); //X=103, Y=107; mutato.Sebesseg = 45; ... mutato.Initialize(content.Load<Texture2D>("cursor"),mutato.Position,mutato.Sebesseg); ... } public override void HandleInput(InputState input) { if (input == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("input"); // Look up inputs for the active player profile. int playerIndex = (int)ControllingPlayer.Value; KeyboardState keyboardState = input.CurrentKeyboardStates[playerIndex]; if (input.IsPauseGame(ControllingPlayer) || gamePadDisconnected) { ScreenManager.AddScreen(new PauseMenuScreen(), ControllingPlayer); } else { // Otherwise move the player position. if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) { Y = (int)mutato.Position.Y + mutato.Move; } if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { Y = (int)mutato.Position.Y - mutato.Move; } if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { X = (int)mutato.Position.X - mutato.Move; } if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { X = (int)mutato.Position.X + mutato.Move; } } } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { mutato.Draw(spriteBatch); } Here's the cursor's (mutato) class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace Battleship.Components { class Cursor { public Texture2D Cursortexture; public Vector2 Position; public int Move; public void Initialize(Texture2D texture, Vector2 position,int move) { Cursortexture = texture; Position = position; Move = move; } public void Update() { } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw(Cursortexture, Position, Color.White); } } } And here is a part of the InputState class where I think I should change something: public bool IsNewKeyPress(Keys key, PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer, out PlayerIndex playerIndex) { if (controllingPlayer.HasValue) { // Read input from the specified player. playerIndex = controllingPlayer.Value; int i = (int)playerIndex; return (CurrentKeyboardStates[i].IsKeyDown(key) && LastKeyboardStates[i].IsKeyUp(key)); } } If I leave the movement operation like this it doesn't have any sense: X = (int)mutato.Position.X - mutato.Move; However if I modify it to this: X = (int)mutato.Position.X--; it moves smoothly. Instead of this I need to move the cursor by fields (45 pixels), but I don't have any idea how to manage it.

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• How do you keep SOA DRY?

  - by TaylorOtwell

  In our organization, we've shifted to a more "service oriented architecture". To give an example, let's assume we need to retrieve a "Quote" object. This quote has a shipper, a consignee, phone numbers, contacts, email addresses, and other location information. In other words, a Quote object is made up of many other objects. So, it seems like it would make sense to make a "Quote Retrieval Service". In our situation, we've accomplished this by creating a .NET solution and writing the service. The service API looks something like this (in pseudo-code): Function GetQuote(String ID) Returns Quote So, so far so good. Now, when this service is consumed, to keep things "de-coupled", we are creating essentially a duplicate of the Quote object and mapping from the QuoteService version of the Quote into the consumer's version of the Quote. In many cases, these classes will have the exact same properties. So, if the Quote service is consumed by 5 other applications, we would have 6 definitions of what a "Quote" is. One for each consumer, and one for the service. This feels wrong. I thought code was supposed to be DRY, but it seems like our method of SOA is forcing us to create tons of duplicated class definitions. What are we doing wrong, or is the code duplication just a "necessary evil" of SOA?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 28, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 28, 2012Popular ReleasesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 7): This release is compatible with the version of the Smooth Streaming SDK released today (10/26). Release 1 of the player framework is expected to be available next week. IMPROVEMENTS & FIXESIMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 6 Support for the latest smooth streaming SDK. Xaml only: Support for moving any of the UI elements outside the MediaPlayer (e.g. into the appbar). Note: Equivelent changes to the JS version due in coming week. Support for localizing all text used in t...Send multiple SMS via Way2SMS C#: SMS 1.1: Added support for 160by2Quick Launch: Quick Launch 1.0: A Lightweight and Fast Way to Manage and Launch Thousands of Tools and ApplicationsPress Win+Q and start to search and run. http://www.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=quicklaunch&DownloadId=523536Orchard Project: Orchard 1.6: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.6: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-6-Release-Notes Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you will pollute the rating, and you won't get an answer.ZXMAK2: Version 2.6.7.0: - small performance improvements - fix & improvements for Direct3D renderer (thanks to zebest for testing)Media Companion: Media Companion 3.507b: Once again, it has been some time since our release, and there have been a number changes since then. It is hoped that these changes will address some of the issues users have been experiencing, and of course, work continues! New Features: Added support for adding Home Movies. Option to sort Movies by votes. Added 'selectedBrowser' preference used when opening links in an external browser. Added option to fallback to getting runtime from the movie file if not available on IMDB. Added new Big...MSBuild Extension Pack: October 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack October 2012 release provides a collection of over 475 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUI...NAudio: NAudio 1.6: Release notes at http://mark-dot-net.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/naudio-16-release-notes-10th.htmlPowerShell Community Extensions: 2.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 2.1 Release NotesOct 25, 2012 This version of PSCX supports both Windows PowerShell 2.0 and 3.0. See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.1: Umbraco 4.9.1 is a bugfix release to fix major issues in 4.9.0 BugfixesThe full list of fixes can be found in the issue tracker's filtered results. A summary: Split buttons work again, you can now also scroll easier when the list is too long for the screen Media and Content pickers have information of the full path of the picked item Fixed: Publish status may not be accurate on nodes with large doctypes Fixed: 2 media folders and recycle bins after upgrade to 4.9 The template/code ...AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.2.2: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...Rawr: Rawr 5.0.2: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.5: Changelog for 2.3.5 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug causing MCEBuddy to crash during or after installation on Windows XP 2. Bugfix for resource leak with UPnP which would lead to a failure after many days 3. Increased the UPnP discovery re-scan interval from 10 minutes to 30 minutes 4. Added support for specifying TVDB and IMDB id’s in the conversion task page (forcing the internet lookup for metadata)CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1025.5): [NEW] Support for connecting to CRM Online via Office 365 (OSDP) [NEW] Current connection information and loaded ribbon name are displayed in the status bar [IMPROVED] Connect dialog minor improvements and error message descriptions [IMPROVED] Connecting to a CRM server will close currently loaded ribbon upon confirmation (if another ribbon was loaded previously) [FIX] Fixed bug in Open Ribbon dialog which would not allow to refresh entity list more than onceReadable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.8.0: Changes: Interrogative phrases (questions) like why did the statesman burgle amidst lucid sunlamps Support transitive / intransitive verbs (whether a verb needs a subject or not). Change adverbs to be either before or after the verb, at random. Add an "equal" version of each strength, where each possibility is equally likely (for password purists). 3401 words in the default dictionary (~400 more than previous release) Fixed bugs when choosing verb tenseseWay payment gateway provider for NB_Store: NB_Store_Gateway_eWay: Install package for eWAY gateway for NB_Store.fastJSON: v2.0.9: - added support for root level DataSet and DataTable deserialize (you have to do ToObject<DataSet>(...) ) - added dataset testsMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.72: Fix for Issue #18819 - bad optimization of return/assign operator.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.390: Version 2.5.0.390 (Release Candidate): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Fix recent file list remove issue. WAF: Minor code improvements. BookLibrary: Fix Blend design time support o...Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.1: Ovo je prva nadogradnja ovog projekta nakon inicijalnog predstavljanja - dodali smo nekoliko feature-a, bilo zato što smo sami primijetili da bi ih bilo dobro dodati, bilo na osnovu vaših sugestija - hvala svima koji su se ukljucili :) Ovo su stvari riješene u v1.1.: 1. Bilo bi dobro da se XML dokument koji se šalje u CIS može snimiti u datoteku (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/612) 2. Podrška za COM DLL (VB6) (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/613) 3. Podrška za DOS (unu...New ProjectsAnalytics for Windows 8: SIlverlight / WPF User control integrated in WPF / SILVERLIGHT / WINDOWS PHONE Apps in order to collect user data ( Action , Timespan etc ) . bGui - User Interfaces in Batch: A small project for allowing basic user interface creation in batch. Still under strict development, see documentation for current functionality.Blog Projects: Projects wich i use in my blog postsCloud Sync Service: This Windows Service lets you sync your files across other machines by using Cloud File Storage as gateway. Amazon S3 and Windows Azure supported.CocoaVP8: CocoaVP8 is a dual-licensed commercial/GPL native library which allows Mac and iOS applications to easily use the VP8 video codec.DarkSky Orchard Microdata: Microdata is an Orchard module that exposes a MicrodataPart that will render microdata for your content items.Gerenciador Paroquial: Um conjunto de ferramentas desenvolvido para auxiliar a administração de comunidades eclesiásticas episcopais.Quick Launch: Quick Launch - a New Lightweight and Fast Way to Manage and Launch Thousands of Tools and ApplicationsRDI Alef: RDI ALEF (ALef Entities Framework) é uma biblioteca desenvolvida em C# para persistência de objetos em um banco de dados. Encapsula um manipulador SQL e o funciSend multiple SMS via Way2SMS C#: Way2SMS, 160BY2, SMS, INDIATrending: Trending program; calculates the highest and lowest changes in frequency of specific words in two files.

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• How can I get nvidia-96 installed?

  - by Bob

  I'm at my wits end here. This is my last effort before I go back to Windows. I need to get nvidia-96 proprietary driver installed. Synaptic won't install it because it says it has dependencies. I installed every single dependency it listed except for "xorg-video-abi-10" which does not show up as an item that can be installed. I have no idea what to do. Using 11.10 with a NVIDIA Geforce 3 GPU. Anyone know how to get this dang driver installed? @fossfreedom: the opensource driver is extremely slow. So slow that the OS is unusable—words appear seconds after I type them—programs take forever to perform actions. Also it is causing my monitor to turn on and off for no reason. @yossile: synaptic shows that I have xserver-xorg-core installed. And xserver-xorg-core-udeb does not show up as something that can be installed. @papseddy: when I try to install the downloaded nvidia driver it says it won't work until I disable Nouveau kernel driver. I have tried everything to get this dang Nouveau kernel driver disabled. Nothing has been successful.

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• Perspective Is Everything

  - by juanlarios

  Sitting on a window seat on my way back from Seattle I looked out the window and saw the large body of water. I was reminded of childhood memories of running as hard as I could through burning hot sand with the anticipation of the splash of the ocean. Looking out the window the water appeared like a sheet draped over land. I couldn’t help but ponder how perspective changes everything.  Over the last several days I had a chance to attend the MVP Summit in Redmond. I had a great time with fellow MVP’s and the SharePoint Product Group. Although I can’t say much about what was discussed and what is coming in the future, I want to share some realizations I had while experiencing the MVP summit.  The SharePoint Product is ever-improving, full of innovation but also a reactionary embodiment of MVP, client and market feedback. There are several features that come to mind that clients complain about where I have felt helpless in informing them that the features are not as mature as they would like it. Together, we figure out a way to make it work and deal with the limitations. It became clear that there are features that have taken a different purpose in the market place from the original vision. The SP Product group is working hard to react to these changes in vision and make SharePoint better for real life implementations.  It is easy to think that SharePoint should be all things to all people. In reality there are products that are very detailed in specific composites, they do this one thing well but severely lack in other areas.  Its easy sometimes to say, “What was Microsoft thinking with this feature?” the Product group is doing all they can to make the moving pieces better and dealing with challenges with having all of them work together.  Sometimes the features don’t fully embody the vision because of the many challenges, but trust me when I say the product group is really focused on delivery and innovation.  As I was speaking with a fellow MVP throughout the session, we spoke about the iPad 2(ironically announced this past week during the MVP summit) and Microsoft’s possible product answer; I realized the days of reactionary products from MS is over. There are many users that will remember Vista and the painful execution in that product, but there has been a lot of success in Windows 7. There was no rush for a reactionary answer to the Nintendo Wii, as a result a ground breaking and game changing product was brought to market, the XBOX –Kinect! I can’t say much here, but it’s safe to say, expect innovation, and execution of products and technology that will change the market instead of react to them!       There are many things I learned and I would love to share that have to do with perspective, technology, etc… but this is far as I can go in details. This might not be new to you or specifically the message that was shared during the summit. These are just my impressions of the event and the spirit of future vision. Great things ahead!

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• HP Envy dv6t-7300: Disabled WiFi through button and can't enable it anymore

  - by Mateus B. Cassiano

  Well, I have a HP Envy dv6t-7300 laptop that came with a Ralink RT5390 WiFi card. Everything was working perfectly, and eventually I press the WiFi button in my keyboard to toggle the card on/off. Until today, all worked right: if the wifi was off (wifi LED amber) and I press the wifi button, after a few seconds the LED turn white and everything works. If I repeat the process, the wifi LED turn amber and the card get disabled, but now, I can't turn it on anymore. running sudo rfkill list all I get: 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes So, I ran sudo rfkill unblock all but nothing changed. As a side note, if I run sudo ifconfig wlan0 up, the indicator LED gets white (indicating that the card was enabled), but Ubuntu still say that the card is blocked by hardware. Extra information: the card works without issues in windows and in Ubuntu installer (booting from a live CD). I'm using the card out-of-box, using the drivers already included in Ubuntu 12.10. The module rt2800pci is loaded and working fine, not blacklisted, etc, etc. The card and the button toggle worked flawlessly until today, when I toggled it off and can't turn it on anymore... The problem is back, but in a different manner: if I don't press the wifi key a few times during the grub loading, in the login screen the wifi button will be ambar (disabled), pressing it will toggle it white (enabled) or ambar (disabled) again, but ubuntu still says that the network card was disabled by hardware and doesn't connect... In other words, if I don't press the WiFi button a few times when Ubuntu is booting, it will be stuck with the "network card was disabled by hardware" message, even if the light is white (enabled). Any clue? Maybe a error in some startup script or config file?

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• Oracle is Child&rsquo;s Play&hellip;in NSW

  - by divya.malik

  A few weeks ago, my colleague Michael Seback posted a blog entry on Oracle’s acquisition of Haley.  We recently read  an interesting report from Down Under, and here was our press release on the  implementation of Oracle’s Policy automation software in New South Wales, which I thought I would share. We always love hearing about our software “at work”, and especially in the Public Sector- social services area, where it makes a big difference to people’s lives. Here were some of the reasons, why NSW chose Oracle software: “One of the things Oracle’s Policy Automation system is good at is allowing you take decision  trees and rules that are obviously written in English and code them up using very much a natural language approach,” said Holling (CIO for Human Services). “So it was quite a short process to translate the final set of rules that were written on paper into business rules that were actually embedded in the system.” “Another reason why we chose Oracle’s Automation tool is because with future versions of Siebel it comes very tightly integrated with that. It allows us to then to basically take the results of the Policy Automation survey and actually populate our client management system database with that information,” said Holling. As per Surend Dayal, North America VP, Oracle’s Policy automation has applications across a wide range of industries, including public sector—especially health and human services—also financial services, insurance, and even airline rewards programs. In other words, any business process that requires consistent, accurate decision-making where complex legislation and/or internal policies are involved. Click here to read more about Oracle and Haley.

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• My Only Gripe With Programming

  - by David Espejo

  Is that im having trouble practicing problems. Even if I decide to practice the problems from my C++ book, they dont give any idea of the way the solution(program) should look like, so that I may compare to see if my program is similar in anyway. My book gives me to many generic "Write a program to do "this" " projects without really showing a concrete example of what "this" really is. In other words How Do I Know That I did "that". One problem in my book said to write a program that calculates the sales tax on a given item????? First of all slase tax differs on state(whats the state,) whats the item(a house, a dog,) How can I check this to see if im right. Programming books dont have answer keys! I know that there is no ABSOLUTE answer, thats just silly, programs can be written in many ways, but a sample of what one would look like based of the difficulty of the problem would really help! Is there a solution to this, maby a book that has worked out examples for the problems they give , or online sources that do something similar.(is there such thing as a programming book with an answer key?)

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• I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?

  - by kmote

  I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice. I am newly employed as the sole "SW Engineer" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 years cobbling together a vast code base. (It was written in a virtually obsolete language: G2 -- think Pascal with graphics). The program itself is a physical model of a complex chemical processing plant; the team that wrote it have incredibly deep domain knowledge but little or no formal training in programming fundamentals. They've recently learned some hard lessons about the consequences of non-existant configuration management. Their maintenance efforts are also greatly hampered by the vast accumulation of undocumented "sludge" in the code itself. I will spare you the "politics" of the situation (there's always politics!), but suffice to say, there is not a consensus of opinion about what is needed for the path ahead. They have asked me to begin presenting to the team some of the principles of modern software development. They want me to introduce some of the industry-standard practices and strategies regarding coding conventions, lifecycle management, high-level design patterns, and source control. Frankly, it's a fairly daunting task and I'm not sure where to begin. Initially, I'm inclined to tutor them in some of the central concepts of The Pragmatic Programmer, or Fowler's Refactoring ("Code Smells", etc). I also hope to introduce a number of Agile methodologies. But ultimately, to be effective, I think I'm going to need to hone in on 5-7 core fundamentals; in other words, what are the most important principles or practices that they can realistically start implementing that will give them the most "bang for the buck". So that's my question: What would you include in your list of the most effective strategies to help straighten out the spaghetti (and prevent it in the future)?

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• How to combat negative SEO?

  - by Perturbed

  Someone has decided to create a hate blog on a hosted blogging service (wordpress.com) that bashes my company. The blog contains posts that completely flame myself, my service, and contains complete falsehoods about how I run my business. Without going into details, I'm pretty sure the author of this blog is an owner of a competing service (although it is authored completely anonymously). Frankly, I'm not sure if the content would qualify for defamation or not, but I really don't like the idea of spending money on a lawyer to even attempt to prove this. I also have no interest in retorting or even replying to the blog in any sort of way -- I feel this would justify the ludicrous claims that have been posted. Unfortunately, whoever wrote the blog was pretty smart about using key words that people commonly use to search for my service. Because my customer base is relatively small and local, our PageRank is not incredibly high. As a result, when someone Google's our business name, this blog is usually within the top five results (thankfully, it's never above the business' actual website, but it's usually within eyeshot). It's incredibly frustrating to hear from customers who have seen the link (luckily, most of the time they think the author is crazy). Is there anything I can do to combat this? Would it be worthwhile to setup my own hosted wordpress.com branded blog, in an effort to trump this wordpress.com with a blog that is more active of my own? TL;DR: Someone made a hate blog using wordpress.com and is now on the first page of my business' search results. What are my options?

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• What and all the areas of Linux a PHP developer should know about? (Like just commands of it or something advanced)

  - by droidsites

  I've developed a website using PHP but I implemented it on Windows OS and hosted it on Windows server. I just searched the PHP job market to know the on-going technology requirement and to keep my knowledge up-to-date accordingly with the job market. I see more are asking for LAMP stack. I understand the sort of skills required for a developer in PHP and MySQL. But coming to the Linux and Apache what kind of the skills exactly companies expect from a developer? On what should I be focusing in case of Linux, Apache whilst developing my website using these LAMP stack? I am going to develop a new website and want it to be using LAMP. But I want to know what difference it makes? Why LAMP stack got more demand in the job market compared to WAMP ? Edit: Sorry I thought my question is creating confusion ... so I put my question in different words as What and all the areas of a Linux a PHP developer should know about? (Like just commands of it or something advanced) Note: I am Linux newbie

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• Breaking up classes and methods into smaller units

  - by micahhoover

  During code reviews a couple devs have recommended I break up my methods into smaller methods. Their justification was (1) increased readability and (2) the back trace that comes back from production showing the method name is more specific to the line of code that failed. There may have also been some colorful words about functional programming. Additionally I think I may have failed an interview a while back because I didn't give an acceptable answer about when to break things up. My inclination is that when I see a bunch of methods in a class or across a bunch of files, it isn't clear to me how they flow together, and how many times each one gets called. I don't really have a good feel for the linearity of it as quickly just by eye-balling it. The other thing is a lot of people seem to place a premium of organization over content (e.g. 'Look at how organized my sock drawer is!' Me: 'Overall, I think I can get to my socks faster if you count the time it took to organize them'). Our business requirements are not very stable. I'm afraid that if the classes/methods are very granular it will take longer to refactor to requirement changes. I'm not sure how much of a factor this should be. Anyway, computer science is part art / part science, but I'm not sure how much this applies to this issue.

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• Is there a typical career path to learn game development "on the job"?

  - by mac

  The extended version of the question is: what is the typical career paths that a developer without specific experience in game development should take if he/she wishes to work in the game development industry? In other words, what are the positions such a programmer might aspire to get hired for, in the game industry? I am asking because it seems to me that - even without direct experience with 3D modelling, physics engines, shaders, etc... - for as much complex as these topics might be - they are still "just" top layers one can learn "on the job" if he/she has already good programming skills and experience in software design (for example during peer-programming sessions). I have no knowledge whatsoever of the game industry, so maybe I am being naïve here, but for all the other programming jobs I previously took, I learnt most of the specificities while working on concrete projects... so I wonder if there is a chance to do the same with game development. Thanks for your time and advice! :) PS: I don't know if this is important or not for answering the question, but scripting languages are the languages I am more proficient in. /mac

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• Unified data source for k2 installed Joomla websites

  - by Özkan ÖZLÜ

  I am responsible for a few web sites of my organization. I use Joomla! 2.5.9 for those web sites. They all are running at the same server. I use K2 component for content managing. I have a general website in which shows all the staff information at the 'Staff' page. Also some of those people and their contents are shown in another department's website. So, there are databases for each web site. For example: In the general website (let's say general.org), when I click on the 'Staff' menu item, page shows all of the people work at my organization. Also they work at different departments. In another web site (eg: education.general.org) when I click on the 'Staff' menu item, it shows the people work at education department. But for each web site, I have different user accounts which means a modification in one of them does not affect the other one. If the one of the education staff tries to change his profile picture on the education web site, he also has to do it on the general web site. And sometimes one person might be working at two departments. Thus he has to edit three times of his data. Is it possible to merge the records for all websites? In other words, I want everyone to insert/update their data on the general web site, and the other web sites will be updated automatically.

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• Does LINQ require significantly more processing cycles and memory than lower-level data iteration techniques?

  - by Matthew Patrick Cashatt

  Background I am recently in the process of enduring grueling tech interviews for positions that use the .NET stack, some of which include silly questions like this one, and some questions that are more valid. I recently came across an issue that may be valid but I want to check with the community here to be sure. When asked by an interviewer how I would count the frequency of words in a text document and rank the results, I answered that I would Use a stream object put the text file in memory as a string. Split the string into an array on spaces while ignoring punctuation. Use LINQ against the array to .GroupBy() and .Count(), then OrderBy() said count. I got this answer wrong for two reasons: Streaming an entire text file into memory could be disasterous. What if it was an entire encyclopedia? Instead I should stream one block at a time and begin building a hash table. LINQ is too expensive and requires too many processing cycles. I should have built a hash table instead and, for each iteration, only added a word to the hash table if it didn't otherwise exist and then increment it's count. The first reason seems, well, reasonable. But the second gives me more pause. I thought that one of the selling points of LINQ is that it simply abstracts away lower-level operations like hash tables but that, under the veil, it is still the same implementation. Question Aside from a few additional processing cycles to call any abstracted methods, does LINQ require significantly more processing cycles to accomplish a given data iteration task than a lower-level task (such as building a hash table) would?

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• The World of SQL Database Deployment

  - by GGBlogger

  In my early development days, I used Microsoft Access for building databases. It made things easy since I only needed to package the database with the installation package so my clients would have access to it. When we began the development of a new package in Visual Studio .NET I decided to use SQL Server Express. It was free and provided good tools - also free. I thought it was a tremendous idea until it came time to distribute our new software! What a surprise. The nightmare Ah, the choices! Detach the database and have the client reattach it to a newly installed – oh wait. FIRST my new client needs to download and install SQL Server Express with SQL Server Management Studio. That’s not a great thing, but it is one more nightmare step for users who may have other versions of SQL installed. Then the question became – do we detach and reattach or do we do a backup. It was too late (bad planning) to revert to Microsoft Access but we badly needed a simple way to package and distribute both the database AND sample contents. Red Gate to the rescue It took me a while to find an answer but I did find it in a package called SQL Packager sold by a relatively unpublicized company in England called Red Gate. They call their products “ingeniously simple” and I must agree with that description. With SQL Packager you point to the database (more in a minute) you want to distribute. A few mouse clicks and dialogs and you have an executable file that you can ship virtually anywhere and virtually any way which, when run, installs the database on your destination SQL Server instance! It really is that simple. Easier to show than tell Let’s explore a hypothetical case. Let’s say you have a local SQL database of customers and you have decided you want to share it with your subsidiaries or partners. Here is the underlying screen you will see on starting SQL Packager. There are a bunch of possibilities here but I’m going to keep this relatively simple. At this point I simply want to illustrate the simplicity of generating an executable to deliver your database. You will notice that you can set up a new package, edit an existing package or change a bunch of options. Start SQL packager And the following is the default dialog you get on startup. In the next dialog, I’ve selected the Server and Database. I’ve also selected Windows Authentication. Pressing Next causes SQL Packager to run a number of checks and produce a report. Now you’re given a comprehensive list of what is going to be packaged and you’re allowed to change it if you desire. I’ve never made any changes here so I can’t really make any suggestions. The just illustrates the comprehensive nature of so many Red Gate products including this one. Clicking Next gives you still further options. SQL Packager then works its magic and shows you a dialog with the results. Packager then gives you a dialog of the scripts it has generated. The capture above only shows 1 of 4 tabs. Finally pressing Next gives you the option to generate a .NET executable of a C# project. I’ve only generated an executable so I’m not in a position to tell you what the C# project looks like. That may be the subject of further discussions. You can rename the package and tell SQL Packager where to save it. I’ve skipped a lot but this will serve to illustrate the comprehensive (and ingenious) things Red Gate does. All in all, it’s a superb way to distribute populated SQL databases. Oh – we’ll save running the resulting executable for later also but believe me it’s insanely simple.

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• Why it is called "hash table", or "hash function"? Hash doesn't make any sense to me here

  - by Saeed Neamati

  It's now about 4 years of development that I'm using, hearing, talking about, and implementing hash tables and hash functions. But I really never understand why it's called hash? I remember the first days I started programming, this term was kind'of cumbersome terminology to me. I never figured out what is it, based on its name. I just experimentally understood what it does and why and when should we use it. However, I still sometimes try to figure out why it's called hash. I have no problem with table or function and to be honest, they are pretty deductive, rational terms. However, I think better words could be used instead of hash, like key, or uniqueness. Don't key table or uniqueness table. According to my dictionary, hash means: Fried dish of potato and meats (highly irrelevant) # symbol (AKA number sign, pound sign, etc.) (still irrelevant, maybe just a mis-nomenclature) Apply algorithm to character string (still has nothing to do with uniqueness, which is the most important feature of a hash table) Cut food Another term for hashish Does anyone know why it's called hash?

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• Best way to mask 2D sprites in XNA?

  - by electroflame

  I currently am trying to mask some sprites. Rather than explaining it in words, I've made up some example pictures: The area to mask (in white) Now, the red sprite that needs to be cropped. The final result. Now, I'm aware that in XNA you can do two things to accomplish this: Use the Stencil Buffer. Use a Pixel Shader. I have tried to do a pixel shader, which essentially did this: float4 main(float2 texCoord : TEXCOORD0) : COLOR0 { float4 tex = tex2D(BaseTexture, texCoord); float4 bitMask = tex2D(MaskTexture, texCoord); if (bitMask.a > 0) { return float4(tex.r, tex.g, tex.b, tex.a); } else { return float4(0, 0, 0, 0); } } This seems to crop the images (albeit, not correct once the image starts to move), but my problem is that the images are constantly moving (they aren't static), so this cropping needs to be dynamic. Is there a way I could alter the shader code to take into account it's position? Alternatively, I've read about using the Stencil Buffer, but most of the samples seem to hinge on using a rendertarget, which I really don't want to do. (I'm already using 3 or 4 for the rest of the game, and adding another one on top of it seems overkill) The only tutorial I've found that doesn't use Rendertargets is one from Shawn Hargreaves' blog over here. The issue with that one, though is that it's for XNA 3.1, and doesn't seem to translate well to XNA 4.0. It seems to me that the pixel shader is the way to go, but I'm unsure of how to get the positioning correct. I believe I would have to change my onscreen coordinates (something like 500, 500) to be between 0 and 1 for the shader coordinates. My only problem is trying to work out how to correctly use the transformed coordinates. Thanks in advance for any help!

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• String Conversion to Char for Java Game

  - by Jen

  Is there someone who could help me achieve the following points on this problems? I can't seem to get it. I tried using toCharArray and Scanner to achieve this, but it doesn't work, nor do I know how to make this things possible for my word game. :( · Get a popular name of person, place, verse, saying or event from the user. This may have a single or multiple words in it. · Create a copy of this string to an array where each letter is replaced with a hyphen (-) and each space is replaced with an underscore (_). Symbols and numbers will remain shown. · The program then asks a letter from the user. If the letter is in the inputted string, then it should be shown on the array at the same position it is shown in the string. Meaning, the letter replaces the hyphen (-) at the correct position of the array. · The program again prompts for a letter from the user and replaces the hyphen (-) of the array if it exists on the inputted string. This will be repeatedly done until such time each hyphen (-) is replaced with the correct letter. · If the user inputs an invalid letter, that is, a letter that does not exist on the inputted string, then the program should inform the user. If this happens 3 times while there is still at least one hyphen on the array, then the program should inform the user that he lost the game and showing him the whole correct string. · If the user completes the game, meaning, all hyphens have been replaced with the correct letters; then the program should congratulate the user for a job well done.

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• Best way to lay-out the website when sections of it are almost identical

  - by Linas

  so, I have a minisite for the mobile application that I did. The mobile application is a public transport (transit) schedule viewer for a particular city (let's call it Foo), and I'm trying to sell it via that minisite. I publish that minisite in www.myawesomeapplication.com/foo/. It has the usual "standard" subpages, like "About", "Compatible phones", "Contact", etc. Now, I have decided to create analogue mobile application for other cities, Bar and Baz. These mobile applications (products) would be almost identical to the one for the Foo city, thus the minisites for those would (should) look very similar too (except for some artwork and Foo = Bar replacement). The question is: what do you think would be the most logical way to lay-out the website in this situation, both from the business and search engine perspective? In other words, should I just duplicate the /foo/ website to /bar/ and /baz/, or would it be better to try to create a single website under root path (/)? I don't want search engine penalties for almost-duplicate information under /foo/, /bar/ and /baz/, and also I don't want a messy, non-localized website (I guess the user is more likely to buy something if he/she sees "This-and-that is the application for NYC, the city you live in", not "This-and-that is the application for city A, city B, ..., NYC, ..., and city Z.")

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• People != Resources

  - by eddraper

  Ken Tabor’s blog post “They Are not Resources – We Are People” struck a chord with me.  I distinctly remember hearing the term “resources” within the context of “people” for the first time back in the late 90’s.  I was in a meeting at Compaq and a manager had been faced with some new scope for an IT project he was managing.  His response was that he needed more “resources” in order to get the job done.  As I knew the timeline for the project was fixed and the process for acquiring additional funding would almost certainly extend beyond his expected delivery date, I wondered what he meant.  After the meeting, I asked him what he meant… his response was that he needed some more “bodies” to get the job done.  For a minute, my mind whirred… why is it so difficult to simply say “people?”  This particular manager was neither a bad person nor a bad manager… quite the contrary.  I respected him quite a bit and still do.  Over time, I began to notice that he was what could be termed an “early adopter” of many “Business speak” terms – such as “sooner rather than later,” “thrown a curve,” “boil the ocean” etcetera.  Over time, I’ve discovered that much of this lexicon can actually be useful, though cliché and overused.  For example, “Boil the ocean” does serve a useful purpose in distilling a lot of verbiage and meaning into three simple words that paint a clear mental picture.  The term “resources” would serve a similar purpose if it were applied to the concept of time, funding, or people.  The problem is that this never happened.  “Resources”, “bodies”, “ICs” (individual contributors)… this is what “people” have become in the IT business world.  Why?  We’re talking about simple word choices here.  Why have human beings been deliberately dehumanized and abstracted in this manner? What useful purpose does it serve other than to demean and denigrate?

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• Extreme Portability: OpenJDK 7 and GlassFish 3.1.1 on Power Mac G5!

  - by MarkH

  Occasionally you hear someone grumble about platform support for some portion or combination of the Java product "stack". As you're about to see, this really is not as much of a problem as you might think. Our friend John Yeary was able to pull off a pretty slick feat with his vintage Power Mac G5. In his words: Using a build script sent to me by Kurt Miller, build recommendations from Kelly O'Hair, and the great work of the BSD Port team... I created a new build of OpenJDK 7 for my PPC based system using the Zero VM. The results are fantastic. I can run GlassFish 3.1.1 along with all my enterprise applications. I recently had the opportunity to pick up an old G5 for little money and passed on it. What would I do with it? At the time, I didn't think it would be more than a space-consuming novelty. Turns out...I could have had some fun and a useful piece of hardware at the same time. Maybe it's time to go bargain-hunting again. For more information about repurposing classic Apple hardware and learning a few JDK-related tricks in the process, visit John's site for the full article, available here. All the best,Mark

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• Representing Mauritius in the 2013 Bench Games

  Only by chance I came across an interesting option for professionals and enthusiasts in IT, and quite honestly I can't even remember where I caught attention of Brainbench and their 2013 Bench Games event. But having access to 600+ free exams in a friendly international intellectual competition doesn't happen to be available every day. So, it was actually a no-brainer to sign up and browse through the various categories. Most interestingly, Brainbench is not only IT-related. They offer a vast variety of fields in their Test Center, like Languages and Communication, Office Skills, Management, Aptitude, etc., and it can be a little bit messy about how things are organised. Anyway, while browsing through their test offers I added a couple of exams to 'My Plan' which I would give a shot afterwards. Self-assessments Actually, I took the tests based on two major aspects: 'Fun Factor' and 'How good would I be in general'... Usually, you have to pay for any kind of exams and given this unique chance by Brainbench to simply train this kind of tests was already worth the time. Frankly speaking, the tests are very close to the ones you would be asked to do at Prometric or Pearson Vue, ie. Microsoft exams, etc. Go through a set of multiple choice questions in a given time frame. Most of the tests I did during the Bench Games were based on 40 questions, each with a maximum of 3 minutes to answer. Ergo, one test in maximum 2 hours - that sounds feasible, doesn't it? The Measure of Achievement While the 2013 Bench Games are considered a worldwide friendly competition of knowledge I was really eager to get other Mauritians attracted. Using various social media networks and community activities it all looked quite well at the beginning. Mauritius was listed on rank #19 of Most Certified Citizens and rank #10 of Most Master Level Certified Nation - not bad, not bad... Until... the next update of the Bench Games Leaderboard. The downwards trend seemed to be unstoppable and I couldn't understand why my results didn't show up on the Individual Leader Board. First of all, I passed exams that were not even listed and second, I had better results on some exams listed. After some further information from the organiser it turned out that my test transcript wasn't available to the public. Only then results are considered and counted in the competition. During that time, I actually managed to hold 3 test results on the Individuals... Other participants were merciless, eh, more successful than me, produced better test results than I did. But still I managed to stay on the final score board: An 'exotic' combination of exam, test result, country and person itself Representing Mauritius and the Visual FoxPro community in that fun event. And although I mainly develop in Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP2 and C# using .NET Framework from 2.0 to 4.5 since a couple of years I still managed to pass on Master Level. Hm, actually my Microsoft Certified Programmer (MCP) exams are dated back in June 2004 - more than 9 years ago... Look who got lucky... As described above I did a couple of exams as time allowed and without any preparations, but still I received the following mail notification: "Thank you for recently participating in our Bench Games event.  We wanted to inform you that you obtained a top score on our test(s) during this event, and as a result, will receive a free annual Brainbench subscription.  Your annual subscription will give you access to all our tests just like Bench Games, but for an entire year plus additional benefits!" -- Leader Board Notification from Brainbench Even fun activities get rewarded sometimes. Thanks to @Brainbench_com for the free annual subscription based on my passed 2013 Bench Games Master Level exam. It would be interesting to know about the total figures, especially to see how many citizens of Mauritius took part in this year's Bench Games. Anyway, I'm looking forward to be able to participate in other challenges like this in the future.

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• Bowing to User Experience

  As a consumer of geeky news it is hard to check my Google Reader without running into two or three posts about Apples iPad and in particular the changes to the developer guidelines which seemingly restrict developers to using Apples Xcode tool and Objective-C language for iPad apps. One of the alternatives to Objective-C affected, is MonoTouch, an option with some appeal to me as it is based on the Mono implementation of C#. Seemingly restricted is the key word here, as far as I can tell, no official announcement has been made about its fate. For more details around MonoTouch for iPhone OS, check out Miguel de Icazas post: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Apr-28.html. These restrictions have provoked some outrage as the perception is that Apple is arrogantly restricting developers freedom to create applications as they choose and perhaps unwittingly shortchanging iPhone/iPad users who wont benefit from these now never-to-be-made great applications. Apples response has mostly been to say they are concentrating on providing a certain user experience to their customers, and to do this, they insist everyone uses the tools they approve. Which isnt a surprising line of reasoning given Apple restricts the hardware used and content of the apps already. The vogue term for this approach is curated, as in a benevolent museum director selecting only the finest artifacts for display or a wise gardener arranging the plants in a garden just so. If this is what a curated experience is like it is hard to argue that consumers are not responding. My iPhone is probably the most satisfying piece of technology I own. Coming from the Razr, it really was an revolution in how the form factor, interface and user experience all tied together. While the curated approach reinvented the smart phone genre, it is easy to forget that this is not a new approach for Apple. Macbooks and Macs are Apple hardware that run Apple software. And theyve been successful, but not quite in the same way as the iPhone or iPad (based on early indications). Why not? Well a curated approach can only be wildly successful if the curator a) makes the right choices and b) offers choices that no one else has. Although its advantages are eroding, the iPhone was different from other phones, a unique, focused, touch-centric experience. The iPad is an attempt to define another category of computing. Macs and Macbooks are great devices, but are not fundamentally a different user experience than a PC, you still have windows, file folders, mouse and keyboard, and similar applications. So the big question for Apple is can they hold on to their market advantage, continuing innovating in user experience and stay on top? Or are they going be like Xerox, and the rest of the world says thank you for the windows metaphor, now let me implement that better? It will be exciting to watch, with Android already a viable competitor and Microsoft readying Windows Phone 7. And to close the loop back to the restrictions on developing for iPhone OS. At this point the main target appears to be Adobe and Adobe Flash. Apples calculation is that a) they dont need those developers or b) the developers they want will learn Apples stuff anyway. My guess is that they are correct; that as much as I like the idea of developers having more options, I am not going to buy a competitors product to spite Apple unless that product is just as usable. For a non-technical consumer, I dont know that this conversation even factors into the buying decision. If it did, wed be talking about how Microsoft is trying to retake a slice of market share from the behemoth that is Linux.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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