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• Examples of 2D side-scrollers that achieve open non-linear feel?

  - by Milosz Falinski

  I'm working on a 2.5D platformer prototype that aims for an open feel while maintaining familiar core mechanics. Now, there's some obvious challenges with creating a non constricted feel in a spatially constricted environment. What I'm interested in, is examples of how game designers deal with the "here's a level, beat the bad guys/puzzles to get to the next level" design that seems so natural to most platformers (eg. Mario/Braid/Pid/Meat Boy to name a few). Some ideas for achieving openness I've come across include: One obvious successful example is Terraria, which achieves openness simply through complexity and flexibility of the game-system Another example that comes to mind is Cave Story. Game is non-linear, offers multiple choices and side-stories Mario, Rayman and some other 'classics' with a top-down level selection. I actually really dislike this as it never did anything for me emotionally and just seems like a bit of a lazy way to do things. Note: I've not actually had much experience with most of the 'classical' console platformers, apart from the obvious Marios/Zeldas/Metroids, since I've grown up on adventure games. By that I mean, it's entirely possible that I simply missed some games that solve the problem really well and are by some considered obvious 'classics'.

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• Is it possible to build a single game to run in Facebook & Google+?

  - by Songo

  I was asked by my customer to build a Facebook game. The game would be something similar to Mafiawars.com where the game is hosted on a server and run through a frame on Facebook. The thing is after several days of negotiations with the customer and near the finalization of the requirements he mentioned something strange. He said that if the game was successful on Facebook then we may add it to Google+ too. I thought he meant that we'll develop a new version for Google+, but he refused as he argued that the game should be able to support both sites and he won't pay for the same game twice. Now I haven't developed neither Facebook nor Google+ games before, so I don't know if it is possible to build a single Facebook/Google+ game. How would you react to such requirement? How would you design such an application? Notes I confirmed with the customer that he wasn't talking about using Open ID he wanted full integration (sharing post, friend requests,..etc.) I really don't want to lose that customer for numerous reasons (He even agreed to extend the project time to compensate for the time I need to learn Facebook/Google+ APIs)

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• Class hierarchy problem in this social network model

  - by Gerenuk

  I'm trying to design a class system for a social network data model - basically a link/object system. Now I have roughly the following structure (simplified and only relevant methods shown) class Data: "used to handle the data with mongodb" "can link, unlink data and also return other linked data" "is basically a proxy object that only stores _id and accesses mongodb on requests" "it looks like {_id: ..., _out: [id1, id2,...], _inc: [id3, id4, ...]}" def get_node(self, id) "create a new Data object from the underlying mongodb" "each data object can potentially create a reference object to new mongo data" "this is needed when the data returns the linked objects" class Node: """ this class proxies linking calls to .data it includes additional network logic operations whereas Data only contains a basic database solution """ def __init__(self, data): "the infrastructure realization is stored as composition by an included object data" "Node bascially proxies most calls to the infrastructure object data" def get_node(self, data): "creates a new object of class Object or Link depending on data" class Object(Node): "can have multiple connections to Link" class Link(Node): "has one 'in' and one 'out' connection to an Object" This system is working, however maybe wouldn't work outside Python. Note that after reading links Now I have two questions here: 1) I want to infrastructure of the data storage to be replacable. Earlier I had Data as a superclass of Node so that it provided the neccessary calls. But (without dirty Python tricks) you cannot replace the superclass dynamically. Is using composition therefore recommended? The drawback is that I have to proxy most calls (link, unlink etc). Any thoughts? 2) The class Node contains the common method .get_node which is used to built new Object or Link instances after reading out the data. Some attribute of data decided whether the object which is only stored by id should be instantiated as an Object or Link class. The problem here is that Node needs to know about Object and Link in advance, which seems dodgy. Do you see a different solution? Both Object and Link need to instantiate one of all possible types depending on what the find in their linked data. Are there any other ideas how to implement a flexible Object/Link structure where the underlying database storage is isolated?

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• My first time in the gambling industry

  - by sfrj

  I am a Java enterprise developer with almost 3 years of professional experience. Soon i am going to have a face to face interview with a company in the gambling industry. I already did successfully a phone screening and now for the personal interview i suppose they will ask me about some kind of white board problem or system design task. I think i am in the right place to ask about this, and would appreciate a lot if someone would give me some tips or share something related to his own experience. The things i am more interested in regarding my interview are: What are the most common challenges for programmers, in this industry? Any idea or suggestion on a white board problem they may ask me? Could you point me to some links where i can find information on the topic or sample problems in this industry?. I personally find this question very interesting not just for me. Also i think, the given answers can help also others in a similar situation. Just what i want to say whit this last comment is: Please avoid, answers like: www.google.com and so on...

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• Why, in WPF, do we set an object to Stretch via its Alignment properties instead of Width/Height?

  - by Jonathan Hobbs

  In WPF's XAML, we can tell an element to fill its container like this: <Button HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" /> Why is it that when we set an element to Stretch, we do it via the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties? Why did the WPF design team decide to take this approach over having Width="Stretch" and Height="Stretch"? I presume it was a calculated decision, and I'm curious about the reasoning. CSS, among other technologies, follows the convention that stretching is done via the width and height properties, and that alignment affects positioning exclusively. This seems intuitive enough: stretching the element is manipulating its width and height, after all! Using the corresponding alignment property to stretch an element seems counter-intuitive and unusual in comparison. This makes me think they didn't just pick this option for no reason: they made a calculated decision and had reasons behind it. Width and Height use the double data type, which would ordinarily mean assigning it a string would be silly. However, WPF's Window objects can take Width="Auto", which gets treated as double.NaN. Couldn't Width="Stretch" be stored as double.PositiveInfinity or some other value?

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• Approach for developing software that will need to be ported to multiple mobile platforms in the future

  - by Jonathan Henson

  I am currently doing the preliminary design for a new product my company will be pushing out soon. We will start on Android, but then we will need to quickly develop the IPhone, IPad.... and then the Windows 8 ports of the application. Basically the only code that wouldn't be reusable is the view specific code and the multimedia functions. This will be an SIP client (of course the user of the app will not know this) with several bells and whistles for our own business specific purposes. My initial thought is to develop all of the engine in C and provide a nice API for the C library since JAVA and .NET will allow native invoking, and I should just be able to directly link to the C lib in objective-C. Is there a better approach for vast code reuse which also remains close to the native platform? I.e. I don't want dependencies such as Mono-droid and the like or complicated interpreter/translator schemes. I don't mind re-coding the view(s) for each platform, but I do not want to have multiple versions of the main engine. Also, if I want to have some good abstraction mechanisms (like I would in say, C++) is this possible? I have read that C++ is not allowed for the IPad and Iphone devices. I would love to handle the media decoding in the C library, but I assume that this will be platform dependent so that probably will not be an option either. Any ideas here?

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• DB Schema for ACL involving 3 subdomains

  - by blacktie24

  Hi, I am trying to design a database schema for a web app which has 3 subdomains: a) internal employees b) clients c) contractors. The users will be able to communicate with each other to some degree, and there may be some resources that overlap between them. Any thoughts about this schema? Really appreciate your time and thoughts on this. Cheers! -- -- Table structure for table locations CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS locations ( id bigint(20) NOT NULL, name varchar(250) NOT NULL ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1; -- -- Table structure for table privileges CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS privileges ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name varchar(255) NOT NULL, resource_id int(11) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=10 ; -- -- Table structure for table resources CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS resources ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name varchar(255) NOT NULL, user_type enum('internal','client','expert') NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3 ; -- -- Table structure for table roles CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS roles ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, name varchar(255) NOT NULL, type enum('position','department') NOT NULL, parent_id int(11) DEFAULT NULL, user_type enum('internal','client','expert') NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3 ; -- -- Table structure for table role_perms CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS role_perms ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, role_id int(11) NOT NULL, privilege_id int(11) NOT NULL, mode varchar(250) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=2 ; -- -- Table structure for table users CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users ( id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, email varchar(255) NOT NULL, password varchar(255) NOT NULL, salt varchar(255) NOT NULL, type enum('internal','client','expert') NOT NULL, first_name varchar(255) NOT NULL, last_name varchar(255) NOT NULL, location_id int(11) NOT NULL, phone varchar(255) NOT NULL, status enum('active','inactive') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'active', PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=4 ; -- -- Table structure for table user_perms CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS user_perms ( id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, user_id int(11) NOT NULL, privilege_id int(11) NOT NULL, mode varchar(250) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=2 ; -- -- Table structure for table user_roles CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS user_roles ( id int(11) NOT NULL, user_id int(11) NOT NULL, role_id int(11) NOT NULL ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

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• Is creating a separate pool for each individual image created from a png appropriate?

  - by Panzercrisis

  I'm still possibly a little green about object-pooling, and I want to make sure something like this is a sound design pattern before really embarking upon it. Take the following code (which uses the Starling framework in ActionScript 3): [Embed(source = "/../assets/images/game/misc/red_door.png")] private const RED_DOOR:Class; private const RED_DOOR_TEXTURE:Texture = Texture.fromBitmap(new RED_DOOR()); private const m_vRedDoorPool:Vector.<Image> = new Vector.<Image>(50, true); . . . public function produceRedDoor():Image { // get a Red Door image } public function retireRedDoor(pImage:Image):void { // retire a Red Door Image } Except that there are four colors: red, green, blue, and yellow. So now we have a separate pool for each color, a separate produce function for each color, and a separate retire function for each color. Additionally there are several items in the game that follow this 4-color pattern, so for each of them, we have four pools, four produce functions, and four retire functions. There are more colors involved in the images themselves than just their predominant one, so trying to throw all the doors, for instance, in a single pool, and then changing their color properties around isn't going to work. Also the nonexistence of the static keyword is due to its slowness in AS3. Is this the right way to do things?

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• Is creating a separate pool for each individual png image in the same class appropriate?

  - by Panzercrisis

  I'm still possibly a little green about object-pooling, and I want to make sure something like this is a sound design pattern before really embarking upon it. Take the following code (which uses the Starling framework in ActionScript 3): [Embed(source = "/../assets/images/game/misc/red_door.png")] private const RED_DOOR:Class; private const RED_DOOR_TEXTURE:Texture = Texture.fromBitmap(new RED_DOOR()); private const m_vRedDoorPool:Vector.<Image> = new Vector.<Image>(50, true); . . . public function produceRedDoor():Image { // get a Red Door image } public function retireRedDoor(pImage:Image):void { // retire a Red Door Image } Except that there are four colors: red, green, blue, and yellow. So now we have a separate pool for each color, a separate produce function for each color, and a separate retire function for each color. Additionally there are several items in the game that follow this 4-color pattern, so for each of them, we have four pools, four produce functions, and four retire functions. There are more colors involved in the images themselves than just their predominant one, so trying to throw all the doors, for instance, in a single pool, and then changing their color properties around isn't going to work. Also the nonexistence of the static keyword is due to its slowness in AS3. Is this the right way to do things?

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• Benefits of classic OOP over Go-like language

  - by tylerl

  I've been thinking a lot about language design and what elements would be necessary for an "ideal" programming language, and studying Google's Go has led me to question a lot of otherwise common knowledge. Specifically, Go seems to have all of the interesting benefits from object oriented programming without actually having any of the structure of an object oriented language. There are no classes, only structures; there is no class/structure inheritance -- only structure embedding. There aren't any hierarchies, no parent classes, no explicit interface implementations. Instead, type casting rules are based on a loose system similar to duck-typing, such that if a struct implements the necessary elements of a "Reader" or a "Request" or an "Encoding", then you can cast it and use it as one. Does such a system obsolete the concept of OOP? Or is there something about OOP as implemented in C++ and Java and C# that is inherently more capable, more maintainable, somehow more powerful that you have to give up when moving to a language like Go? What benefit do you have to give up to gain the simplicity that this new paradigm represents?

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• Knowing state of game in real time

  - by evthim

  I'm trying to code a tic tac toe game in java and I need help figuring out how to efficiently and without freezing the program check if someone won the game. I'm only in the design stages now, I haven't started programming anything but I'm wondering how would I know at all times the state of the game and exactly when someone wins? Response to MarkR: (note: had to place comment here, it was too long for comment section) It's not a homework problem, I'm trying to get more practice programming GUI's which I've only done once as a freshman in my second introductory programming course. I understand I'll have a 2D array. I plan to have a 2D integer array where x would equal 1 and o would equal 0. However, won't it take too much time if I check after every move if someone won the game? Is there a way or a data structure or algorithm I can use so that the program will know the state (when I say state I mean not just knowing every position on the board, the int array will take care of that, I mean knowing that user 1 will win if he places x on this block) of the game at all times and thus can know automatically when someone won?

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• Are DDD Aggregates really a good idea in a Web Application?

  - by Mystere Man

  I'm diving in to Domain Driven Design and some of the concepts i'm coming across make a lot of sense on the surface, but when I think about them more I have to wonder if that's really a good idea. The concept of Aggregates, for instance makes sense. You create small domains of ownership so that you don't have to deal with the entire domain model. However, when I think about this in the context of a web app, we're frequently hitting the database to pull back small subsets of data. For instance, a page may only list the number of orders, with links to click on to open the order and see its order id's. If i'm understanding Aggregates right, I would typically use the repository pattern to return an OrderAggregate that would contain the members GetAll, GetByID, Delete, and Save. Ok, that sounds good. But... If I call GetAll to list all my order's, it would seem to me that this pattern would require the entire list of aggregate information to be returned, complete orders, order lines, etc... When I only need a small subset of that information (just header information). Am I missing something? Or is there some level of optimization you would use here? I can't imagine that anyone would advocate returning entire aggregates of information when you don't need it. Certainly, one could create methods on your repository like GetOrderHeaders, but that seems to defeat the purpose of using a pattern like repository in the first place. Can anyone clarify this for me?

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• Advice on designing web application with a 40+ year lifetime

  - by user2708395

  Scenario Currently, I am apart of a health care project whose main requirement is to capture data with unknown attributes using user generated forms by health care providers. The second requirement is that data integrity is key and that the application will be used for 40+ years. We are currently migrating the client's data from the past 40 years from various sources (Paper, Excel, Access, etc...) to the database. Future requirements are: Workflow management of forms Schedule management of forms Security/Role based management Reporting engine Mobile/Tablet support Situation Only 6 months in, the current (contracted) architect/senior programmer has taken the "fast" approach and has designed a poor system. The database is not normalized, the code is coupled, the tiers have no dedicated purpose and data is starting to go missing since he has designed some beans to perform "deletes" on the database. The code base is extremely bloated and there are jobs just to synchronize data since the database is not normalized. His approach has been to rely on backup jobs to restore missing data and doesn't seem to believe in re-factoring. Having presented my findings to the PM, the architect will be removed when his contract ends. I have been given the task to re-architect this application. My team consists of me and one junior programmer. We have no other resources. We have been granted a 6-month requirement freeze in which we can focus on re-building this system. I suggested using a CMS system like Drupal, but for policy reasons at the client's organization, the system must be built from scratch. This is the first time that I will be designing a system with a 40+ lifespan. I have only worked on projects with 3-5 year lifespans, so this situation is very new, yet exciting. Questions What design considerations will make the system more "future proof"? What experiences have you had in designing such systems - both failures and successes? What questions should be asked to the client/PM to make the system more "future proof"?

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• How to handle fine grained field-based ACL permissions in a RESTful service?

  - by Jason McClellan

  I've been trying to design a RESTful API and have had most of my questions answered, but there is one aspect of permissions that I'm struggling with. Different roles may have different permissions and different representations of a resource. For example, an Admin or the user himself may see more fields in his own User representation vs another less-privileged user. This is achieved simply by changing the representation on the backend, ie: deciding whether or not to include those fields. Additionally, some actions may be taken on a resource by some users and not by others. This is achieved by deciding whether or not to include those action items as links, eg: edit and delete links. A user who does not have edit permissions will not have an edit link. That covers nearly all of my permission use cases, but there is one that I've not quite figured out. There are some scenarios whereby for a given representation of an object, all fields are visible for two or more roles, but only a subset of those roles my edit certain fields. An example: { "person": { "id": 1, "name": "Bob", "age": 25, "occupation": "software developer", "phone": "555-555-5555", "description": "Could use some sunlight.." } } Given 3 users: an Admin, a regular User, and Bob himself (also a regular User), I need to be able to convey to the front end that: Admins may edit all fields, Bob himself may edit all fields, but a regular User, while they can view all fields, can only edit the description field. I certainly don't want the client to have to make the determination (or even, for that matter, to have any notion of the roles involved) but I do need a way for the backend to convey to the client which fields are editable. I can't simply use a combination of representation (the fields returned for viewing) and links (whether or not an edit link is availble) in this scenario since it's more finely grained. Has anyone solved this elegantly without adding the logic directly to the client?

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• Storing Tiled Level Data in J2ME game

  - by Alex

  I'm developing a J2ME game which uses tiled backgrounds for the levels. My question is how do I store this tile information in my game. At the moment it is stored as an array; with each number representing a different tile from the tile-sheet. This works well enough, however I don't like the fact that it is 'hard-coded' into the game because (at least in my opinion) it is harder to edit the levels, or design new ones. I was also thinking that it would be difficult if you wanted to add a 'level pack', I'm not sure on how this would be achieved though; it's not something I was planning on doing, I'm just curious. I was wondering if there was a way I could store level data in some external file and then load this in to the game. The problem is I don't know what the limitations are for J2ME regarding file I/O, can it read in any file like Java? I am aware of the RMS, but from my experience I don't think this would work (unless I am mistaken). Also, would loading the data in this way be too big a performance hit? Or is there another way I can achieve what I am trying to do. As I said, the way I have it at the moment works fine, and if this is the only viable option then it will suffice.

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• Keeping a domain model consistent with actual data

  - by fstuijt

  Recently domain driven design got my attention, and while thinking about how this approach could help us I came across the following problem. In DDD the common approach is to retrieve entities (or better, aggregate roots) from a repository which acts as a in-memory collection of these entities. After these entities have been retrieved, they can be updated or deleted by the user, however after retrieval they are essentially disconnected from the data source and one must actively inform the repository to update the data source and make is consistent again with our in-memory representation. What is the DDD approach to retrieving entities that should remain connected to the data source? For example, in our situation we retrieve a series of sensors that have a specific measurement during retrieval. Over time, these measurement values may change and our business logic in the domain model should respond to these changes properly. E.g., domain events may be raised if a sensor value exceeds a predefined threshold. However, using the repository approach, these sensor values are just snapshots, and are disconnected from the data source. Does any of you have an idea on how to solve this following the DDD approach?

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• Is there a common programming term for the problems of adding features to an already-featureful program?

  - by Jeremy Friesner

  I'm looking for a commonly used programming term to describe a software-engineering phenomenon, which (for lack of a better way to describe it) I'll illustrate first with a couple of examples-by-analogy: Scenario 1: We want to build/extend a subway system on the outskirts of a small town in Wyoming. There are the usual subway-problems to solve, of course (hiring the right construction company, choosing the best route, buying the subway cars), but other than that it's pretty straightforward to implement the system because there aren't a huge number of constraints to satisfy. Scenario 2: Same as above, except now we need to build/extend the subway system in downtown Los Angeles. Here we face all of the problems we did in case (1), but also additional problems -- most of the applicable space is already in use, and has a vocal constituency which will protest loudly if we inconvenience them by repurposing, redesigning, or otherwise modifying the infrastructure that they rely on. Because of this, extensions to the system happen either very slowly and expensively, or they don't happen at all. I sometimes see a similar pattern with software development -- adding a new feature to a small/simple program is straightforward, but as the program grows, adding further new features becomes more and more difficult, if only because it is difficult to integrate the new feature without adversely affecting any of the large number of existing use-cases or user-constituencies. (even with a robust, adaptable program design, you run into the problem of the user interface becoming so elaborate that the program becomes difficult to learn or use) Is there a term for this phenomenon?

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• Depending on fixed version of a library and ignore its updates

  - by Moataz Elmasry

  I was talking to a technical boss yesterday. Its about a project in C++ that depends on opencv and he wanted to include a specific opencv version into the svn and keep using this version ignoring any updates which I disagreed with.We had a heated discussion about that. His arguments: Everything has to be delivered into one package and we can't ask the client to install external libraries. We depend on a fixed version so that new updates of opencv won't screw our code. We can't guarantee that within a version update, ex from 3.2.buildx to 3.2.buildy. Buildy the function signatures won't change. My arguments: True everything has to be delivered to the client as one package,but that's what build scripts are for. They download the external libraries and create a bundle. Within updates of the same version 3.2.buildx to 3.2.buildy its impossible that a signature change, unless it is a really crappy framework, which isn't the case with opencv. We deprive ourselves from new updates and features of that library. If there's a bug in the version we took, and even if there's a bug fix later, we won't be able to get that fix. Its simply ineffiecient and anti design to depend on a certain version/build of an external library as it makes our project difficult in the future to adopt to new changes. So I'd like to know what you guys think. Does it really make sense to include a specific version of external library in our svn and keep using it ignoring all updates?

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• How can we best petition to bring Adobe creative software to Ubuntu?

  - by Sixthlaw

  Now I know its not as simple as asking for Adobe to support their design software on Ubuntu, but is there a way for the community and Canonical to make known to Adobe the rapidly growing amount of Linux users, and their desire for this great set of tools OFFICIALLY? I know that many of the answers I receive might be of the fashion "Its not going to happen", "use the free tools provided" or "Who knows it might happen in the near future", but this IS not what I am looking for. I have noticed, on sites like www.OmgUbuntu.com, there are links to pages where people can "like" the idea. Is there a way to try and get the whole community on board with this one, even Canonical, and as stated above, put forward this proposal to Adobe. The current requests for an Adobe CS, for Linux, are in dribs and drabs scattered all of the internet. Now is the best time to come up with productive solutions on how we can best gather statistics on the amount of people willing to buy the Adobe CS. These are the words of an Adobe employee: "I have forwarded this feedback on to the appropriate team who will consider it for future releases of Adobe software." The larger amount of people we have unified in the ONE community proposal, the greater chance we have of getting the software. How can we make this happen?

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• Is wrapping a third party code the only solution to unit test its consumers? [closed]

  - by Songo

  I'm doing unit testing and in one of my classes I need to send a mail from one of the methods, so using constructor injection I inject an instance of Zend_Mail class which is in Zend framework. Now some people argue that if a library is stable enough and won't change often then there is no need to wrap it. So assuming that Zend_Mail is stable and won't change and it fits my needs entirely, then I won't need a wrapper for it. Now take a look at my class Logger that depends on Zend_Mail: class Logger{ private $mailer; function __construct(Zend_Mail $mail){ $this->mail=$mail; } function toBeTestedFunction(){ //Some code $this->mail->setTo('some value'); $this->mail->setSubject('some value'); $this->mail->setBody('some value'); $this->mail->send(); //Some } } However, Unit testing demands that I test one component at a time, so I need to mock the Zend_Mail class. In addition I'm violating the Dependency Inversion principle as my Logger class now depends on concretion not abstraction. Now is wrapping Zend_Mail the only solution or is there a better approach to this problem? The code is in PHP, but answers doesn't have to be. This is more of a design issue than a language specific feature

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• What are solutions and tradeoffs to maintain search result consistency in a web application

  - by iammichael

  Consider a web application with a custom search function that must display the results in a paged manner (twenty per page with up to hundreds of thousands of total results) and the ability to drill down to individual results that maintain next/previous links to navigate through the results. Re-executing the search on each page request to get the appropriate results for that page of data can be too expensive (up to 15s per search). Also, since the underlying data can change frequently (e.g. addition of new results), re-executing could cause the next/previous functionality to result in inconsistent behavior (e.g. the same results reappearing on a later page after having been viewed on an earlier page). What options exist to ensure the search results can be viewed across multiple pages in a consistent manner, and what tradeoffs does each option have in terms of network, CPU, memory, and storage requirements? EDIT: I thought caching the query search results was an obvious necessity. The question is really asking about where to cache the result set and what tradeoffs might exist to each. For example, storing the ids of the entities in the result set on the client, or storing the IDs of the entities themselves in the users session on the web server, or in a temporary table in the database. I'm not looking specifically for a single solution as different scenarios may result in different approaches (and such a question would be more suited for stackoverflow.com rather than here), but more of a design comparison between the possible approaches.

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• Static / Shared Helper Functions vs Built-In Methods

  - by Nathan

  This is a simple question but a design consideration that I often run across in my day to day development work. Lets say that you have a class that represents some kinds of collection. Public Class ModifiedCustomerOrders Public Property Orders as List(Of ModifiedOrders) End Class Within this class you do all kinds of important work, such as combining many different information sources and, eventually, build the Modified Customer Orders. Now, you have different processes that consume this class, each of which needs a slightly different slice of the ModifiedCustomerOrders items. To enable this, you want to add filtering functionality. How do you go about this? Do you: Add Filtering calls to the ModifiedCustomerOrders class so that you can say: MyOrdersClass.RemoveCanceledOrders() Create a Static / Shared "tooling" class that allows you to call: OrdersFilters.RemoveCanceledOrders(MyOrders) Create an extension method to accomplish the same feat as #2 but with less typing: MyOrders.RemoveCanceledOrders() Create a "Service" method that handles the getting of Orders as appropriate to the calling function, while using one of the previous approaches "under the hood". OrdersService.GetOrdersForProcessA() Others? I tend to prefer the tooling / extension method approaches as they make testing a little bit simpler. Although I dependency inject all my sourcing data into the ModifiedCustomerOrders, having it as part of the class makes it a little bit more complicated to test. Typically, I choose to use extension methods where I am doing parameterless transformations / filters. As they get more complex, I will move it into a static class instead. Thoughts on this approach? How would you approach it?

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• How to implement isValid correctly?

  - by Songo

  I'm trying to provide a mechanism for validating my object like this: class SomeObject { private $_inputString; private $_errors=array(); public function __construct($inputString) { $this->_inputString = $inputString; } public function getErrors() { return $this->_errors; } public function isValid() { $isValid = preg_match("/Some regular expression here/", $this->_inputString); if($isValid==0){ $this->_errors[]= 'Error was found in the input'; } return $isValid==1; } } Then when I'm testing my code I'm doing it like this: $obj = new SomeObject('an INVALID input string'); $isValid = $obj->isValid(); $errors=$obj->getErrors(); $this->assertFalse($isValid); $this->assertNotEmpty($errors); Now the test passes correctly, but I noticed a design problem here. What if the user called $obj->getErrors() before calling $obj->isValid()? The test will fail because the user has to validate the object first before checking the error resulting from validation. I think this way the user depends on a sequence of action to work properly which I think is a bad thing because it exposes the internal behaviour of the class. How do I solve this problem? Should I tell the user explicitly to validate first? Where do I mention that? Should I change the way I validate? Is there a better solution for this? UPDATE: I'm still developing the class so changes are easy and renaming functions and refactoring them is possible.

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• Need ideas on how to give my levels structure

  - by akuritsu

  I am making an iOS game for a project at school. It is going to be a tiny bit like Fruit Ninja, as in it will have different things on the screen, and when you hit them, they die, and you get points. The trouble is that unlike Fruit Ninja, my game will have different types of sprites, all doing different things (moving different places, doing different things, etc). The one thing that is bad about having all of these sprites that do different things is that it is hard for them to look neat on the screen all together. I was planning on having a couple of different gamemodes: Time Trial You have 120 seconds to kill as many sprites as possible. Survival You have three lives, every time you try to hit a sprite and miss, you lose a life. ???? Whatever I think of. I am a rookie to game design in general, and I don't know the best way to make my game look good, and play well. I could have all of these sprites on the screen at the same time, or I could have them come in waves, for example 10 of sprite_a come on, and once they are killed, 10 of sprite_b come on, etc... Please give me your opinion about which one I should code. If you have any other suggestions for either a third gamemode, or a completely different way to make the levels, feel free to tell me.

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• Override methods should call base method?

  - by Trevor Pilley

  I'm just running NDepend against some code that I have written and one of the warnings is Overrides of Method() should call base.Method(). The places this occurs are where I have a base class which has virtual properties and methods with default behaviour but which can be overridden by a class which inherits from the base class and doesn't call the overridden method. For example, in the base class I have a property defined like this: protected virtual char CloseQuote { get { return '"'; } } And then in an inheriting class which uses a different close quote: protected override char CloseQuote { get { return ']'; } } Not all classes which inherit from the base class use different quote characters hence my initial design. The alternatives I thought of were have get/set properties in the base class with the defaults set in the constructor: protected BaseClass() { this.CloseQuote = '"'; } protected char CloseQuote { get; set; } public InheritingClass() { this.CloseQuote = ']'; } Or make the base class require the values as constructor args: protected BaseClass(char closeQuote, ...) { this.CloseQuote = '"'; } protected char CloseQuote { get; private set; } public InheritingClass() base (closeQuote: ']', ...) { } Should I use virtual in a scenario where the base implementation may be replaced instead of extended or should I opt for one of the alternatives I thought of? If so, which would be preferable and why?

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