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• GRE subject Computer science

  - by Maddy.Shik

  How do I prepare for the GRE Computer Science subject test? Are there any standard text books I should follow? Agree that its under graduation level and one doesn't need to dig to deep for it. I have done my computer engineering from a college who ranks in top 20 in India. So may be my curriculum has not been that good as compared to international students. Since now i want to get admission in to world renowned university's Ph. D. program. I want to enhance my basic skills up to a level to beat other international students in competition. I want to know good book references which are recommended by professors in international school like CMU, MIT, Standford etc. Like for Algorithms Coreman is considered very good. Good books builds concepts from very basic so that one doesn't need to mug up even a basic concepts. Coreman is just too good with good blend of Mathematics and programming concepts. Definitely Test paper are must but that can be practiced once one has read text books thoroughly. Besides its been 2 years i passed out from college so its is essential for me to revise all concepts from text books. Please tell me standard text books for each subject like Computer Architecture, Database Design, Operating Systems, Discrete Maths etc.

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• Annotate source code with diagrams as comments

  - by Steven Lu

  I write a lot of (primarily c++ and javascript) code that touches upon computational geometry and graphics and those kinds of topics, so I have found that visual diagrams have been an indispensable part of the process of solving problems. I have determined just now that "oh, wouldn't it just be fantastic if I could somehow attach a hand-drawn diagram to a piece of code as a comment", and this would allow me to come back to something I worked on, days, weeks, months earlier and far more quickly re-grok my algorithms. As a visual learner, I feel like this has the potential to improve my productivity with almost every type of programming because simple diagrams can help with understanding and reasoning about any type of non-trivial data structure. Graphs for example. During graph theory class at university I had only ever been able to truly comprehend the graph relationships that I could actually draw diagrammatical representations of. So... No IDE to my knowledge lets you save a picture as a comment to code. My thinking was that I or someone else could come up with some reasonably easy-to-use tool that can convert an image into a base64 binary string which I can then insert into my code. If the conversion/insertion process can be streamlined enough it would allow a far better connection between the diagram and the actual code, so I no longer need to chronographically search through my notebooks. Even more awesome: plugins for the IDEs to automatically parse out and display the image. There is absolutely nothing difficult about this from a theoretical point of view. My guess is that it would take some extra time for me to actually figure out how to extend my favorite IDEs and maintain these plugins, so I'd be totally happy with a sort of code post-processor which would do the same parsing out and rendering of the images and show them side by side with the code, inside of a browser or something. Since I'm a javascript programmer by trade. What do people think? Would anyone pay for this? I would.

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• How much system and business analysis should a programmer be reasonably expected to do?

  - by Rahul

  In most places I have worked for, there were no formal System or Business Analysts and the programmers were expected to perform both the roles. One had to understand all the subsystems and their interdependencies inside out. Further, one was also supposed to have a thorough knowledge of the business logic of the applications and interact directly with the users to gather requirements, answer their queries etc. In my current job, for ex, I spend about 70% time doing system analysis and only 30% time programming. I consider myself a good programmer but struggle with developing a good understanding of the business rules of a complex application. Often, this creates a handicap because while I can write efficient algorithms and thread-safe code, I lose out to guys who may be average programmers but have a much better understanding of the business processes. So I want to know - How much business and systems knowledge should a programmer have ? - How does one go about getting this knowledge in an immensely complex software system (e.g. trading applications) with several interdependent business processes but poorly documented business rules.

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• Computer Science Degrees and Real-World Experience

  - by Steven Elliott Jr

  Recently, at a family reunion-type event I was asked by a high school student how important it is to get a computer science degree in order to get a job as a programmer in lieu of actual programming experience. The kid has been working with Python and the Blender project as he's into making games and the like; it sounds like he has some decent programming chops. Now, as someone that has gone through a computer science degree my initial response to this question is to say, "You absolutely MUST get a computer science degree in order to get a job as a programmer!" However, as I thought about this I was unsure as to whether my initial reaction was due in part to my own suffering as a CS student or because I feel that this is actually the case. Now, for me, I can say that I rarely use anything that I learned in college, in terms of the extremely hard math, algorithms, etc, etc. but I did come away with a decent attitude and the willingness to work through tough problems. I just don't know what to tell this kid; I feel like I should tell him to do the CS degree but I have hired so many programmers that majored in things like English, Philosophy, and other liberal arts-type degrees, even some that never went to college. In fact my best developer, falls into this latter category. He got started writing software for his church or something and then it took off into a passion. So, while I know this is one of those juicy potential down vote questions, I am just curious as to what everyone else thinks about this topic. Would you tell a high school kid about this? Perhaps if he/she already knows a good deal of programming and loves it he doesn't need a CS degree and could expand his horizons with a liberal arts degree. I know one of the creators of the Django web framework was a American Literature major and he is obviously a pretty gifted developer. Anyway, thanks for the consideration.

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• Procedural... house with rooms generator

  - by pek

  I've been looking at some algorithms and articles about procedurally generating a dungeon. The problem is, I'm trying to generate a house with rooms, and they don't seem to fit my requirements. For one, dungeons have corridors, where houses have halls. And while initially they might seem the same, a hall is nothing more than the area that isn't a room, whereas a corridor is specifically designed to connect one area to another. Another important difference with a house is that you have a specific width and height, and you have to fill the entire thing with rooms and halls, whereas with a dungeon, there is empty space. I think halls in a house is something in between a dungeon corridor (gets you to other rooms) and an empty space in the dungeon (it's not explicitly defined in code). More specifically, the requirements are: There is a set of predefined rooms I cannot create walls and doors on the fly. Rooms can be rotated but not resized Again, because I have a predefined set of rooms, I can only rotate them, not resize them. The house dimensions are set and has to be entirely filled with rooms (or halls) I.e. I want to fill a 14x20 house with the available rooms making sure there is no empty space. Here are some images to make this a little more clear: As you can see, in the house, the "empty space" is still walkable and it gets you from one room to another. So, having said all this, maybe a house is just a really really tightly packed dungeon with corridors. Or it's something easier than a dungeon. Maybe there is something out there and I haven't found it because I don't really know what to search for. This is where I'd like your help: could you give me pointers on how to design this algorithm? Any thoughts on what steps it will take? If you have created a dungeon generator, how would you modify it to fit my requirements? You can be as specific or as generic as you like. I'm looking to pick your brains, really.

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• Why are SW engineering interviews disproportionately difficult?

  - by stackoverflowuser2010

  First, some background on me. I have a PhD in CS and have had jobs both as a software engineer and as an R&D research scientist, both at Very Large Corporations You Know Very Well. I recently changed jobs and interviewed for both types of jobs (as I have done in the past). My observation: SW engineer job interviews are way, way disproportionately more difficult than CS researcher job interviews, but the researcher job is higher paying, more competitive, more rewarding, more interesting, and has a higher upside. Here's a typical interview loop for researcher: Phone interview to see if my research is in alignment with the lab's researcher In-person, give presentation on my recent research for one hour (which represents maybe 9 month's worth of work), answer questions In-person one-on-one interviews with about 5 researchers, where they ask me very reasonable questions on my work/publications/patents, including: technical questions, where my work fits into related work, and how I can extend my work to new areas Here's a typical interview loop for SW engineer: Phone interview where I'm asked algorithm questions and maybe do some coding. Pretty standard. In-person interviews at the whiteboard where they drill the F*** out of you on esoteric C++ minutia (e.g. how does a polymorphic virtual function call work), algorithms (make all-pairs-shortest-path algorithm work for 1B vertices), system design (design a database load balancer), etc. This goes on for six or seven interviews. Ridiculous. Why would anyone be willing to put up with this? What is the point of asking about C++ trivia or writing code to prove yourself? Why not make the SE interview more like the researcher interview where you give a talk about what you've done? How are technical job interviews for other fields, like physics, chemistry, civil engineering, mechanical engineering?

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• What is your unique programming problem-solving style? [closed]

  - by gcc

  Everyone has their own styles and technique for approaching and solving real world problems. These distinguish us from other people or other programmers. (Actually, I think it make us more desirable as programmers and improves computer science) To improve, we read a lot of books; for example, programming style, how to solve problems, how to approach problems, software and algorithms, et al. Can I learn your technique? In other words, if someone gives you a problem, at first step, what are you doing to solve it? I want learn the style in which you approach, analyze, and solve a problem. EDIT: every programmer is a unique instance; each of us approach problems and converge on solutions in our own... idiomatic manner. This manner is sometimes a quirk of training, a bias of tools, but often it is an insightful nugget, a little golden hammer that cracks nuts just slightly faster then others. When answering, give your general approaches but also take a moment to identify how you look at things in ways that your peers do not. Let's call this your Unique Solving Perspective, or USP.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, February 27, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, February 27, 2011Popular ReleasesVidCoder: 0.8.2: Updated auto-naming to handle seconds and frames ranges as well. Deprecated the {chapters} token for auto-naming in favor of {range}. Allowing file drag to preview window and enabling main window shortcut keys to work no matter what window is focused. Added option in config to enable giving custom names to audio tracks. (Note that these names will only show up certain players like iTunes or on the iPod. Players that support custom track names normally may not show them.) Added tooltips ...DirectQ: Release 1.8.7 Beta 2: Beta 2 release to fix some early reported problems with the original 1.8.7 Beta.Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9.2: Release Notes Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Now with added support to Windows XP! Change Log from 0.9.1 to 0.9.2: ==================== Added: > Now it displays number of files added in the wizard to the Window Title bar. > Added support to Windows XP. > Minor UI tweaks. I...Claims Based Identity & Access Control Guide: Drop 1 - Claims Identity Guide V2: Highlights of drop #1 This is the first drop of the new "Claims Identity Guide" edition. In this release you will find: All previous samples updated and enhanced. All code upgraded to .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Extensive cleanup. Refactored Simulated Issuers: each solution now gets its own issuers. This results in much cleaner and simpler to understand code. Added Single Sign Out support. Added first sample using ACS ("ACS as a Federation Provider"). This sample extends the ori...Simple Notify: Simple Notify Beta 2011-02-25: Feature: host the service with a single click in console Feature: host the service as a windows service Feature: notification cient application Feature: push client application Feature: push notifications from your powershell script Feature: C# wrapper libraries for your applicationsMono.Addins: Mono.Addins 0.6: The 0.6 release of Mono.Addins includes many improvements, bug fixes and new features: Add-in engine Add-in name and description can now be localized. There are new custom attributes for defining them, and can also be specified as xml elements in an add-in manifest instead of attributes. Support for custom add-in properties. It is now possible to specify arbitrary properties in add-ins, which can be queried at install time (using the Mono.Addins.Setup API) or at run-time. Custom extensio...patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 3 - 25 Feb 2011: IntroductionWelcome to the third community drop of Project Silk. For this drop we are requesting feedback on overall application architecture, code review of the JavaScript Conductor and Widgets, and general direction of the application. Project Silk provides guidance and sample implementations that describe and illustrate recommended practices for building modern web applications using technologies such as HTML5, jQuery, CSS3 and Internet Explorer 9. This guidance is intended for experien...PhoneyTools: Initial Release (0.1): This is the 0.1 version for preview of the features.Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.5: Now supports new Minecraft beta v1.3 map format, thanks to updated mcmap. Disabled biomes, until Minecraft Biome Extractor supports new format.Smartkernel: Smartkernel: ????，??????Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.2: New control, Toast Prompt! Removed progress bar since Silverlight Toolkit Feb 2010 has it.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.7: Service release fixing 31 issues. A full changelog will be available with the final stable release of 4.7 Important when upgradingUpgrade as if it was a patch release (update /bin, /umbraco and /umbraco_client). For general upgrade information follow the guide found at http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/upgrading-an-umbraco-installation 4.7 requires the .NET 4.0 framework Web.Config changes Update the web web.config to include the 4 changes found in (they're clearly marked in...HubbleDotNet - Open source full-text search engine: V1.1.0.0: Add Sqlite3 DBAdapter Add App Report when Query Cache is Collecting. Improve the performance of index through Synchronize. Add top 0 feature so that we can only get count of the result. Improve the score calculating algorithm of match. Let the score of the record that match all items large then others. Add MySql DBAdapter Improve performance for multi-fields sort . Using hash table to access the Payload data. The version before used bin search. Using heap sort instead of qui...DJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC: DJME2 -The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC beta3: Grid jQuery Mvc extension is added,the Grid extension support data binding, server / client (ajax) mode, master/detail view, scrolling, paging, filtering, grouping and sorting. For more product info you can goto http://www.dotnetage.com/djme.htmlSilverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????，?????，????????silverlight??????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.20 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.3.2: New FeaturesPowerGUI Console Tool Window PowerShell Project Type PowerGUI 2.4 SupportNew ProjectsAppology SugarSync API: A SugarSync API for Windows Desktop, Silverlight, and Windows Phone 7.CodeField - collection of sample code on algorithms: Collection of sample code on algorithms. It's contributed by myself. There's no plan to release them as a single product or part of it.Donsole: A live debugger console for windows client applications.F# AlgoLib: F# Algorithm Library - fully open source - under constructionFileShred: An easy-to-use secure File ShredderHyperlinked Validation System for WinForms: A very small system for validating complex forms in WinForms. It´s simple to use and takes a massive piece of work.KFtpClient - Ftp client (core et helper): <project name>kFtpClientmanagedCUDA: managedCUDA makes the CUDA Driver API available in .net. It also includes classes for an easy handling and interop with CUDA, i.e. build-in CUDA types like float3, but also classes for thread safe CUDA-context handling.Mini Dots: A simplified dots game with two remote playersMovieCollection: Programm to manage movie filesMSForge NextGen: MSForge NextGen je projekat izrade novog web sajta za MIcrosoft Community u Srbiji, što obuhvata izradu nekoliko wireframe-ova, dizajn Orchard CMS tema, alata za migraciu sadržaja sa starog sajta...OdeToFood: For people who love food ... and code. This is a sample application for ASP.NET MVC 3 using C# and Razor. PanzerTemplate: PanzerTemplate ????? http://zsharedcode.googlecode.com/ ???，??? zsharedcode ? panzer ?????????，??? DataWindowCore，IEBrowser ?，?? panzer ?????，??????????????。 ??????????????，???????????????。Sanal bildirimler: Sanal bildirisilverlight123_Shreous_Internal: This an project developed for internal purposeSkyper: TODOThai Airway & Nok Air WP7 App.: Flight Booking, Flight Info, Flight Check In.TicketValidator: A .net CF application to validate tickets with a barcode. A Denso BHT-420BW is used in my case.Toggl Time Traking for Windows Phone 7: Toggl is a web application that provides an easy way to track time spent on projects. It works well for both teams and freelancers. Unida Gestão Acadêmica: Sistema de Gestão Acadêmica

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• Making an AI walk on a NavigationMesh (2D/Top-Down game)

  - by Lennard Fonteijn

  For some time I have been working on a framework which should make it possible to generate 2D levels based on a set of rules specified by level designers. You can read more about it here as I won't go into details: http://www.jorisdormans.nl/article.php?ref=engineering_emergence Anyway, I'm now at the point of putting the framework to use and have trouble coming up with a solution for AI. I decided to implement a NavigationMesh in the generated levels as I already have that information to start with. Consider the following image (borrowed from http://www.david-gouveia.com/pathfinding-on-a-2d-polygonal-map/): When I run A* on the NavigationMesh, the red path would be suggested when I want to go from point A to B (either direction). However, I don't want my AI to walk that path directly and clipping corners, I'd rather want them to follow the more logical black path. How would I go about going from the Red path to the Black path, are there any algorithms for this. Which steps do I take? Is A* the proper solution for this at all? For some additional information: The proof-of-concept game is a 2D top-down game written in C#, but examples/references in any language are welcome!

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• Learning to be a good developer: what parts can you skip over?

  - by Andrew M

  I have set myself the goal of becoming a decent developer by this time next year. By this I mean full experience of the development 'lifecycle,' a few good apps/sites/webapps under my belt, and most importantly being able to work at a steady pace without getting sidelined for hours by some should-know-this-already technique. I'm not starting from scratch. I've written a lot of html/css, SQL, javascript, python and VB.net, and studied other languages like C and Java. I know about things like OOP, design patterns, TDD, complexity, computational linguistics, pointers/references, functional programming, and other academic/theoretical matters. It's just I can't say I've really done these things yet. So I want to get up to speed, and I want to know what things I can leave till a later date. For instance, studying algorithms and the maths behind them is interesting and all, but so far I've hardly needed to write anything but the most basic nested loops. Investigating Assembly to have a clearer picture of low-level operations would be cool... but I imagine rarely infringes on daily work. On the other hand, looking at a functional programming language might help me write programs that are more comprehensible and less prone to hidden failures (at the moment I'm finding the biggest difficulty is when the complexity of the app exceeds my capacity to understand it - for instance passing data around was fine... until I had to start doing it with AJAX, which was a painful step up). I could spend time working through case studies of design patterns, but I'm not sure how many of them get used in 'real life.' I'm a programmer with basic abilities - what skills should I focus on developing? (also my Unix skills are very weak, and also knowledge of Windows configuration... not sure how much time I should spend on that)

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• How advanced are author-recognition methods?

  - by Nick Rtz

  From a written text by an author if a computer program analyses the text, how much can a computer program tell today about the author of some (long enough to be statistically significant) texts? Can the computer program even tell with "certainty" whether a man or a woman wrote this text based solely on the contents of the text and not an investigation such as ip numbers etc? I'm interested to know if there are algorithms in use for instance to automatically know whether an author was male or female or similar characteristics of an author that a computer program can decide based on analyses of the written text by an author. It could be useful to know before you read a message what a computer analyses says about the author, do you agree? If I for instance get a longer message from my wife that she has had an accident in Nigeria and the computer program says that with 99 % probability the message was written by a male author in his sixties of non-caucasian origin or likewise, or by somebody who is not my wife, then the computer program could help me investigate why a certain message differs in characteristics. There can also be other uses for instance just detecting outliers in a geographically or demographically bounded larger data set. Scam detection is the obvious use I'm thinking of but there could also be other uses. Are there already such programs that analyse a written text to tell something about the author based on word choice, use of pronouns, unusual language usage, or likewise?

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• From physics to Java programmer?

  - by inovaovao

  I'm a physics phd with little actual programming experience. I've always liked programming and played around with Basic and Pascal (also VB and Delphi) as a teen, but the largest actual project I completed was an assignement for the introductory computer science class in university where I wrote a nice little program (about 1500 lines of pascal) to display functions of 2 variables in 3D. I've had also a couple other projects of a few hundred lines range, but during my phd I didn't have (or take) the time to program more (string theory is hard guys!), beside playing around with ruby. Now I've decided that I'm more interested in programming than in physics and started to learn Java (hoping to pass the certification exam next week) and OO design. Still, I have trouble deciding on what to focus next (Java EE? Web development? algorithms and C programming?) in order to maximize my employement chances. Bear in mind that I'm aiming (mostly) at the swedish job market and that I'm 30 years old. So for the questions: Do you think that I have any chances to start and make a career in IT and programming coming from physics? What would be the best strategy to maximize my value in the field? Do you have suggestions as to where my physics background might be useful?

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• Is it more valuable to double major in Computer Science/Software Engineering or get an undergraduate CS degree with a Masters in SE?

  - by Austin Hyde

  A friend and I (both in college) are currently in a debate over which is better, in terms of employment opportunities, experience, and education: a Bachelors degree in both Computer Science and Software Engineering, or a Bachelors in Computer Science with a Masters in Software Engineering. My point of view is that I would rather go to school for 4-4.5 years to learn both sides of the field, and be out working on real projects gaining real experience, by going the double major route. His point of view is that it would look better to potential employers if he had a Bachelors in CS and Masters in SE. That way, when he's finally done after 4 years of CS and 2-4 of SE (depending on where he goes), he can pretty much have his choosing of what he wants to do. We are both in agreement on the distinction between the two degrees: CS is "traditional" and about the theory of algorithms, data structures, and programming, where SE is the study of the design of software and the implementation of CS theory. So, what's your stance on this debate? Have you gone one route or another? And most importantly, why?

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• Drawing particles as a smooth blob

  - by Nömmik

  I'm new to game/graphics development and I'm playing around with particles (in 2D). I want to draw particles close to each other as a blob, just as liquid/water. I do not want to draw big circles overlapping as the blob won't be smooth (and too big). I don't really know physics but I assume what I want is something looking similar to surface tension. I haven't been able to find anything on stackexchange or on Google (maybe I do not know the correct keywords?). So far I have found two possible solutions, but I am unable to find any concrete information about algorithms. One of them is to calculate the concave hull of particles I consider being a blob. I can calculate the blob by creating an equivalence class (on the relation "close to each other"). Strangely enough I haven't been able to find any algorithm explaining how to calculate the concave hull. Many posts (and among stackexchange) links to libraries or commercial products that do this (I need libraries to work in C#), but never any algorithm. Also this solution might have a problem with a circle of particles, which would not detect the empty space in the middle. While researching concave hull I stumbled upon something called alpha shapes. Which seems to be exactly what I want to do, however just as with concave hull I haven't found any source explaining how they actually work. I have found some presentation materials but not enough to go on. It's like a big secret everyone knows except me :-/ After calculating the concave hull or alpha shape I want to make it a Bézier curve to make it smooth and nice. Although I do find my approach a bit too complex, maybe I am trying to solve this the wrong way? If you can either suggest any other solution to my problem, or explain the pieces I am missing I would be very happy and grateful :-) Thanks.

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• Reading source code to learn

  - by perl.j

  As you develop as a programmer, IMO, you begin to see different practices, different Algorithms, and "more than one way to do it". Seeing this code can be a great learning experience for you, even though you did not write the code. But is doing this only going to confuse you? For example, let's say you have a library in any language that was created by a colleague, and you have been using it for a while. You decide to look at the actual source code, regardless of how extensive it is, and get a better look at how this library is written. For the sake of example, the function you use most often from this library is the max function, which finds the largest of two numbers. But this function is a lot more complicated than it needs to be. The way it is written is confusing the heck out of you, and you don't know how this works. Will this make you a better programmer, because you realize how complicated it is for such a simple function, or will it make you a worse coder because you feel less confidant? So my question, in general, is does reading source code make you a better programmer and if so how? If not why do people still do it?.

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• Fastest way to group units that can see each other?

  - by mac

  In the 2D game I'm working with, the game engine is able to give me, for each unit, the list of other units that are in its view range. I would like to know if there is an established algorithm to sort the units in groups, where each group would be defined by all those units which are "connected" to each other (even through others). An example might help understand the question better (E=enemy, O=own unit). First the data that I would get from the game engine: E1 can see E2, E3, O5 E2 can see E1 E3 can see E1 E4 can see O5 E5 can see O2 E6 can see E7, O9, O1 E7 can see E6 O1 can see E6 O2 can see O5, E5 O5 can see E1, E4, O2 O9 can see E6 Then I should compute the groups as follow: G1 = E1, E2, E3, E4, E5, O2, O5 G2 = O1, O9, E6, E7 It can be safely assumed that there is a transitive property for the field of view: [if A sees B, then B sees A]. Just to clarify: I already wrote a naïve implementation that loops on each row of the game engine info, but from the look of it, it seems a problem general enough for it to have been studied in depth and have various established algorithms (maybe passing through some tree-like structure?). My problem is that I couldn't find a way to describe my problem that returned useful google hits. Thank you in advance for your help!

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• Java language book for an experienced programmer?

  - by Andrew

  I am looking for book to get up to speed with (start with) a Java language. I am experienced (more than 15 years) C# and C++ programmer with a bit of Python, so I don't need a book which starts with a programming concepts for a beginner. In fact I think I need a "Java language specification" sort of book. I checked the answers to questions similar to mine and found that there two books which is being recommended most: "Effective Java" and "Sun Certified Java Programmer". After a quick look at the "Effective Java" I realised it should not be a book to start with, it is a good book (I read all books in Effective C++, STL series and liked them but they are more "good practices" books, rather than a book for a beginners) "Sun Certified Java Programmer" looks closer to what I am after - but goes too slow for me. So I did some more search and found these two books: The Java(TM) Language Specification by Gosling himself Java™ Programming Language, The (4th Edition) by Ken Arnold I gather the first one a little bit dated and the second one is the best Java Language Reference books up to date, but I am not sure - as I am not a Java person to make such judgements. After reading the language reference book I will start learning the basic libraries / packages / namespaces (collections, algorithms, IO, etc) and then something about UI architecture. But that will come later. Question: - which Java Language reference book for an experienced programmer you can recomend ? and why? Cheers.

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• Why do some programmers think there is a contrast between theory and practice?

  - by Giorgio

  Comparing software engineering with civil engineering, I was surprised to observe a different way of thinking: any civil engineer knows that if you want to build a small hut in the garden you can just get the materials and go build it whereas if you want to build a 10-storey house you need to do quite some maths to be sure that it won't fall apart. In contrast, speaking with some programmers or reading blogs or forums I often find a wide-spread opinion that can be formulated more or less as follows: theory and formal methods are for mathematicians / scientists while programming is more about getting things done. What is normally implied here is that programming is something very practical and that even though formal methods, mathematics, algorithm theory, clean / coherent programming languages, etc, may be interesting topics, they are often not needed if all one wants is to get things done. According to my experience, I would say that while you do not need much theory to put together a 100-line script (the hut), in order to develop a complex application (the 10-storey building) you need a structured design, well-defined methods, a good programming language, good text books where you can look up algorithms, etc. So IMO (the right amount of) theory is one of the tools for getting things done. So my question is why do some programmers think that there is a contrast between theory (formal methods) and practice (getting things done)? Is software engineering (building software) perceived by many as easy compared to, say, civil engineering (building houses)? Or are these two disciplines really different (apart from mission-critical software, software failure is much more acceptable than building failure)?

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• Porting Ruby/NCruses Rogue-Like to .NET and FlatRedBall

  - by ashes999

  I created an awesome rogue-like game in Ruby. For the GUI, I used NCurses. Since I'm using FlatRedBall as my engine of choice for Silverlight game development, I want to port this game over. What is the best way to efficiently doing this, and what are the pitfalls I should expect? For example, Ruby is object-oriented, like C#, and I should be able to just convert (rewrite) classes one by one. However, I will run into issues like: NCurses API. I need to possibly create my own notions of a "Window", or else rewrite GUI code. It's one class, but it's BIG. Mix-Ins. These are essentially aspect-oriented development. There are a couple of solutions in .NET, like dynamic classes. What else? Also, I should mention that I want to create a C# application out of this. As much as possible, I'll dump reusable and helper code, algorithms, etc. into separate projects and generate reusable DLLs.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, December 28, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, December 28, 2010Popular ReleasesMonitorWang: MonitorWang v1.0.5 (Growler): What's new?Added Growl Notification Finalisers - these are interceptor components that work exclusively with the Growl Publisher. These allow you to modify the Growl Notification just prior to it being sent by the publisher. You can inject custom logic to precisely control how the Growl Notification will appear; this includes changing the Growl Priority level and message text. I've created to two Growl Notification Finalisers - one allows you to change the Growl Notification Priorty based on ...Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.0.0: And there it is, the final release of Catel, and it is no longer a beta version!Multicore Task Framework: MTF 1.0.2: Release 1.0.2 of Multicore Task Framework.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.7 ALPHA: 2.2.7 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Mongoose has bee...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.19: Mono 2.8, Silverlight, OAuth, 100% Twitter API coverage, streaming, extensibility via Raw Queries, and added documentation. Bug fixes.Hammock for REST: Hammock v1.1.4: v1.1.4 ChangesOAuth fixes for post content handling, encoding, and url parameter doubling v1.1.3 ChangesAdded an event handler for use with retries Made improvements to OAuth for performance, plus additional fixes Added OAuth token refresh support Fixed memory leak in content streaming, and regression issue with async GET call response handling v1.1.2 ChangesAdded OAuth Echo native support and static helper methods on OAuthCredentials Fixes for multi-part stream writing and recovery...Rocket Framework (.Net 4.0): Rocket Framework for Windows V 1.0.0: Architecture is reviewed and adjusted in a way so that I can introduce the Web version and WPF version of this framework next. - Rocket.Core is introduced - Controller button functions revisited and updated - DB is renewed to suite the implemented features - Create New button functionality is changed - Add Question Handling featuresFxCop Integrator for Visual Studio 2010: FxCop Integrtor 1.1.0: New FeatureSearch violation information FxCop Integrator provides the violation search feature. You can find out specific violation information by simple search expression.Analyze with FxCop project file FxCop Integrator supports code analysis with FxCop project file. You can customize code analysis behavior (e.g. analyze specifid types only, use specific rules only, and so on). ImprovementImproved the code analysis result list to show more information (added Proejct and File column). Change...NoSimplerAccounting: NoSimplerAccounting 6.0: -Fixed a bug in expense category report.NHibernate Mapping Generator: NHibernate Mapping Generator 2.0: Added support for Postgres (Thanks to Angelo)NewLife XCode: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????（????v3.5??）: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????，??： NewLife.Core ??? NewLife.Net ??? XControl ??? XTemplate ????，??C#?????? XAgent ???? NewLife.CommonEnitty ??????（???，XCode??????） XCode?? ?????????，??????????????????，?????95% XCode v3.5.2009.0714 ??，?v3.5?v6.0???????????????，?????????。v3.5???????????，??????????????。 XCoder ??XTemplate?????????，????????XCode??? XCoder_Src ???????（????XTemplate????），??????????????????MiniTwitter: 1.64: MiniTwitter 1.64 ???? ?? 1.63 ??? URL ??????????????VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.0: Please see changes: http://support.vivoware.com/project/ChangeLog.aspx?PROJID=48Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6 Beta - codename JUNO: The Umbraco 4.6 beta (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains more than 89 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Improved installer experience Updated Starter Kits (Simple, Blog, Personal, Business) Beautiful, free, customizable skins included Skinning engine and Skin customization (see Skinning Documentation Kit) Default dashboards on install with hide option Updated Login t...SSH.NET Library: 2010.12.23: This release includes some bug fixes and few new fetures. Fixes Allow to retrieve big directory structures ssh-dss algorithm is fixed Populate sftp file attributes New Features Support for passhrase when private key is used Support added for diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256 and diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1 key exchange algorithms Allow to provide multiple key files for authentication Add support for "keyboard-interactive" authentication method...ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 2.3.0: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. Release notesThis will be the last release targeting ASP.NET MVC 2 and .NET 3.5. MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 will be targeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4 Web.config setting skipAssemblyScanOn has been deprecated in favor of excludeAssembliesForScan and includeAssembliesForScan ISiteMapNodeUrlResolver is now completely responsible for generating th...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.400: Extract the entire archive to a folder which has user access rights, eg desktop, documents etc. A manual is included to get you startedWindows Media Player GNTP Plugin: WMP-GNTP v1.0.5: This is the installer for WMP-GNTP. Install it to get the plugin on your system.Google Geo Kit: Static Google Map WinForm Control Nightly Build: 12/22/2010 MD5sum - b8118c9970d6dc9480fe7c41f042537f add event OnGMapNotDefined. When anything went wrong in StaticGmap internally and return null stream, this event will be firedSilverlight Sockets Sample: No binaries: Whole source code in a ZIP. Shame 'Source Code' tab isn't working, so I'll just upload a ZIP.New ProjectsAsfMojo: AsfMojo is an open source .NET ASF parsing library, providing support for parsing WMA audio and WMV video files. It offers classes to create streams from packet data within a media file, gather file statistics and extract audio segments or frame accurate still frames.asp.net ajax file manager: Features : Full Ajax Support security View Image Create folder Delete file & folder Copy file & folder Move file & folder multiple selection ( Ctrl + Select ) Easy installation and configuration Open source. compatible IE7,IE8,FF,Safari,Chrome http://www.filemanager.3ntar.netBoxNet: BoxNet is a opensource library which will provide possibility for Windows Phone 7 developers to integrate with DropBox.C# Sqlite For WP7: C# Sqlite Port for Windows phone 7 and possibly Silverlight 3, 4. The core engine was slightly modified to be used with IsolatedStorage and SqliteClient were ported by using missing codes from Mono project in order to maximize usability and portability from desktop.Comparison of Managed Compression Algorithms: Visual Studio 2010 Console Test Harness with samples of MiniLZO, QuickLz, SharpZipLib, iRolz and other managed compression classes. Tests compression of a 2MB Word file and shows timings. Useful in deciding what type of compression to use. Developers can easily add their own.Cypher Bot 2011: Cypher Bot 2011 Brings the word cipher to a whole new level. You can now easily open, save, print, and send ciphers. Make a short message or completly encrypt a document. The cipher is impossible to figure out unless you have the keyword and algorithm to solve it! Try it out!Directed Graph for .NET: This project presents a simple directed graph implementation for the .NET framework using C# language.DynamicAccess: DynamicAccess is a library to aid connecting DLR languages such as ironpython and ironruby to non-dynamic languages like managed C++. It also fills in some gaps in the current C# support of dynamic objects, such as member access by string and deletion of members or indexes.Euro for Windows XP: A simple tool and sample to change Estonian currency from Estonian Krone (kr) to Euro (€). Applies to all versions of Windows and from .NET 2.0 which is default build. The sample creates a custom locale and updates existing users through Registry.Excel PowerShell Console: An Excel AddIn to enable using PowerShell for Excel automation.fantastic: fantasticGomarket Toolbar: GoMarket FireFox toolbarjs: jsLiving Agile's Common Framework: This project is a collection of commonly used routines here at Living Agile. There are a lot of helpful extension methods, logging, configuration and threading utilities. All other Living Agile projects have a dependency on this project.MapWindow 4: MapWindow4 is a free windows GIS application and uses an ActiveX control at it's core that can be embedded into many applications that don't support .Net such as excel, access, visual basic 6, or other pre-.Net languages.Mdelete API: Delete all files and directores in windows shell. Support long path (less then 32000 chars) and network path (eg. \\server\share or \\127.0.0.1\share)OP-Code SyntaxEditor: OP-Code SyntaxEditor is a Windows Forms Control, similar to a multi-line TextBox, which syntax highlights text and provides some features for code editing.passion: passionSharpHighlighter: SharpHighlighter is an extension for Visual Studio; a fairly simple code highlighter for C# I made it for anyone who wants to download and learn how to create is own parser or Syntax Highlighter. This sample will highlight only C# classes and structs but it's quite extensible.Test Center Locator: Test center locator makes it easier to find closest toefl or Ielts test center

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• What should I learn that I missed by not going to school?

  - by BinaryMuse

  I'm a software engineer at a local university, and I feel I'm able to competently do my job, but recently I've been interested in "filling in" the gaps in my knowledge. I suspect I would have learned some of this in school; for example, I don't have a lot of knowledge of sorting algorithms (something I feel is pretty common in college). So, what knowledge am I likely missing by not going to college that I could study on my own? Bonus points for listing resources that might put me on the right track! Some background: I've programmed in PHP, Java, and Ruby (more seriously in Java and Ruby than PHP); I have some experience with C/C++, though my workload doesn't really lend itself to those languages; I work mostly (recently) with the web, using frameworks such as CakePHP and Rails. I'm familiar with SQL (though probably not with some of the theory). Note: The university I work for has no technical classes, so taking courses on the university's dime is a great idea but not possible for me. :)

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• Game Trees Conceptual Question

  - by Chris Corbin

  I am struggling to conceptually understand a question in a programming assignment for an algorithms class. The problem is dealing with a fictitious 2 player game, named Easy. The rules of the game are simple; each player may chose one of 4 integers {0-3} after which that integer is not available for the other player. The catch is, a player picks {0} it means they quit. The objective is for Player 1 to get {1} and Player 2 to get {2}, in which case they may win, however if both or neither succeed, then the game ends in a draw. I have been asked to draw the game tree for Easy, showing all nodes, which they explained as 4! = 24. Labeling the edges, which represent moves (selecting a number) and the leaves with who won (1 means Player 1 won, -1 means Player 2 won, and 0 means a tie). I have drawn out a game tree, which I believe is correct, however I am not 100% certain hence I am asking the question. My game tree only has 16 leaves. I am thinking that when a player picks {0}, and then quits, the game tree stops there? I don't see how it is possible to get to 24 leaves? Any help would be greatly appreciate, and if you need more information I would be happy to provide it. Thanks

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• How to design highly scalable web services in Java?

  - by Kshitiz Sharma

  I am creating some Web Services that would have 2000 concurrent users. The services are offered for free and are hence expected to get a large user base. In the future it may be required to scale up to 50,000 users. There are already a few other questions that address the issue like - Building highly scalable web services However my requirements differ from the question above. For example - My application does not have a user interface, so images, CSS, javascript are not an issue. It is in Java so suggestions like using HipHop to translate PHP to native code are useless. Hence I decided to ask my question separately. This is my project setup - Rest based Web services using Apache CXF Hibernate 3.0 (With relevant optimizations like lazy loading and custom HQL for tune up) Tomcat 6.0 MySql 5.5 My questions are - Are there alternatives to Mysql that offer better performance for what I'm trying to do? What are some general things to abide by in order to scale a Java based web application? I am thinking of putting my Application in two tomcat instances with httpd redirecting the request to appropriate tomcat on basis of load. Is this the right approach? Separate tomcat instances can help but then database becomes the bottleneck since both applications access the same database? I am a programmer not a Db Admin, how difficult would it be to cluster a Mysql database (or, to cluster whatever database offered as an alternative to 1)? How effective are caching solutions like EHCache? Any other general best practices? Some clarifications - Could you partition the data? Yes we could but we're trying to avoid it. We need to run a lot of data mining algorithms and the design would evolve over time so we can't be sure what lines of partition should be there.

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• Language parsing to find important words

  - by Matt Huggins

  I'm looking for some input and theory on how to approach a lexical topic. Let's say I have a collection of strings, which may just be one sentence or potentially multiple sentences. I'd like to parse these strings to and rip out the most important words, perhaps with a score that denotes how likely the word is to be important. Let's look at a few examples of what I mean. Example #1: "I really want a Keurig, but I can't afford one!" This is a very basic example, just one sentence. As a human, I can easily see that "Keurig" is the most important word here. Also, "afford" is relatively important, though it's clearly not the primary point of the sentence. The word "I" appears twice, but it is not important at all since it doesn't really tell us any information. I might expect to see a hash of word/scores something like this: "Keurig" => 0.9 "afford" => 0.4 "want" => 0.2 "really" => 0.1 etc... Example #2: "Just had one of the best swimming practices of my life. Hopefully I can maintain my times come the competition. If only I had remembered to take of my non-waterproof watch." This example has multiple sentences, so there will be more important words throughout. Without repeating the point exercise from example #1, I would probably expect to see two or three really important words come out of this: "swimming" (or "swimming practice"), "competition", & "watch" (or "waterproof watch" or "non-waterproof watch" depending on how the hyphen is handled). Given a couple examples like this, how would you go about doing something similar? Are there any existing (open source) libraries or algorithms in programming that already do this?

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• Can inbound links through template-based layouts result in penalties?

  - by Liam Sorsby

  So obviously link building is encouraged as long as it is natural, organic and has meaningful links with content relevant to your site. Obviously with the constant release of new updates to algorithms, Google is flagging sites for unnatural links to their sites. My Question is: Can this be caused by templating systems? With WordPress for example, where you can add a link on the footer and it is repeated throughout the entire website generating thousands of links? If we don't add any links, Good Content will be re-posted and linked to, surely if your content is constantly linked to this will flag your site for "unnatural" content as it's difficult to see if someone has been paid to write an article on your content. Or does Google just simply want us to audit some of the links to show we are making an effort? As you can tell we have had a Manual action for: Unnatural links to your site—impacts links. However, this seems to impact our website as well. Edit: To clarify the question: Can you get penalised for paying for advertising on a site that uses a templated sidebar. So when they create a new blog/page ect your link is also added onto the page hence resulting in 1000's of links to one page on our site. I know that one effect maybe a 0 pagerank web page linking to your page dilutes the PR of our page. However the links are only inbound not reciprocal

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