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• CoffeeScript - inability to support progressive adoption

  - by Renso

  First if, what is CoffeeScript?Web definitionsCoffeeScript is a programming language that compiles statement-by-statement to JavaScript. The language adds syntactic sugar inspired by Ruby and Python to enhance JavaScript's brevity and readability, as well as adding more sophisticated features like array comprehension and pattern matching.The issue with CoffeeScript is that it eliminates any progressive adoption. It is a purist approach, kind of like the Amish, if you're not borne Amish, tough luck. So for folks with thousands of lines of JavaScript code will have a tough time to convert it to CoffeeScript. You can use the js2coffee API to convert the JavaScript file to CoffeeScript but in my experience that had trouble converting the files. It would convert the file to CoffeeScript without any complaints, but then when trying to generate the CoffeeScript file got errors with guess what: INDENTATION!Tried to convince the CoffeeScript community on github but got lots of push-back to progressive adoption with comments like "stupid", "crap", "child's comportment", "it's like Ruby, Python", "legacy code" etc. As a matter of interest one of the first comments were that the code needs to be re-designed before converted to CoffeeScript. Well I rest my case then :-)So far the community on github has been very reluctant to even consider introducing some way to define code-blocks, obviously curly braces is not an option as they use it for json object definitions. They also have no consideration for a progressive adoption where some, if not all, JavaScript syntax will be allowed which means all of us in the real world that have thousands of lines of JavaScript will have a real issue converting it over. Worst, I for one lack the confidence that tools like js2coffee will provide the correct indentation that will determine the flow of control in your code!!! Actually it is hard for me to find enough justification for using spaces or tabs to control the flow of code. It is no wonder that C#, C, C++, Java, all enterprise-scale frameworks still use curly braces. Have never seen an enterprise app built with Ruby or PhP.Let me know what your concerns are with CoffeeScript and how you dealt with large scale JavaScript conversions to CoffeeScript.

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• How to stay creative when going through tough emotional times (divorce, family death, etc)? [closed]

  - by gaearon

  Hi everyone. I believe this is not a duplicate of motivation question because I want to especially emphasize the emotional breakdown. You may conquer lack of motivation by working harder and getting through the dip, however this was not the case when I was separating with my girlfriend. I actually liked the project, it was (and it still is!) my first programming job at an amazing workplace and I wasn't being pressured in any way but I found myself absolutely unable to code, blankly staring at the screen, my thoughts disorganized, the feeling of emptiness all in my chest. I could perform some straightforward coding but anything that involves creative thinking, designing abstractions, solving new problems and, worst of all, fixing bugs in legacy code, completely wiped out my brain to the point I started avoiding work, which I never have done before. Coffee only used to make it worse. Eventually I got over that, and I remember the happy day I solved a problem elegantly and thought—hell, first time in a month! Thankfully the project wasn't top priority and I had the time to catch up. I wonder now, was there any other way to boost my productivity back then? I bet people would say I should've taken a break—and I think I really should have—but what if I needed the money? Didn't want to lose my job? Are there any ways to trick your brain into being creative despite emotional losses? From your experience, would it be worth talking to my boss, collegues?

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• Need help with ColdFusion and ASP.NET site [closed]

  - by Michael Stone

  To begin, I wasn't too sure how to title this.. I've got a few questions. First off, I've got a very big site that's in ColdFusion and we've been migrating to ASP.NET C# 4.0 the last 8 months. I've got a team of 7 programmers and no one can seem to figure out these answers, not even our senior C# programmer. We're using Team Foundation Server and we can't figure out how to only push up one small change at time. Right now we're stuck to publishing the entire site and it's causing serious issues. We've currently got the site as a Project and not a Website. We're wondering if that's one issue. I actually think it might be a problem. We're also dealing with an issue where we can't access our regular folders with relative paths. So we're first developing our admin side in .NET and We've got our regular site and then we've got another site within that for our .NET admin tools. By site, I'm referring to them actually being Sites in IIS. This also creates a problem for us when we're creating tools that upload images and want to store them and access them from our parent Site. I'd very much appreciate any advice on how to go about this in the most standardized way. So what I'm hoping for is advise on: -Publishing and managing a site/project in Team Foundation Server. Being able to push up one fix at a time if needed would be GREAT! -Any help figuring out the issuing referencing folders from my .NET child site to my parent ColdFusion site using regular relative paths. "/a/images/b/" would be nice nice instead of only being able to do "/b/images/" We're using ColdFusion 8, C# Asp.NET 4.0/Entity Framework/POCO Templates, and a Windows 2008 R2 Server. Thank you in advance for any help.

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• Naming conventions: camelCase versus underscore_case ? what are your thoughts about it?

  - by poelinca

  I've been using underscore_case for about 2 years and I recently switched to camelCase because of the new job (been using the later one for about 2 months and I still think underscore_case is better suited for large projects where there are alot of programmers involved, mainly because the code is easyer to read). Now everybody at work uses camelCase because (so they say) the code looks more elegant . What are you're thoughts about camelCase or underscore_case p.s. please excuse my bad english Edit Some update first: platform used is PHP (but I'm not expecting strict PHP platform related answers , anybody can share their thoughts on which would be the best to use , that's why I came here in the first place) I use camelCase just as everibody else in the team (just as most of you recomend) we use Zend Framework which also recommends camelCase Some examples (related to PHP) : Codeigniter framework recommends underscore_case , and honestly the code is easier to read . ZF recomends camelCase and I'm not the only one who thinks ZF code is a tad harder to follow through. So my question would be rephrased: Let's take a case where you have the platform Foo which doesn't recommend any naming conventions and it's the team leader's choice to pick one. You are that team leader, why would you pick camelCase or why underscore_case? p.s. thanks everybody for the prompt answers so far

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• Places to store basic data

  - by Ella

  I am using PHP. I'm building a fully modular CMS, which is destined for the public. Some people might view this as a framework, but I intend to write a set of extensions for it, extensions that will make it a CMS :P Because it's completely modular I have a problem figuring out how to load extensions. Practically I need to get the list of active extensions, so I can load them inside my base class. I load them by reading some file headers, which contain a "dependency" field. That field decides the order in which I have to instantiate the objects. The problem is that when the CMS starts I have no database interface, because that's an extension too, so I can't store the active extensions list in the database :) You might ask how are extensions activated in the first place. Well - in the administration interface, which is an extension as well (obviously on first install of the CMS there will be some extensions active by default). Could writing that list inside a text file be a solution? The problem is that a lot of hosts are not very nice with scripts when they write files. And since this CMS is public I might have a problem here?

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• Ubuntu 12.04 Freezes w/ Ethernet Unplugged + Wireless Drops (Acer Aspire 5516)

  - by Grand Master T

  Ubuntu 12.04-12.10 32/64 freezes or won't boot if the Ethernet cable is unplugged and will not hold a wireless connection. Here is my scenario... Laptop: Acer Aspire 5516 Wireless card: Broadcom BCM4312 Ubuntu 12.04 32/64 Issues Unity 3d won't load without the Ethernet cable plugged in. If I let it load with Ethernet plugged in, it will freeze once I disconnect the cable. Unity 2d will load without the Ethernet cable plugged. In Unity 2d, wireless cannot hold a connection. I can connect to a Wireless network, but when I try to use it (i.e. open a browser), it disconnects. I can reconnect by disabling wireless (uncheck Enable Wireless), re-enable wireless, and reconnect. But, it will disconnect again once I start using it. Ubuntu 12.10 Issues Since 12.10 only gives me the option to load 3d (I assume), I experience the same thing as the first issue in 12.04. Attempted Solutions Enable networking/LAN in BIOS Set LAN first in boot priority in BIOS Remove STA wireless driver (bcmwl-kernel-source) and install b43 low power driver (firmware-b43-lpphy-installer). Remove default Network Manager and install Wicd. So far, I have had no luck with fixing this issue. Does anyone have any further suggestions?

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• Where is my ram?

  - by gsedej

  I have 2GB installed on my machine running Ubuntu 12.04. After some time of use, I see much of my RAM used. The RAM does not free enough even though I closed all my programs. I included 2 screenshots. First is "Gnome system monitor" (all process) and second is "htop" (with sudo), both sorted by memory usage. From both you see, that it's not possible that all running apps takes together 1GB of memory. First 7 biggest programs sum 250, but others are much smaller (all can't sum even 100MB). The cache is 300MB (yellow ||| on htop) and is not included in 1GB used. Also 260MB is already on swap. (which actually makes 1,3GB of used memory) If i start Firefox (or Chrome) with many tabs, it has only 1GB available and not potentially 1,5 GB (assume 0,5GB is for system). When I need more ram, swapping happens. So where is my ram? Which program is using it? How can i free it, to be available for e.g. Firefox? Gnome system monitor htop

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• List<T>.AddRange is causing a brief Update/Draw delay

  - by Justin Skiles

  I have a list of entities which implement an ICollidable interface. This interface is used to resolve collisions between entities. My entities are thus: Players Enemies Projectiles Items Tiles On each game update (about 60 t/s), I am clearing the list and adding the current entities based on the game state. I am accomplishing this via: collidableEntities.Clear(); collidableEntities.AddRange(players); collidableEntities.AddRange(enemies); collidableEntities.AddRange(projectiles); collidableEntities.AddRange(items); collidableEntities.AddRange(camera.VisibleTiles); Everything works fine until I add the visible tiles to the list. The first ~1-2 seconds of running the game loop causes a visible hiccup that delays drawing (so I can see a jitter in the rendering). I can literally remove/add the line that adds the tiles and see the jitter occur and not occur, so I have narrowed it down to that line. My question is, why? The list of VisibleTiles is about 450-500 tiles, so it's really not that much data. Each tile contains a Texture2D (image) and a Vector2 (position) to determine what is rendered and where. I'm going to keep looking, but from the top of my head, I can't understand why only the first 1-2 seconds hiccups but is then smooth from there on out. Any advice is appreciated.

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• Crash due to removal of Elements like CCSprite from NSMutableArray

  - by mayuur

  So, here's how it goes. I am currently working on Cocos2d game, which consists of many Obstacles. One obstacle gets added on the screen at an interval of 10 seconds like this. ObstacleSprite* newObstacle = [ObstacleSprite spriteWithFile:@"Obstacle.png" rect:CGRectMake(0, 0, 20, 20)]; newObstacle.position = ccp(mainPlayer1.position.x,10); [self addChild:newObstacle]; [self.arrayForObstacles addObject:newObstacle]; Now, I insert these obstacles into the arrayForObstacles because I also want to keep checking whether the Obstacles and MainPlayer don't collide. I check it with the help of this function. - (void) checkCollisionWithObstacle { if(mainPlayer1.playerActive) { for(int i = 0; i < [self.arrayForObstacles count]; i++) { ObstacleSprite* newObstacle = [self.arrayForObstacles objectAtIndex:i]; if(newObstacle != nil) { if(CGRectIntersectsRect([mainPlayer1 boundingBox], [newObstacle boundingBox])) { mainPlayer1.livesLeft--; } } } } } THE ISSUE Problem is when I get to certain score, one of the Obstacles gets deleted. Removal of Obstacles works as in First In-First Out (FIFO) mode. So, to delete obstacles, I write the following method : - (void) keepUpdatingScore { //update new score mainPlayer1.score+=10; //remove obstacle when score increases by 5k if(mainPlayer1.score > 5000 && mainPlayer1.score > 0) { mainPlayer1.playerActive = NO; if([self.arrayForObstacles count] > 0) { CCLOG(@"count is %d",[self.arrayForObstacles count]); ObstacleSprite* newObstacle = [self.arrayForObstacles objectAtIndex:0]; [self.arrayForObstacles removeObjectAtIndex:0]; [self removeChild:newObstacle cleanup:YES]; CCLOG(@"count is %d",[self.arrayForObstacles count]); } } else { } } It crashes when score crosses 5000 mark! UPDATE Crash happens when it again goes to the method checkCollisionWithObstacle. This is the THREAD Look. THis is the line Which crashes.

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• Adding root bone in 3DS Max?

  - by carlturtle

  my animation artist has made me a nice first person pair of arms, animated it, textured it, and given it to me. Then he went on vacation. I am programming my animations, and I am trying to test the model he has given me. Building my project gives me a warning: Multiple skeletons were found in the file. The first skeleton, named "frame l upperarm" has been moved to be a child of the scene root. The other, "frame r upperarm", will be ignored. Fragment identifier "frame r upperarm". Then an error: "Vertex is bound to bone "frame l forearm", but this bone is not present in the skeleton." I realize this means that there are two skeletons, as said in this problem: Importing 3d model with multiple skeletons I have 3DS Max, but I have no idea how to use it, and Google/CGTalk/Plycount turn up nothing relevant on how to add a root bone or combine skeletons. If anyone knows how, it would help me out greatly. Thanks.

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• Pick Up BioShock and Bioshock 2 for Price of a Big Mac Meal

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Pre-ordering just opened on the third-installment of the highly-acclaimed horror-survival game series BioShock, BioShock Infinite. As part of the pre-order promotions, you can pick up a bundled copy of BioShock and BioShock 2 for a song. For the unfamiliar, BioShock is an atmospheric first-person-shooter backed up by an incredible storyline set in the underwater utopian-turned-dystopian city of Rapture. BioShock 2 continues the story in Rapture and the upcoming release (Febuary 2013) of BioShock Infinite takes place in the same game universe but fifty years before the events of the first two installments. If that seems like the kind of game you could dig into, Amazon has the Windows-platform version of BioShock and BioShock 2 bundled together for a scant $7.49–81% off the Steam and general retail price. The best part about the promotion is you can either download the games from Amazon or, for those of you that use Steam, you can simply plug the game product key into Steam. You can read more about the both the original two games and the upcoming release at the official BioShock site. BioShock Dual Pack [via Geeks Are Sexy] How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

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• Code Clone Analysis on Rawr &ndash; Part 1

  - by Dylan Smith

  In this post we’ll take a look at the first result from the Code Clone Analysis, and do some refactoring to eliminate the duplication.  The first result indicated that it found an exact match repeated 14 times across the solution, with 18 lines of duplicated code in each of the 14 blocks.   Net Lines Of Code Deleted: 179     In this case the code in question was a bunch of classes representing the various Bosses.  Every Boss class has a constructor that initializes a whole bunch of properties of that boss, however, for most bosses a lot of these are simply set to 0’s.     Every Boss class inherits from the class MultiDiffBoss, so I simply moved all the initialization of the various properties to the base class constructor, and left it up to the Boss subclasses to only set those that are different than the default values. In this case there are actually 22 Boss subclasses, however, due to some inconsistencies in the code structure Code Clone only identified 14 of them as identical blocks.  Since I was in there refactoring the 14 identified already, it was pretty straightforward to identify the other 8 subclasses that had the same duplicated behavior and refactor those also.   Note: Code Clone Analysis is pretty slow right now.  It takes approx 1 min to build this solution, but it takes 9 mins to run Code Clone Analysis.  Personally, if the results are high quality I’m OK with it taking a long time to run since I don’t expect it’s something I would be running all that often.  However, it would be nice to be able to run it as part of a nightly build, but at this time I don’t believe it’s possible to run outside of Visual Studio due to a dependency on the meta-data available in the VS environment.

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• OPN Exchange @ OpenWorld - Don't Overlook TestFest!

  - by Get_Specialized!

  As part of the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld conference a “Test Fest” will be taking place from Monday, October 1st - Thursday, October 4th 2012 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel. Were you requested by management to get the most out of your OOW experience and expense?  Looking for something that will help you or a team member get approved by your management to attend this year? Seeking a way to justify having your technical expert out to OOW to help you close a deal?  Then take advantage of training available onsite for your staff or yourself during Oracle OpenWorld; no matter if you are primarily coming to staff a booth, present a session, meet with customers, or attend the OPN PartnerNetwork Exchange. With limited seating available, its adviseable to pre-register today to: Get recognized for your skills, with an OPN Specialist accreditation Take exams that are free of charge for Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange attendees Help your company get Specialized in a higher level of the OPN Program Get a list of exams , study materials and pre-register using the Schedule Builder tool to reserve a seat in one of the 10 sessions offered on a first come, first serve basis. Remember upon arrival to the testing room, you will need to show proof of valid OPN Membership and have your valid Pearson Vue account ID. For any questions, email the OPN Communications team. Test Fest Schedule Date Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Monday - October 1 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM Tuesday - October 2 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM Wednesday - October 3 10:30 AM - 12:30PM 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM 3:30 PM - 5:30PM Thursday - October 4 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM 1:30 PM- 3:30 PM Look forward to meeting you at the Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange

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• Rewrite img and link paths with htaccess and serve the file from rewritten path?

  - by frequent

  I have a static mockup page, which I want to "customize" by switching a variable used in image-src and link-href attributes. Paths will look like this: <img src="/some/where/VARIABLE/img/1.jpg" alt="" /> <link rel="some" href="/some/where/VARIABLE/stuff/foo.bar" /> I'm setting a cookie with the VARIABLE value on the preceding page and now want to modfiy the paths accordingly by replacing VARIABLE with the cookie value. I'm a htaccess newbie. This is what I have (doesn't work): <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> # get cookie value cookie RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} client=([^;]*) # rewrite/redirect to correct file RewriteRule ^/VARIABLE/(.+)$ /%1/$1 [L] </IfModule> So I thought my first line gets the cookie value and stores this in %1. And on the second line I'm filtering VARIABLE, replace it with the cookie value and whatever comes after VARIABLE in $1. Thanks for sheeding some light on what I'm doing, doing wrong and if I can do this at all using htaccess. EDIT: I'm sort of halfway through, but it's still not working... Mabye someone can apply the finishing touches: <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> # check for client cookie RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} (?:^|;\s*)client=([^;]*) # check if an image was requested RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} \.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ # exclude these folders RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !some/members/logos # grab everything before the variable folder and everything afterwards # replace this with first bracket/cookie_value/second bracket RewriteRule (^.+)/VARIABLE/(.+)$ $1/%1/$2 [L] </IfModule> Still can't get it to work, but I think this is the correct way of doing it. Thanks for help!

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• Dreaded SQLs

  - by lavanyadeepak

  Dreaded SQLs We used to think that a SQL statement without a where clause is only dangerous right since running that on a server TSQL is just going to impact the entire table like waving the magic wand. For that reason we should cultivate the habit first to write the statement as select and then to modify the select portion as update. Within the T-SQL Window, I would normally prefer the following first: select * from employee where empid in (4,5) and then once I am satisfied with the results, I would go ahead with the following change: --select * delete from employee where empid in (4,5) Today I just discovered another coding horror. This would typically be applicable in a stored procedure and with respect to variable nomenclature. It is always desirable to have a suitable nomenclature for parameters distinct from the column names and internal variables. This would help quicker debugging of the stored procedures besides enhancing the readability. Else in a quick bout of enthusiasm a statement like   if (@CustomerID = @CustomerID) [when the latter is intended to denote the column name and there is a superflous @ prepended], zeroing in on the problem would be little tricky. Had there been a still powerful nomenclature rules then debugging would have been more straight-forward and simpler right?

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• Why do I need a framework?

  - by lvictorino

  First of all I know my question may sounds idiot but I am no "beginner". In fact I work as game developer for several years now and I know some things about code :) But as this is no related to game development I am a bit lost. I am writing a big script (something about GIS) in Python, using a lot of data stored in a database. I made a first version of my script, and now, I'd like to re-design the whole thing. I read some advice about using a framework (like Django) for database queries. But as my script only "SELECT" informations I was wondering about the real benefits to use a framework. It seems that it adds a lot of complexity and useless embedded features (useless for my specific script) for the benefits that it will bring. Am I wrong? EDIT: few spec of this "script". Its purpose is to get GIS data on an enormous database (if you ever worked with openstreetmap you know what I mean ~= 200Go) and to manipulate this data in order to produce nice map images. Queries are not numerous (select streets, select avenues, select waterways, select forests... and so on for a specific area) but query results may be more than 10.000 rows. I'd like to sell this script as a service, so yes it's meant to stay.

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• Forking a GPL dual licensed software with business owned copyrights

  - by Eric

  After receiving some threats of the copyrights holder of a dual licensed software(GPL2 and commercial) to buy the commercial version for projects in production, I am thinking to make a fork. In a case of GPL2 and commercially dual licensed with business owned copyrights software, is forking the GPL2 version an option? Also, is forking a good way to deal with such cases? Background information The software is a web CMS released under 2 versions a GPL2 free open source edition and a commercial edition including technical support and extra functionality. The problem is that now, basing their argumentation on the "distribution" definition of the GPL2, the company holding the copyrights argue that delivering the software and some extensions to a client is considered as a "distribution". And that such a "distribution" falls under the GPL2 obligation to release the custom made extension code. Custom made extensions are mainly designs, templates and very specific functionality. Basically they give me 3 choices: Buying the commercial licensed edition for projects based on the GPL in production, Deleting all the projects in production based on GPL2 version, Releasing all the extensions as GPL2 code. The first 2 options are nothing realistic for finished projects. The third option could be fine, but as most of the extensions are very specific, cleaning the code to make it usable by other users means lot of works and also I am not sure the clients will appreciate to have their website designs and specific functionality released publicly. The copyrights holding company even contacted some clients directly, giving them the "choice". I know that this is a very corporate interpretation of GPL2, and a such action is nothing close to legal, but as an independent developer, I don't want to take the risk to get involved in some long and tiring legal procedures. PS. This question was first asked on Stack Overflow where it felt out of the scope and closed, after reading the present site FAQ, discussing about software licensing seems fine.

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• Should I avoid or embrace asking questions of other developers on the job?

  - by T.K.

  As a CS undergraduate, the people around me are either learning or are paid to teach me, but as a software developer, the people around me have tasks of their own. They aren't paid to teach me, and conversely, I am paid to contribute. When I first started working as a software developer co-op, I was introduced to a huge code base written in a language I had never used before. I had plenty of questions, but didn't want to bother my co-workers with all of them - it wasted their time and hurt my pride. Instead, I spent a lot of time bouncing between IDE and browser, trying to make sense of what had already been written and differentiate between expected behavior and symptoms of bugs. I'd ask my co-workers when I felt that the root of my lack of understanding was an in-house concept that I wouldn't find on the internet, but aside from that, I tried to confine my questions to lunch hours. Naturally, there were occasions where I wasted time trying to understand something in code on the internet that had, at its heart, an in-house concept, but overall, I felt I was productive enough during my first semester, contributing about as much as one could expect and gaining a pretty decent understanding of large parts of the product. I was wondering what senior developers felt about that mindset. Should new developers ask more questions to get to speed faster, or should they do their own research for themselves? I see benefits to both mindsets, and anticipate a large variety of responses, but I figure new developers might appreciate your answers without thinking to ask this question.

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• Should I make a seperate unit test for a method, if it only modifies the parent state?

  - by Dante

  Should classes, that modify the state of the parent class, but not itself, be unit tested separately? And by separately, I mean putting the test in the corresponding unit test class, that tests that specific class. I'm developing a library based on chained methods, that return a new instance of a new type in most cases, where a chained method is called. The returned instances only modify the root parent state, but not itself. Overly simplified example, to get the point across: public class BoxedRabbits { private readonly Box _box; public BoxedRabbits(Box box) { _box = box; } public void SetCount(int count) { _box.Items += count; } } public class Box { public int Items { get; set; } public BoxedRabbits AddRabbits() { return new BoxedRabbits(this); } } var box = new Box(); box.AddRabbits().SetCount(14); Say, if I write a unit test under the Box class unit tests: box.AddRabbits().SetCount(14) I could effectively say, that I've already tested the BoxedRabbits class as well. Is this the wrong way of approaching this, even though it's far simpler to first write a test for the above call, then to first write a unit test for the BoxedRabbits separately?

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• The clock problem - to if or not to if?

  - by trejder

  Let's say, we have a simple digital clock. To "power" it, we use a routine executed every second. We update seconds part in it. But, what about minutes and hours part? What is better / more professional / offers better performance: Ignore all checking and update hour, minute and seconds part each time, every second. Use if + a variable for checking, if 60 (or 3600) seconds passed and update minute / hour part only at that precise moments. This leads us to a question, what is better -- unnecessary drawings (first approach) or extra ifs? I've just spotted a Javascript digital clock, one of millions similar on one of billions pages. And I noticed that all three parts (hours, minutes and seconds) are updated every second, though first changes its value only once per 3600 seconds and second once per 60 seconds. I'm not to experienced developer, so I might me wrong. But everything, what I've learnt up until now, tells me, that if are far better then executing drawing / refreshing sequences only to draw the same content.

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• Neural network input preprocessing

  - by TND

  It's clear that the effectiveness of a neural network depends strongly on the format you give it to work with. You want to preprocess it into the most convenient form you can algorithmically get to, so that the neural network doesn't have to account for that itself. I'm working on a little project that (surprise!) is going to be using neural networks. My future goal is to eventually use NEAT, which I'm really excited about. Anyway, one of my ideas involves moving entities in continuous 2D space, from a top-down perspective (this would be a really cool game AI). Of course, unless these guys are blind, they're going to be able to see the world around them. There's a lot of different ways this information could be fed into the network. One interesting but expensive way is to simply render a top-down "view" of things, with the entities as dots on the picture, and feed that in. I was hoping for something much simpler to use (at least at first), such as a list of the x (maybe 7 or so) nearest entities and their position in relative polar coordinates, orientation, health, etc., but I'm trying to think of the best way to do it. My first instinct was to order them by distance, which would inherently also train the neural network to consider those more "important". However, I was thinking- what if there's two entities that are nearly the same distance away? They could easily alternate indexes in that list, confusing the network. My question is, is there a better way of representing this? Essentially, the issue is the network needs a good way of keeping track of who's who, while knowing (by being inputted) relevant information about the list of entities it can see. Thanks!

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• Spherical to Cartesian Coordinates

  - by user1258455

  Well I'm reading the Frank's Luna DirectX10 book and, while I'm trying to understand the first demo, I found something that's not very clear at least for me. In the updateScene method, when I press A, S, W or D, the angles mTheta and mPhi change, but after that, there are three lines of code that I don't understand exactly what they do: // Convert Spherical to Cartesian coordinates: mPhi measured from +y // and mTheta measured counterclockwise from -z. float x = 5.0f*sinf(mPhi)*sinf(mTheta); float z = -5.0f*sinf(mPhi)*cosf(mTheta); float y = 5.0f*cosf(mPhi); I mean, this explains that they do, it says that it converts the spherical coordinates to cartesian coordinates, but, mathematically, why? why the x value is calculated by the product of the sins of both angles? And the z by the product of the sine and cosine? and why the y just uses the cosine? After that, those values (x, y and z) are used to build the view matrix. The book doesn't explain (mathematically) why those values are calculated like that (and I didn't find anything to help me to understand it at the first Part of the book: "Mathematical prerequisites"), so it would be good if someone could explain me what exactly happen in those code lines or just give me a link that helps me to understand the math part. Thanks in advance!

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• Seperation of drawing and logic in games

  - by BFree

  I'm a developer that's just now starting to mess around with game development. I'm a .Net guy, so I've messed with XNA and am now playing around with Cocos2d for the iPhone. My question really is more general though. Let's say I'm building a simple Pong game. I'd have a Ball class and a Paddle class. Coming from the business world development, my first instinct is to not have any drawing or input handling code in either of these classes. //pseudo code class Ball { Vector2D position; Vector2D velocity; Color color; void Move(){} } Nothing in the ball class handles input, or deals with drawing. I'd then have another class, my Game class, or my Scene.m (in Cocos2D) which would new up the Ball, and during the game loop, it would manipulate the ball as needed. The thing is though, in many tutorials for both XNA and Cocos2D, I see a pattern like this: //pseudo code class Ball : SomeUpdatableComponent { Vector2D position; Vector2D velocity; Color color; void Update(){} void Draw(){} void HandleInput(){} } My question is, is this right? Is this the pattern that people use in game development? It somehow goes against everything I'm used to, to have my Ball class do everything. Furthermore, in this second example, where my Ball knows how to move around, how would I handle collision detection with the Paddle? Would the Ball need to have knowledge of the Paddle? In my first example, the Game class would have references to both the Ball and the Paddle, and then ship both of those off to some CollisionDetection manager or something, but how do I deal with the complexity of various components, if each individual component does everything themselves? (I hope I'm making sense.....)

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• Problem in multi booting Ubuntu 12.04 with existing Windows XP, 7 and 8 in 500GB HDD with 5 Partitions

  - by Dhruva

  Here's my case. I have 500GB HDD with 5 Partitions with XP, Windows7 and Windows8 RP in the first three. As per one of the instruction I've seen in this forum, I did shrink my 4th Partition to create a 30GB unallocated free space to install Ubuntu 12.04. But, when next I'm trying to boot the Ubuntu CD and choosing "Something Else", its only recognizing my 500GB HDD in whole as "/sda" and not reading the free 30GB space separately to install Ubuntu in it as suggested in the instruction mentioned in this forum. I've also tried to install in from within Windows7, by mounting the Ubuntu ISO file and using the .exe file and instruction thereupon (choosing free drive, user name, installation size, etc.), but that also failed after the PC restarted to continue the installation, showing as error for file extension, partition something error. One thing to be noted that the PC I'm trying to install Ubuntu in it is my Home PC and doesn't have any internet connection. Hence, no updates or otherwise online help. What shall I do?? Kindly suggest. Sorry if I made some grammatical mistakes as English is not my first language. Thanks in advance.

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• Matrices: Arrays or separate member variables?

  - by bjz

  I'm teaching myself 3D maths and in the process building my own rudimentary engine (of sorts). I was wondering what would be the best way to structure my matrix class. There are a few options: Separate member variables: struct Mat4 { float m11, m12, m13, m14, m21, m22, m23, m24, m31, m32, m33, m34, m41, m42, m43, m44; // methods } A multi-dimensional array: struct Mat4 { float[4][4] m; // methods } An array of vectors struct Mat4 { Vec4[4] m; // methods } I'm guessing there would be positives and negatives to each. From 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development, 2nd Edition p.155: Matrices use 1-based indices, so the first row and column are numbered 1. For example, a12 (read “a one two,” not “a twelve”) is the element in the first row, second column. Notice that this is different from programming languages such as C++ and Java, which use 0-based array indices. A matrix does not have a column 0 or row 0. This difference in indexing can cause some confusion if matrices are stored using an actual array data type. For this reason, it’s common for classes that store small, fixed size matrices of the type used for geometric purposes to give each element its own named member variable, such as float a11, instead of using the language’s native array support with something like float elem[3][3]. So that's one vote for method one. Is this really the accepted way to do things? It seems rather unwieldy if the only benefit would be sticking with the conventional math notation.

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