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• Do you think natively compiled languages have reached their EOL?

  - by Yuval A

  If we look at the major programming languages in use today it is pretty noticeable that the vast majority of them are, in fact, interpreted. Looking at the largest piece of the pie we have Java and C# which are both enterprise-ready, heavy-duty, serious programming languages which are basically compiled to byte-code only to be interpreted by their respective VMs (the JVM and the CLR). If we look at scripting languages, we have Perl, Python, Ruby and Lua which are all interpreted (either from code or from bytecode - and yes, it should be noted that they are absolutely not the same). Looking at compiled languages we have C which is nowadays used in embedded and low-level, real-time environments, and C++ which is still alive and kicking, when you want to get down to serious programming as close to the hardware as you can, but still have some nice abstractions to help you with day to day tasks. Basically, there is no real runner-up compiled language in the distance. Do you feel that languages which are natively compiled to executable, binary code are a thing of the past, taken over by interpreted languages which are much more portable and compatible? Does C++ mark an end of an era? Why don't we see any new compiled languages anymore? I think I should clarify: I do not want this to turn into a "which language is better" discussion, because that is not the issue at hand. The languages I gave as example are only examples. Please focus on the question I raised, and if you disagree with my statement that compiled languages are less frequent these days, that is totally fine, I am more than happy to be proved mistaken.

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• Unit testing statically typed functional code

  - by back2dos

  I wanted to ask you people, in which cases it makes sense to unit test statically typed functional code, as written in haskell, scala, ocaml, nemerle, f# or haXe (the last is what I am really interested in, but I wanted to tap into the knowledge of the bigger communities). I ask this because from my understanding: One aspect of unit tests is to have the specs in runnable form. However when employing a declarative style, that directly maps the formalized specs to language semantics, is it even actually possible to express the specs in runnable form in a separate way, that adds value? The more obvious aspect of unit tests is to track down errors that cannot be revealed through static analysis. Given that type safe functional code is a good tool to code extremely close to what your static analyzer understands. However a simple mistake like using x instead of y (both being coordinates) in your code cannot be covered. However such a mistake could also arise while writing the test code, so I am not sure whether its worth the effort. Unit tests do introduce redundancy, which means that when requirements change, the code implementing them and the tests covering this code must both be changed. This overhead of course is about constant, so one could argue, that it doesn't really matter. In fact, in languages like Ruby it really doesn't compared to the benefits, but given how statically typed functional programming covers a lot of the ground unit tests are intended for, it feels like it's a constant overhead one can simply reduce without penalty. From this I'd deduce that unit tests are somewhat obsolete in this programming style. Of course such a claim can only lead to religious wars, so let me boil this down to a simple question: When you use such a programming style, to which extents do you use unit tests and why (what quality is it you hope to gain for your code)? Or the other way round: do you have criteria by which you can qualify a unit of statically typed functional code as covered by the static analyzer and hence needs no unit test coverage?

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• I don't know C. And why should I learn it?

  - by Stephen

  My first programming language was PHP (gasp). After that I started working with JavaScript. I've recently done work in C#. I've never once looked at low or mid level languages like C. The general consensus in the programming-community-at-large is that "a programmer who hasn't learned something like C, frankly, just can't handle programming concepts like pointers, data types, passing values by reference, etc." I do not agree. I argue that: Because high level languages are easily accessible, more "non-programmers" dive in and make a mess, and In order to really get anything done in a high level language, one needs to understand the same similar concepts that most proponents of "learn-low-level-first" evangelize about. Some people need to know C. Those people have jobs that require them to write low to mid-level code. I'm sure C is awesome. I'm sure there are a few bad programmers who know C. My question is, why the bias? As a good, honest, hungry programmer, if I had to learn C (for some unforeseen reason), I would learn C. Considering the multitude of languages out there, shouldn't good programmers focus on learning what advances us? Shouldn't we learn what interests us? Should we not utilize our finite time moving forward? Why do some programmers disagree with this? I believe that striving for excellence in what you do is the fundamental deterministic trait between good programmers and bad ones. Does anyone have any real world examples of how something written in a high level language--say Java, Pascal, PHP, or Javascript--truely benefitted from a prior knowledge of C? Examples would be most appreciated. (revised to better coincide with the six guidelines.)

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• How can I make sense of the word "Functor" from a semantic standpoint?

  - by guillaume31

  When facing new programming jargon words, I first try to reason about them from an semantic and etymological standpoint when possible (that is, when they aren't obscure acronyms). For instance, you can get the beginning of a hint of what things like Polymorphism or even Monad are about with the help of a little Greek/Latin. At the very least, once you've learned the concept, the word itself appears to go along with it well. I guess that's part of why we name things names, to make mental representations and associations more fluent. I found Functor to be a tougher nut to crack. Not so much the C++ meaning -- an object that acts (-or) as a function (funct-), but the various functional meanings (in ML, Haskell) definitely left me puzzled. From the (mathematics) Functor Wikipedia article, it seems the word was borrowed from linguistics. I think I get what a "function word" or "functor" means in that context - a word that "makes function" as opposed to a word that "makes sense". But I can't really relate that to the notion of Functor in category theory, let alone functional programming. I imagined a Functor to be something that creates functions, or behaves like a function, or short for "functional constructor", but none of those seems to fit... How do experienced functional programmers reason about this ? Do they just need any label to put in front of a concept and be fine with it ? Generally speaking, isn't it partly why advanced functional programming is hard to grasp for mere mortals compared to, say, OO -- very abstract in that you can't relate it to anything familiar ? Note that I don't need a definition of Functor, only an explanation that would allow me to relate it to something more tangible, if there is any.

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• I don't know C. And why should I learn it?

  - by Stephen

  My first programming language was PHP (gasp). After that I started working with JavaScript. I've recently done work in C#. I've never once looked at low or mid level languages like C. The general consensus in the programming-community-at-large is that "a programmer who hasn't learned something like C, frankly, just can't handle programming concepts like pointers, data types, passing values by reference, etc." I do not agree. I argue that: Because high level languages are easily accessible, more "non-programmers" dive in and make a mess In order to really get anything done in a high level language, one needs to understand the same similar concepts that most proponents of "learn-low-level-first" evangelize about. Some people need to know C; those people have jobs that require them to write low to mid-level code. I'm sure C is awesome, and I'm sure there are a few bad programmers who know C. Why the bias? As a good, honest, hungry programmer, if I had to learn C (for some unforeseen reason), I would learn C. Considering the multitude of languages out there, shouldn't good programmers focus on learning what advances us? Shouldn't we learn what interests us? Should we not utilize our finite time moving forward? Why do some programmers disagree with this? I believe that striving for excellence in what you do is the fundamental deterministic trait between good programmers and bad ones. Does anyone have any real world examples of how something written in a high level language—say Java, Pascal, PHP, or Javascript—truely benefitted from a prior knowledge of C? Examples would be most appreciated.

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• How to write constructors which might fail to properly instantiate an object

  - by whitman

  Sometimes you need to write a constructor which can fail. For instance, say I want to instantiate an object with a file path, something like obj = new Object("/home/user/foo_file") As long as the path points to an appropriate file everything's fine. But if the string is not a valid path things should break. But how? You could: 1. throw an exception 2. return null object (if your programming language allows constructors to return values) 3. return a valid object but with a flag indicating that its path wasn't set properly (ugh) 4. others? I assume that the "best practices" of various programming languages would implement this differently. For instance I think ObjC prefers (2). But (2) would be impossible to implement in C++ where constructors must have void as a return type. In that case I take it that (1) is used. In your programming language of choice can you show how you'd handle this problem and explain why?

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• Misconceptions about purely functional languages?

  - by Giorgio

  I often encounter the following statements / arguments: Pure functional programming languages do not allow side effects (and are therefore of little use in practice because any useful program does have side effects, e.g. when it interacts with the external world). Pure functional programming languages do not allow to write a program that maintains state (which makes programming very awkward because in many application you do need state). I am not an expert in functional languages but here is what I have understood about these topics until now. Regarding point 1, you can interact with the environment in purely functional languages but you have to explicitly mark the code (functions) that introduces them (e.g. in Haskell by means of monadic types). Also, AFAIK computing by side effects (destructively updating data) should also be possible (using monadic types?) but is not the preferred way of working. Regarding point 2, AFAIK you can represent state by threading values through several computation steps (in Haskell, again, using monadic types) but I have no practical experience doing this and my understanding is rather vague. So, are the two statements above correct in any sense or are they just misconceptions about purely functional languages? If they are misconceptions, how did they come about? Could you write a (possibly small) code snippet illustrating the Haskell idiomatic way to (1) implement side effects and (2) implement a computation with state?

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• Can higher-order functions in FP be interpreted as some kind of dependency injection?

  - by Giorgio

  According to this article, in object-oriented programming / design dependency injection involves a dependent consumer, a declaration of a component's dependencies, defined as interface contracts, an injector that creates instances of classes that implement a given dependency interface on request. Let us now consider a higher-order function in a functional programming language, e.g. the Haskell function filter :: (a -> Bool) -> [a] -> [a] from Data.List. This function transforms a list into another list and, in order to perform its job, it uses (consumes) an external predicate function that must be provided by its caller, e.g. the expression filter (\x -> (mod x 2) == 0) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] selects all even numbers from the input list. But isn't this construction very similar to the pattern illustrated above, where the filter function is the dependent consumer, the signature (a -> Bool) of the function argument is the interface contract, the expression that uses the higher-order is the injector that, in this particular case, injects the implementation (\x -> (mod x 2) == 0) of the contract. More in general, can one relate higher-order functions and their usage pattern in functional programming to the dependency injection pattern in object-oriented languages? Or in the inverse direction, can dependency injection be compared to using some kind of higher-order function?

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• What do you wish language designers paid attention to?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  The purpose of this question is not to assemble a laundry list of programming language features that you can't live without, or wish was in your main language of choice. The purpose of this question is to bring to light corners of languge design most language designers might not think about. So, instead of thinking about language feature X, think a little more philisophically. One of my biases, and perhaps it might be controversial, is that the softer side of engineering--the whys and what fors--are many times more important than the more concrete side. For example, Ruby was designed with a stated goal of improving developer happiness. While your opinions may be mixed on whether it delivered or not, the fact that was a goal means that some of the choices in language design were influenced by that philosophy. Please do not post: Syntax flame wars (I could care less whether you use whitespace [Python], keywords [Ruby], or curly braces [Java, C/C++, et. al.] to denote program blocks). That's just an implementation detail. "Any language that doesn't have feature X doesn't deserve to exist" type comments. There is at least one reason for all programming languages to exist--good or bad. Please do post: Philisophical ideas that language designers seem to miss. Technical concepts that seem to be poorly implemented more often than not. Please do provide an example of the pain it causes and if you have any ideas of how you would prefer it to function. Things you wish were in the platform's common library but seldom are. One the same token, things that usually are in a common library that you wish were not. Conceptual features such as built in test/assertion/contract/error handling support that you wish all programming languages would implement properly--and define properly. My hope is that this will be a fun and stimulating topic.

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• Hobbyist transitioning to earn money on paid work?

  - by Chelonian

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

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• Do we ethically have the right to use the MAC Address for verification purposes?

  - by Matt Ridge

  I am writing a program, or starting at the very beginning of it, and I am thinking of purchase verification systems as a final step. I will be catering to Macs, PCs, and possibly Linux if all is said and done. I will also be programming this for smartphones as well using C++ and Objective-C. (I am writing a blueprint before going head first into it) That being said, I am not asking for help on doing it yet, but what I’m looking for is a realistic measurement for what could be expected as a viable and ethical option for purchase verification systems. Apple through the Apple Store, and some other stores out there have their own "You bought it" check. I am looking to use a three prong verification system. Email/password 16 to 32 character serial number using alpha/numeric and symbols with Upper and lowercase variants. MAC Address. The first two are in my mind ok, but I have to ask on an ethical standpoint, is a MAC Address to lock the software to said hardware unethical, or is it smart? I understand if an Ethernet card changes if not part of the logic board, or if the logic board changes so does the MAC address, so if that changes it will have to be re-verified, but I have to ask with how everything is today... Is it ethical to actually use the MAC address as a validation key or no? Should I be forward with this kind of verification system or should I keep it hidden as a secret? Yes I know hackers and others will find ways of knowing what I am doing, but in reality this is why I am asking. I know no verification is foolproof, but making it so that its harder to break is something I've always been interested in, and learning how to program is bringing up these questions, because I don't want to assume one thing and find out it's not really accepted in the programming world as a "you shouldn't do that" maneuver... Thanks in advance... I know this is my first programming question, but I am just learning how to program, and I am just making sure I'm not breaking some ethical programmer credo I shouldn't...

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• How often do you review fundamentals?

  - by mlnyc

  So I've been out of school for a year and a half now. In school, of course we covered all the fundamentals: OS, databases, programming languages (i.e. syntax, binding rules, exception handling, recursion, etc), and fundamental algorithms. the rest were more in-depth topics on things like NLP, data mining, etc. Now, a year ago if you would have told me to write a quicksort, or reverse a singly-linked list, analyze the time complexity of this 'naive' algorithm vs it's dynamic programming counterpart, etc I would have been able to give you a decent and hopefully satisfying answer. But if you would have asked me more real world questions I might have been stumped (things like how would handle logging for an application, or security difference between GET and POST, differences between SQL Server and Oracle SQL, anything I list on my resume as currently working with [jQuery questions, ColdFusion questions, ...] etc) Now, I feel things are the opposite. I haven't wrote my own sort since graduating, and I don't really have to worry much about theoretical things that do not naturally fall into problems I am trying to solve. For example, I might give you some great SQL solutions using an analytical function that I would have otherwise been stumped on or write a cool web application using angular or something but ask me to write an algo for insertAfter(Element* elem) and I might not be able to do it in a reasonable time frame. I guess my question here to the experienced programmers is how do you balance the need to both learn and experiment with new technologies (fun!), working on personal projects (also fun!) working and solving real world problems in a timeboxed environment (so I might reach out to a library that does what I want rather than re-invent the wheel so that I can focus on the problem I am trying to solve) (work, basically), and refreshing on old theoretical material which is still valid for interviews and such (can be a drag)? Do you review older material (such as famous algorithms, dynamic programming, Big-O analysis, locking implementations) regularly or just when you need it? How much time do you dedicate to both in your 'deliberate practice' and do you have a certain to-do list of topics that you want to work on?

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• What kinds of languages would be most useful for this kind of webapp?

  - by Caedar

  I've had some experience with programming in the past (2-3 years of C++ self-teaching), so I'm no stranger to the programming process, but there are so many languages out there that I'm lost when thinking about this project idea that's been floating around my head: I would like to create a webapp that would be used for helping somebody figure out what kinds of productivity tools would suit them. The first part of the app would basically be a survey with a variety of questions that would help weed out tools that wouldn't be useful for them. (Slider bar between minimalist and maximizer, slider bar between all free apps and no cost limit, checkboxes on what platforms are required, etc.) While the person is filling out the survey, they will see a web of applications, webapps, and other tools forming on the screen with links showing the relationships the programs have with eachother (syncing supported, good combinations of apps, etc.), along with a list of applications below sorted by general use (notetaking, document organization, storage, etc.) I would imagine that each program entered into the database that will be accessed would have a certain set of characteristics, ie. price, user friendliness, platforms supported, general uses, etc. and the survey would be designed to correlate to those elements and remove programs that don't match the criteria set. The difficult part of this entire process would be getting the web of applications to arrange itself and render properly. Now that I've finished mind-dumping, onto my question: What kinds/combinations of programming languages would you imagine being useful for this kind of project, and why? I learn best by setting up a project for myself like this one and tinkering with the languages, so I don't mind if the end product is out of reach from my current skill level. I'd just like some guidance so I don't fumble in the dark for too long.

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• If you had to go back and re-learn your skill set, how would you do it?

  - by vorbb

  My younger brother is looking to start programming. He's 14, and technically-inclined, but no real experience programming. He's looking to me for guidance, and I don't feel as if my experience is enough, so I figured I'd ask here. He's more interested in web programming, but also has an interest in desktop/mobile/server applications. What would be a good learning path for him to take? I'm going to buy him a bunch of books for Christmas to get him started; the question is, what should he learn, and in which order? The way I see it, he needs to learn theory and code. I'd like to start him off with Python or Ruby or PHP. If he wants to get in to web, he's also going to need to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. Out of those three domains (Languages, Theory, Markup/Etc.), what is the best order do you think to learn in? Also, am I missing anything? Thanks!

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• Programming doesn&rsquo;t have to be Magic

  - by Wes McClure

  In the show LOST, the Swan Station had a button that “had to be pushed” every 100 minutes to avoid disaster.  Several characters in the show took it upon themselves to have faith and religiously push the button, resetting the clock and averting the unknown “disaster”.  There are striking similarities in this story to the code we write every day.  Here are some common ones that I encounter: “I don’t know what it does but the application doesn’t work without it” “I added that code because I saw it in other similar places, I didn’t understand it, but thought it was necessary.” (for consistency, or to make things “work”) “An error message recommended it” “I copied that code” (and didn’t look at what it was doing) “It was suggested in a forum online and it fixed my problem so I left it” In all of these cases we haven’t done our due diligence to understand what the code we are writing is actually doing.  In the rush to get things done it seems like we’re willing to push any button (add any line of code) just to get our desired result and move on.  All of the above explanations are common things we encounter, and are valid ways to work through a problem we have, but when we find a solution to a task we are working on (whether a bug or a feature), we should take a moment to reflect on what we don’t understand.  Remove what isn’t necessary, comprehend and simplify what is.  Why is it detrimental to commit code we don’t understand? Perpetuates unnecessary code If you copy code that isn’t necessary, someone else is more likely to do so, especially peers Perpetuates tech debt Adding unnecessary code leads to extra code that must be understood, maintained and eventually cleaned up in longer lived projects Tech debt begets tech debt as other developers copy or use this code as guidelines in similar situations Increases maintenance How do we know the code is simplified if we don’t understand it? Perpetuates a lack of ownership Makes it seem ok to commit anything so long as it “gets the job done” Perpetuates the notion that programming is magic If we don’t take the time to understand every line of code we add, then we are contributing to the notion that it is simply enough to make the code work, regardless of how. TLDR Don’t commit code that you don’t understand, take the time to understand it, simplify it and then commit it!

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• Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - All you need in one title

  It took me a while to work through the 800+ pages of this title. And yes, I really mean working not reading... Since the release of Windows 8 it should be obvious to any Windows software developer that there are new ways to develop, deploy and market applications for a broader audience. Interestingly, Microsoft started to narrow the technological gap between the various platforms - desktop, web, smartphone and XBox - and development of modern apps with HTML, CSS and JavaScript couldn't be easier. Kraig covers all facets of modern Windows 8 apps from the basic building blocks and project templates in Visual Studio 2012 over to the thoughtful use of specific APIs to finally proper deployment in the App Store and potential monetization. The organisation of the book is lied out like step by step instructions or a tutorial. Kraig literally takes the reader by the hand and explains in detail in his examples about the reasons, the pros, and the cons of a certain way of implementation. Thanks to cross-references to other chapters he leaves the choice to the reader to dig deeper right now or to catch up at some time later. Personally, I have to admit that I really enjoyed the relaxed writing style. App development is not dust-dry rocket science and it should be joyful to learn about new technologies. And thanks to the richness of the various chapters and samples you could easily adapt and transfer the knowledge gained in this title to other platforms like Windows Phone 8. And last but not least: The ebook is freely available at Amazon, Microsoft Press and O'Reilly. Don't think about it, just get the book. Now. Update: I already mentioned this title in other blog entries which are related to Microsoft certification. Feel free to read on and to discover more online resources: Learning content for MCSDs: Web Applications and Windows Store Apps using HTML5 More content for MCSDs: Web Applications and Windows Store Apps using HTML5 O'Reilly offers free webcasts on their site, too. And in case that you would like to know more about Kraig's book and his experience with various development teams, please checkout this one: Zero to App in Two Weeks: Programming Windows 8 Apps in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The recording should be available soon.

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• Could spending time on Programmers.SE or Stack Overflow be substitute of good programming books for a non-beginner?

  - by Atul Goyal

  Could spending time (and actively participating) on Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow help me improve my programming skills any close to what spending time on reading a book like Code Complete 2 (which would otherwise be next in my reading list) will help. Ok, may be the answer to this question for someone who is beginning with programming might be a straight no, but I'd like to add that this question I'm asking in context when the person is familiar with programming languages but wants to improve his programming skills. I was reading this question on SO and also this book has been recommended by many others (including Jeff and Joel). To be more specific, I'd also add that even though I do programming in C, Java, Python,etc but still I'm not happy with my coding skills and reading the review of CC2 I realized I still need to improve a lot. So, basically I want to know what's the best way for me to improve programming skills - spend more time on here/SO or continue with CC2 and may be come here as and when time permits.

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• SceneManagers as systems in entity system or as a core class used by a system?

  - by Hatoru Hansou

  It seems entity systems are really popular here. Links posted by other users convinced me of the power of such system and I decided to try it. (Well, that and my original code getting messy) In my project, I originally had a SceneManager class that maintained needed logic and structures to organize the scene (QuadTree, 2D game). Before rendering I call selectRect() and pass the x,y of the camera and the width and height of the screen and then obtain a minimized list containing only visible entities ordered from back to front. Now with Systems, originally in my first attempt my Render system required to get added all entities it should handle. This may sound like the correct approach but I realized this was not efficient. Trying to optimize It I reused the SceneManager class internally in the Renderer system, but then I realized I needed methods such as selectRect() in others systems too (AI principally) and make the SceneManager accessible globally again. Currently I converted SceneManager to a system, and ended up with the following interface (only relevant methods): /// Base system interface class System { public: virtual void tick (double delta_time) = 0; // (methods to add and remove entities) }; typedef std::vector<Entity*> EntitiesVector; /// Specialized system interface to allow query the scene class SceneManager: public System { public: virtual EntitiesVector& cull () = 0; /// Sets the entity to be used as the camera and replaces previous ones. virtual void setCamera (Entity* entity) = 0; }; class SceneRenderer // Not a system { vitual void render (EntitiesVector& entities) = 0; }; Also I could not guess how to convert renderers to systems. My game separates logic updates from screen updates, my main class have a tick() method and a render() method that may not be called the same times. In my first attempt renderers were systems but they was saved in a separated manager, updated only in render() and not in tick() like all other systems. I realized that was silly and simply created a SceneRenderer interface and give up about converting them to systems, but that may be for another question. Then... something does not feel right, isn't it? If I understood correctly a system should not depend on another or even count with another system exposing an specific interface. Each system should care only about its entities, or nodes (as optimization, so they have direct references to relevant components without having to constantly call the component() or getComponent() method of the entity).

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• How is programming affected by spatial aptitude?

  - by natli

  The longer I work on a project, the less clear it becomes. It's like I cannot seperate various classes/objects anymore in my head. Everything starts mixing up, and it's extremely hard to take it all apart again. I start putting functions in classes where they really don't belong, and make silly mistakes such as writing code that I later find was 100% obsolete; things are no longer clearly mappable in my head. It isn't until I take a step back for several hours (or days somtimes!) that I can actually see what's going on again, and be productive. I usually try to fight through this, I am so passionate about coding that I wouldn't for the life of me know what else I could be doing. This is when stuff can get really weird, I get so up in my head that I sort of lose touch with reality (to some extent) in that various actions, such as pouring a glass of water, no longer happen on a concious level. It happens on auto pilot, during which pretty much all of my concious concentration (is that even a thing?) is devoted to borderline pointless problem solving (trying to seperate elements of code). It feels like a losing battle. So I took an IQ test a while ago (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale I believe it was) and it turned out my Spatial Aptitude was quite low. I still got a decent score, just above average, so I won't have to poke things with a stick for a living, but I am a little worried that this is such a handicap when writing/engineering computer programs that I won't ever be able to do it seriously or professionally. I am very much interested in what other people think of this.. could a low spatial aptitude be the cause of the above described problems? Maybe I should be looking more along the lines of ADD or something similar, because I did get diagnosed with ADD at the age of 17 (5 years ago) but the medicine I received didn't seem to affect me that much so I never took it all that serious. Sorry if I got a little off topic there, I know this is not a mental help board, the question should be clear; How is programming affected by spatial aptitude? As far as I know people are born with low/med/high spatial aptitude, so I think it's interesting to find out if the more fortunate are better programmers by birth right.

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• Should I continue to pursue programming based on my experience?

  - by El Be

  The reason I ask this question is because I am not sure my troubles come from a lack of confidence, or something much deeper like lack of passion. I'm hoping experienced programmers and developers can help identify the cause of my troubles. To be brief my undergraduate major was in Computer Science, but in a small school and I had the highest gpa in my year in computer science. The first time I ever programmed was once in the 5th grade (using logo) and when I was a freshman in college. I enjoyed programming when I was in school. Then I did an internships where I was expected to produce image processing software and program microchips. I was unsuccessful and produced little results and I hated the job, because I had to figure out everything for myself, did not have any help, and there was a lot of pressure to produce results. Although I tried I could not figure out what to do and was stuck all the time and made me dislike the job. When the internship ended I went to a PhD program for computer science at a prestigious computer science school. I had a very hard time with the course, met people who have been programming since they were 6 and made plenty of applications in their spare time (which I never did, although I tried). I even met many sophomores who understood more than I did. The combination of this and other things have made me feel that programming is not for me, but sometimes I consider a career in programming. I still consider programming as a career because of the career potential (not only just because of money). Based on my experience do you believe my confidence has just been shaken and I should continue to prepare for a programming career, or do you see a lack of passion and it would make it tough to continue programming. thank you for reading and for your advice Thank you for everyone's advice so far! Also: I dropped out of the ph.D program for computer science and switched to a master's in computer graphics. Its more applied, but I still find it hard to be motivated (due to either lack of confidence or passion), but since programming is such a big field I am looking for that niche area that I feel good programming in.

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• Preventing Windows version of Vim from destroying other file systems permissions

  - by dborba

  I am currently using the windows version of gVim to edit source files on a networked drive mapped to a linux system, as well as local files created in cygwin. The problem is that the windows version of gVim destroys the original file permissions on the respective systems. IE: Files on cygwin are defaulted to 077. When edited by the windows version of vim they are saved as 777.This problem doesn't even occur when using ms-notepad (as well as all other editors I've tried), so I am not quite sure why gVim does it. A possible solution would be to use cygwin's gVim for everything, but that's rather cumbersome as it requires running an x11 environment to support it, and it causes some problems when running some commands from within gVim (or vim for that matter) when working on the networked drive. Any ideas how I might be able to maintain the existing file permissions? Edit: This morning while on a different machine the problem with cygwin did not occur. Cygwin & gVim were the same version, however the other machine is running WinXP while the machine the problem is occurring on runs Win7.

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• Strange difference in bash behavior across systems

  - by pinkie_d_pie_0228

  I have two systems, an Ubuntu computer and an Android tablet. I have built and configured bash for Android to be used in adb, so it's the same version as my Ubuntu bash, and they use mostly the same bashrc and configuration, and the same exact options set by shopt. However, there is a slight difference in that the Android bash behaves as I expect when I I try to tab-complete something using a variable in it, but the Ubuntu bash doesn't. #Android ls $HOME/loc<tab> => ls $HOME/local #As expected Basically, the variable is taken into account when completing. But then #Ubuntu ls $HOME/loc<tab> => ls \$HOME/loc #Undesired behavior. The list of options is as follows, and is the same in both builds of bash. autocd:checkwinsize:cmdhist:expand_aliases:extglob:extquote:force_fignore:histappend:interactive_comments:progcomp:promptvars:sourcepath What can be making the Ubuntu version escape the $ instead of using it for completion as in the Android build? What can I do to make both work the same way? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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• Monitoring AWS Systems Behind ElasticBeanStalk

  - by A. Avadis

  So I'm getting a company set up in the Amazon Cloud -- creating IAAS protocol/solutions/standardized implementation, etc while also being the SysAdmin for individual systems, app environments, and day-to-day uptime. One of the biggest issues I'm having is tracking various system/application logs, as well as logging/monitoring/archiving system metrics like memory usage, cpu usage, etc etc In a centralized fashion. E.g. -- Nagios + Urchin. The BIGGEST impediment to my endeavors is the following: The company application is deployed in the form of a Java *.WAR file, uploaded to an Elastic BeanStalk application environment, load balancing and auto-scaling between 3(min) and 10(max) servers, and the EC2's that run the application are fired up and disposed of ad-hoc. That is to say, I can't monitor the individual EC2's for very long because so many are being terminated then auto-provisioned/auto-scaled on the fly -- so I'd constantly be having to "monitor what I'm monitoring", and continuously remove/add EC2 machine addresses to my monitoring lists. IS there some sort of way to use monitoring tools like Zabbix or Nagios to monitor the ElasticBeanStalk, and have it automatically add on new EC2's, and remove terminated/failed EC2's from its monitoring list automatically? Furthermore, is there anything I can do with GrayLog to achieve similar results with the aggregation/centralization of my application logs from multiple EC2 instances into ONE consolidated set of logs/events? If not GrayLog, is there ANYTHING LIKE GrayLog that can automatically detect what EC2 members are being added/removed from the environment, and collect the logs from them automatically? Any and all advice or direction is appreciated. Thanks much, and cheers!!

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• Patch management on multiple systems

  - by Pierre

  I'm in charge of auditing the security configuration of an important farm of Unix servers. So far, I came up with a way to assess the basic configuration but not the installed updates. The very problem here is that I just can't trust the package management tools on those machine. Indeed some of them did not sync with the repository for a long time (So I can't do a "yum check-updates" on Redhat for example). Some of those servers are not even connected to the internet and use an company repository. Another problem is that I have multiple target systems: AIX, Debian, Centos/Redhat, etc... So the version could be different (AIX) and the tools available will be different. And, last but not least, I can't install anything on the target system. So I need to use a script to retrieve the information and either: process it directly or save the information to be able to process it later on a server (Which may happen to run a different distribution than the one on which the information have been retrieved). The best ideas I could come up with were: either retrieve the list of installed packages on the machine (dpkg -l for example on debian) and process it on a dedicated server (Directly parsing the "Packages" file of debian repositories). Still, the problem remains the same for AIX and Redhat... or use Nessus' scripts to assess vulnerability on the installed packages, but I find this a bit dirty. Does anyone know any better/efficient way of doing this ? P.S: I already took time to review some answers to similar problems. Unfortunately Chef, puppet, ... don't meet the requirements I have to meet. Edit: Long story short. I need to have the list of missing updates on a Unix system just like MBSA on Windows. I'm not authorized to install anything on this system as it's not mine. All I have are scripts languages. Thanks.

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• Host system resets (crashes) when using VMWare or VirtualBox and 64-bit guest systems

  - by sinni800

  I have been trying to install virtual systems on VMWare for a while now and encountered strange behaviour from my PC. The behaviour is as follows: On "automatic" virtualization mode it either outputs a cryptic error message (can MAYBE give later, if I can reproduce) right on startup (before even the BIOS) or it resets the complete HOST system (blackscreen, bios...) If I install a Windows XP on it it works well on "binary translation" mode. If I try installing Linux on it, in "binary translation" mode it crashes 1 or 2 seconds after I hit enter on the GRUB selection screen (after the first page of kernel messages rolled in) Using VirtualBox it crashes right in the BIOS. It gave me a Bluescreen though! 0x00000101: CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT: a clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval NEWS: I tried VirtualBox again and it did not completely crash the computer this time. It gave me a critical error and a log file: http://pastebin.com/yKZSDs91 In conclusion, it will crash instantly if VT-x is activated. If not, it seemingly only crashed if I try to install something with 64 bits. Another update: Yes, it ONLY crashes when the guest is 64 bit! What I tried: Reinstalling Windows (my Windows installation was quite broken so it seemed natural. Didn't work though.) New BIOS What I am certain of: Virtualization extensions are activated in the BIOS What my computer specs are: ASUS P8P67 LE mainboard, newest BIOS/EFI firmware Intel Core i5 2500k Ati Radeon HD 5770 16 GB Corsair 1333mhz DDR3 RAM, 4 X 4 GB

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