Search Results

Search found 22104 results on 885 pages for 'programming language'.

Page 597/885 | < Previous Page | 593 594 595 596 597 598 599 600 601 602 603 604  | Next Page >

• What should I expect from a system engineer university career

  - by Trufa

  I'm starting tomorrow a series of interviews to decide which university should I choose to get a degree in System Engineer. I know this is a serious university but I would like to get some feedback about what should I expect or "demand" from the university. My experience in the technology field is (obviously) limited and would like to be aware of what should I to be aware if the university might be good or not. Specially in following fields: Infrastructure: what are the essentials? big pluses? Theoretical vs Practical: how practical should it be? what is a "good" mix? Programming languages, frameworks, etc: Which are the ideal for learning? Most demand? Latest technologies: What should they be teaching right know to "prove" they are up to date. Qualification system: What exam methods do you think are ideal for this kind of degree, good ol' Q&A, multiple choice, projects, a fair mix? What other points do you think I should care about? What isn't important? Thanks in advance. I realize this is might be a very subjective topic so I tried to make it as specific and on topic as I could but any recommendations are of course welcome. I also understand that none of this questions will guarantee this will be a good university but it might give me another reference as to which should I choose when the moment comes.

  Read the article

• How do I create a 2.5d parallax effect?

  - by Nikolay Dyankov

  I have a decent background in 3D graphics and programming, but I'm new to game development. I'm currently exploring different possibilities and I really want to make an RPG game. I was thinking about classic 2D isometric view, but I really love how Diablo 2 looks and feels to play. My question is - how can I achieve Diablo 2's parallax effect? Everything looks hand drawn with baked lights and shadows and looks awesome, but when you move around you notice some perspective. For example, let's say that I drew a big hall with columns in Photoshop with an orthographic perspective (classic pixel art style, just parallel lines). How would I give parallax effect to this scene when the character moves around? If I use camera-facing sprites for everything it would probably look OK in the distance, but it would be really fake when a character comes close to a column (cylinder) for example. Any suggestions? How did Blizzard make the parallax effect in Diablo 2? See this screenshot: http://guidesmedia.ign.com/guides/10629/images/act2tombs.jpg

  Read the article

• HTML5 Development for Dummies

  - by Geertjan

  What's HTML5 all about and what does it actually mean, concretely, to develop HTML5 applications? NetBeans IDE 7.3 provides something called "Project Easel", which is a bundling of HTML5-related tools into a coherent toolset. Within a matter of hours, you'll know everything you need to know about what all this is about if you follow the steps below.  Get A Solid Overview. Start by viewing this screencast from JavaOne 2012 (click the media link on the right side once you've clicked the link below, a downloadable MP4 file is also available there):https://oracleus.activeevents.com/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=4038That is an awesome way to get you in the right mindframe for what HTML5 is and how it fits into the programming world, together with a very cool and entertaining demo, presented by JB Brock. He starts with about three slides and then does a super awesome demo that puts you into the picture very quickly. Understand How HTML5 Relates To Java EE. Now here's a very cool follow up to the above, again demo-driven (click the media links on the right side once you've clicked the link below):https://oracleus.activeevents.com/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=4737David Konecny takes the Affable Bean project created via the NetBeans E-commerce Tutorial and creates an HTML5 front end for it! I.e., you are shown how HTML5 can provide a different front end, as an alternative to JSF. Why would you do that? Well, that's explained in David's session, as well as in JB Brock's session, i.e., choose the right technology for the right situation. Sometimes HTML5 might make sense, other times JSF might make sense. Follow The NetBeans Screencasts. To revise and firm up everything you've learned from the above two JavaOne sessions, watch two screencasts by Ken Ganfield, part 1, Getting Started with HTML5 and part 2, Working with JavaScript in HTML5 Applications. In particular, you'll learn how NetBeans IDE provides tools to thoroughly cover the needs of HTML5 developers. Having taken the above three steps, you now have a thorough background, together with an understanding of the tools and procedures needed for creating your own HTML5 applications.

  Read the article

• Comparing the Performance of Visual Studio's Web Reference to a Custom Class

  As developers, we all make assumptions when programming. Perhaps the biggest assumption we make is that those libraries and tools that ship with the .NET Framework are the best way to accomplish a given task. For example, most developers assume that using ASP.NET's Membership system is the best way to manage user accounts in a website (rather than rolling your own user account store). Similarly, creating a Web Reference to communicate with a web service generates markup that auto-creates a proxy class, which handles the low-level details of invoking the web service, serializing parameters, and so on. Recently a client made us question one of our fundamental assumptions about the .NET Framework and Web Services by asking, "Why should we use proxy class created by Visual Studio to connect to a web service?" In this particular project we were calling a web service to retrieve data, which was then sorted, formatted slightly and displayed in a web page. The client hypothesized that it would be more efficient to invoke the web service directly via the HttpWebRequest class, retrieve the XML output, populate an XmlDocument object, then use XSLT to output the result to HTML. Surely that would be faster than using Visual Studio's auto-generated proxy class, right? Prior to this request, we had never considered rolling our own proxy class; we had always taken advantage of the proxy classes Visual Studio auto-generated for us. Could these auto-generated proxy classes be inefficient? Would retrieving and parsing the web service's XML directly be more efficient? The only way to know for sure was to test my client's hypothesis. Read More >

  Read the article

• What is up with the Joy of Clojure 2nd edition?

  - by kurofune

  Manning just released the second edition of the beloved Joy of Clojure book, and while I share that love I get the feeling that many of the examples are already outdated. In particular, in the chapter on optimization the recommended type-hinting seems not to be allowed by the compiler. I don't know if this was allowable for older versions of Clojure. For example: (defn factorial-f [^long original-x] (loop [x original-x, acc 1] (if (>= 1 x) acc (recur (dec x) (*' x acc))))) returns: clojure.lang.Compiler$CompilerException: java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: Can't type hint a primitive local, compiling:(null:3:1) Likewise, the chapter on core.logic seems be using an old API and I have to find workarounds for each example to accommodate the recent changes. For example, I had to turn this: (logic/defrel orbits orbital body) (logic/fact orbits :mercury :sun) (logic/fact orbits :venus :sun) (logic/fact orbits :earth :sun) (logic/fact orbits :mars :sun) (logic/fact orbits :jupiter :sun) (logic/fact orbits :saturn :sun) (logic/fact orbits :uranus :sun) (logic/fact orbits :neptune :sun) (logic/run* [q] (logic/fresh [orbital body] (orbits orbital body) (logic/== q orbital))) into this, leveraging the pldb lib: (pldb/db-rel orbits orbital body) (def facts (pldb/db [orbits :mercury :sun] [orbits :venus :sun] [orbits :earth :sun] [orbits :mars :sun] [orbits :jupiter :sun] [orbits :saturn :sun] [orbits :uranus :sun] [orbits :neptune :sun])) (pldb/with-db facts (logic/run* [q] (logic/fresh [orbital body] (orbits orbital body) (logic/== q orbital)))) I am still pulling teeth to get the later examples to work. I am relatively new programming, myself, so I wonder if I am naively looking over something here, or are if these points I'm making legitimate concerns? I really want to get good at this stuff like type-hinting and core.logic, but wanna make sure I am studying up to date materials. Any illuminating facts to help clear up my confusion would be most welcome.

  Read the article

• How would I implement this application idea?

  - by Mike Wills

  I am a D&D gamer and a developer that has mostly worked with ASP.NET applications professionally. I have written some chat bots in Node.js and I have only played a little with PHP but wrote nothing serious. I have had inspiration to create a site that allows a person to keep track of characters (aka the character sheet). I am thinking of using this as a learning opportunity to learn noSQL and to write a full javascript front-end. I want this application to save the value as I change it. So if I edit the armor class, it is saved immediately instead of waiting until I hit the submit button. I think that will make it easier to use while gaming and not losing anything because I forgot to save the change. I have never done anything like this. How do you implement this style of application? Is there a tutorial or howto to get me on the right path? While I would really like to use ASP.NET but I don't have a Windows server to publish on (and I really can't afford to pay for a service). What language that runs on Linux would work well for this type of application? Note: I feel noSQL would work in this case because of the sheer number of tables required to create something like this in SQL.

  Read the article

• Need game development sandbox like Etoys to do 2D games prototyping

  - by Dimitry Tato

  I am new to game development, and currently working on development a mobile 2D game (for android). As the part of the development process, I need to build a prototype and playtest it, to see if the game mechanics and user interaction is ok For example: if I have a starship shooting at ememies, I need to see what's the best size for my starship. what trajectories should the enemy ships fly and what velocity. Should the enemy ships be coming only from left to right, or also from top Should the enemy ships form a 'flock' or just fly by themselves what's the best 'powerup' pickup mechanics: to shoot it, or to pick it with the ship etc Implementing these details directly in Java (Android) is time consuming and as many of the 'hypotheses' will be rejected, I also don't want to invest a lot of time to code thigs, majority of which gonna be rejected. I found 'tool' Etoys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34cWCnLC5nM&feature=related and official website http://www.squeakland.org/ which helps to build 'prototype' quickly, but Etoys is meant for children learning programming and is too basic. SO MY QUESTION IS: Is there any prototyping tool, as simple as Etoys and with better prototype quality?

  Read the article

• multi user web game with scheduled processing?

  - by Rooq

  I have an idea for a game which I am in the process of designing, but I am struggling to establish if the way I plan to implement it is possible. The game is a text based sports management simulation. This will require players to take certain actions through a web browser which will interact with a database - adding/updating and selecting. Most of the code required to be executed at this point will be fairly straightforward. The main processing will take place by applications which are scheduled to run on the server at certain times. These apps will process transactions added by the players and also perform some automatic processing based on the game date. My plan was to use an SQL server database (at last count I require about 20 tables) and VB.net for all the coding (coming from a mainframe programming background this language is the simplist for me to get to grips with). I will also need a scheduling tool on the server. Can anyone tell me if what I am planning is feasible before I dive into the actual coding stage of my project?

  Read the article

• Terminology: .NET C++ vs. traditional C++

  - by Mike Clark

  Hello. I've recently been working with a team that's using both .NET C++ and pre-.NET C++. I fully understand the technical differences between the two technologies. However, I sometimes feel like I'm floundering when it comes to the terminology used to differentiate the two. Example: Say we have two projects: ProjectA contains "C++" code that builds a .NET assembly DLL. ProjectB contains Visual C++ code that builds a traditional native Windows DLL. What is the best way to succinctly and terminologically draw a distinction between the two projects? Again, I'm not asking for an in-depth technical description of the differences between the two technologies. I'm just looking for names and labels. This is how I might try to make the distinction when talking to someone about Project A and Project B: "ProjectA is a managed .NET C++ project" and ProjectB is an unmanaged Visual C++ DLL project." However I am not at all certain that this terminology is ideal, or even correct. Please describe what you feel the ideal language to use in this situation (or similar situations) might be. Feel free to motivate your answer.

  Read the article

• C# - How to store and reuse queries

  - by Jason Holland

  I'm learning C# by programming a real monstrosity of an application for personal use. Part of my application uses several SPARQL queries like so: const string ArtistByRdfsLabel = @" PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> SELECT DISTINCT ?artist WHERE {{ {{ ?artist rdf:type <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/MusicalArtist> . ?artist rdfs:label ?rdfsLabel . }} UNION {{ ?artist rdf:type <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/Band> . ?artist rdfs:label ?rdfsLabel . }} FILTER ( str(?rdfsLabel) = '{0}' ) }}"; string Query = String.Format(ArtistByRdfsLabel, Artist); I don't like the idea of keeping all these queries in the same class that I'm using them in so I thought I would just move them into their own dedicated class to remove clutter in my RestClient class. I'm used to working with SQL Server and just wrapping every query in a stored procedure but since this is not SQL Server I'm scratching my head on what would be the best for these SPARQL queries. Are there any better approaches to storing these queries using any special C# language features (or general, non C# specific, approaches) that I may not already know about?

  Read the article

• When are Getters and Setters Justified

  - by Winston Ewert

  Getters and setters are often criticized as being not proper OO. On the other hand most OO code I've seen has extensive getters and setters. When are getters and setters justified? Do you try to avoid using them? Are they overused in general? If your favorite language has properties (mine does) then such things are also considered getters and setters for this question. They are same thing from an OO methodology perspective. They just have nicer syntax. Sources for Getter/Setter Criticism (some taken from comments to give them better visibility): http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2003/jw-0905-toolbox.html http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=23 http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AccessorsAreEvil http://www.darronschall.com/weblog/2005/03/no-brain-getter-and-setters.cfm http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/encapsulation_violation_with_getters_and To state the criticism simply: Getters and Setters allow you to manipulate the internal state of objects from outside of the object. This violates encapsulation. Only the object itself should care about its internal state. And an example Procedural version of code. struct Fridge { int cheese; } void go_shopping(Fridge fridge) { fridge.cheese += 5; } Mutator version of code: class Fridge { int cheese; void set_cheese(int _cheese) { cheese = _cheese; } int get_cheese() { return cheese; } } void go_shopping(Fridge fridge) { fridge.set_cheese(fridge.get_cheese() + 5); } The getters and setters made the code much more complicated without affording proper encapsulation. Because the internal state is accessible to other objects we don't gain a whole lot by adding these getters and setters. The question has been previously discussed on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/565095/java-are-getters-and-setters-evil http://stackoverflow.com/questions/996179

  Read the article

• Architecture advice for converting biz app from old school to new school?

  - by Aaron Anodide

  I've got a WinForms business application that evolved over the past few years. It's forms over data with a number custom UI experiences taylored to the business, so I don't think it's a candidate to port to something like SharePoint or re-write in LightSwitch (at least not without significant investment). When I started it in 2009 I was new to this type of development (coming from more low level programming and my RDBMS knowledge was just slightly greater than what I got from school). Thus, when I was confronted with a business model that operates on a strict monthly accounting cycle, I made the unfortunate decision to create a separate database for each accounting period. Also, when I started I knew DataSets, then I learned Linq2Sql, then I learned EntityFramework. The screens are a mix and match of those. Now, after a few years developing this thing by myself I've finally got a small team. Ultimately, I want a web front end (for remote access to more straight up screens with grids of data) and a thick client (for the highly customized interfaces). My question is: can you offer me some broad strokes architecture advice that will help me formulate a battle plan to convert over to a single database and lay the foundations for my future goals at the same time? Here's a screen shot showing how an older screen uses DataSets and a newer screen uses EF (I'm thinking this might make it more real for someone reading the question - I'm willing to add any amount of detail if someone is willing to help).

  Read the article

• WPF and Composite Application Library &ndash; Missing The Point

  - by David Totzke

  I have a headache and it’s not even 9AM yet.  Well, ok, it’s nearly ten here now in GMT –5 but it’s before nine somewhere still. Sometimes people will miss the point of something so utterly and completely that one is left wondering how such a person can even dress themselves. Writing an application using WPF and the Composite Application Library (Prism) means that one must learn the various programming idioms common to these frameworks.  The Windows Forms event driven model simply will not suffice.  You need to come to grips with the idea of a very loosely coupled application.  Concepts that must be absorbed and internalized include Data Binding, Control and Data Templates, Commands, Dependency Injection, and Inversion of Control, as well as the Supervising Controller, Presentation Model and Model-View-View-Model patterns. It is as simple as that.  Not to embrace these concepts is to invite pain.  It is to invite noodles; and not the holy kind. Someone actually said to me that “just because it’s not WPF, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”  And he’s right.  Unless, of course, you are writing a WPF application and especially if you are using the Composite Application Library. In simple terms then; YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!   Dave Just because I can…

  Read the article

• What do you think of this iterator syntax?

  - by ChaosPandion

  I've been working on an ECMAScript dialect for quite some time now and have reached a point where I am comfortable adding new language features. I would love to hear some thoughts and suggestions on the syntax. Example iterator Numbers { yield 1; yield 2; yield 3; if (true) { yield break; } yield continue iterator { yield 4; yield 5; yield 6; }; } Syntax IteratorDeclaration:     iterator  Identifier  {  IteratorBody  } IteratorExpression:     iterator  Identifieropt  {  IteratorBody  } IteratorBody:     IteratorStatementsopt IteratorStatements:     IteratorStatement IteratorStatementsopt IteratorStatement:     Statement but not one of BreakStatement ContinueStatement ReturnStatement     YieldStatement     YieldBreakStatement     YieldContinueStatement YieldStatement:     yield  Expression  ; YieldBreakStatement:     yield  break  ; YieldContinueStatement:     yield  continue  Expression  ;

  Read the article

• Hide email adress with JavaScript

  - by Martin Aleksander

  I read somewhere that hiding email address behind JavaScript code, could reduce spam bots harvesting the email address. <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> var a = "Red"; var t = "no"; var doc = document; var b = "ITpro"; var ad = a; ad += "@"; ad += b; ad += "."; ad += t; var mt = "ma"; mt += "il"; mt += "to"; var text = ""; if (text == null || text.length == 0) text = ad; doc.write("<"+"a hr"+"ef=\""+mt+":"+ad+"\">"+text+"</"+"a>"); </script> This will not display the actual email-address in the sourcecode of the page, but it will display and work like a normal link for human users. Is it any point of doing this? Will it reduce spam bots, or is it just nonsense that might slow down performance of the page because of the JavaScript?

  Read the article

• C#.NET (AForge) against Java (JavaCV, JMF) for video processing

  - by Leron

  I'm starting to get really confused looking deeper and deeper at video processing world and searching for optimal choices. This is the reason to post this and some other questions to try and navigate myself in the best possible way. I really like Java, working with Java, coding with Java, at the same time C# is not that different from Java and Visual Studio is maybe the best IDE I've been working with. So even though I really want to do my projects in Java so I can get better and better Java programmer at the same time I'm really attract to video processing and even though I'm still at the beginning of this journey I want to take the right path. So I'm really in doubt could Java be used in a production environment for serious video processing software. As the title says I already have been looking at maybe the two most used technologies for video processing in Java - JMF and JavaCV and I'm starting to think that even they are used and they provide some functionality, when it comes to real work and real project that's not the first thing that comes to once mind, I mean to someone that have a professional opinion about this. On the other hand I haven't got the time to investigate .NET (c# specificly) options but even AForge looks a lot more serious library then those provided for Java. So in general -either ways I'm gonna spend a lot of time learning some technology and trying to do something that make sense with it, but my plan is at the end the thing that I'll eventually come up to be my headline project. To represent my skills and eventually help me find a job in the field. So I really don't want to spend time learning something that will give me the programming result I want but at the same time is not something that is needed in the real world development. So what is your opinion, which language, technology is better for this specific issue. Which one worths more in terms that I specified above?

  Read the article

• TDD - Outside In vs Inside Out

  - by Songo

  What is the difference between building an application Outside In vs building it Inside Out using TDD? These are the books I read about TDD and unit testing: Test Driven Development: By Example Test-Driven Development: A Practical Guide: A Practical Guide Real-World Solutions for Developing High-Quality PHP Frameworks and Applications Test-Driven Development in Microsoft .NET xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code The Art of Unit Testing: With Examples in .Net Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests---This one was really hard to understand since JAVA isn't my primary language :) Almost all of them explained TDD basics and unit testing in general, but with little mention of the different ways the application can be constructed. Another thing I noticed is that most of these books (if not all) ignore the design phase when writing the application. They focus more on writing the test cases quickly and letting the design emerge by itself. However, I came across a paragraph in xUnit Test Patterns that discussed the ways people approach TDD. There are 2 schools out there Outside In vs Inside Out. Sadly the book doesn't elaborate more on this point. I wish to know what is the main difference between these 2 cases. When should I use each one of them? To a TDD beginner which one is easier to grasp? What is the drawbacks of each method? Is there any materials out there that discuss this topic specifically?

  Read the article

• Highly SEO optimised forum posts

  - by Tom Gullen

  Given the following forum post: Basics of how internals of Construct work I've used GameMaker in the past. And I know some C++ and have used a few 3d engines with it. I have also looked at Unity, though I didn't get too much into it. So I know my way around programming etc... My question is, how does construct work internally? I know it allows python scripting, which itself is "technically" interpreted, though python is pretty fast as far as being interpreted goes. But what about the rest? Is the executable that gets cre... The forum software will take the first 150 chars of the first post as the page meta description, and the title will be the thread title. All ok. So in Google it will appear as: Basics of how internals of Construct work I've used GameMaker in the past. And I know some C++ and have used a few 3d engines with it. I have also looked at Unity, though I didn't get too much... http://www.domain.com/forum/basics-of-how-internals-of-construct-work.html Now the problem is (not so much with this thread, but other ones) is the first 150 chars don't always create the best meta description. Is it worth my time to cherry pick threads and manually set their description/title tags so they read like: Internal workings of Construct 2 Events aren't converted to any other language. The runtime is a standalone compiled EXE application, which is optimised and actually very fast. Your events... http://www.domain.com/forum/basics-of-how-internals-of-construct-work.html The H1 on the page is still the original title, but we have overridden the title and description to look more friendly on search results. Is this advantageous forgetting the obvious time cost?

  Read the article

• links for 2011-02-03

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcast: Reduce Complexity and Cost with Application Integration and SOA Speakers: Bruce Tierney (Product Director, Oracle Fusion Middleware) and Rajendran Rajaram (Oracle Technical Consultant). Thursday, February 17, 2011. 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. (tags: oracle otn soa fusionmiddleware) William Vambenepe: The API, the whole API and nothing but the API William asks: "When programming against a remote service, do you like to be provided with a library (or service stub) or do you prefer 'the API, the whole API, nothing but the API?'" (tags: oracle otn API webservices soa) Gary Myers: Fluffy white Oracle clouds by the hour Gary says: "Pay-by-the-hour options are becoming more common, with Amazon and Oracle are getting even more intimate in the next few months. Yes, you too will be able to pay for a quickie with the king of databases (or queen if you prefer that as a mental image). " (tags: oracle otn cloudcomputing amazon ec2) Conversation as User Assistance (the user assistance experience) "To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies." -- Ultan O'Broin (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 userexperience) Webcast: Oracle WebCenter Suite – Giving Users a Modern Experience Thursday, February 10, 2011. 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET. Speakers: Vince Casarez, Vice President of Enterprise 2.0 Product Management, Oracle; Erin Smith, Consulting Practice Manager – Portals, Oracle; Robert Wessa, Consulting Technical Director,  Enterprise 2.0 Infrastructure, Oracle.  (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 webcenter)

  Read the article

• Should I be using Lua for game logic on mobile devices?

  - by Rob Ashton

  As above really, I'm writing an android based game in my spare time (android because it's free and I've no real aspirations to do anything commercial). The game logic comes from a very typical component based model whereby entities exist and have components attached to them and messages are sent to and fro in order to make things happen. Obviously the layer for actually performing that is thin, and if I were to write an iPhone version of this app, I'd have to re-write the renderer and core driver (of this component based system) in Objective C. The entities are just flat files determining the names of the components to be added, and the components themselves are simple, single-purpose objects containing the logic for the entity. Now, if I write all the logic for those components in Java, then I'd have to re-write them on Objective C if I decided to do an iPhone port. As the bulk of the application logic is contained within these components, they would, in an ideal world, be written in some platform-agnostic language/script/DSL which could then just be loaded into the app on whatever platform. I've been led to believe however that this is not an ideal world though, and that Lua performance etc on mobile devices still isn't up to scratch, that the overhead is too much and that I'd run into troubles later if I went down that route? Is this actually the case? Obviously this is just a hypothetical question, I'm happy writing them all in Java as it's simple and easy get things off the ground, but say I actually enjoy making this game (unlikely, given how much I'm currently disliking having to deal with all those different mobile devices) and I wanted to make a commercially viable game - would I use Lua or would I just take the hit when it came to porting and just re-write all the code?

  Read the article

• Oracle Applications Global User Experience

  - by ultan o'broin

  Today, we're launching Oracle's first ever blog for global user experience (UX) applications issues. We'll be talking about how we design and develop applications for global use, looking at the cultural factors, internationalization (I18n), localization (L10n) and language used for a start. We will also discuss how we study and work with real users so that our customers have applications that allow them to be productive regardless of where they are located in the world. In addition, we will inform you about any globally-related events we know about, and about product features, development frameworks, tools, information and relevant to our worldwide customers. Also, of course, we hope to hear from you, too. If you have anything you want to know about our global user experience, a localization you'd like, or cultural feature you think would be useful, then let us know. If you have any tips or guidelines you'd like to share in this space, then this blog is for you too! As far as global user experience is concerned, you don't have to be lost in translation. Hence the name of the blog!

  Read the article

• Why is Quicksort called "Quicksort"?

  - by Darrel Hoffman

  The point of this question is not to debate the merits of this over any other sorting algorithm - certainly there are many other questions that do this. This question is about the name. Why is Quicksort called "Quicksort"? Sure, it's "quick", most of the time, but not always. The possibility of degenerating to O(N^2) is well known. There are various modifications to Quicksort that mitigate this problem, but the ones which bring the worst case down to a guaranteed O(n log n) aren't generally called Quicksort anymore. (e.g. Introsort). I just wonder why of all the well-known sorting algorithms, this is the only one deserving of the name "quick", which describes not how the algorithm works, but how fast it (usually) is. Mergesort is called that because it merges the data. Heapsort is called that because it uses a heap. Introsort gets its name from "Introspective", since it monitors its own performance to decide when to switch from Quicksort to Heapsort. Similarly for all the slower ones - Bubblesort, Insertion sort, Selection sort, etc. They're all named for how they work. The only other exception I can think of is "Bogosort", which is really just a joke that nobody ever actually uses in practice. Why isn't Quicksort called something more descriptive, like "Partition sort" or "Pivot sort", which describe what it actually does? It's not even a case of "got here first". Mergesort was developed 15 years before Quicksort. (1945 and 1960 respectively according to Wikipedia) I guess this is really more of a history question than a programming one. I'm just curious how it got the name - was it just good marketing?

  Read the article

• Game actions that take multiple frames to complete

  - by CantTetris

  I've never really done much game programming before, pretty straightforward question. Imagine I'm building a Tetris game, with the main loop looking something like this. for every frame handle input if it's time to make the current block move down a row if we can move the block move the block else remove all complete rows move rows down so there are no gaps if we can spawn a new block spawn a new current block else game over Everything in the game so far happens instantly - things are spawned instantly, rows are removed instantly etc. But what if I don't want things to happen instantly (i.e animate things)? for every frame handle input if it's time to make the current block move down a row if we can move the block move the block else ?? animate complete rows disappearing (somehow, wait over multiple frames until the animation is done) ?? animate rows moving downwards (and again, wait over multiple frames) if we can spawn a new block spawn a new current block else game over In my Pong clone this wasn't an issue, as every frame I was just moving the ball and checking for collisions. How can I wrap my head around this issue? Surely most games involves some action that takes more than a frame, and other things halt until the action is done.

  Read the article

• SQL Server Interview Questions

  - by Rodney Vinyard

  User-Defined Functions Scalar User-Defined Function A Scalar user-defined function returns one of the scalar data types. Text, ntext, image and timestamp data types are not supported. These are the type of user-defined functions that most developers are used to in other programming languages. Table-Value User-Defined Function An Inline Table-Value user-defined function returns a table data type and is an exceptional alternative to a view as the user-defined function can pass parameters into a T-SQL select command and in essence provide us with a parameterized, non-updateable view of the underlying tables. Multi-statement Table-Value User-Defined Function A Multi-Statement Table-Value user-defined function returns a table and is also an exceptional alternative to a view as the function can support multiple T-SQL statements to build the final result where the view is limited to a single SELECT statement. Also, the ability to pass parameters into a T-SQL select command or a group of them gives us the capability to in essence create a parameterized, non-updateable view of the data in the underlying tables. Within the create function command you must define the table structure that is being returned. After creating this type of user-defined function, I can use it in the FROM clause of a T-SQL command unlike the behavior found when using a stored procedure which can also return record sets.

  Read the article

• XNA C# Platformer - physics engine or tile based?

  - by Hugh

  I would like to get some opinions on whether i should develop my game using a physics engine (farseer physics seems to be the best option) or follow the traditional tile-based method. Quick background: - its a college project, my first game, but have 4 years academic programming experience - Just want a basic platformer with a few levels, nothing fancy - want a shooting mechanic, run and gun, just like contra or metal slug for example - possibly some simple puzzles I have made a basic prototype with farseer, the level is hardcoded with collisions and not really tiled, more like big full-screen sized tiles, with collision bodies drawn manually along the ground and walls etc. My main problem is i want a simple retro feel to the jumping and physics but because its a physics simulation engine its going to be realistic, whereas typical in air controllable physics for platformers arent realistic. I have to make a box with wheel body fixture under it to have this effect and its glitchy and doesnt feel right. I chose to use a physics engine because i tried the tile method initially and found it very hard to understand, the engine took care of alot things to save me time, mainly being able to do slopes easily was nice and the freedom to draw collision bounds wherever i liked, rather then restricted to a grid, which gave me more freedom for art design also. In conclusion i don't know which method to pick, i want to use a method which will be the most straight forward way to implement and wont give me a headache later on, preferably a method which has an abundance of tutorials and resources so i dont get "stuck" doing something which has been done a million times before! Let me know i haven't provided enough information for you to help me! Thanks in advance, Hugh.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 593 594 595 596 597 598 599 600 601 602 603 604  | Next Page >