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• What 5 things should SQL Server get rid of?

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been “tagged” by my friend Paul Randal. It’s a high-tech way of making someone else do what you want, but since it’s Paul, well, I guess I’m OK with that. He’s asked in his recent blog entry “What five things would you get rid of in SQL Server if you were in charge?” This is, of course, a delicate issue. After all, I work at Microsoft, so anything I say here might be taken as a criticism that would require action – but of course it really doesn’t. Interestingly, you may have more to do with what goes in to SQL Server than I did even as a Program Manager where I “owned” a feature. Unlike many places I’ve worked, Microsoft really does drive its products by what its users want – not every time, and not every user request, mind you, but overall I think we hit the mark pretty well. So, with all of that said, and of course the obligatory statement of “these are my own opinions, and have nothing to do with any official Microsoft position in any way, and do not reflect the opinions of other Microsoft employees or management”, here goes. 1. Get rid of SQL Server Management Studio Does that surprise you? After all, when I was a Program Manager, I actually owned the general architecture for SSMS. But those on my team probably would have been able to guess this one for you. I think that SSMS is a fine development tool. But I think that it does less of a good job for managing a system. It’s based on Visual Studio, probably one of the best development IDE’s around. And when I develop code, I really like it. But for a monitoring/management tool, I prefer a snap-in to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). I know, the old one (prior to 3.0) was kludgy, difficult to use and program in. But that’s changed. Of course, when I bring this up, you’ll probably immediately say “But I don’t have that in XP.” And that’s one of the reasons we didn’t go there. (But I still don’t like SSMS for management.) 2. ShrinkDB I think this discussion has been done to death, so I’ll leave it at that. 3. SQL Server Agent Does that one surprise you as well? In my mind, since we ALWAYS ride on Windows, just use the task scheduler there, along with PowerShell. You could log the results in Windows logs, files, back into SQL Server, whatever. It’s just a complexity we don’t need in SQL Server. 4. SQL Server Error Logs We have a full logging setup in Windows. They’re well done, easy to understand and ubiquitous. We should just use that. 5. Several SKU’s I won’t say which, but we have a few SKU’s of SQL Server that need to go. And we need to figure out how to help you understand clearly where you need to go to Enterprise or Data Center.  Most folks are trying to push Standard edition to do things it isn’t designed to do, and then they think SQL Server won’t scale. I think we can do a better job of showing you where Standard Edition will hit the wall, and I think with fewer choices it would be pretty simple for you to pick the right one. Well, once again I’ve probably puzzled some folks and angered others. I think my work here is done. :) Back to you, Paul. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Head in the Clouds

  - by Tony Davis

  We're just past the second anniversary of the launch of Windows Azure. A couple of years' experience with Azure in the industry has provided some obvious success stories, but has deflated some of the initial marketing hyperbole. As a general principle, Azure seems to work well in providing a Service-Oriented Architecture for services in enterprises that suffer wide fluctuations in demand. Instead of being obliged to provide hardware sufficient for the occasional peaks in demand, one can hire capacity only when it is needed, and the cost of hosting an application is no longer a capital cost. It enables companies to avoid having to scale out hardware for peak periods only to see it underused for the rest of the time. A customer-facing application such as a concert ticketing system, which suffers high demand in short, predictable bursts of activity, is a great example of an application that would work well in Azure. However, moving existing applications to Azure isn't something to be done on impulse. Unless your application is .NET-based, and consists of 'stateless' components that communicate via queues, you are probably in for a lot of redevelopment work. It makes most sense for IT departments who are already deep in this .NET mindset, and who also want 'grown-up' methods of staging, testing, and deployment. Azure fits well with this culture and offers, as a bonus, good Visual Studio integration. The most-commonly stated barrier to porting these applications to Azure is the problem of reconciling the use of the cloud with legislation for data privacy and security. Putting databases in the cloud is a sticky issue for many and impossible for some due to compliance and security issues, the need for direct control over data, and so on. In the face of feedback from the early adopters of Azure, Microsoft has broadened the architectural choices to cater for a wide range of requirements. As well as SQL Azure Database (SAD) and Azure storage, the unstructured 'BLOB and Entity-Attribute-Value' NoSQL storage alternative (which equates more closely with folders and files than a database), Windows Azure offers a wide range of storage options including use of services such as oData: developers who are programming for Windows Azure can simply choose the one most appropriate for their needs. Secondly, and crucially, the Windows Azure architecture allows you the freedom to produce hybrid applications, where only those parts that need cloud-based hosting are deployed to Azure, whereas those parts that must unavoidably be hosted in a corporate datacenter can stay there. By using a hybrid architecture, it will seldom, if ever, be necessary to move an entire application to the cloud, along with personal and financial data. For example that we could port to Azure only put those parts of our ticketing application that capture and process tickets orders. Once an order is captured, the financial side can be processed in our own data center. In short, Windows Azure seems to be a very effective way of providing services that are subject to wide but predictable fluctuations in demand. Have you come to the same conclusions, or do you think I've got it wrong? If you've had experience with Azure, would you recommend it? It would be great to hear from you. Cheers, Tony.

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• Extrapolation breaks collision detection

  - by user22241

  Before applying extrapolation to my sprite's movement, my collision worked perfectly. However, after applying extrapolation to my sprite's movement (to smooth things out), the collision no longer works. This is how things worked before extrapolation: However, after I implement my extrapolation, the collision routine breaks. I am assuming this is because it is acting upon the new coordinate that has been produced by the extrapolation routine (which is situated in my render call ). After I apply my extrapolation How to correct this behaviour? I've tried puting an extra collision check just after extrapolation - this does seem to clear up a lot of the problems but I've ruled this out because putting logic into my rendering is out of the question. I've also tried making a copy of the spritesX position, extrapolating that and drawing using that rather than the original, thus leaving the original intact for the logic to pick up on - this seems a better option, but it still produces some weird effects when colliding with walls. I'm pretty sure this also isn't the correct way to deal with this. I've found a couple of similar questions on here but the answers haven't helped me. This is my extrapolation code: public void onDrawFrame(GL10 gl) { //Set/Re-set loop back to 0 to start counting again loops=0; while(System.currentTimeMillis() > nextGameTick && loops < maxFrameskip){ SceneManager.getInstance().getCurrentScene().updateLogic(); nextGameTick+=skipTicks; timeCorrection += (1000d/ticksPerSecond) % 1; nextGameTick+=timeCorrection; timeCorrection %=1; loops++; tics++; } extrapolation = (float)(System.currentTimeMillis() + skipTicks - nextGameTick) / (float)skipTicks; render(extrapolation); } Applying extrapolation render(float extrapolation){ //This example shows extrapolation for X axis only. Y position (spriteScreenY is assumed to be valid) extrapolatedPosX = spriteGridX+(SpriteXVelocity*dt)*extrapolation; spriteScreenPosX = extrapolationPosX * screenWidth; drawSprite(spriteScreenX, spriteScreenY); } Edit As I mentioned above, I have tried making a copy of the sprite's coordinates specifically to draw with.... this has it's own problems. Firstly, regardless of the copying, when the sprite is moving, it's super-smooth, when it stops, it's wobbling slightly left/right - as it's still extrapolating it's position based on the time. Is this normal behavior and can we 'turn it off' when the sprite stops? I've tried having flags for left / right and only extrapolating if either of these is enabled. I've also tried copying the last and current positions to see if there is any difference. However, as far as collision goes, these don't help. If the user is pressing say, the right button and the sprite is moving right, when it hits a wall, if the user continues to hold the right button down, the sprite will keep animating to the right, while being stopped by the wall (therefore not actually moving), however because the right flag is still set and also because the collision routine is constantly moving the sprite out of the wall, it still appear to the code (not the player) that the sprite is still moving, and therefore extrapolation continues. So what the player would see, is the sprite 'static' (yes, it's animating, but it's not actually moving across the screen), and every now and then it shakes violently as the extrapolation attempts to do it's thing....... Hope this help

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• Caching factory design

  - by max

  I have a factory class XFactory that creates objects of class X. Instances of X are very large, so the main purpose of the factory is to cache them, as transparently to the client code as possible. Objects of class X are immutable, so the following code seems reasonable: # module xfactory.py import x class XFactory: _registry = {} def get_x(self, arg1, arg2, use_cache = True): if use_cache: hash_id = hash((arg1, arg2)) if hash_id in _registry: return _registry[hash_id] obj = x.X(arg1, arg2) _registry[hash_id] = obj return obj # module x.py class X: # ... Is it a good pattern? (I know it's not the actual Factory Pattern.) Is there anything I should change? Now, I find that sometimes I want to cache X objects to disk. I'll use pickle for that purpose, and store as values in the _registry the filenames of the pickled objects instead of references to the objects. Of course, _registry itself would have to be stored persistently (perhaps in a pickle file of its own, in a text file, in a database, or simply by giving pickle files the filenames that contain hash_id). Except now the validity of the cached object depends not only on the parameters passed to get_x(), but also on the version of the code that created these objects. Strictly speaking, even a memory-cached object could become invalid if someone modifies x.py or any of its dependencies, and reloads it while the program is running. So far I ignored this danger since it seems unlikely for my application. But I certainly cannot ignore it when my objects are cached to persistent storage. What can I do? I suppose I could make the hash_id more robust by calculating hash of a tuple that contains arguments arg1 and arg2, as well as the filename and last modified date for x.py and every module and data file that it (recursively) depends on. To help delete cache files that won't ever be useful again, I'd add to the _registry the unhashed representation of the modified dates for each record. But even this solution isn't 100% safe since theoretically someone might load a module dynamically, and I wouldn't know about it from statically analyzing the source code. If I go all out and assume every file in the project is a dependency, the mechanism will still break if some module grabs data from an external website, etc.). In addition, the frequency of changes in x.py and its dependencies is quite high, leading to heavy cache invalidation. Thus, I figured I might as well give up some safety, and only invalidate the cache only when there is an obvious mismatch. This means that class X would have a class-level cache validation identifier that should be changed whenever the developer believes a change happened that should invalidate the cache. (With multiple developers, a separate invalidation identifier is required for each.) This identifier is hashed along with arg1 and arg2 and becomes part of the hash keys stored in _registry. Since developers may forget to update the validation identifier or not realize that they invalidated existing cache, it would seem better to add another validation mechanism: class X can have a method that returns all the known "traits" of X. For instance, if X is a table, I might add the names of all the columns. The hash calculation will include the traits as well. I can write this code, but I am afraid that I'm missing something important; and I'm also wondering if perhaps there's a framework or package that can do all of this stuff already. Ideally, I'd like to combine in-memory and disk-based caching.

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• Bumblebee [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG]

  - by Lunchbox

  Though this may seem like a duplicate question, none of the suggestions I've seen have worked for me, however nearly all posters get good results. I'll start with hardware: Metabox W350ST notebook Intel Core i7 4700 16GB RAM GTX 765M (with Optimus) 128GB SSD 1TB SSHD My initial error output when trying to optirun a game is: [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: [XORG] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0. Please [133.973920] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled. If anything else is needed to troubleshoot this just let me know. Adding bumblebee.conf: # Configuration file for Bumblebee. Values should **not** be put between quotes ## Server options. Any change made in this section will need a server restart # to take effect. [bumblebeed] # The secondary Xorg server DISPLAY number VirtualDisplay=:8 # Should the unused Xorg server be kept running? Set this to true if waiting # for X to be ready is too long and don't need power management at all. KeepUnusedXServer=false # The name of the Bumbleblee server group name (GID name) ServerGroup=bumblebee # Card power state at exit. Set to false if the card shoud be ON when Bumblebee # server exits. TurnCardOffAtExit=false # The default behavior of '-f' option on optirun. If set to "true", '-f' will # be ignored. NoEcoModeOverride=false # The Driver used by Bumblebee server. If this value is not set (or empty), # auto-detection is performed. The available drivers are nvidia and nouveau # (See also the driver-specific sections below) Driver=nvidia # Directory with a dummy config file to pass as a -configdir to secondary X XorgConfDir=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.d ## Client options. Will take effect on the next optirun executed. [optirun] # Acceleration/ rendering bridge, possible values are auto, virtualgl and # primus. Bridge=auto # The method used for VirtualGL to transport frames between X servers. # Possible values are proxy, jpeg, rgb, xv and yuv. VGLTransport=proxy # List of paths which are searched for the primus libGL.so.1 when using # the primus bridge PrimusLibraryPath=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/primus:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/primus # Should the program run under optirun even if Bumblebee server or nvidia card # is not available? AllowFallbackToIGC=false # Driver-specific settings are grouped under [driver-NAME]. The sections are # parsed if the Driver setting in [bumblebeed] is set to NAME (or if auto- # detection resolves to NAME). # PMMethod: method to use for saving power by disabling the nvidia card, valid # values are: auto - automatically detect which PM method to use # bbswitch - new in BB 3, recommended if available # switcheroo - vga_switcheroo method, use at your own risk # none - disable PM completely # https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/Comparison-of-PM-methods ## Section with nvidia driver specific options, only parsed if Driver=nvidia [driver-nvidia] # Module name to load, defaults to Driver if empty or unset KernelDriver=nvidia PMMethod=auto # colon-separated path to the nvidia libraries LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-current:/usr/lib32/nvidia-current # comma-separated path of the directory containing nvidia_drv.so and the # default Xorg modules path XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-current/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules XorgConfFile=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia ## Section with nouveau driver specific options, only parsed if Driver=nouveau [driver-nouveau] KernelDriver=nouveau PMMethod=auto XorgConfFile=/etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nouveau DRIVER VERSION - Output of jockey-text -l: nvidia_304_updates - nvidia_304_updates (Proprietary, Enabled, Not in use)

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• AI to move custom-shaped spaceships (shape affecting movement behaviour)

  - by kaoD

  I'm designing a networked turn based 3D-6DOF space fleet combat strategy game which relies heavily on ship customization. Let me explain the game a bit, since you need to know a bit about it to set the question. What I aim for is the ability to create your own fleet of ships with custom shapes and attached modules (propellers, tractor beams...) which would give advantages and disadvantages to each ship, so you have lots of different fleet distributions. E.g., long ship with two propellers at the side would let the ship spin around that plane easily, bigger ships would move slowly unless you place lots of propellers at the back (therefore spending more "construction" points and energy when moving, and it will only move fast towards that direction.) I plan to balance all the game around this feature. The game would revolve around two phases: orders and combat phase. During the orders phase, you command the different ships. When all players finish the order phase, the combat phase begins and the ship orders get resolved in real-time for some time, then the action pauses and there's a new orders phase. The problem comes when I think about player input. To move a ship, you need to turn on or off different propellers if you want to steer, travel forward, brake, rotate in place... These propellers don't have to work at their whole power, so you can achieve more movement combinations with less propellers. I think this approach is a bit boring. The player doesn't want to fiddle with motors or anything, you just want to MOVE and KILL. The way I intend the player to give orders to these ships is by a destination and a rotation, and then the AI would calculate the correct propeller power to achive that movement and rotation. Propulsion doesn't have to be the same throught the entire turn calculation (after the orders have been given) so it would be cool if the ships reacted as they move, adjusting the power of the propellers for their needs dynamically, but it may be too hard to implement and it's not really needed for the game to work. In both cases, how would that AI decide which propellers to activate for the best (or at least not worst) trajectory to be achieved? I though about some approaches: Learning AI: The ship types would learn about their movement by trial and error, adjusting their behaviour with more uses, and finally becoming "smart". I don't want to get involved THAT far in AI coding, and I think it can be frustrating for the player (even if you can let it learn without playing.) Pre-calculated timestep movement: Upon ship creation, ALL possible movements are calculated for each propeller configuration and power for a given delta-time. Memory intensive, ugly, bad. Pre-calculated trajectories: The same as above but not for each delta-time but the whole trajectory, which would then be fitted as much as possible. Requires a fixed propeller configuration for the whole combat phase and is still memory intensive, ugly and bad. Continuous brute forcing: The AI continously checks ALL possible propeller configurations throughout the entire combat phase, precalculates a few time steps and decides which is the best one based on that. Con: what's good now might not be that good later, and it's too CPU intensive, ugly, and bad too. Single brute forcing: Same as above, but only brute forcing at the beginning of the simulation, so it needs constant propeller configuration throughout the entire combat phase. Coninuous angle check: This is not a full movement method, but maybe a way to discard "stupid" propeller configurations. Given the current propeller's normal vector and the final one, you can approximate the power needed for the propeller based on the angle. You must do this continuously throughout the whole combat phase. I figured this one out recently so I didn't put in too much thought. A priori, it has the "what's good now might not be that good later" drawback too, and it doesn't care about the other propellers which may act together to make a better propelling configuration. I'm really stuck here. Any ideas?

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• Help understand GLSL directional light on iOS (left handed coord system)

  - by Robse

  I now have changed from GLKBaseEffect to a own shader implementation. I have a shader management, which compiles and applies a shader to the right time and does some shader setup like lights. Please have a look at my vertex shader code. Now, light direction should be provided in eye space, but I think there is something I don't get right. After I setup my view with camera I save a lightMatrix to transform the light from global space to eye space. My modelview and projection setup: - (void)setupViewWithWidth:(int)width height:(int)height camera:(N3DCamera *)aCamera { aCamera.aspect = (float)width / (float)height; float aspect = aCamera.aspect; float far = aCamera.far; float near = aCamera.near; float vFOV = aCamera.fieldOfView; float top = near * tanf(M_PI * vFOV / 360.0f); float bottom = -top; float right = aspect * top; float left = -right; // projection GLKMatrixStackLoadMatrix4(projectionStack, GLKMatrix4MakeFrustum(left, right, bottom, top, near, far)); // identity modelview GLKMatrixStackLoadMatrix4(modelviewStack, GLKMatrix4Identity); // switch to left handed coord system (forward = z+) GLKMatrixStackMultiplyMatrix4(modelviewStack, GLKMatrix4MakeScale(1, 1, -1)); // transform camera GLKMatrixStackMultiplyMatrix4(modelviewStack, GLKMatrix4MakeWithMatrix3(GLKMatrix3Transpose(aCamera.orientation))); GLKMatrixStackTranslate(modelviewStack, -aCamera.position.x, -aCamera.position.y, -aCamera.position.z); } - (GLKMatrix4)modelviewMatrix { return GLKMatrixStackGetMatrix4(modelviewStack); } - (GLKMatrix4)projectionMatrix { return GLKMatrixStackGetMatrix4(projectionStack); } - (GLKMatrix4)modelviewProjectionMatrix { return GLKMatrix4Multiply([self projectionMatrix], [self modelviewMatrix]); } - (GLKMatrix3)normalMatrix { return GLKMatrix3InvertAndTranspose(GLKMatrix4GetMatrix3([self modelviewProjectionMatrix]), NULL); } After that, I save the lightMatrix like this: [self.renderer setupViewWithWidth:view.drawableWidth height:view.drawableHeight camera:self.camera]; self.lightMatrix = [self.renderer modelviewProjectionMatrix]; And just before I render a 3d entity of the scene graph, I setup the light config for its shader with the lightMatrix like this: - (N3DLight)transformedLight:(N3DLight)light transformation:(GLKMatrix4)matrix { N3DLight transformedLight = N3DLightMakeDisabled(); if (N3DLightIsDirectional(light)) { GLKVector3 direction = GLKVector3MakeWithArray(GLKMatrix4MultiplyVector4(matrix, light.position).v); direction = GLKVector3Negate(direction); // HACK -> TODO: get lightMatrix right! transformedLight = N3DLightMakeDirectional(direction, light.diffuse, light.specular); } else { ... } return transformedLight; } You see the line, where I negate the direction!? I can't explain why I need to do that, but if I do, the lights are correct as far as I can tell. Please help me, to get rid of the hack. I'am scared that this has something to do, with my switch to left handed coord system. My vertex shader looks like this: attribute highp vec4 inPosition; attribute lowp vec4 inNormal; ... uniform highp mat4 MVP; uniform highp mat4 MV; uniform lowp mat3 N; uniform lowp vec4 constantColor; uniform lowp vec4 ambient; uniform lowp vec4 light0Position; uniform lowp vec4 light0Diffuse; uniform lowp vec4 light0Specular; varying lowp vec4 vColor; varying lowp vec3 vTexCoord0; vec4 calcDirectional(vec3 dir, vec4 diffuse, vec4 specular, vec3 normal) { float NdotL = max(dot(normal, dir), 0.0); return NdotL * diffuse; } ... vec4 calcLight(vec4 pos, vec4 diffuse, vec4 specular, vec3 normal) { if (pos.w == 0.0) { // Directional Light return calcDirectional(normalize(pos.xyz), diffuse, specular, normal); } else { ... } } void main(void) { // position highp vec4 position = MVP * inPosition; gl_Position = position; // normal lowp vec3 normal = inNormal.xyz / inNormal.w; normal = N * normal; normal = normalize(normal); // colors vColor = constantColor * ambient; // add lights vColor += calcLight(light0Position, light0Diffuse, light0Specular, normal); ... }

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• Design Pattern for building a Budget

  - by Scott

  So I've looked at the Builder Pattern, Abstract Interfaces, other design patterns, etc. - and I think I'm over thinking the simplicity behind what I'm trying to do, so I'm asking you guys for some help with either recommending a design pattern I should use, or an architecture style I'm not familiar with that fits my task. So I have one model that represents a Budget in my code. At a high level, it looks like this: public class Budget { public int Id { get; set; } public List<MonthlySummary> Months { get; set; } public float SavingsPriority { get; set; } public float DebtPriority { get; set; } public List<Savings> SavingsCollection { get; set; } public UserProjectionParameters UserProjectionParameters { get; set; } public List<Debt> DebtCollection { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public List<Expense> Expenses { get; set; } public List<Income> IncomeCollection { get; set; } public bool AutoSave { get; set; } public decimal AutoSaveAmount { get; set; } public FundType AutoSaveType { get; set; } public decimal TotalExcess { get; set; } public decimal AccountMinimum { get; set; } } To go into more detail about some of the properties here shouldn't be necessary, but if you have any questions about those I will fill more out for you guys. Now, I'm trying to create code that builds one of these things based on a set of BudgetBuildParameters that the user will create and supply. There are going to be multiple types of these parameters. For example, on the sites homepage, there will be an example section where you can quickly see what your numbers look like, so they would be a much simpler set of SampleBudgetBuildParameters then say after a user registers and wants to create a fully filled out Budget using much more information in the DebtBudgetBuildParameters. Now a lot of these builds are going to be using similar code for certain tasks, but might want to also check the status of a users DebtCollection when formulating a monthly spending report, where as a Budget that only focuses on savings might not want to. I'd like to reduce code duplication (obviously) as much as possible, but in my head, every way I can think to do this would require using a base BudgetBuilderFactory to return the correct builder to the caller, and then creating say a SimpleBudgetBuilder that inherits from a BudgetBuilder, and put all duplicate code in the BudgetBuilder, and let the SimpleBudgetBuilder handle it's own cases. Problem is, a lot of the unique cases are unique to 2/4 builders, so there will be duplicate code somewhere in there obviously if I did that. Can anyone think of a better way to either explain a solution to this that may or may not be similar to mine, or a completely different pattern or way of thinking here? I really appreciate it.

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• Field Report - Notes from IHRIM Atlanta Event

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Steve Boese, Director, Talent Strategy, Oracle Recently I had the pleasure to serve as a guest speaker at the IHRIM Atlanta/SE Chapter meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. The focus of my talk was Mobile Technology in Human Resources, and while still a new and developing area, the enormous growth and ubiquitous presence of mobile devices and increasing importance of and demand for constant connectivity in both our personal and professional lives has put planning and developing a mobile HR technology strategy high on many organizations lists of priorities in 2012. Numerous studies have shown that the confluence of ever-rising sales of smartphones and tablets; and the increasing tendency for workers of all kinds to be more mobile and less tied down to traditional, fixed-location workplaces and what now seem like old-fashioned PC-centric and traditional computing environments are driving Human Resources leaders to think about how, where, when, and for whom that the deployment of mobile HR solutions will help them address their business needs, and put information in the hands of those that need it, when they need it, and on their preferred devices. In the session we talked about some of the potential opportunities for mobile HR technologies, from simple workflow-based approval capability, to employee directories and robust employee profiles, to more advanced use cases like internal social networking and location-based mobile recruiting applications. And truly we are just scratching the surface of the potential and the value that all kinds of HR-related mobile technologies will help deliver to enterprises in the coming years. Additionally, it was encouraging to talk with many of the HR leaders in attendance who expressed interest in these kinds of mobile HR technology opportunities, as well as to hear how some of them are already working on developing their own mobile strategies or experimenting with mobile solutions in their workforces. It was a fantastic meeting and I’d like to express my thanks to Kim Bryant, IHRIM Atlanta/SE Board President, the other board members, and also the IHRIM Atlanta Chapter members and attendees at the event. If you are in the Atlanta area and are interested in HR and HR Technology, you can learn more about the programs and services that the Chapter has to offer at their website - http://www.ihrimatlantase.org/. And for people that are interested in what we at Oracle are working on in mobile, you can also sign up to receive the latest updates about the Oracle Fusion Applications tablet solutions, Oracle Fusion Tap, at https://fusiontap.oracle.com/.

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• Web Developer - How to enhance my skillset?

  - by atif089

  First of all pardon my English. I am not a native English speaker I have been a Web Developer for the past 4 years. In these 4 years I have spent my time on the internet to learn things. My current skillset comprises of HTML CSS PHP MySQL jQuery (I would not say js and rather say jQuery because I am good at using jQuery and bad with plain javascript.) The above things seemed like an easier part of my life as I quickly learned them. But now I would really like to enhance my skillset and I am pretty confused which way to move ahead considering that I have to learn things using the web and references on my own. Design My first option is towards design. Shall I get started with design and start using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Flex. Designing along with my previous skills looks like a money maker to me. As both are co-related to each other when web design is considered. And its easier to learn the first 2 and I hope I can get tutorials for the last 2 as well. Marketing A lot of my existing clients asked me if I do SEO. So this looked as a good field to me as well. I cannot estimate the scope of SEO but I assume it has a long future. Since I am business minded as well and there are a lot of tutorials around, should I start with SEO, SEM, Social Media, PPC or whatever it consists of. Software Development The complex plight and hardest thing (perhaps) but the easiest way to find a decent job in my location. If I go for software development what platform should be that I should be ideally going after? Should it be C# for windows development, or ASP.NET (once again enhances my skill set), J2EE (there are a lot of jobs for J2EE developers here) or plain C and C++. Also I think it is difficult to learn software languages right from Hello World, using internet? I have no clue how I learned PHP but I am sort of a pro now, but these other languages seems like a disaster to me? I cant figure out the reason if its because PHP is easier or there was a lot of tutorials around for PHP. Anyways is it also possible to learn software development right from Hello World using the web? Database / Server (Linux) / Network Administration Seems like a job with a decent pay but less number of jobs and a bit harder to learn online. (not sure) What should be the right track I should move ahead. P.S - Age is not a constraint for me as I am between 20-21, and I come from an IT background. I know quite little basics about C (upto structures) C++ (upto objects, I was not able to understand templates) Core Java (some basics and OOP concept) RDBMS Visual Basic 6 (used to do this long back) UNIX (a bunch of commands like who, finger, chmod, ls and a bit of #bash) Or is there anything else that I left out? I need you guys to please give me a feedback and the reason why I should select that field.

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• Dont Throw Duplicate Exceptions

  In your code, youll sometimes have write code that validates input using a variety of checks.  Assuming you havent embraced AOP and done everything with attributes, its likely that your defensive coding is going to look something like this: public void Foo(SomeClass someArgument) { if(someArgument == null) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument"); } if(!someArgument.IsValid()) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument"); }   // Do Real Work } Do you see a problem here?  Heres the deal Exceptions should be meaningful.  They have value at a number of levels: In the code, throwing an exception lets the develop know that there is an unsupported condition here In calling code, different types of exceptions may be handled differently At runtime, logging of exceptions provides a valuable diagnostic tool Its this last reason I want to focus on.  If you find yourself literally throwing the exact exception in more than one location within a given method, stop.  The stack trace for such an exception is likely going to be identical regardless of which path of execution led to the exception being thrown.  When that happens, you or whomever is debugging the problem will have to guess which exception was thrown.  Guessing is a great way to introduce additional problems and/or greatly increase the amount of time require to properly diagnose and correct any bugs related to this behavior. Dont Guess Be Specific When throwing an exception from multiple code paths within the code, be specific.  Virtually ever exception allows a custom message use it and ensure each case is unique.  If the exception might be handled differently by the caller, than consider implementing a new custom exception type.  Also, dont automatically think that you can improve the code by collapsing the if-then logic into a single call with short-circuiting (e.g. if(x == null || !x.IsValid()) ) that will guarantee that you cant easily throw different information into the message as easily as constructing the exception separately in each case. The code above might be refactored like so:   public void Foo(SomeClass someArgument) { if(someArgument == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("someArgument"); } if(!someArgument.IsValid()) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument"); }   // Do Real Work } In this case its taking advantage of the fact that there is already an ArgumentNullException in the framework, but if you didnt have an IsValid() method and were doing validation on your own, it might look like this: public void Foo(SomeClass someArgument) { if(someArgument.Quantity < 0) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument", "Quantity cannot be less than 0. Quantity: " + someArgument.Quantity); } if(someArgument.Quantity > 100) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument", "SomeArgument.Quantity cannot exceed 100. Quantity: " + someArgument.Quantity); }   // Do Real Work }   Note that in this last example, Im throwing the same exception type in each case, but with different Message values.  Im also making sure to include the value that resulted in the exception, as this can be extremely useful for debugging.  (How many times have you wished NullReferenceException would tell you the name of the variable it was trying to reference?) Dont add work to those who will follow after you to maintain your application (especially since its likely to be you).  Be specific with your exception messages follow DRY when throwing exceptions within a given method by throwing unique exceptions for each interesting case of invalid state. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Managing common code on Windows 7 (.NET) and Windows 8 (WinRT)

  - by ryanabr

  Recent announcements regarding Windows Phone 8 and the fact that it will have the WinRT behind it might make some of this less painful but I  discovered the "XmlDocument" object is in a new location in WinRT and is almost the same as it's brother in .NET System.Xml.XmlDocument (.NET) Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlDocument (WinRT) The problem I am trying to solve is how to work with both types in the code that performs the same task on both Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 platforms. The first thing I did was define my own XmlNode and XmlNodeList classes that wrap the actual Microsoft objects so that by using the "#if" compiler directive either work with the WinRT version of the type, or the .NET version from the calling code easily. public class XmlNode     { #if WIN8         public Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.IXmlNode Node { get; set; }         public XmlNode(Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.IXmlNode xmlNode)         {             Node = xmlNode;         } #endif #if !WIN8 public System.Xml.XmlNode Node { get; set ; } public XmlNode(System.Xml.XmlNode xmlNode)         {             Node = xmlNode;         } #endif     } public class XmlNodeList     { #if WIN8         public Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlNodeList List { get; set; }         public int Count {get {return (int)List.Count;}}         public XmlNodeList(Windows.Data.Xml.Dom.XmlNodeList list)         {             List = list;         } #endif #if !WIN8 public System.Xml.XmlNodeList List { get; set ; } public int Count { get { return List.Count;}} public XmlNodeList(System.Xml.XmlNodeList list)         {             List = list;        } #endif     } From there I can then use my XmlNode and XmlNodeList in the calling code with out having to clutter the code with all of the additional #if switches. The challenge after this was the code that worked directly with the XMLDocument object needed to be seperate on both platforms since the method for populating the XmlDocument object is completly different on both platforms. To solve this issue. I made partial classes, one partial class for .NET and one for WinRT. Both projects have Links to the Partial Class that contains the code that is the same for the majority of the class, and the partial class contains the code that is unique to the version of the XmlDocument. The files with the little arrow in the lower left corner denotes 'linked files' and are shared in multiple projects but only exist in one location in source control. You can see that the _Win7 partial class is included directly in the project since it include code that is only for the .NET platform, where as it's cousin the _Win8 (not pictured above) has all of the code specific to the _Win8 platform. In the _Win7 partial class is this code: public partial class WUndergroundViewModel     { public static WUndergroundData GetWeatherData( double lat, double lng)         { WUndergroundData data = new WUndergroundData();             System.Net. WebClient c = new System.Net. WebClient(); string req = "http://api.wunderground.com/api/xxx/yesterday/conditions/forecast/q/[LAT],[LNG].xml" ;             req = req.Replace( "[LAT]" , lat.ToString());             req = req.Replace( "[LNG]" , lng.ToString()); XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();             doc.Load(c.OpenRead(req)); foreach (XmlNode item in doc.SelectNodes("/response/features/feature" ))             { switch (item.Node.InnerText)                 { case "yesterday" :                         ParseForecast( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/txt_forecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/simpleforecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), data); break ; case "conditions" :                         ParseCurrent( new FishingControls.XmlNode (doc.SelectSingleNode("/response/current_observation" )), data); break ; case "forecast" :                         ParseYesterday( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/history/observations/observation" )),data); break ;                 }             } return data;         }     } in _win8 partial class is this code: public partial class WUndergroundViewModel     { public async static Task< WUndergroundData > GetWeatherData(double lat, double lng)         { WUndergroundData data = new WUndergroundData (); HttpClient c = new HttpClient (); string req = "http://api.wunderground.com/api/xxxx/yesterday/conditions/forecast/q/[LAT],[LNG].xml" ;             req = req.Replace( "[LAT]" , lat.ToString());             req = req.Replace( "[LNG]" , lng.ToString()); HttpResponseMessage msg = await c.GetAsync(req); string stream = await msg.Content.ReadAsStringAsync(); XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument ();             doc.LoadXml(stream, null); foreach ( IXmlNode item in doc.SelectNodes("/response/features/feature" ))             { switch (item.InnerText)                 { case "yesterday" :                         ParseForecast( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/txt_forecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/forecast/simpleforecast/forecastdays/forecastday" )), data); break; case "conditions" :                         ParseCurrent( new FishingControls.XmlNode (doc.SelectSingleNode("/response/current_observation" )), data); break; case "forecast" :                         ParseYesterday( new FishingControls.XmlNodeList (doc.SelectNodes( "/response/history/observations/observation")), data); break;                 }             } return data;         }     } Summary: This method allows me to have common 'business' code for both platforms that is pretty clean, and I manage the technology differences separately. Thank you tostringtheory for your suggestion, I was considering that approach.

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• Advice on refactoring PHP Project

  - by b0x

  I have a small SAS ERP that was written some years ago using PHP. At that time, it didn't use any framework, but the code isn't a mess. Nowadays, the project grows and I’m now working with 3 more programmers. Often, they ask to me why we don’t migrate to a framework such as Laravel. Although I'd love trying Laravel, I’m a small business and I don't have time nor money to stop and spend a whole year building everything from scratch. I need to live and pay the bills. So, I've read a lot about this matter, and I decided that doing a refactoring is the best way to do it. Also, I'm not so sure that a framework will make things easy. Business goals are: Make the code easier to new hired programmers Separate the "view", in order to: release different versions of this product (using the same code), but under different brands and websites at the minimum cost (just changing view) release different versions to fit mobile/tablet. Make different types of this product, selling packages as if they were plugins. Develop custom packages for some costumers (like plugins/addon's that they can buy to put on the main application). Code goals: Introduce best pratices, standards for everyone Try to build my own MVC structure Improve validation of data/forms (today they are mixed in both ajax and classes) Create automated testing routines for quality assurance. My current structure project: class\ extra\ hd\ logs\ public_html\ public_html\includes\ public_html\css|js|images\ class\ There are three types of classes. They are all “autoloaded” with something similar with PSR-0, but I don’t use namespaces. 1. class.Something.php Connects to Database using specific methods. I.e: Costumer-list(); It uses “class.Db.php”, that it’s an abstraction of mysql on every method. 2. class.SomethingProc.php Do things that “join” things that come from “class.Something.php”. Like IF/ELSE, math operations. 3. class.SomethingHTML.php The classes with “HTML” suffix implements only static methods and HTML code only. A real life example: All the programmers need to use $cSomething ($c to class) and $arrSomething (to array). Costumer.php (view) <?php $cCosumter = new Costumer(); $arrCostumer = $cCostumer->list(); echo CostumerHTML::table($arrCostumer); ?> Extra\ Store 3rdparty projects/classes from others, such MPDF, PHPMailer, etc. Hd\ Store user’s files outsite wwwroot dir. Logs\ Store phplogs and the system itself logs (We have a static Log::error() method, that we put in every method of every class) Public_html\ Stores the files that people use. Public_html\includes\ Store the main “config.php” file and all files that do “ajax things” ajax.Costumer.php, for example. Help is needed ;) So, as you can see we have some standards, and also for database things. But I want to write a manual of our rules. Something that I can give to any new programmer at my company and he can go on. This is not totally a mess, but it could be better seeing the new practices. What could I do to separate this as MVC, to have multiple views. Could you give me some tips considering my goals? Keep im mind the different products/custom things for specific costumers without breaking the main application. URL for tutorials, books, etc, would be nice.

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• Refactoring existing PHP Project. I need some advices

  - by b0x

  i have a small SAS ERP that was written some years ago using PHP. At that time, it didn't used any framework, but the code isn't a mess as i will explain more detailed in the following lines. Nowadays, the project grow and I’m now working with 3 more programmers. Often, they ask to me why we don’t migrate to a framework such Laravel. Although I'd love trying Laravel, I’m a small business and i don't have time/money to stop and spend a whole year building everything from scratch. I need to live and pay the bills. So, I've read a lot about this matter, and I decided that doing a refactoring is the best way to do it. Also, I'm not so sure that a framework will make things easy. Business goals are: Make the code easier to new hired programmers I must separate the "view", because: I want to release different versions of this product (using the same code), but under different brands and websites at the minimum cost (just changing view) Release different versions to fit mobile/tablet. Make different types of this product, seeling packages as if it were plugins. Develop custom packages for some costumers (like plugins/addon's that they can buy to put on the main application). Code goals: Introduce best pratices, standards for everyone Try to build my own MVC structure Improve validation of data/forms (today they are mixed in both ajax and classes) Create automated testing rotines, to quality assurance. My actual structure project: class\ extra\ hd\ logs\ public_html\ public_html\includes\ public_html\css|js|images\ class\ There are three types of classes. They are all “autoloaded” with something similar with PSR-0, but I don’t use namespaces. 1. class.Something.php Connects to Database using specific methods. I.e: Costumer-list(); It uses “class.Db.php”, that it’s an abstraction of mysqli on every method. 2. class.SomethingProc.php Do things that “join” things that come from “class.Something.php”. Like IF/ELSE, math operations. 3. class.SomethingHTML.php The classes with “HTML” suffix implements only static methods and HTML code only. A real life example: All the programmers need to use $cSomething ($c to class) and $arrSomething (to array). Costumer.php (view) <?php $cCosumter = new Costumer(); $arrCostumer = $cCostumer->list(); echo CostumerHTML::table($arrCostumer); ?> Extra\ Store 3rdparty projects/classes from others, such MPDF, PHPMailer, etc. Hd\ Store user’s fies outsite wwwroot dir. Logs\ Store phplogs and the system itself logs (We have a static Log::error() method, that we put in every method of every class) Public_html\ Stores the files that people use. Public_html\includes\ Store the main “config.php” file and all files that do “ajax things” ajax.Costumer.php, for example. Help is needed ;) So, as you can see we have some standards, and also for database things. But i want to write a manual of our rules. Something that i can give to any new programmer at my companie and he can go on. This is not totally a mess, but It could be better seeing the new practices. What could I do to separate this as MVC, to have multiple VIEW’s. Could you gimme some tips considering my goals? Keep im mind the different products/custom things for specific costumers without breaking the main application. URL for tutorials, books, etc. It would be nice. Thanks!

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• JavaOne 2012: Nashorn Edition

  - by $utils.escapeXML($entry.author)

  As with my JavaOne 2012: OpenJDK Edition post a while back (now updated to reflect the schedule of the talks), I find it convenient to have my JavaOne schedule ordered by subjects of interest. Beside OpenJDK in all its flavors, another subject I find very exciting is Nashorn. I blogged about the various material on Nashorn in the past, and we interviewed Jim Laskey, the Project Lead on Project Nashorn in the Java Spotlight podcast. So without further ado, here are the JavaOne 2012 talks and BOFs with Nashorn in their title, or abstract:CON5390 - Nashorn: Optimizing JavaScript and Dynamic Language Execution on the JVM - Monday, Oct 1, 8:30 AM - 9:30 AMThere are many implementations of JavaScript, meant to run either on the JVM or standalone as native code. Both approaches have their respective pros and cons. The Oracle Nashorn JavaScript project is based on the former approach. This presentation goes through the performance work that has gone on in Oracle’s Nashorn JavaScript project to date in order to make JavaScript-to-bytecode generation for execution on the JVM feasible. It shows that the new invoke dynamic bytecode gets us part of the way there but may not quite be enough. What other tricks did the Nashorn project use? The presentation also discusses future directions for increased performance for dynamic languages on the JVM, covering proposed enhancements to both the JVM itself and to the bytecode compiler.CON4082 - Nashorn: JavaScript on the JVM - Monday, Oct 1, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PMThe JavaScript programming language has been experiencing a renaissance of late, driven by the interest in HTML5. Nashorn is a JavaScript engine implemented fully in Java on the JVM. It is based on the Da Vinci Machine (JSR 292) and will be available with JDK 8. This session describes the goals of Project Nashorn, gives a top-level view of how it all works, provides the current status, and demonstrates examples of JavaScript and Java working together.BOF4763 - Meet the Nashorn JavaScript Team - Tuesday, Oct 2, 4:30 PM - 5:15 PMCome to this session to meet the Oracle JavaScript (Project Nashorn) language teamBOF6661 - Nashorn, Node, and Java Persistence - Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:30 PM - 6:15 PMWith Project Nashorn, developers will have a full and modern JavaScript engine available on the JVM. In addition, they will have support for running Node applications with Node.jar. This unique combination of capabilities opens the door for best-of-breed applications combining Node with Java SE and Java EE. In this session, you’ll learn about Node.jar and how it can be combined with Java EE components such as EclipseLink JPA for rich Java persistence. You’ll also hear about all of Node.jar’s mapping, caching, querying, performance, and scaling features.CON10657 - The Polyglot Java VM and Java Middleware - Thursday, Oct 4, 12:30 PM - 1:30 PMIn this session, Red Hat and Oracle discuss the impact of polyglot programming from their own unique perspectives, examining non-Java languages that utilize Oracle’s Java HotSpot VM. You’ll hear a discussion of topics relating to Ruby, Lisp, and Clojure and the intersection of other languages where they may touch upon individual frameworks and projects, and you’ll get perspectives on JavaScript via the Nashorn Project, an upcoming JavaScript engine, developed fully in Java.CON5251 - Putting the Metaobject Protocol to Work: Nashorn’s Java Bindings - Thursday, Oct 4, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PMProject Nashorn is Oracle’s new JavaScript runtime in Java 8. Being a JavaScript runtime running on the JVM, it provides integration with the underlying runtime by enabling JavaScript objects to manipulate Java objects, implement Java interfaces, and extend Java classes. Nashorn is invokedynamic-based, and for its Java integration, it does away with the concept of wrapper objects in favor of direct virtual machine linking to Java objects’ methods provided by a metaobject protocol, providing much higher performance than what could be expected from a scripting runtime. This session looks at the details of the integration, a topic of interest to other language implementers on the JVM and a wider audience of developers who want to understand how Nashorn works.That's 6 sessions tooting the Nashorn this year at JavaOne, up from 2 last year.

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• Investigating Strategies For Functional Decomposition

  - by Liam McLennan

  Introducing Functional Decomposition Before I begin I must apologise. I think I am using the term ‘functional decomposition’ loosely, and probably incorrectly. For the purpose of this article I use functional decomposition to mean the recursive splitting of a large problem into increasingly smaller ones, so that the one large problem may be solved by solving a set of smaller problems. The justification for functional decomposition is that the decomposed problem is more easily solved. As software developers we recognise that the smaller pieces are more easily tested, since they do less and are more cohesive. Functional decomposition is important to all scientific pursuits. Once we understand natural selection we can start to look for humanities ancestral species, once we understand the big bang we can trace our expanding universe back to its origin. Isaac Newton acknowledged the compositional nature of his scientific achievements: If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants   The Two Strategies For Functional Decomposition of Computer Programs Private Methods When I was working on my undergraduate degree I was taught to functionally decompose problems by using private methods. Consider the problem of painting a house. The obvious solution is to solve the problem as a single unit: public void PaintAHouse() { // all the things required to paint a house ... } We decompose the problem by breaking it into parts: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { // everything required to paint the undercoat } private void PaintTopcoat() { // everything required to paint the topcoat } The problem can be recursively decomposed until a sufficiently granular level of detail is reached: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { prepareSurface(); fetchUndercoat(); paintUndercoat(); } private void PaintTopcoat() { fetchPaint(); paintTopcoat(); } According to Wikipedia, at least one computer programmer has referred to this process as “the art of subroutining”. The practical issues that I have encountered when using private methods for decomposition are: To preserve the top level API all of the steps must be private. This means that they can’t easily be tested. The private methods often have little cohesion except that they form part of the same solution. Decomposing to Classes The alternative is to decompose large problems into multiple classes, effectively using a class instead of each private method. The API delegates to related classes, so the API is not polluted by the sub-steps of the problem, and the steps can be easily tested because they are each in their own highly cohesive class. Additionally, I think that this technique facilitates better adherence to the Single Responsibility Principle, since each class can be decomposed until it has precisely one responsibility. Revisiting my previous example using class composition: public class HousePainter { private undercoatPainter = new UndercoatPainter(); private topcoatPainter = new TopcoatPainter(); public void PaintAHouse() { undercoatPainter.Paint(); topcoatPainter.Paint(); } } Summary When decomposing a problem there is more than one way to represent the sub-problems. Using private methods keeps the logic in one place and prevents a proliferation of classes (thereby following the four rules of simple design) but the class decomposition is more easily testable and more compatible with the Single Responsibility Principle.

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• Meet Matthijs, Dutch Inside Sales Representative for Oracle Direct

  - by Maria Sandu

  Today we would like to share some information around the Dutch Core Technology team in Malaga. Matthijs is one of the team members who decided to relocate from the Netherlands to Malaga to join Oracle Direct two years ago. Matthijs: “For the past two years I have been working as an Oracle Direct Core Technology Inside Sales representative for Named Accounts in the Netherlands, based in Malaga, Spain. In my case, working for the Dutch OD Core Technology team means that I am responsible for the Account Management of Larger companies in the Travel & Transportation and the Manufacturing, Retail & Distribution sector. I work together with the Oracle Field Account Managers and our Field Sales Management in the Netherlands where I am often the main point of contact for customers. This means that I deal with their requests and I manage their various issues, provide solutions and suggestions based on the Oracle Core Technology portfolio. I work on interesting projects with end-customers, making financial proposals and building business cases. It is a very interesting sales environment and for the last two years I improved my skills substantially. This month I will finish my Inside Sales career in Malaga to move to a position within Field Sales in the Netherlands. Oracle Direct has proven to be a great stepping stone for my career. Boost your personal development One of the reasons for joining Oracle was to boost my personal & career development. You can choose from various different trainings to follow all over Europe which enable you to reach both your personal and professional goals. Furthermore, you can decide your own career path and plan the steps necessary to achieve your goal. Many people aim to grow into Field Sales in their native countries, Business Development or Sales Management, but there are many possibilities once you decide to join Oracle. Overall, working at Oracle means working for an international company and one of the worldwide leaders in Enterprise Hardware & Software. Here you get all the tools necessary to develop yourself personally & professionally. Another great advantage of working for Oracle Direct is working from our office in Malaga, Southern Spain where we have over 400 employees from many countries across EMEA. It is a truly international environment! Working and living in Spain gives you an excellent opportunity to learn Spanish and of course enjoy the Spanish lifestyle, cuisine, beaches and much, much more!” Interview day Utrecht If you are inspired by the story of Matthijs and would like to explore the opportunity to join the Technology Sales team for the Dutch market in Malaga, let us know! We will organise an Interview day in the Oracle office in Utrecht on the 18th and 19th of September. We currently have multiple openings in the Core Technology team that focus on selling our Database portfolio in the Dutch market. We are looking for native Dutch speakers with a Bachelors degree, 2-5 years sales experience (ideally in IT) who are willing to relocate to Malaga for at least 2 years! For more information please contact [email protected] or [email protected].

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• Getting Wrong Answer in range maximum query [on hold]

  - by user3186829

  I've just learnt range minimum and maximum queries using segment trees.But when I implemented it on my own I'm getting wrong answer.Logically I don't find any mistake in my code but if any one can point it out then I would be really thankful. Code in C++: #include<bits/stdc++.h> using namespace std; #define LL long long #define mp make_pair #define pb push_back #define gc getchar_unlocked #define pc putchar_unlocked #define LD long double #define MAXN 19999999 #define max(a,b) ((a)>(b)?(a):(b)) LL P[MAXN+15]; LL ST[2*MAXN+25]; long N,M,i,A,B,K; void build(long id,long L,long R) { long M=(L+R)>>1L; long LCT=id<<1L; long RCT=LCT+1L; if(L==R) { ST[id]=P[L]; return; } build(LCT,L,M); build(RCT,M+1,R); } //Range Update of segment tree void updateST(long id,long L,long R,long Q1,long Q2,long val) { long M=(L+R)>>1L; long LCT=id<<1L; long RCT=LCT+1L; if(L>Q2||R<Q1) { return; } if(L==Q1&&R==Q2) { ST[id]+=val; return; } if(Q2<=M) { updateST(LCT,L,M,Q1,Q2,val); } else if(Q1>M) { updateST(RCT,M+1,R,Q1,Q2,val); } else { updateST(LCT,L,M,Q1,M,val); updateST(RCT,M+1,R,M+1,Q2,val); } } //Query for finding maximum element in a given range[Q1,Q2] and 1<=Q1,Q2<=N LL query2(long id,long L,long R,long Q1,long Q2) { long M=(L+R)>>1; long LCT=id<<1; long RCT=LCT+1; if(L>Q2||R<Q1) { return 0; } if(L==Q1&&R==Q2) { return ST[id]; } if(Q2<=M) { return query2(LCT,L,M,Q1,Q2); } else if(Q1>M) { return query2(RCT,M+1,R,Q1,Q2); } else { LL G=query2(LCT,L,M,Q1,M); LL H=query2(RCT,M+1,R,M+1,Q2); LL RES=max(G,H); return RES; } } int main() { scanf("%ld %ld",&N,&M); build(1,1,N); for(i=0;i<M;i++) { scanf("%ld %ld %ld",&A,&B,&K); updateST(1,1,N,A,B,K); } //Finding maximum element in range[1,N]] cout<<query2(1,1,N,1,N); return 0; }

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• Notes - Part II - Play with JavaFX

  - by Silviu Turuga

  Open the project from last lesson Double click on NotesUI.fmxl, this will open the JavaFX Scene Builder On the left side you have a area called Hierarchy, from there press Del or Shift+Backspace on Mac to delete the Button and the Label. You'll receive a warning, that some components have been assigned an fx:id, click Delete as we don't need them anymore. Resize the AnchorPane to have enough room for our design, eg. 820x550px From the top left pick the Container called Accordion and drag over the AnchorPane design Chose then from Controls a List View and drag inside the Accordion. You'll notice that by default the Accordion has 2 TitledPane, and you can switch between them by clicking on their name. I'll let you the pleasure to do the rest in order to get the following result  Here is the list of objects used Save it and then return to NetBeans Run the application and it should be run without any issue. If you click on buttons they all are functional, but nothing happens as we didn't link them with any action. We'll see this in the next episode. Now, let's play a little bit with the application and try to resize it… Have you notice the behavior? If the form is too small, some objects aren't visible, if it is too large there is too much space . That's for sure something that your users won't like and you as a programmer have to care about this. From NetBeans double click NotesUI.fmxl so to return back to JavaFX Scene Builder Select the TextField from bottom left of Notes, the one where I put the text Category and then from the right part of JavaFX Scene Builder you'll notice a panel called Inspector. Chose Layout and then click on the dotted lines from left and bottom of the square, like you see in the below image This will make the textfield to have always the same distance from left and bottom no matter the size of the form. Save and run the application. Note that whenever the form is changing the Height, the Category TextField has the same distance from the bottom. Select Accordion and do the same steps but also check the top dotted line, because we want the Accordion to have the same height as the main form has. I'll let you the pleasure to do the same for the rest of components. It's very important to design an application that can be resize by user and in the same time, all the buttons are on place. Last step is to make sure our application is not getting smaller then a certain size, as this will hide parts of our layout. So select the AnchorPane and from Inspector go to Layout and note down the Width and Height. Go back to NetBeans and open the file Main.java and add the following code just after stage.setScene(scene); (around line 26) stage.setMinWidth(820); stage.setMinHeight(550); Use your own width and height. This will prevent user to reduce the width or height of your application to a value that will hide parts of your layout. So now you should have done most of the design part and next time we'll see how can we enter some data into our newly created application… Note: in case you miss something, here are the source files of the project till this point. 

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• My shiny new gadget

  - by TechTwaddle

  About 3 months ago when I had tweeted (or twit?) that the HD7 could be my next phone I wasn’t a 100 percent sure, and when the HTC Mozart came out it was switch at first sight. I wanted to buy the Mozart mainly for three reasons; its unibody construction, smaller screen and the SLCD display. But now, holding a HD7 in my hand, I reminisce and think about how fate had its own plan. Too dramatic for a piece of gadget? Well, sort of, but seriously, this has been most exciting. So in short, I bought myself a HTC HD7 and am really loving it so far. Here are some pics (taken from my HD2 which now lies in a corner, crying),     Most of my day was spent setting up the device. Email accounts, Facebook, Marketplace etc. Since marketplace isn’t officially launched in India yet, my primary live id did not work. Whenever I tried launching marketplace it would say ‘marketplace is not currently supported in your country’. Searching the forums I found an easy work around. Just create a dummy live id with the country set to UK or US and log in to the device using this id. I was worried if the contacts and feeds from my primary live account would not be updated but that was not a problem. Adding another live account into the device does import your contacts, calendar and feeds from it. And that’s it, marketplace now works perfectly. I installed a few trial and free applications; haven’t checked if I can purchase apps though, will check that later and update this post. There is one issue I am still facing with the device, I can’t access the internet over GPRS. Windows Phone 7 only gives you the option to add an ‘APN’ and nothing else. Checking the connection settings on my HD2, I found out that there is also a proxy server I need to add to access GPRS, but so far I haven’t found a way to do that on WP7. Ideally HTC should have taken care of this, detect the operator and apply that operators settings on the device, but looks like that’s not happening. I also tried the ‘Connection Settings’ application that HTC bundled with the device, but it did nothing magical. If you’re reading this and know how to fix this problem please leave a comment. The next thing I did is install apps, a lot of apps. Read Engadget’s guide to essential apps for WP7. The apps and games I installed so far include Beezz (twitter app with push notifications), twitter (the official twitter app), Facebook, Youtube, NFS Undercover, Rocket Riot, Krashlander, Unite and the list goes on. All the apps run super smooth. The display looks fine indoors but I know it’s going to suck in bright sunlight. Anyhow, I am really impressed with what I’ve seen so far. I leave you with a few more photos. Have a great year ahead. Ciao!

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• Web Safe Area (optimal resolution) for web app design?

  - by M.A.X

  I'm in the process of designing a new web app and I'm wondering for what 'Web Safe Area' should I optimize the app layout and design. By Web Safe Area I mean the actual area available to display the website in the browser (which is influenced by monitor resolution as well as the space taken up by the browser and OS) I did some investigation and thinking on my own but wanted to share this to see what the general opinion is. Here is what I found: Optimal Display Resolution: w3schools web stats seems to be the most referenced source (however they state that these are results from their site and is biased towards tech savvy users) http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php (aggregate data from something like 15,000 different sites that use their tracking services) StatCounter Global Stats Display Resolution (Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 15 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites) NetMarketShare Screen Resolutions (marketshare.hitslink.com) (a web analytics consulting firm, they get data from browsers of site visitors to their on-demand network of live stats customers. The data is compiled from approximately 160 million visitors per month) Display Resolution Summary: There is a bit of variation between the above sources but in general as of Jan 2011 looks like 1024x768 is about 20%, while ~85% have a higher resolution of at least 1280x768 (1280x800 is the most common of these with 15-20% of total web, depending on the source; 1280x1024 and 1366x768 follow behind with 9-14% of the share). My guess would be that the higher resolution values will be even more common if we filter on North America, and even higher if we filter on N.American corporate users (unfortunately I couldn't find any free geographically filtered statistics). Another point to note is that the 1024x768 desktop user population is likely lower than the aforementioned 20%, seeing as the iPad (1024x768 native display) is likely propping up those number (the app I'm designing is flash based, Apple mobile devices don't support flash so iPad support isn't a concern). My recommendation would be to optimize around the 1280x768 constraint (*note: 1280x768 is actually a relatively rare resolution, but I think it's a valid constraint range considering that 1366x768 is relatively common and 1280 is the most common horizontal resolution). Browser + OS Constraints: To further add to the constraints we have to subtract the space taken up by the browser (assuming IE, which is the most space consuming) and the OS (assuming WinXP-Win7): Win7 has the biggest taskbar footprint at a height of 40px (XP's and Vista's is 30px) The default IE8 view uses up 25px at the bottom of the screen with the status bar and a further 120px at the top of the screen with the windows title bar and the browser UI (assuming the default 'favorites' toolbar is present, it would instead be 91px without the favorites toolbar). Assuming no scrollbar, we also loose a total of 4px horizontally for the window outline. This means that we are left with 583px of vertical space and 1276px of horizontal. In other words, a Web Safe Area of 1276 x 583 Is this a correct line of thinking? I'm really surprised that I couldn't find this type of investigation anywhere on the web. Lots of websites talk about designing for 1024x768, but that's only half the equation! There is no mention of browser/OS influences on the actual area you have to display the site/app. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. EDIT Another caveat to my line of thinking above is that different browsers actually take up different amounts of pixels based on the OS they're running on. For example, under WinXP IE8 takes up 142px on top of the screen (instead the aforementioned 120px for Win7) because the file menu shows up by default on XP while in Win7 the file menu is hidden by default. So it looks like on WinXP + IE8 the Web Safe Area would be a mere 572px (768px-142-30-24=572)

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• Introduction to WebCenter Personalization: &ldquo;The Conductor&rdquo;

  - by Steve Pepper

  There are some new faces in the town of WebCenter with the latest 11g PS3 release.  A new component has introduced itself as "Oracle WebCenter Personalization", a.k.a WCP, to simplify delivery of a personalized experience and content to end users.  This posting reviews one of the primary components within WCP: "The Conductor". The Conductor: This ain't just an ordinary cloud... One of the founding principals behind WebCenter Personalization was to provide an open client-side API that remains independent of the technology invoking it, in addition to independence from the architecture running it.  The Conductor delivers this, and much, much more. The Conductor is the engine behind WebCenter Personalization that allows flow-based documents, called "Scenarios", to be managed and executed on the server-side through a well published and RESTful api.      The Conductor also supports an extensible model for custom provider integration that can be easily invoked within a Scenario to promote seamless integration with existing business assets. Introducing the Scenario Conductor Scenarios are declarative offline-authored documents using the custom Personalization JDeveloper bundle included with WebCenter.  A Scenario contains one (or more) statements that can: Create variables that are scoped to the current execution context Iterate over collections, or loop until a specific condition is met Execute one or more statements when a condition is met Invoke other scenarios that exist within the same namespace Invoke a data provider that integrates with custom applications Once a variable is assigned within the Scenario's execution context, it can be referenced anywhere within the same Scenario using the common Expression Language syntax used in J2EE web containers. Scenarios are then published and tested to the Integrated WebLogic Server domain, or published remotely to other domains running WebCenter Personalization. Various Client-side Models The Conductor server API is built upon RESTful services that support a wide variety of clients able to communicate over HTTP.  The Conductor supports the following client-side models: REST:  Popular browser-based languages can be used to manage and execute Conductor Scenarios.  There are other public methods to retrieve configured provider metadata that can be used by custom applications. The Conductor currently supports XML and JSON for it's API syntax. Java: WebCenter Personalization delivers a robust and light-weight java client with the popular Jersey framework as it's foundation.  It has never been easier to write a remote java client to manage remote RESTful services. Expression Language (EL): Allow the results of Scenario execution to control your user interface or embed personalized content using the session-scoped managed bean.  The EL client can also be used in straight JSP pages with minimal configuration. Extensible Provider Framework The Conductor supports a pluggable provider framework for integrating custom code with Scenario execution.  There are two types of providers supported by the Conductor: Function Provider: Function Providers are simple java annotated classes with static methods that are meant to be served as utilities.  Some common uses would include: object creation or instantiation, data transformation, and the like.  Function Providers can be invoked using the common EL syntax from variable assignments, conditions, and loops. For example:  ${myUtilityClass:doStuff(arg1,arg2))} If you are familiar with EL Functions, Function Providers are based on the same concept. Data Provider: Like Function Providers, Data Providers are annotated java classes, but they must adhere to a much more strict object model.  Data Providers have access to a wealth of Conductor services, such as: Access to namespace-scoped configuration API that can be managed by Oracle Enterprise Manager, Scenario execution context for expression resolution, and more.  Oracle ships with three out-of-the-box data providers that supports integration with: Standardized Content Servers(CMIS),  Federated Profile Properties through the Properties Service, and WebCenter Activity Graph. Useful References If you are looking to immediately get started writing your own application using WebCenter Personalization Services, you will find the following references helpful in getting you on your way: Personalizing WebCenter Applications Authoring Personalized Scenarios in JDeveloper Using Personalization APIs Externally Implementing and Calling Function Providers Implementing and Calling Data Providers

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• Missing Fields and Default Values

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Dealing with Missing Fields and Default Values New fields and new default values are not propagated throughout the list. They only apply to new and updated items and not to items already entered. They are only prospective. We need to be able to deal with this issue. Here is a scenario. The user has an old list with old items and adds a new field. The field is not created for any of the old items. Trying to get its value raises an Argument Exception. Here is another: a default value is added to a field. All the old items, where the field was not assigned a value, do not get the new default value. The two can also happen in tandem – a new field is added with a default. The older items have neither. Even better, if the user changes the default value, the old items still carry the old defaults. Let’s go a bit further. You have already written code for the list, be it an event receiver, a feature receiver, a console app or a command extension, in which you span all the fields and run on selected items – some new (no problem) and some old (problems aplenty). Had you written defensive code, you would be able to handle the situation, including similar changes in the future. So, without further ado, here’s how. Instead of just getting the value of a field in an item – item[field].ToString() – use the function below. I use ItemValue(item, fieldname, “mud in your eye”) and if “mud in your eye” is what I get, I know that the item did not have the field.   /// <summary> /// Return the column value or a default value /// </summary> private static string ItemValue(SPItem item, string column, string defaultValue) {     try     {         return item[column].ToString();     }     catch (NullReferenceException ex)     {         return defaultValue;     }     catch (ArgumentException ex)     {         return defaultValue;     } } I also use a similar function to return the default and a funny default-default to ascertain that the default does not exist. Here it is:  /// <summary> /// return a fields default or the "default" default. /// </summary> public static string GetFieldDefault(SPField fld, string defValue) {     try     {         // -- Check if default exists.         return fld.DefaultValue.ToString();     }     catch (NullReferenceException ex)     {         return defValue;     }     catch (ArgumentException ex)     {         return defValue;     } } How is this defensive? You have trapped an expected error and dealt with it. Therefore the program did not stop cold in its track and the required code ran to its end. Now, take a further step - write to a log (See Logging – a log blog). Read your own log every now and then, and act accordingly. That’s all Folks!

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• Multithreading 2D gravity calculations

  - by Postman

  I'm building a space exploration game and I've currently started working on gravity ( In C# with XNA). The gravity still needs tweaking, but before I can do that, I need to address some performance issues with my physics calculations. This is using 100 objects, normally rendering 1000 of them with no physics calculations gets well over 300 FPS (which is my FPS cap), but any more than 10 or so objects brings the game (and the single thread it runs on) to its knees when doing physics calculations. I checked my thread usage and the first thread was killing itself from all the work, so I figured I just needed to do the physics calculation on another thread. However when I try to run the Gravity.cs class's Update method on another thread, even if Gravity's Update method has nothing in it, the game is still down to 2 FPS. Gravity.cs public void Update() { foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in entityEngine.Entities) { Vector2 Force = new Vector2(); foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e2 in entityEngine.Entities) { if (e2.Key != e.Key) { float distance = Vector2.Distance(entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position, entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Position); if (distance > (entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Texture.Width / 2 + entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Texture.Width / 2)) { double angle = Math.Atan2(entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Position.Y - entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position.Y, entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Position.X - entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position.X); float mult = 0.1f * (entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Mass * entityEngine.Entities[e2.Key].Mass) / distance * distance; Vector2 VecForce = new Vector2((float)Math.Cos(angle), (float)Math.Sin(angle)); VecForce.Normalize(); Force = Vector2.Add(Force, VecForce * mult); } } } entityEngine.Entities[e.Key].Position += Force; } } Yeah, I know. It's a nested foreach loop, but I don't know how else to do the gravity calculation, and this seems to work, it's just so intensive that it needs its own thread. (Even if someone knows a super efficient way to do these calculations, I'd still like to know how I COULD do it on multiple threads instead) EntityEngine.cs (manages an instance of Gravity.cs) public class EntityEngine { public Dictionary<string, Entity> Entities = new Dictionary<string, Entity>(); public Gravity gravity; private Thread T; public EntityEngine() { gravity = new Gravity(this); } public void Update() { foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Entity> e in Entities) { Entities[e.Key].Update(); } T = new Thread(new ThreadStart(gravity.Update)); T.IsBackground = true; T.Start(); } } EntityEngine is created in Game1.cs, and its Update() method is called within Game1.cs. I need my physics calculation in Gravity.cs to run every time the game updates, in a separate thread so that the calculation doesn't slow the game down to horribly low (0-2) FPS. How would I go about making this threading work? (any suggestions for an improved Planetary Gravity system are welcome if anyone has them) I'm also not looking for a lesson in why I shouldn't use threading or the dangers of using it incorrectly, I'm looking for a straight answer on how to do it. I've already spent an hour googling this very question with little results that I understood or were helpful. I don't mean to come off rude, but it always seems hard as a programming noob to get a straight meaningful answer, I usually rather get an answer so complex I'd easily be able to solve my issue if I understood it, or someone saying why I shouldn't do what I want to do and offering no alternatives (that are helpful). Thank you for the help!

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• Questions to ask to ensure someone understands programming? (and iOS)

  - by Stephen J

  So, I've been tutoring my friend for 2 years. Most people learn programming on their own in 3-6 months, (sans algorithms). It's confusing 'cause he'll run anywhere I tell him to, understands how to read C and C++ honestly better than the average college student, and he'll modify and repeat anything I do... but for the love of god he doesn't move on to new things and he still has test anxiety. I've recently realized he's copied and toyed with existing, but not once gained an understanding of why. I was under the impression he was learning fast because he could write it, but when you say "Make a function that takes an NSString" and he says "How?" and I say "The same way you make ANY function that takes any parameter, NSString is just a type like int" and all I hear is "No, it's an NSString, it's a special thing." and we get into an arguing match 'cause I'm like "It's just a class like any other class, you've used them for months now" and blah... I've subconsciously avoided comprehension questions because of this. Anyway, if you have him copy a program and say "Just initialize it" "Where?" "I don't care, didLoad or initWithCoder or Awake from nib, anywhere it gets initialized" and "No, it has to be exactly where you had it!" "No it doesn't!" I'm sick of this, but he won't give up. So I'm done avoiding these yelling matches and becoming a sadist from now on. I would like some help in finding questions to ask him that force him to understand what he's doing. I'd like some help and any resources I can find. CQuestions looked like a good site, but now I need some iPhone stuff. For example: *What do properties do? How are they changed? How do you change the name of the getter? *Why are Booleans inefficent? What advantage does int have over a boolean and how does the bit-shift operator help? *What does Copy do to a string? *What's the difference between a view controller and a uiview? *Write a program from memory that displays blah on screen, and flashes each view one by one. From beginner up to intermediate, hobbyist with some algebra at most. I'm just looking for resources to work with. I left in backstory so you know to "twist" the questions so he doesn't know he's supposed to init a variable here or there, but has to figure it out, and learn why it goes "here" or that "anywhere is fine as long as it's". Sample programs, anything. I'm relatively open about this because, being a programmer, I seriously doubt he's the only one who has this issue. I'd like to know how others have overcome similar. What made things "click"? for you? Did you have a hard time finding answers on Google, and how did you learn a better way to find what you were looking for? (He's so exact, he'll search for how to write a checkers program with color X and Y inside a uiview, as his search string, instead of breaking it up into components, I need help with that too, and believe it is related). This type of problem has to remind one of us of someone they know. So, Exercises to force them to think? Ways we overcame this thing in the past? I greatly appreciate any help.

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