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• Software development metrics and reporting

  - by David M

  I've had some interesting conversations recently about software development metrics, in particular how they can be used in a reasonably large organisation to help development teams work better. I know there have been Stack Overflow questions about which metrics are good to use - like this one, but my question is more about which metrics are useful to which stakeholders, and at what level of aggregation. As an example, my view is that code coverage is a useful metric in the following ways (and maybe others): For a team's own internal use when combined with other measurements. For facilitating/enabling/mentoring teams, where it might be instructive when considered on a team-by-team basis as a trend (e.g. if team A and B have coverage this month of 75 and 50, I'd be more concerned with team A than B if the previous month they'd had 80 and 40). For senior management when presented as an aggregated statistic across a number of teams or a whole department. But I don't think it's useful for senior management to see this on a team-by-team basis, as this encourages artifical attempts to bolster coverage with tests that merely exercise, rather than test, code. I'm in an organisation with a couple of levels in its management hierarchy, but where the vast majority of managers are technically minded and able (with many still getting their hands dirty). Some of the development teams are leading the way in driving towards agile development practices, but others lag, and there is now a serious mandate from the top for this to be the way the organisation works. A couple of us are starting a programme to encourage this. In this sort of an organisation, what sort of metrics do you think are useful, to whom, why, and at what level of aggregation? I don't want people to feel their performance is being assessed based on a metric that they can artificially influence; at the same time, the senior management are going to want some sort of evidence that progress is being made. What advice or caveats can you provide based on experience in your own organisations? EDIT We are definitely wanting to use metrics as a tool for organisational improvement not as a tool for individual performance measurement.

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• Is it reasonable to expect knowing the whole stack bottom up?

  - by Vaibhav Garg

  I am an Sr. developer/architect/Product Manager for embedded systems. The systems that I have had experience with have typically been small to medium size codebases - typically close to 25-30K LOC in C, using 8-16 and 32 bit low end microcontrollers. The systems have been entirely bootstrapped by our team - meaning right from the start-up code to the end application code has either been written by the team, or at the very least, is thoroughly understood and maintained by us. Now, if we were to start developing more complex systems with complex peripherals, such as USB OTG et al. (think, low end cell phones), there are libraries and stacks available commercially and from chip vendors that reduce the task to just calling the right APIs and being able to use those peripherals. Now, from a habit point of view, this does not give me and the team a comfortable feeling, not being able to comprehend the entire code tree, with virtual black boxes at the lower layers. Is it reasonable to devote, and reserve, time getting into the details of how the APIs are implemented, assuming that the same would also entail getting into details of relevant standards (again, for USB as an example)? Or, alternatively, should a thorough understanding of the top level usage of the APIs be sufficient? This of course assumes that the source codes to all libraries are available, which they are, in almost all cases. Edit: In partial response to @Abhi Beckert, the documentation is refreshingly very comprehensive and meticulously maintained, AFAIK and been able to judge. I have not had a long experience with the same.

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• Personal Development : Time, Planning , Repairs & Maintenance

  - by Rajesh Pillai

  Personal Development : Time, Planning, Repairs & Maintenance These are just my thoughts, but some you may find something interesting in it. Please think over it. We may know many things, but still we always keeps procrastinating it. I have written this as I have heard many people coming back and saying they don’t have time to do things they like. These are my thoughts buy may be useful to someone else too. Certain things in life needs periodic repairs and maintenance. To cite some examples , your CAR, your HOUSE, your personal laptop/desktop, your health etc. Likewise there are certain other things in professional life that requires repair/ maintenance /or some kind of polishing, so that you always stay on top of it. But they are not always obvious. Some of them are - Improving your communication skills - Increasing your vocabulary - Upgrading your technical skills - Pursuing your hobby - Increasing your knowledge/awareness etc… etc… And then there are certain things that we are always short of…. one is TIME. We all know TIME is one of the most precious things in life and yet we all are very miserable at managing it. Remember you can only manage it and not control it. You can only control which you own or which you create. In theory time is infinite. So, there should be abundant of it. But remember one thing, you know this, it’s not reversible. Once it has elapsed you cannot live it again. Think over it. So, how do find that golden 25th hour every day. To find the 25th hour you need to reflect back on your current daily activities. Analyze them and see where you are spending most of your time and is it really important. Even the 8 hours that you spent in the office, is it spent fruitfully. At the end of the day is the 8 precious hour that you spent was worth it. Just reflect back on your activities. Did you learn something? If yes did you make a point to NOTE IT. If you didn’t NOTED it then was the time you spent really worth it. Just ponder over it. Some calculations of your daily activities where most of the time is spent. Let’s start (in no particular order though) - Sleep (6.5 hours) [Remember you only require 6 good hours of sleep every day]. Some may thing it is 8, but it’s a myth.   o To achive 6 hours of sleep and be in good health you can practice 15 minutes of daily meditation. So effectively you can    round it to 6.5 hours. - Morning chores(2 hours) : Some may need to prepare breakfast and all other things. - Office commuting (avg. to and fro 3 hours) - Office Work (avg 9.5 hours) Total Hours: 21 hours effective time which is spent irrespective of what you do. There may be some variations here and there. Still you have 3 hours EXTRA. Where do these 3 hours go? If you can find it, then you may get that golden 25th hour out of these 3 hours. Let’s discount 2 hours for contingencies, still you have 1 hour with you. If you can’t find it then you are living a direction less life. As you can see, the 25th Hour lies within the 24 hours of the day. It’s upto each one of us to find and make use of it. Now what can you do with that 25th hour i.e. 1 hour extra of your life. Imagine the possibility. Again some calculations 1 hour daily * 30 days = 30 hours every month 30 hours pm * 12 month = 360 hours every year. 360 hours every year seems very promising. Let’s add some contingencies, say, let’s be optimistic and say 50 % contingency. Still you have 180 hours every year. That leaves with 30 minutes every day of extra time. That’s hell a lot of time, if you could manage it. These may sound like a high talk [yes, it is, unless you apply these simple rules and rationalize your everyday living and stop procrastinating]. NOTE: I haven’t taken weekend, holidays and leaves into account. So, that leaves us with a lot of buffer time. You can meet family friends, relatives, other tasks, and yet have these 180 pure hours of joy every year. Do whatever you want to do with it. So, how important is this 180 hours per year to you? Just think over it. You may use it the way you like - 50 hours [pursue your hobby like drawing, crafting, learn dance, learn juggling, learn swimming, travelling hmm.. anything you like doing and you didn’t had time to do it.] - 30 hours you can learn a new programming language or technology (i.e. you can get comfortable with it) - 50 hours [improve existing skills] - 20 hours [improve you communication skill]. Do some light reading. - 30 hours [YOU DECIDE WHAT TO DO]? So, if you had done this for one year you would have learnt a new programming language, upgraded existing skills, improved you communication etc.. If you had done this for two years.. imagine the level of personal development or growth which you may have attained….. If you had done this for three years….. NOW I think I don’t need to mention this… So, you still have TIME, as they say TIME is infinite. So, make judicious use of this precious thing. And never ever comeback saying “I don’t have time”. So, if you are RICH in TIME, everything else will be automatically taken care of, as those things may just be a byproduct of how you spend your time… So, happy TIMING your TIME everyday.

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• Breadcrumbs in a modern web application, make sense? [on hold]

  - by Xtreme Biker

  I'm currently beginning with the development of a new web application. The whole web application is going to be bookmarkable and all the pages accesible via GET requests and url parameters. Having said that, let's suppose I've got three entities in my application, Customer, Team and City. Each Customer and Team belong to a city and I've got a city-detail page which displays the detail for a concrete city. So next navigation cases are possible: Customers - Customer detail (id=2) - City detail (id=3) Football teams - Team detail (id=5) - City detail (id=3) Cities - City detail (id=3) There are three possible ways of ending up in a city detail view. My question is, does it make sense to implement a breadcrumb to show such a history, having it available in the browser itself? Would it be more appropiate to show a breadcrumb with the last case, no matter where we're coming from (hierarchical breadcrumb)? That's what Jakob Nielsen points out here: Offering users a Hansel-and-Gretel-style history trail is basically useless, because it simply duplicates functionality offered by the Back button, which is the Web’s second-most-used feature. A history trail can also be confusing: users often wander in circles or go to the wrong site sections. Having each point in a confused progression at the top of the current page doesn’t offer much help. Finally, a history trail is useless for users who arrive directly at a page deep within the site. Also, even if the history trail seems the most natural way to implement it, it requires an extra effort to keep the whole track being HTTP a stateless mean.

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• Who should write the test plan?

  - by Cheng Kiang

  Hi, I am in the in-house development team of my company, and we develop our company's web sites according to the requirements of the marketing team. Before releasing the site to them for acceptance testing, we were requested to give them a test plan to follow. However, the development team feels that since the requirements came from the requestors, they would have the best knowledge of what to test, what to lookout for, how things should behave etc and a test plan is thus not required. We are always in an argument over this, and developers find it a waste of time to write down things like:- Click on button A. Key in XYZ in the form field and click button B. You should see behaviour C. which we have to repeat for each requirement/feature requested. This is basically rephrasing what's already in the requirements document. We are moving towards using an Agile approach for managing our projects and this is also requested at the end of each iteration. Unit and integration testing aside, who should be the one to come up with the end user acceptance test plan? Should it be the reqestors or the developers? Many thanks in advance. Regards CK

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• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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• What do you need to know to be a world-class master software developer? [closed]

  - by glitch

  I wanted to bring up this question to you folks and see what you think, hopefully advise me on the matter: let's say you had 30 years of learning and practicing software development in front of you, how would you dedicate your time so that you'd get the biggest bang for your buck. What would you both learn and work on to be a world-class software developer that would make a large impact on the industry and leave behind a legacy? I think that most great developers end up being both broad generalists and specialists in one-two areas of interest. I'm thinking Bill Joy, John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, K&R and so on. I'm thinking that perhaps one approach would be to break things down by categories and establish a base minimum of "software development" greatness. I'm thinking: Operating Systems: completely internalize the core concepts of OS, perhaps gain a lot of familiarity with an OSS one such as Linux. Anything from memory management to device drivers has to be complete second nature. Programming Languages: this is one of those topics that imho has to be fully grokked even if it might take many years. I don't think there's quite anything like going through the process of developing your own compiler, understanding language design trade-offs and so on. Programming Language Pragmatics is one of my favorite books actually, I think you want to have that internalized back to back, and that's just the start. You could go significantly deeper, but I think it's time well spent, because it's such a crucial building block. As a subset of that, you want to really understand the different programming paradigms out there. Imperative, declarative, logic, functional and so on. Anything from assembly to LISP should be at the very least comfortable to write in. Contexts: I believe one should have experience working in different contexts to truly be able to appreciate the trade-offs that are being made every day. Embedded, web development, mobile development, UX development, distributed, cloud computing and so on. Hardware: I'm somewhat conflicted about this one. I think you want some understanding of computer architecture at a low level, but I feel like the concepts that will truly matter will be slightly higher level, such as CPU caching / memory hierarchy, ILP, and so on. Networking: we live in a completely network-dependent era. Having a good understanding of the OSI model, knowing how the Web works, how HTTP works and so on is pretty much a pre-requisite these days. Distributed systems: once again, everything's distributed these days, it's getting progressively harder to ignore this reality. Slightly related, perhaps add solid understanding of how browsers work to that, since the world seems to be moving so much to interfacing with everything through a browser. Tools: Have a really broad toolset that you're familiar with, one that continuously expands throughout the years. Communication: I think being a great writer, effective communicator and a phenomenal team player is pretty much a prerequisite for a lot of a software developer's greatness. It can't be overstated. Software engineering: understanding the process of building software, team dynamics, the requirements of the business-side, all the pitfalls. You want to deeply understand where what you're writing fits from the market perspective. The better you understand all of this, the more of your work will actually see the daylight. This is really just a starting list, I'm confident that there's a ton of other material that you need to master. As I mentioned, you most likely end up specializing in a bunch of these areas as you go along, but I was trying to come up with a baseline. Any thoughts, suggestions and words of wisdom from the grizzled veterans out there who would like to share their thoughts and experiences with this? I'd really love to know what you think!

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• Coming up with manageable game ideas as a hobbyist game developer

  - by Kragen

  I'm trying to come up with ideas for games to develop - as per the advice on this question I've started jotting down and brainstorming my ideas as I get them, and it has worked relatively well - I now have a growing collection of ideas that I think are relatively original. The trouble is that I'm a solo hobbyist developer so my time is limited (and I have short attention span!) I've decided to set myself a limit of 1 working week (i.e. 35-40 hours) to develop / prototype my game, but all of the ideas that really spark my imagination are far too complex to be achievable in that sort of time (e.g. RTS or RPG style gameplay), and none of my simpler ideas really strike me as being that good (and whenever I get a flash of inspiration I invariably end up making things more complicated!) Am I being too picky - should I just take one of my simpler ideas and have a go?

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• How to study for 70-573 Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development

  - by ybbest

  I just passed my 70-573 exam today and would like to Share my experience on learning SharePoint 2010 as a beginner. 1. Book Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Building Solutions for SharePoint 2010 by Sahil Malik http://apress.com/book/view/1430228652 Sahil is an expert and MVP in SharePoint 2010.He certainly know his field and the book is well written. More importantly Sahil has got very good sense of humor in delivering the knowledge. 2.A development machine It is of great importance to have a dev machine , you cannot learn a new technology by just reading a book nor by watching some training videos. You need get your hands dirty with SharePoint a lot. 3.Training videos Since I have one year subscription with learndev , I use them as my learning resources. It is quite cheap , only cost US $99 for a year subscription and you will get not only the SharePoint training but the whole training library .The videos are from Appdev . Appdev training is of high quality. http://www.appdev.com/ http://www.learndevnow.com/ You can also get the videos from Microsoft SharePoint site. They are pretty good too. But bear in mind , by just watching these videos you will not learn much , you need to build a SharePoint 2010 machine and play with it .Try to write the sample code yourself and not just copy and paste. 4. Write blogs about your learning. This will motive you in your long journey with SharePoint learning. 5. Do check out the patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance on codeplex. http://spg.codeplex.com/ 6.Thanks for Becky Bertram,who kindly put up all the exam requirements with links to MSDN http://blog.beckybertram.com/Lists/Exam%2070573%20Study%20Guide/AllItems.aspx

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• Professional Windows Phone 7 Game Development: Creating Games using XNA Game Studio 4

  - by Chris Williams

  In 24 short days*, my (along with the awesome George W. Clingerman) first book will be released:   Professional Windows Phone 7 Game Development: Creating Games using XNA Game Studio 4 (or as we like to call it, that damned 550 page monstrosity that nearly killed us) Weighing in at 552 pages and featuring a foreward by the legendary James Silva (Ska Studios, creator of The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, I MAED A GAME W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1, and more...) this book gives thorough coverage of XNA 4.0 as it relates to Windows Phone 7. The book is written in a light, conversational tone, which means (unlike some books) you won't be compelled to gouge your eyes out with a rusty spork after reading the first few pages. At least, that’s the intent. If you do feel compelled to engage in some feats of eye-gouging sporkage, we (the authors of this book) would like to point out that we are not responsible and that seeking the help of a mental health professional might be advised. (We’re not qualified to dispense medical advice either.) The book is structured to introduce relevant material first, with code snippets and samples of how to use various phone features and XNA concepts, with helpful side notes along the way. After you've been exposed to a few chapters worth of concepts, you get the chance to bring them together by building a game that leverages those features. This book contains THREE (3!) complete games, including: Drive & Dodge (a racing game), Poker Dice (roll dice to make poker hand combinations) and Picture Puzzle (take a photo and turn it into a jigsaw puzzle.) Writing this book has been an incredible experience, and we hope reading it will be equally informative for all of you. We’re also happy to announce there will be a Kindle edition available, along with various other electronic media. Get your copy from Wiley.com, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and anywhere else awesome books are sold. *more or less… some sites list the publication date as early march, but the official street date is 2/21/2011

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• Legal question.

  - by Kjow

  Hi all, a question bounces in my head from some time. Copyright laws are different by nation to nation, but generally which is the border line to break a copyright? Suppose to make a game that is very similar to an other come out in the past, e.g. a Pacman clone or a Space Invaders clone, but nothing from original titles are grabbed and maybe they're not made in 2d, but in 3d. The titles aren't "Pacman clone - the return" or "Space Invaders - they did it again", and not also "Pocman" or "Space Evaders" (maybe this last could be fun for some "creative financers" that need to escape from earth :D). Finally suppose to call these some thing like "Popcorn, fruit and ghosts" (or the acronym: "PFG") and "Kill all enemy" (or the acronym: "KAE"). In this case (not grab- all self-made) and no references to original titles, but with a game that feels very similar to "ispiration ones"... they could be sold to somewhere like "Valve's Steam"? Regards, Kjow

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• Avoid Memory Leaks in SharePoint2010 Development

  - by ybbest

  When you develop SharePoint solution using code, you need to Dispose SPWeb appropriately to avoid memory Leaks. The general guideline for this are: Dispose Not to dispose OpenWebEnumerating Webs or AllWebs ParentWebRootWeb SPWeb from SPContext There are more rules than the one list above and as a smart SharePoint developer, you do not have to memories all the rules .There is a tool called SharePoint Dispose Checker which can help you to find potential memory leak. To use SPDisposeChecker in you solution, you need to download the tool from MSDN Code Gallery and install it in your development machine as follow. 1. Run the installer with elevated privilege. 2. Accept the agreement and click next. 3. Select those two options and click next. 4. Select Everyone and click Next. 5. Go to Toolsà SharePoint Dispose Check to Configure the SPDisposeCheck. 6. You can change the Treat problems as Errors to Warnings. 7. after clicking Save, you are all set to use the tool.Recompile my project , I can get the result below. References: SharePoint 2007/2010 “Do Not Dispose Guidance” + SPDisposeCheck

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• Can LittleBigPlanet2's engine be used for other ?

  - by Bill

  LittleBigPlanet2 just came out. I've worked with the original LBP level editor a bit and really enjoyed it. I've read that LBP2's featureset in the game is much richer; is it possible to use these advanced features to create different sorts of game other than just a regular platformer? I imagine that something along the lines of a Breakout clone would definitely be manageable, but I'm interested in hearing more about the capabilities of the platform.

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• Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone Development

  - by Bobby Diaz

  There were a lot of announcements made during the keynote at MIX10 today, most notable were the releases of Silverlight 4 RC, Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010, Expression Blend 4 Beta and the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools.  I was glad to see that developers will be able to use Silverlight to create awesome applications for Windows Phone 7 so we can reuse our WPF and Silverlight skills to target mobile devices! With so much information coming out of this conference, I wanted to be sure to save a list of links that I can quickly reference as I learn about these exciting new technologies: Silverlight 4 A guide to what has changed in the Silverlight 4 RC Silverlight 4 Beta – A guide to the new features WCF RIA Services Silverlight 4 Information Silverlight Toolkit  March 2010 Release  was still showing Nov09 at time of posting… Windows Phone 7 Getting Started with Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Development Building your first Silverlight for Windows Phone Application Silverlight for Windows Phone Windows Phone for Developers Developing for Windows Phone 7 Series Whew, and that’s just from day 1!  Can’t wait to see what else comes out tomorrow.  Hopefully these links will give you a good starting point for Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7 information. Enjoy!

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• finite state machine used in mario like platform game

  - by juakob

  I dont understand how to use a finite state machine with the entity controlled by the player. For example i have a mario(2d platform) i can jump,run,walk,take damage,swim,etc so my first thought was to use this actions as states. But what happen when you are running when you take damage? or jumping taking damage and shooting at the same time? I just want to add functionalities(actions) to the player in a clean way(not using ifs for all the actions in the entity update)

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• PHP remote development workflow: git, symfony and hudson

  - by user2022

  I'm looking to develop a website and all the work will be done remotely (no local dev server). The reason for this is that my shared hosting company a2hosting has a specific configuration (symfony,mysql,git) that I don't want to spend time duplicating when I can just ssh and develop remotely or through netbeans remote editing features. My question is how can I use git to separate my site into three areas: live, staging and dev. Here's my initial thought: public_html (live site and git repo) testing: a mirror of the site used for visual tests (full git repo) dev/ticket# : git branches of public_html used for features and bug fixes (full git repo) Version Control with git: Initial setup: cd public_html git init git add * git commit -m ‘initial commit of the site’ cd .. git clone public_html testing mkdir dev Development: cd /dev git clone ../testing ticket# all work is done in ./dev/ticket#, then visit www.domain.com/dev/ticket# to visually test make granular commits as necessary until dev is done git push origin master:ticket# if the above fails: merge latest testing state into current dev work: git merge origin/master then try the push again mark ticket# as ready for integration integration and deployment process: cd ../../testing git merge ticket# -m "integration test for ticket# --no-ff (check for conflicts ) run hudson tests visit www.domain.com/testing for visual test if all tests pass: if this ticket marks the end of a big dev sprint: make a snapshot with git tag git push --tags origin else git push origin cd ../public_html git checkout -f (live site should have the latest dev from ticket#) else: revert the merge: git checkout master~1; git commit -m "reverting ticket#" update ticket# that testing failed with the failure details Snapshots: Each major deployment sprint should have a standard name and should be tracked. Method: git tag Naming convention: TBD Reverting site to previous state If something goes wrong, then revert to previous snapshot and debug the issue in dev with a new ticket#. Once the bug is fixed, follow the deployment process again. My questions: Does this workflow make sense, if not, any recommendations Is my approach for reverting correct or is there a better way to say 'revert to before x commit'

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• How to achieve highly accurate car physics such as Liveforspeed?

  - by Kim Jong Woo

  Liveforspeed is a racing simulator, there is amazing amount of realistic physics. for example, tires get warm, tire actually deforms when you turn corners. You need to play this game with a mouse at the minimum because it almost drives like the real thing. Anyhow, how does one achieve that level of physics simulation? Are there off-the-shelf solutions out there? If not, how does one start with simulating real world physics as close as possible. I would love to be able to work on an opensource car physics focused game. Imagine, more passionate developers, it could keep things going.

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• Microsoft MVP Award &ndash; Data Platform Development

  - by Dane Morgridge

  For those who don't already know, yesterday I received my first Microsoft MVP Award in Data Platform Development.  With less than 5,000 MVPs in the world overall and about 20 in the Data Platform category, saying I am honored would be an understatement.  From the first time I spoke at a code camp, I was totally hooked and have had a blast travelling around the east coast speaking at code camps and users groups.  I'd like to take the time to thank Dani Diaz (@danidiaz) for the nomination and everyone who supported me, especially my wife Lisa for letting me travel and speak as much as I have and putting up with me for late nights and such.  Roska Digital, my employer, also deserves a shout out for supporting me and giving me the necessary time off to get to speaking engagements.  With any luck, the next year will be at least as fun if not more than the last one has.  I hope to see you at a code camp or user group meeting soon! I would also like to send a congratulations to the other new Philly Area MVPs: John Angelini (@johnangelini) & Ned Ames (@nedames) You can find out more about the Microsoft MVP Award at https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/

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• Windows Azure Database (SQL Azure) Development Tip

  - by BuckWoody

  When you create something in the cloud, it's real, and you're charged for it. There are free offerings, and you even get free resources with your Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) subscription, but there are limits within those. Creating a 1 GB database - even with nothing in it - is a 1 GB Database. If you create it, drop it, and create it again 2 minutes later, that's 2 GB of space you've used for the month. Wait - how do I develop in this kind of situation? With Windows Azure, you can simply install the free Software Development Kit (SDK) and develop your entire application for free - you need never even log in to Windows Azure to code. Once you're done, you simply deploy the app and you start making money from the application as you're paying for it. Windows Azure Databases (The Artist Formerly Known As SQL Azure) is a bit different. It's not emulated in the SDK - because it doesn't have to be. It's just SQL Server, with some differences in feature set. To develop in this environment, you can use SQL Server, any edition. Be aware of the feature differences, of course, but just develop away - even in the free "Express" or LocalDB flavors - and then right-click in SQL Server Management Studio to script objects. Script the database, but change the "Advanced" selection to the Engine Type of "SQL Azure". Bing. Although most all T-SQL ports directly, one thing to keep in mind is that you need a Clustered Index on every table. Often the Primary Key (PK) is a good choice for that.

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• Is unit testing development or testing?

  - by Rubio

  I had a discussion with a testing manager about the role of unit and integration testing. She requested that developers report what they have unit and integration tested and how. My perspective is that unit and integration testing are part of the development process, not the testing process. Beyond semantics what I mean is that unit and integration tests should not be included in the testing reports and systems testers should not be concerned about them. My reasoning is based on two things. Unit and integration tests are planned and performed against an interface and a contract, always. Regardless of whether you use formalized contracts you still test what e.g. a method is supposed to do, i.e. a contract. In integration testing you test the interface between two distinct modules. The interface and the contract determine when the test passes. But you always test a limited part of the whole system. Systems testing on the other hand is planned and performed against the system specifications. The spec determines when the test passes. I don't see any value in communicating the breadth and depth of unit and integration tests to the (systems) tester. Suppose I write a report that lists what kind of unit tests are performed on a particular business layer class. What is he/she supposed to take away from that? Judging what should and shouldn't be tested from that is a false conclusion because the system may still not function the way the specs require even though all unit and integration tests pass. This might seem like useless academic discussion but if you work in a strictly formal environment as I do, it's actually important in determining how we do things. Anyway, am I totally wrong? (Sorry for the long post.)

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• Android threads trouble wrapping my head around design

  - by semajhan

  I am having trouble wrapping my head around game design. On the android platform, I have an activity and set its content view with a custom surface view. The custom surface view acts as my panel and I create instances of all classes and do all the drawing and calculation in there. Question: Should I instead create the instances of other classes in my activity? Now I create a custom thread class that handles the game loop. Question: How do I use this one class in all my activities? Or do I have to create a separate instance of the extended thread class each time? In my previous game, I had multiple levels that had to create an instance of the thread class and in the thread class I had to set constructor methods for each separate level and in the loop use a switch statement to check which level it needs to render and update. Sorry if that sounds confusing. I just want to know if the method I am using is inefficient (which it probably is) and how to go about designing it the correct way. I have read many tutorials out there and I am still having lots of trouble with this particular topic. Maybe a link to a some tutorials that explain this? Thanks.

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• difference between Casini [IIS express] and VS Development server or Expression web

  - by anirudha

  MVC3 project can be run within Expression web and Visual studio as opened like a website not a project. they work same even if you open blogengine.net project in VS they take a time when you have more theme but expression web debug them in a second. well because theme design not matter for code. Expression web is a good because they save time for compile the code. even changes we make a little in design nothing in backend code.   i found a little difference between Casini and VS development server that if image putted in wrong way like <img src=”//img.png”/> instead of <img src=”/img.png”/> the error we make // instead of / that’s not worked in Expression web or Visual studio debugging but in Cassini it’s work fine.   Well i found that debug Blogengine.net in Expression web is a great thing because in VS they take a time like a minute to debug when you trying to debug first time. Expression Web save a time when we design themes within them and that’s much good option because web is also maked for design.   Well if you want to debug application faster then use casini but Expression web debugging is a good option when they take a long time to debug in Visual studio and EW debug them in a seconds.

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• Feasability of mobile 2D multiplayer RPG game with interactive bitmap background

  - by user2827214

  I'm looking to develop a 2D multiplayer RPG game for Android, with a bird's eye view similar to that of zelda/pokemon. The game is very simple in all ways since my intent is for thousands of players to occupy the same world which I imagine requires good performance. However, I am unsure about the performance requirements of two properties: the tile map that is used as a background is dynamic (interactive). For example, a player steps in the water, and the water turns black. Every tile in the game does this. the tile map is the same object used for all players, but it is displayed differently on each user's mobile device, even though the players exist in the same world. For example, the water that turned black is displayed as red on all other players' screens. I have knowledge of java, but almost none regarding game dev. tools. Is there a best process for these requirements? Should I develop in pure java, or use some tool like Slick2D etc.? How performance intensive are these properties, if even possible? Edit: There are no collisions in the game or difficult animations, I am imagining simply changing the colors of the tiles (like in the examples), and a client-server architecture

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• Is the development of CLI apps considered "backward"?

  - by user61852

  I am a DBA fledgling with a lot of experience in programming. I have developed several CLI, non interactive apps that solve some daily repetitive tasks or eliminate the human error from more complex albeit not so daily tasks. These tools are now part of our tool box. I find CLI apps are great because you can include them in an automated workflow. Also the Unix philosophy of doing a single thing but doing it well, and letting the output of a process be the input of another, is a great way of building a set of tools than would consolidate into an strategic advantage. My boss recently commented that developing CLI tools is "backward", or constitutes a "regression". I told him I disagreed, because most CLI tools that exist now are not legacy but are live projects with improved versions being released all the time. Is this kind of development considered "backwards" in the market? Does it look bad on a rèsumè? I also considered all solutions whether they are web or desktop, should have command line, non-interactive options. Some people consider this a waste of programming resources. Is this goal a worthy one in a software project?

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• Difficulty / Process for mobile 2D multiplayer RPG game

  - by user2827214

  I'm looking to develop a 2D multiplayer RPG game for Android, with a bird's eye view similar to that of zelda/pokemon. The game is very simple in all ways since my intent is for thousands of players to occupy the same world which I imagine requires good performance. However, I am unsure about the performance requirements of two properties: the tile map that is used as a background is dynamic (interactive). For example, a player steps in the water, and the water turns black. Every tile in the game does this. the tile map is the same object used for all players, but it is displayed differently on each user's mobile device, even though the players exist in the same world. For example, the water that turned black is displayed as red on all other players' screens. I have knowledge of java, but almost none regarding game dev. tools. Is there a best process for these requirements? Should I develop in pure java, or use some tool like Slick2D etc.? How performance intensive are these properties, if even possible? Edit: There are no collisions in the game or difficult animations, I imagining simply changing colors of the tiles like in the examples, and a client-server architecture

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