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• Unit Tests as a learning tool - a good idea?

  - by Ekkehard.Horner

  I'm interested in ways and means for learning (a) programming language(s) efficiently. I believe that using Unit Test concepts and infrastructure early in that process is a good thing, even better than starting with "Hello world". Why: To write a decent program even for a toy/restricted problem in a new language, you'll have to master many heterogenous concepts (control flow & variables & IO ...), you are tempted to glance over details just to get your program 'to work'. Putting (your understanding of) the facts about the new language in assertions with good descriptions (=success messages) enforces thinking thru/clearness/precision. Grouping topics and adding assertions to such groups is much easier than incorporation features from the 2. chapter of your "Learning X" book to your chapter 1 program. Why not: 'Real' Unit Tests are meant to output "1234 tests ok; 1 failure: saveWorld() chokes on negative input"; 'didactic' Unit Tests should output relevant facts about the new language like perl6 10-string.t # ### p5chop ... ok 13 - p5chop( "cbä" ) returns "ä" ok 14 - after that, victim is changed to "cb" # ### (p6) chop ... ok 27 - (p6) chop( "cbä" ) returns chopped copy: "cb" ok 18 - after that, victim is unchanged: "cbä" # ### chomp ... So (mis?)using Unit Tests may be counterproductive - practicing actions while learning you wouldn't use professionally. How: Writing 'didactic' Unit Tests in languages with lightweight testing systems (Perl 5/6) is easy; (mis?)using more elaborate systems (JUnit, CppUnit) may be not worth the effort or not suitable for a person just starting with a new language. So Is using Unit Tests as a learning tool a bad idea? Can the Unit Test tool(s) of your favourite language(s) used didactically? Should implementation details (eventually) be discussed here or over at stackoverflow.com?

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• Best way to indicate more results available

  - by Alex Stangl

  We have a service to return messages. We want to limit the number returned, either allowing the caller to specify the max number to return, or else to use an internal hard limit. We also have thought it would be nice to include in the response whether more messages are available. The "best" way to go about this is not clear. Here are some ideas so far: Only set the "more messages" indicator if the user did not specify a max limit, and the internal max limit was hit. Same as #1 except that "more messages" indicator set regardless of whether the internal hard limit is hit, or the user-specified limit is hit. Same as #1 (or #2) except that we internally read limit + 1 records, but only return limit records, so we know "for sure" there is at least one additional message rather than "maybe" there are additional messages. Do away with the "more messages" flag, as it is confusing and unnecessary. Instead force the user to keep calling the API until it returns no messages. Change "more messages" indicator to something more akin to an EOF indicator, only set when the last message is known to have been retrieved and returned. What do you think is the best solution? (Doesn't have to be one of the above choices.) I searched and couldn't find a similar question already asked. Hopefully this is not "too subjective".

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• How important do you find exception safety to be in your C++ code?

  - by Kai

  Every time I consider making my code strongly exception safe, I justify not doing it because it would be so time consuming. Consider this relatively simple snippet: Level::Entity* entity = new Level::Entity(); entity->id = GetNextId(); entity->AddComponent(new Component::Position(x, y)); entity->AddComponent(new Component::Movement()); entity->AddComponent(new Component::Render()); allEntities.push_back(entity); // std::vector entityById[entity->id] = entity; // std::map return entity; To implement a basic exception guarantee, I could use a scoped pointer on the new calls. This would prevent memory leaks if any of the calls were to throw an exception. However, let's say I want to implement a strong exception guarantee. At the least, I would need to implement a shared pointer for my containers (I'm not using Boost), a nothrow Entity::Swap for adding the components atomically, and some sort of idiom for atomically adding to both the Vector and Map. Not only would these be time consuming to implement, but they would be expensive since it involves a lot more copying than the exception unsafe solution. Ultimately, it feels to me like that time spent doing all of that wouldn't be justified just so that the a simple CreateEntity function is strongly exception safe. I probably just want the game to display an error and close at that point anyway. How far do you take this in your own game projects? Is it generally acceptable to write exception unsafe code for a program that can just crash when there is an exception?

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• Purpose of "new" keyword

  - by Channel72

  The new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# creates a new instance of a class. This syntax seems to have been inherited from C++, where new is used specifically to allocate a new instance of a class on the heap, and return a pointer to the new instance. In C++, this is not the only way to construct an object. You can also construct an object on the stack, without using new - and in fact, this way of constructing objects is much more common in C++. So, coming from a C++ background, the new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# seemed natural and obvious to me. Then I started to learn Python, which doesn't have the new keyword. In Python, an instance is constructed simply by calling the constructor, like: f = Foo() At first, this seemed a bit off to me, until it occurred to me that there's no reason for Python to have new, because everything is an object so there's no need to disambiguate between various constructor syntaxes. But then I thought - what's really the point of new in Java? Why should we say Object o = new Object();? Why not just Object o = Object();? In C++ there's definitely a need for new, since we need to distinguish between allocating on the heap and allocating on the stack, but in Java all objects are constructed on the heap, so why even have the new keyword? The same question could be asked for Javascript. In C#, which I'm much less familiar with, I think new may have some purpose in terms of distinguishing between object types and value types, but I'm not sure. Regardless, it seems to me that many languages which came after C++ simply "inherited" the new keyword - without really needing it. It's almost like a vestigial keyword. We don't seem to need it for any reason, and yet it's there. Question: Am I correct about this? Or is there some compelling reason that new needs to be in C++-inspired memory-managed languages like Java, Javascript and C#?

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• Discuss: PLs are characterised by which (iso)morphisms are implemented

  - by Yttrill

  I am interested to hear discussion of the proposition summarised in the title. As we know programming language constructions admit a vast number of isomorphisms. In some languages in some places in the translation process some of these isomorphisms are implemented, whilst others require code to be written to implement them. For example, in my language Felix, the isomorphism between a type T and a tuple of one element of type T is implemented, meaning the two types are indistinguishable (identical). Similarly, a tuple of N values of the same type is not merely isomorphic to an array, it is an array: the isomorphism is implemented by the compiler. Many other isomorphisms are not implemented for example there is an isomorphism expressed by the following client code: match v with | ((?x,?y),?z = x,(y,z) // Felix match v with | (x,y), - x,(y,z) (* Ocaml *) As another example, a type constructor C of int in Felix may be used directly as a function, whilst in Ocaml you must write a wrapper: let c x = C x Another isomorphism Felix implements is the elimination of unit values, including those in tuples: Felix can do this because (most) polymorphic values are monomorphised which can be done because it is a whole program analyser, Ocaml, for example, cannot do this easily because it supports separate compilation. For the same reason Felix performs type-class dispatch at compile time whilst Haskell passes around dictionaries. There are some quite surprising issues here. For example an array is just a tuple, and tuples can be indexed at run time using a match and returning a value of a corresponding sum type. Indeed, to be correct the index used is in fact a case of unit sum with N summands, rather than an integer. Yet, in a real implementation, if the tuple is an array the index is replaced by an integer with a range check, and the result type is replaced by the common argument type of all the constructors: two isomorphisms are involved here, but they're implemented partly in the compiler translation and partly at run time.

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• Is there a process-oriented IDE ?

  - by Raveline

  My problem is simple : when I'm programming in an OO paradigm, I'm often having part of a main business process divided in many classes. Which means, if I want to examine the whole functional chain that leads to the output, for debugging or for optimization research, it can be a bit painful. So I was wondering : is there an IDE that let you put a "process tag" on functions coming from different objects, and give you a view of all those functions having the same tag ? edit : To give an example (that I'm making up completely, sorry if it doesn't sound very realistic). Let's say we have the following business process for a HR application : receive a holiday-request by an employee, check the validity of the request, then give an alert to his boss ("one of those lazy programmer wants another day off"); at the same time, let's say the boss will want to have a table of all employee's timetable during the time the employee wants his vacations; then handle the answer of the boss, send a nice little mail to the employee ("No way, lazy bones"). Even if we get rid of everything not purely business-related (mail sending process, db handling to get the useful info, GUI functionalities, and so on), we still have something that doesn't really fit in "one class". I'd like to have an IDE that would give me the opportunity to embrace quickly, at the very least : The function handling the validation of the request by the employee; The function preparing the "timetable" for the boss; The function handling the validation of the request by the boss; I wouldn't put all those functions in the same class (but perhaps that's my mistake ?). This is where my dreamed IDE could be helpful.

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• Google Programmers

  - by seth

  As a soon-to-be software engineer, I have studied some languages during my time in college. I can name C, C++, Java, Scheme, Ruby, PHP, for example. However, one of the main principles in my college (recognized by many as the best in my country) is to teach us how to learn for ourselves and how to search the web when we have a doubt. This leads to a proactive attitude, when I need something, I go get it and this has worked so far for me. Recently, I started wondering though, how much development would I be able to do without internet access. The answer bugged me quite a bit. I know the concept of the languages, mostly I know what to do, but I was amazed by how "slow" things were without having the google to help in the development. The problem was mostly related to specific syntax but it was not without some effort that i solved some of the SPOJ problems in C++. Is this normal? Should I be worried and try to change something in my programming behaviour? UPDATE: I'll give a concrete example. Reading and writing to a file in java. I have done this about a dozen times in my life, yet every time I need to do it, I end up googling "read file java" and refreshing my memory. I completely understand the code, i fully understand what it does. But I am sure, that without google, it would take me a few tries to read and write correctly (if I had to sit in front of the screen with a blank page and write this without consulting any source whatsoever).

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• Logging library for (c++) games

  - by Klaim

  I know a lot of logging libraries but didn't test a lot of them. (GoogleLog, Pantheios, the coming boost::log library...) In games, especially in remote multiplayer and multithreaded games, logging is vital to debugging, even if you remove all logs in the end. Let's say I'm making a PC game (not console) that needs logs (multiplayer and multithreaded and/or multiprocess) and I have good reasons for looking for a library for logging (like, I don't have time or I'm not confident in my ability to write one correctly for my case). Assuming that I need : performance ease of use (allow streaming or formating or something like that) reliable (don't leak or crash!) cross-platform (at least Windows, MacOSX, Linux/Ubuntu) Wich logging library would you recommand? Currently, I think that boost::log is the most flexible one (you can even log to remotely!), but have not good performance. Pantheios is often cited but I don't have comparison points on performance and usage. I've used my own lib for a long time but I know it don't manage multithreading so it's a big problem, even if it's fast enough. Google Log seems interesting, I just need to test it but if you already have compared those libs and more, your advice might be of good use. Games are often performance demanding while complex to debug so it would be good to know logging libraries that, in our specific case, have clear advantages.

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• Which language is more suitable heavy file tasks?

  - by All

  I need to write a script (based on basic functions) to process /image/audio/video files. The process is mainly filesystem tasks and converts. The database of files has been stored by mysql. The script is simple but cause heavy tasks on the system; for example renaming/converting/copying thousands of file in a run. The script does not read the content of files into memory, it just manage the commands for sub-processes. The main weight is on the communication with filesystem. The script will be used regularly for new files. My concern is about performance. I am thinking of Shell script a complied language like C Please advise which programming language is more suitable for this purpose and why? UPDATE: An example is to scan a folder for images, convert them with ImageMagick, move files to destination folder, get file info, then update the database. As you can see, the process has no room for optimization, and most of languages have similar APIs for popular programs like ImageMagick, MySQL, etc. Thus, it can be written in any language. I just wish to reduce resource usage by speeding up the long loop. NOTE: I know that questions about comparing languages are not favorable, but I really had problem to choose, because the problems can appear in action.

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• Is it OK to use dynamic typing to reduce the amount of variables in scope?

  - by missingno

  Often, when I am initializing something I have to use a temporary variable, for example: file_str = "path/to/file" file_file = open(file) or regexp_parts = ['foo', 'bar'] regexp = new RegExp( regexp_parts.join('|') ) However, I like to reduce the scope my variables to the smallest scope possible so there is less places where they can be (mis-)used. For example, I try to use for(var i ...) in C++ so the loop variable is confined to the loop body. In these initialization cases, if I am using a dynamic language, I am then often tempted to reuse the same variable in order to prevent the initial (and now useless) value from being used latter in the function. file = "path/to/file" file = open(file) regexp = ['...', '...'] regexp = new RegExp( regexp.join('|') ) The idea is that by reducing the number of variables in scope I reduce the chances to misuse them. However this sometimes makes the variable names look a little weird, as in the first example, where "file" refers to a "filename". I think perhaps this would be a non issue if I could use non-nested scopes begin scope1 filename = ... begin scope2 file = open(filename) end scope1 //use file here //can't use filename on accident end scope2 but I can't think of any programming language that supports this. What rules of thumb should I use in this situation? When is it best to reuse the variable? When is it best to create an extra variable? What other ways do we solve this scope problem?

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• Is these company terms good for a programmer or should I move?

  - by o_O

  Here are some of the terms and conditions set forward by my employer. Does these make sense for a job like programming? No freelancing in any way even in your free time outside company work hours (may be okay. May be they wanted their employees to be fully concentrating on their full time job. Also they don't want their employees to do similar work for a competing client. Completely rational in that sense). - So sort of agreed. Any thing you develop like ideas, design, code etc while I'm employed there, makes them the owner of that. Seriously? Don't you think that its bad (for me)? If I'm to develop something in my free time (by cutting down sleep and hard working), outside the company time and resource, is that claim rational? I heard that Steve Wozniak had such a contract while he was working at HP. But that sort of hardware design and also those companies pay well, when compared to the peanuts I get. No other kind of works allowed. Means no open source stuffs. Fully dedicated to being a puppet for the employer, though the working environment is sort of okay. According to my assessment this place would score a 10/12 in Joel's test. So are these terms okay especially considering the fact that I'm underpaid with peanuts?

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• Novice prototyping a massive multiplayer webpage based gaming system

  - by Sean Hendlin

  I'm trying to build a website based game in which various pages of the site act as different areas of the game. I am wondering what you would recommended as a design structure. Which languages would be best if building what will hopefully becomes a massive system able to scale to massive amounts of users. I am wondering if and how various elements from differing languages could be meshed to interact with each other. For example could I use html5, javascript, and PHP? What about asp.net how might that factor in? I'm a newbie programmer but I've been working on this idea for years and I want to build it to reality. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated. P.S.: The game is not all graphics and animation (though flash like appearance and some animation would be nice). What I am thinking of is essentially a heavily gamified system of forms. And LOTS of data in many different categories cross referencing each-other. I'm not sure how to go about structuring the collection of data. Also while I know javascript can be used to process some functions, I'm wondering what sort of base system I would need to handle the server side processing of what I am expecting to be some pretty significant algorithm processing. That is to say I expect to have many many many functions and I'm not sure how to mange this using javascript. I feel like they would be forgotten, mixed up, disorganizes as they essentially only exist where they are coded. I guess I need to learn something of libraries? OK, Thank you! Is enough from me for now.

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• First Experience with Web Services

  When I first started programming with Microsoft .Net (1.0 Framework) I had a strong desire to learn how search engines indexed web sites. At that time I was a working as a search engine spammer creating web pages to generate traffic for specific themes for various clients. One way I attempted to better understand .Net was to build a web spider that analyzed web pages on demand. An example of the spider is hosted at AddLinkz.com. After my spider was built I had no real idea what I could/should do with it until I found the MSN Search API. I used this web service to compare its results with my spider. Additionally, I used the API to feed my .Net web spider new URLs from the API based on specific search terms. MSN’s search API was very easy to use, I just had to request information by calling a web URL with parameters via a Get request and the results were returned in XML. At that time all requests were limited to XML responses and a maximum of 1,000 results per query.   Since then the entire API has gone through several reconstructions, rebranding and new search services.  Microsoft’s new Bing API replaced the older MSN search API and added several new search capabilities. These new features allow search data to be returned for web searches, image searches, new searches, and related search terms to name a few. Bing API Version 2.0 SourceTypes Web Searches for web content Sushi Image Searches for images on the web Sushi News Searches news stories Sushi InstantAnswer Searches Encarta online what is sushi, convert 5 feet to meters, x*5=7, and 2 plus 2 Spell Searches Encarta dictionary for spelling suggestions Phonebook Searches phonebook entries sushi in Los Angeles RelatedSearch Returns the query strings most similar to yours Ad Returns advertisements to incorporate with results I currently plan to start using the web search feature from the new Bing 2.0 API in an open source project related to exception management. Currently, it is still in the conception phase.

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• Why do memory-managed languages retain the `new` keyword?

  - by Channel72

  The new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# creates a new instance of a class. This syntax seems to have been inherited from C++, where new is used specifically to allocate a new instance of a class on the heap, and return a pointer to the new instance. In C++, this is not the only way to construct an object. You can also construct an object on the stack, without using new - and in fact, this way of constructing objects is much more common in C++. So, coming from a C++ background, the new keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# seemed natural and obvious to me. Then I started to learn Python, which doesn't have the new keyword. In Python, an instance is constructed simply by calling the constructor, like: f = Foo() At first, this seemed a bit off to me, until it occurred to me that there's no reason for Python to have new, because everything is an object so there's no need to disambiguate between various constructor syntaxes. But then I thought - what's really the point of new in Java? Why should we say Object o = new Object();? Why not just Object o = Object();? In C++ there's definitely a need for new, since we need to distinguish between allocating on the heap and allocating on the stack, but in Java all objects are constructed on the heap, so why even have the new keyword? The same question could be asked for Javascript. In C#, which I'm much less familiar with, I think new may have some purpose in terms of distinguishing between object types and value types, but I'm not sure. Regardless, it seems to me that many languages which came after C++ simply "inherited" the new keyword - without really needing it. It's almost like a vestigial keyword. We don't seem to need it for any reason, and yet it's there. Question: Am I correct about this? Or is there some compelling reason that new needs to be in C++-inspired memory-managed languages like Java, Javascript and C#?

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• Are these company terms good for a programmer or should I move?

  - by o_O

  Here are some of the terms and conditions set forward by my employer. Does these make sense for a job like programming? No freelancing in any way even in your free time outside company work hours (may be okay. May be they wanted their employees to be fully concentrating on their full time job. Also they don't want their employees to do similar work for a competing client. Completely rational in that sense). - So sort of agreed. Any thing you develop like ideas, design, code etc while I'm employed there, makes them the owner of that. Seriously? Don't you think that its bad (for me)? If I'm to develop something in my free time (by cutting down sleep and hard working), outside the company time and resource, is that claim rational? I heard that Steve Wozniak had such a contract while he was working at HP. But that sort of hardware design and also those companies pay well, when compared to the peanuts I get. No other kind of works allowed. Means no open source stuffs. Fully dedicated to being a puppet for the employer, though the working environment is sort of okay. According to my assessment this place would score a 10/12 in Joel's test. So are these terms okay especially considering the fact that I'm underpaid with peanuts?

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• what languages are good selling points on resume? [closed]

  - by Thomas Galvin

  I have a good amount of experience with C# and Java at the moment but after education and whatnot I wish to be able in more than just 2 high-level, comparatively limited languages, and from what I've seen languages like C(++) or PHP are in demand at the moment. I've thought about learning the following: C. Very standard, lightweight and available on everything. However very old and mostly procedural. C++. Standard like C but I've read in some places that it encourages bad programming design and use of dodgy libraries - but similar things have been said about C too so I'll take that with a grain of salt. D. Quite new but looks promising, but will it be relevant or applicable in the future though? PHP. With the internet becoming ever more important I think this might be the one to go with, but the code itself isn't very intuitive. CoffeeScript (or plain JavaScript). With Microsoft's new idea of HTML5+JS for everything under the sun this doesn't look like a bad choice. However things do change and I wish to be primarily a software dev, not web dev. So out of the above list, or any others that you could suggest, what would you say I should begin to focus on? What is your opinion on staying with C#?

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• Can a candidate be judged by asking to write a complex program on "paper"?

  - by iammilind

  Sometime back in an interview, I was asked to write following program: In a keypad of a mobile phone, there is a mapping between number and characters. e.g. 0 & 1 corresponds to nothing; 2 corresponds to 'a','b','c'; 3 corresponds to 'd','e','f'; ...; 9 corresponds to 'w','x','y','z'. User should input any number (e.g. 23, 389423, 927348923747293) and I should store all the combinations of these character mapping into some data structure. For example, if user enters "23" then possible character combinations are: ad, ae, af, bd, be, bf, cd, ce, cf or if user enters, "4676972" then it can be, gmpmwpa, gmpmwpb, ..., hnroxrc, ..., iosozrc Interviewer told that people have written code for this within 20-30 mins!! Also he insisted I have to write on paper. If I am writing a code then my tendency is as of I am writing production code, even though it may not be expected from me. So, I always try to think all the aspects like, optimization, readability, maintainability, extensible and so on. Considering all these, I felt that I should be writing on PC and it needs decent 2 hours. Finally after 25 mins, I was able to come up with just the concept and some shattered pieces of code (not to mention of my rejection). My question is not the answer for the above program. I want to know that is this a right way to judge the caliber of a person ? Am I wrong / too slow in the estimates ? Am I too idealistic ?

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• What determines which Javascript functions are blocking vs non-blocking?

  - by Sean

  I have been doing web-based Javascript (vanilla JS, jQuery, Backbone, etc.) for a few years now, and recently I've been doing some work with Node.js. It took me a while to get the hang of "non-blocking" programming, but I've now gotten used to using callbacks for IO operations and whatnot. I understand that Javascript is single-threaded by nature. I understand the concept of the Node "event queue". What I DON'T understand is what determines whether an individual javascript operation is "blocking" vs. "non-blocking". How do I know which operations I can depend on to produce an output synchronously for me to use in later code, and which ones I'll need to pass callbacks to so I can process the output after the initial operation has completed? Is there a list of Javascript functions somewhere that are asynchronous/non-blocking, and a list of ones that are synchronous/blocking? What is preventing my Javascript app from being one giant race condition? I know that operations that take a long time, like IO operations in Node and AJAX operations on the web, require them to be asynchronous and therefore use callbacks - but who is determining what qualifies as "a long time"? Is there some sort of trigger within these operations that removes them from the normal "event queue"? If not, what makes them different from simple operations like assigning values to variables or looping through arrays, which it seems we can depend on to finish in a synchronous manner? Perhaps I'm not even thinking of this correctly - hoping someone can set me straight. Thanks!

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• Putting Together a Game Design Team?

  - by Kaia

  I'm attempting to put together a game design team that is willing to help me design/program, test, and somewhat produce the game we make to the public. I need anyone who knows anything about programming/coding, designing, etc. Once we get it up and running and out into the world (over dramatic maybe? haha) I have ideas of generating a profit from it so there is a possibility of payment. My thinking on it (so far) is this: 2D (possibly. I haven't decided if I want it 2D or 3D. It really depends on what is easier) 3rd person. Adventure (I want there to be a point to it, but like a point with no real end) I want there to be a story to it. If you've ever played Dofus, think like that. There is a story to the game, but no real end. I want (if possible) to include mini-games. These could end up becoming a possible way for a player to aquire in-game money, quest items, etc. If anyone is interested in helping me create the story line/script (which we will finsih first, before creating the game) please contact me. I want to get this completed as soon as possible.

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• Languages with a clear distinction between subroutines that are purely functional, mutating, state-changing, etc?

  - by CPX

  Lately I've become more and more frustrated that in most modern programming languages I've worked with (C/C++, C#, F#, Ruby, Python, JS and more) there is very little, if any, language support for determining what a subroutine will actually do. Consider the following simple pseudo-code: var x = DoSomethingWith(y); How do I determine what the call to DoSomethingWith(y) will actually do? Will it mutate y, or will it return a copy of y? Does it depend on global or local state, or is it only dependent on y? Will it change the global or local state? How does closure affect the outcome of the call? In all languages I've encountered, almost none of these questions can be answered by merely looking at the signature of the subroutine, and there is almost never any compile-time or run-time support either. Usually, the only way is to put your trust in the author of the API, and hope that the documentation and/or naming conventions reveal what the subroutine will actually do. My question is this: Does there exist any languages today that make symbolic distinctions between these types of scenarios, and places compile-time constraints on what code you can actually write? (There is of course some support for this in most modern languages, such as different levels of scope and closure, the separation between static and instance code, lambda functions, et cetera. But too often these seem to come into conflict with each other. For instance, a lambda function will usually either be purely functional, and simply return a value based on input parameters, or mutate the input parameters in some way. But it is usually possible to access static variables from a lambda function, which in turn can give you access to instance variables, and then it all breaks apart.)

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• What are some good resources for creating a game engine in XNA?

  - by Glasser

  I'm currently a student game programmer working on an indie project. We have a team of eleven people (five programmers, four artists, and two audio designers) aboard, all working hard to help design this game. We've been meeting for months now and so far we have a pretty buffed out Game Design Document as well as much audio/visual concept art. Our programmers are itching to progress on our own end. Each person in our programming team is well versed in C++, but is very familiar with C#. We have enough experience and skill that we're confident that we will be successful with our game, and we're looking to build our own game engine in XNA as it seems like it would be worth our time and effort in the end. The game itself will be a 2D beat 'em up style game to be released over xbox live and the PC. It's play style will be similar to that of Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim vs The World. We want to design the game engine to allow us to better implement our assets into the game as well as to simplify the creation of design elements/mechanics. Currently between our programmers, we have books such as "XNA 4.0" and "Game Coding Complete, Third Edition," but we'd still like more information on both XNA and (especially) building a game engine from scratch. What are any other good books, websites, or resources we could use to further map out and program our game engine?

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• Can too much abstraction be bad?

  - by m3th0dman

  As programmers I feel that our goal is to provide good abstractions on the given domain model and business logic. But where should this abstraction stop? How to make the trade-off between abstraction and all it's benefits (flexibility, ease of changing etc.) and ease of understanding the code and all it's benefits. I believe I tend to write code overly abstracted and I don't know how good is it; I often tend to write it like it is some kind of a micro-framework, which consists of two parts: Micro-Modules which are hooked up in the micro-framework: these modules are easy to be understood, developed and maintained as single units. This code basically represents the code that actually does the functional stuff, described in requirements. Connecting code; now here I believe stands the problem. This code tends to be complicated because it is sometimes very abstracted and is hard to be understood at the beginning; this arises due to the fact that it is only pure abstraction, the base in reality and business logic being performed in the code presented 1; from this reason this code is not expected to be changed once tested. Is this a good approach at programming? That it, having changing code very fragmented in many modules and very easy to be understood and non-changing code very complex from the abstraction POV? Should all the code be uniformly complex (that is code 1 more complex and interlinked and code 2 more simple) so that anybody looking through it can understand it in a reasonable amount of time but change is expensive or the solution presented above is good, where "changing code" is very easy to be understood, debugged, changed and "linking code" is kind of difficult. Note: this is not about code readability! Both code at 1 and 2 is readable, but code at 2 comes with more complex abstractions while code 1 comes with simple abstractions.

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• Breaking up classes and methods into smaller units

  - by micahhoover

  During code reviews a couple devs have recommended I break up my methods into smaller methods. Their justification was (1) increased readability and (2) the back trace that comes back from production showing the method name is more specific to the line of code that failed. There may have also been some colorful words about functional programming. Additionally I think I may have failed an interview a while back because I didn't give an acceptable answer about when to break things up. My inclination is that when I see a bunch of methods in a class or across a bunch of files, it isn't clear to me how they flow together, and how many times each one gets called. I don't really have a good feel for the linearity of it as quickly just by eye-balling it. The other thing is a lot of people seem to place a premium of organization over content (e.g. 'Look at how organized my sock drawer is!' Me: 'Overall, I think I can get to my socks faster if you count the time it took to organize them'). Our business requirements are not very stable. I'm afraid that if the classes/methods are very granular it will take longer to refactor to requirement changes. I'm not sure how much of a factor this should be. Anyway, computer science is part art / part science, but I'm not sure how much this applies to this issue.

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• Have there been attempts to make object containers that search for valid programs by auto wiring compatible components?

  - by Aaron Anodide

  I hope this post isn't too "Fringe" - I'm sure someone will just kill it if it is :) Three things made me want to reach out about this now: Decoupling is so in the forefront of design. TDD inspires the idea that it doesn't matter how a program comes to exist as long as it works. Seeing how often the adapter pattern is applied to achieve (1). I'm almost sure this has been tried from a memory of reading about it around the year 2000 or so. If I had to guess, it was maybe about and earlier version of the Java Spring framework. At this time we were not so far from days when the belief was that computer programs could exhibit useful emergent behavior. I think the article said it didn't work, but it didn't say it was impossible. I wonder if since then it has been deemed impossible or simply an illusion due to a false assumption of similarity between a brain and a CPU. I know this illusion existed because I had an internship in 1996 where I programmed neural nets that were supposedly going to exhibit "brain damage". STILL, after all that, I'm sitting around this morning and not able to shake the idea that it should be possible to have a method of programming to allow autonomous components to find each other, attempt to collaborate and their outputs evaluated against a set desired results.

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• Cloud Computing - just get started already!

  - by BuckWoody

  OK - you've been hearing about "cloud" (I really dislike that term, but whatever) for over two years. You've equated it with just throwing some VM's in some vendor's datacenter - which is certainly part of it, but not the whole story. There's a whole world of - wait for it - *coding* out there that you should be working on. If you're a developer, this is just a set of servers with operating systems and the runtime layer (like.NET, Java, PHP, etc.) that you can deploy code to and have it run. It can expand in a horizontal way, allowing massive - and I really, honestly mean massive, not just marketing talk kind of scale. We see this every day. If you're not a developer, well, now's the time to learn. Explore a little. Try it. We'll help you. There's a free conference you can attend in November, and you can sign up for it now. It's all on-line, and the tools you need to code are free. Put down Facebook and Twitter for a minute - go sign up. Learn. Do. :) See you there. http://www.windowsazureconf.net/

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