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  • How to solve programming problems using logic? [closed]

    - by md nth
    I know these principles: Define the constrains and operations,eg constrains are the rules that you cant pass and what you want determined by the end goal, operations are actions you can do, "choices" . Buy some time by solving easy and solvable piece. Halving the difficulty by dividing the project into small goals and blocks. The more blocks you create the more hinges you have. Analogies which means : using other code blocks, yours or from other programmers . which has problem similar to the current problem. Experiments not guessing by writing "predicted end" code, in other word creating a hypothesis, about what will happen if you do this or that. Use your tools first, don't begin with a unknown code first. By making small goals you ll not get frustrated. Start from smallest problem. Are there other principles?

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  • C programming multiple storage backends

    - by ahjmorton
    I am starting a side project in C which requires multiple storage backends to be driven by a particular piece of logic. These storage backends would each be linked with the decision of which one to use specified at runtime. So for example if I invoke my program with one set of parameters it will perform the operations in memory but if I change the program configuration it would write to disk. The underlying idea is that each storage backend should implement the same protocol. In other words the logic for performing operations should need to know which backend it is operating on. Currently the way I have thought to provide this indirection is to have a struct of function pointers with the logic calling these function pointers. Essentially the struct would contain all the operations needed to implement the higher level logic E.g. struct Context { void (* doPartOfDoOp)(void) int (* getResult)(void); } //logic.h void doOp(Context * context) { //bunch of stuff context->doPartOfDoOp(); } int getResult(Context * context) { //bunch of stuff return context->getResult(); } My questions is if this way of solving the problem is one a C programmer would understand? I am a Java developer by trade but enjoy using C/++. Essentially the Context struct provides an interface like level of indirection. However I would like to know if there is a more idiomatic way of achieving this.

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  • Server socket programming in Android 1.5, most power efficient way?

    - by Antek
    Hello people, I am doing a project where I have too develop an application that listens for incoming events by a service. The device that has to listen too events is an Android phone with Android SDK 1.5 on it. Currently the services that call events only implement communication trough UDP or TCP sockets. I can solve my problem by setting up a ServerSocket, but i doubt that's the most power efficient way. This application will be running most of the time, with Wi-Fi on, and I'd like too reach an long battery duration. I've been looking for options on the internet for my question for a while but i couldn't get a real answer. I've got the following questions: What is the most efficient way too listen to incoming events? Should I make an ServerSocket? or what are my options? Are there any other implementations that are more power efficient? Ive been also thinking of implementing communication trough XMPP. Not sure if this is the best way. I'm not forced too an specific implementation. All suggestions are welcome! Thanks for the help, Antek

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  • Can I use POSIX signals in my Perl program to create event-driven programming?

    - by Shiftbit
    Is there any POSIX signals that I could utilize in my Perl program to create event-driven programming? Currently, I have multi-process program that is able to cross communicate but my parent thread is only able to listen to listen at one child at a time. foreach (@proc) { sysread(${$_}{'read'}, my $line, 100); #problem here chomp($line); print "Parent hears: $line\n"; } The problem is that the parent sits in a continual wait state until it receives it a signal from the first child before it can continue on. I am relying on 'pipe' for my intercommunication. My current solution is very similar to: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2558098/how-can-i-use-pipe-to-facilitate-interprocess-communication-in-perl If possible I would like to rely on a $SIG{...} event or any non-CPAN solution. Update: As Jonathan Leffler mentioned, kill can be used to send a signal: kill USR1 = $$; # send myself a SIGUSR1 My solution will be to send a USR1 signal to my child process. This event tells the parent to listen to the particular child. child: kill USR1 => $parentPID if($customEvent); syswrite($parentPipe, $msg, $buffer); #select $parentPipe; print $parentPipe $msg; parent: $SIG{USR1} = { #get child pid? sysread($array[$pid]{'childPipe'}, $msg, $buffer); }; But how do I get my the source/child pid that signaled the parent? Have the child Identify itself in its message. What happens if two children signal USR1 at the same time?

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  • Concurrent Programming:Should I write a sequential program first, then add thread safety?

    - by evthim
    I'm working on a project where we have to create a number of threads(actual number will be inputted in by testers (TA's)). I'm having trouble not only with the programming but also with the design, I can't wrap my head around all of the threads that will be invoked and where I might cause errors. The project is due soon so I don't want to waste time on this if it'll actually set me back, but I was wondering if I should write the program like only one thread will be running and everything should be sequential and then later go back and try to add the thread safety parts of the code? Would that take twice the original amount of time? Project Description: Note:I'm going to be as vague as possible so I don't violate any honor codes, sorry :( your program should accept n number of objectA threads, m number of objectB threads, and r number of objectC objectB threads interact with code in objectA. objectA threads interact with code in objectB and objectC objectB and objectC don't directly interact, but do so indirectly through objectA -ex: objectB needs something from objectA. objectA gets the result for that something by calling objectC my confusion stems mostly from the fact that all of this interactions will be done by m+n threads and there are various restrictions throughout the descriptions, like objectB can request something from objectA, and objectA has to wait for objectC to finish that something before returning it to objectB. Also each objectA thread can only work on one instruction from objectB at a time, etc. etc. I just want to know if I write the code so that there is only 1 objectA, 1 objectB and 1 object C, can I go back and easily modify it so that those 1's can be changed to m, n and r? Sorry again, if my description is a little bit confusing.

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  • no more hitcollision at 1 life

    - by user1449547
    So I finally got my implementation of lives fixed, and it works. Now however when I collide with a ghost when I am at 1 life, nothing happens. I can fall to my death enough times for a game over. from what i can tell the problem is that hit collision is not longer working, because it does not detect a hit, I do not fall. the question is why? update if i kill myself fast enough it works, but if i play for like 30 seconds, it stops the hit collision detection on my ghosts. platforms and springs still work. public class World { public interface WorldListener { public void jump(); public void highJump(); public void hit(); public void coin(); public void dying(); } public static final float WORLD_WIDTH = 10; public static final float WORLD_HEIGHT = 15 * 20; public static final int WORLD_STATE_RUNNING = 0; public static final int WORLD_STATE_NEXT_LEVEL = 1; public static final int WORLD_STATE_GAME_OVER = 2; public static final Vector2 gravity = new Vector2(0, -12); public Hero hero; public final List<Platform> platforms; public final List<Spring> springs; public final List<Ghost> ghosts; public final List<Coin> coins; public Castle castle; public final WorldListener listener; public final Random rand; public float heightSoFar; public int score; public int state; public int lives=3; public World(WorldListener listener) { this.hero = new Hero(5, 1); this.platforms = new ArrayList<Platform>(); this.springs = new ArrayList<Spring>(); this.ghosts = new ArrayList<Ghost>(); this.coins = new ArrayList<Coin>(); this.listener = listener; rand = new Random(); generateLevel(); this.heightSoFar = 0; this.score = 0; this.state = WORLD_STATE_RUNNING; } private void generateLevel() { float y = Platform.PLATFORM_HEIGHT / 2; float maxJumpHeight = Hero.hero_JUMP_VELOCITY * Hero.hero_JUMP_VELOCITY / (2 * -gravity.y); while (y < WORLD_HEIGHT - WORLD_WIDTH / 2) { int type = rand.nextFloat() > 0.8f ? Platform.PLATFORM_TYPE_MOVING : Platform.PLATFORM_TYPE_STATIC; float x = rand.nextFloat() * (WORLD_WIDTH - Platform.PLATFORM_WIDTH) + Platform.PLATFORM_WIDTH / 2; Platform platform = new Platform(type, x, y); platforms.add(platform); if (rand.nextFloat() > 0.9f && type != Platform.PLATFORM_TYPE_MOVING) { Spring spring = new Spring(platform.position.x, platform.position.y + Platform.PLATFORM_HEIGHT / 2 + Spring.SPRING_HEIGHT / 2); springs.add(spring); } if (rand.nextFloat() > 0.7f) { Ghost ghost = new Ghost(platform.position.x + rand.nextFloat(), platform.position.y + Ghost.GHOST_HEIGHT + rand.nextFloat() * 3); ghosts.add(ghost); } if (rand.nextFloat() > 0.6f) { Coin coin = new Coin(platform.position.x + rand.nextFloat(), platform.position.y + Coin.COIN_HEIGHT + rand.nextFloat() * 3); coins.add(coin); } y += (maxJumpHeight - 0.5f); y -= rand.nextFloat() * (maxJumpHeight / 3); } castle = new Castle(WORLD_WIDTH / 2, y); } public void update(float deltaTime, float accelX) { updatehero(deltaTime, accelX); updatePlatforms(deltaTime); updateGhosts(deltaTime); updateCoins(deltaTime); if (hero.state != Hero.hero_STATE_HIT) checkCollisions(); checkGameOver(); checkFall(); } private void updatehero(float deltaTime, float accelX) { if (hero.state != Hero.hero_STATE_HIT && hero.position.y <= 0.5f) hero.hitPlatform(); if (hero.state != Hero.hero_STATE_HIT) hero.velocity.x = -accelX / 10 * Hero.hero_MOVE_VELOCITY; hero.update(deltaTime); heightSoFar = Math.max(hero.position.y, heightSoFar); } private void updatePlatforms(float deltaTime) { int len = platforms.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Platform platform = platforms.get(i); platform.update(deltaTime); if (platform.state == Platform.PLATFORM_STATE_PULVERIZING && platform.stateTime > Platform.PLATFORM_PULVERIZE_TIME) { platforms.remove(platform); len = platforms.size(); } } } private void updateGhosts(float deltaTime) { int len = ghosts.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Ghost ghost = ghosts.get(i); ghost.update(deltaTime); if (ghost.state == Ghost.GHOST_STATE_DYING && ghost.stateTime > Ghost.GHOST_DYING_TIME) { ghosts.remove(ghost); len = ghosts.size(); } } } private void updateCoins(float deltaTime) { int len = coins.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Coin coin = coins.get(i); coin.update(deltaTime); } } private void checkCollisions() { checkPlatformCollisions(); checkGhostCollisions(); checkItemCollisions(); checkCastleCollisions(); } private void checkPlatformCollisions() { if (hero.velocity.y > 0) return; int len = platforms.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Platform platform = platforms.get(i); if (hero.position.y > platform.position.y) { if (OverlapTester .overlapRectangles(hero.bounds, platform.bounds)) { hero.hitPlatform(); listener.jump(); if (rand.nextFloat() > 0.5f) { platform.pulverize(); } break; } } } } private void checkGhostCollisions() { int len = ghosts.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Ghost ghost = ghosts.get(i); if (hero.position.y < ghost.position.y) { if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(ghost.bounds, hero.bounds)){ hero.hitGhost(); listener.hit(); } break; } else { if(hero.position.y > ghost.position.y) { if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(hero.bounds, ghost.bounds)){ hero.hitGhostJump(); listener.jump(); ghost.dying(); score += Ghost.GHOST_SCORE; } break; } } } } private void checkItemCollisions() { int len = coins.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Coin coin = coins.get(i); if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(hero.bounds, coin.bounds)) { coins.remove(coin); len = coins.size(); listener.coin(); score += Coin.COIN_SCORE; } } if (hero.velocity.y > 0) return; len = springs.size(); for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { Spring spring = springs.get(i); if (hero.position.y > spring.position.y) { if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(hero.bounds, spring.bounds)) { hero.hitSpring(); listener.highJump(); } } } } private void checkCastleCollisions() { if (OverlapTester.overlapRectangles(castle.bounds, hero.bounds)) { state = WORLD_STATE_NEXT_LEVEL; } } private void checkFall() { if (heightSoFar - 7.5f > hero.position.y) { --lives; hero.hitSpring(); listener.highJump(); } } private void checkGameOver() { if (lives<=0) { state = WORLD_STATE_GAME_OVER; } } }

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  • Should I learn two (or more) programming languages in parallel?

    - by c_maker
    I found entries on this site about learning a new programming language, however, I have not come across anything that talks about the advantages and disadvantages of learning two languages at the same time. Let's say my goal is to learn two new languages in a year. I understand that the definition of learning a new language is different for everyone and you can probably never know everything about a language. I believe in most cases the following things are enough to include the language in your resume and say that you are proficient in it (list is not in any particular order): Know its syntax so you can write a simple program in it Compare its underlying concepts with concepts of other languages Know best practices Know what libraries are available Know in what situations to use it Understand the flow of a more complex program At least know most of what you do not know I would probably look for a good book and pick an open source project for both of these languages to start with. My questions: Is it best to spend 5 months learning language#1 then 5 months learning language#2, or should you mix the two. Mixing them I mean you work on them in parallel. Should you pick two languages that are similar or different? Are there any advantages/disadvantages of let's say learning Lisp in tandem with Ruby? Is it a good idea to pick two languages with similar syntax or would it be too confusing? Please tell me what your experiences are regarding this. Does it make a difference if you are a beginner or a senior programmer?

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  • Can anyone give me a sample java socket programming for doing a peer to peer for 3 systems?

    - by Sadesh Kumar N
    I am doing an university project. I need some sample programs on peer to peer programs in java socket programming. Every where people are telling to add a server socket in the client program. I am in a confusion. Can a single program having server socket and client socket will do or i have to create two programs of one initiating a system and another peer program running thrice to solve the problem. or i need to create three programs for three peer systems. I am not clear on the architecture of building peer to peer programs using java sockets. Can some one help me giving a simple program on how to create a peer to peer connection between three systems. I know how to do a socket program for client server model and clear on the concept. But creating a peer to peer architecture sounds complex for me to understand. I also referred this thread. developing peer to peer in java The person commented second says" To make peer2peer app each client opens server socket too. When client A wishes to connect to client B it just connects to its socket. " Need some more sample and an explanation on how peer to peer java socket program works I dont want any external api like jxta to do this task. I need a clear picture on how it works alone with an example.

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  • MBA versus MSIS

    - by user794684
    I am considering going back to school for my masters and I've been looking at several avenues I can take. I've been considering either an MBA or an MSIS degree. Overall I know that an MBA is going to give me a solid skill set that can help me become an executive. However they seem to be a dime a dozen these days and the University I can get into is good, but it's not exactly in the top 100 anything. My undergrad MINOR was in Business Information Systems. I'm rusty as hell, considering I haven't touched it, but an MSIS would be more in the direction of my past academic experience and seems to touch both on business management and IT. Question... With an MSIS will I just be a middleman? Will I really be an important person with a real skill set or will I merely be someone who isn't quite cut out to be a manager and who is clueless about the tech side? Is an MSIS degree going to give me a real chance to move up the pay scale quickly or am I better off learning programing, networking through another BS degree? What will give me more upward mobility career wise? An MBA or an MSIS?

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  • How to evaluate the quality of Rails code?

    - by Fortuity
    In a code review, what do you look for to assess a developer's expertise? Given an opportunity to look at a developer's work on a real-world project, what tell-tale signs are a tip-off to carelessness or lack of experience? Conversely, where do you look in the code to find evidence of a developer's skill or knowledge of best practices? For example, if I'm looking at a typical Rails app, I would be happy to see the developer is using RSpec (showing a commitment to using test-driven development and knowledge that RSpec is currently more popular than the default TestUnit). But in examining the specs for a Rails model, I see that the developer is testing associations, which might indicate a lack of real understanding of Rails testing requirements (since such tests are redundant given that they only test what's already implemented and tested in ActiveRecord). More generally, I might look to see if developers are writing their own implementations versus using widely available gems or if they are cleaning up code versus leaving lots of commented-out "leftovers." What helps you determine the skill of a Rails developer? What's your code quality checklist?

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  • symlink for dbus headers

    - by DarenW
    Source code for something that won't compile has the line #include but in real life that header file is in /usr/include/dbus-1.0/ Similarsituation exists for the dbus-c++ package. Why doesn't Ubuntu provide a symlink /usr/include/dbus pointing to the dbus-1.0 directory? Is this an bug in the dbus package? If intended, what it the purpose? Is it a proper fix to add a symlink myself? (Changing the source is not practical - there are many files, and they need to match what other people have.) update: ok, I totally misunderstood the situation, though it still comes down to a problem I think should be solved by a symlink. The dbus directory referred to in the #include statement is a deeper level directory under /usr/include/dbus-1.0/. The real problem is that the file dbus-arch-deps.h appears to be missing, but is actually stored in the weird location /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dbus-1.0/include/dbus/ so now - why doesn't ubuntu provide a symlink to this in /usr/include/dbus-1.0/dbus, or actually store it there?

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  • How are events in games handled?

    - by Alex
    In may games that I have played, I have seen events being triggered, such as when you walk into a certain land area while holding a specific object, it will trigger a special creature to spawn. I was wondering, how do games deal with events such as this? Not in a specific game, but in general among games. The first thought I had was that each place has a hard-coded set of events that it will call when something happens there. However, that would be too inefficient to maintain, as when something new is added, that would require modification of every part of the game that would potentially cause the event to be called. Next up, I had the idea of maybe how GUI programming works. In all of the GUI programming I've done, you create a component and a callback function, or a listener. Then, when the user interacts when the button, the callback function is called, allowing you to do something with it. So, I was thinking that in terms of a game, when a land area gets loaded the game loops over a list of all events, creating instances of them and calling public methods to bind them to the current scene. The events themselves then handle what scene it is, and if it is a scene that pertains to the event, will call the public method of the scene to bind the event to an action. Then, when the action takes place, the scene would call all events that are bound to that action. However, I'm sure that's not how games would operate either, as that would require a lot of creating of events all the time. So how to video games handle events, are either of those methods correct, or is it something completely different?

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  • Why do programmers seem to be such bad spellers?

    - by Joel Etherton
    Programming languages are very precise tools based on explicit grammars. They're very picky, and when being used they require an exacting amount of detail. C#, for instance, is case sensitive so even getting the case of an argument wrong will cause an error. Questions asked all over the StackExchange are replete with misspellings, grammatical errors, and other problems that seem to indicate a lack of attention to detail when it comes to the language itself. Now, I understand there are a lot of programmers out there whose native language is not English, and I am not directing this question (rant one might say) at them. I'm referring to the individuals who are clearly from an English speaking background who refuse to pay attention to these simple details. I am not perfect by any means, but I try to use the language correctly so that my meaning will be understood correctly. I find programmers misspelling variable names, classes, and all manner of words in any kind of technical documentation they might write. I have had to withstand code where I am repeatedly referring to the subit[sic] button or HttpWebResponse reponse. The general complaint about bad spelling is one thing, and it will always be there. I accept that. But my question/comment is about the proclivity of bad spelling within the programming community. I would think that people who deal with such exacting tools to be more naturally predisposed towards proper spelling. Yet this doesn't seem to be the case.

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  • Learning to be a good developer: what parts can you skip over?

    - by Andrew M
    I have set myself the goal of becoming a decent developer by this time next year. By this I mean full experience of the development 'lifecycle,' a few good apps/sites/webapps under my belt, and most importantly being able to work at a steady pace without getting sidelined for hours by some should-know-this-already technique. I'm not starting from scratch. I've written a lot of html/css, SQL, javascript, python and VB.net, and studied other languages like C and Java. I know about things like OOP, design patterns, TDD, complexity, computational linguistics, pointers/references, functional programming, and other academic/theoretical matters. It's just I can't say I've really done these things yet. So I want to get up to speed, and I want to know what things I can leave till a later date. For instance, studying algorithms and the maths behind them is interesting and all, but so far I've hardly needed to write anything but the most basic nested loops. Investigating Assembly to have a clearer picture of low-level operations would be cool... but I imagine rarely infringes on daily work. On the other hand, looking at a functional programming language might help me write programs that are more comprehensible and less prone to hidden failures (at the moment I'm finding the biggest difficulty is when the complexity of the app exceeds my capacity to understand it - for instance passing data around was fine... until I had to start doing it with AJAX, which was a painful step up). I could spend time working through case studies of design patterns, but I'm not sure how many of them get used in 'real life.' I'm a programmer with basic abilities - what skills should I focus on developing? (also my Unix skills are very weak, and also knowledge of Windows configuration... not sure how much time I should spend on that)

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  • Are programmers getting lazier and less competent

    - by Skeith
    I started programming in C++ at uni and loved it. In the next term we changed to VB6 and I hated it. I could not tell what was going on, you drag a button to a form and the ide writes the code for you. While I hated the way VB functioned I cannot argue that it was faster and easier than doing the same thing in C++ so i can see why it is a popular language. Now I am not calling VB developers lazy in just saying it easier than C++ and I have noticed that a lot of newer languages are following this trend such a C#. This leads me to think that as more business want quick results more people will program like this and sooner or later there will be no such thing as what we call programming now. Future programmers will tell the computer what they want and the compiler will write the program for them like in star trek. Is this just an under informed opinion of a junior programmer or are programmers getting lazier and less competent in general? EDIT: A lot of answers say why re invent the wheel and I agree with this but when there are wheels available people are not bothering to learn how to make the wheel. I can google how to do pretty much anything in any language and half the languages do so much for you when it come to debugging they have no idea what there code does of how to fix the error. That's how I cam up with the theory that programmers are becoming lazier and less competent as no one cares how stuff works just that it does until it does not.

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  • Software development process for a part time University project for 1 developer?

    - by Pricey
    I will be doing a part time University project soon and the time frame for it is around 8 months with approximately 10-15 hours a week spent working on it, with a review by a tutor each quarter. My question is what software development process would you recommend using when the course requires you to work on your own in order to manage yourself as well as the project? I wanted to use a weekly or bi-weekly iterative approach to my work but a lot of the processes seem tailored to teams of people. I am looking at XP (Extreme Programming) OR Scrum as something that is less than the norm for University work but again Scrum I don't know a lot about yet, and a question I have is; can you say you are doing XP without pair-programming? because my tutor seems to think that I have to stick to all the practices otherwise I can't do it (nevermind if I am working alone). We can have external user input as well but due to the small timescales with part time work it may be more beneficial for myself to be the user as well, which is not what I prefer considering how I can get lost in the design.

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  • Metaphor for task synchronization [closed]

    - by nkint
    I'm looking for a metaphor. A friend of mine taught me to use metaphors from nature, everyday life, math, and use them to design my projects. They can help in creating a better design or better understanding or the problem, and they are cool. Now I'm working on a project with hardware and micro-controllers in C. For convenience, I have decided to use multiple micro-controllers as co-processor units for real-time (the slaves) and a master. This has saved me a lot of headache: I can code the main logic in the master without paying too much attention to super optimizing everything; I don't care if I need some blocking-call; I don't worry about serial communication with the computer. I just send messages to the slaves and they are super fast super in real time. I like my design and it seems to work well. So here are the important concepts that I'm trying capture in the metaphor: hierarchy of processing Not using one big brain but rather several small, distributed brain units using distributed power or resources I'm looking for a good metaphor for this concept of having one unit synchronize the work of all the others. Preferably, the metaphor would come from nature, biology, or zoology.

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  • Is the separation of program logic and presentation layer going too far?

    - by Timwi
    In a Drupal programming guide, I noticed this sentence: The theme hook receives the total number of votes and the number of votes for just that item, but the template wants to display a percentage. That kind of work shouldn't be done in a template; instead, the math is performed here. The math necessary to calculate a percentage from a total and a number is (number/total)*100. Is this application of two basic arithmetic operators within a presentation layer already too much? Is the maintenance of the entire system severely compromised by this amount of mathematics? The WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) and its UI mark-up language, XAML, seem to go to similar extremes. If you try to so much as add two numbers in the View (the presentation layer), you have committed a cardinal sin. Consequently, XAML has no operators for any arithmetic whatsoever. Is this ultra-strict separation really the holy grail of programming? What are the significant gains to be had from taking the separation to such extremes?

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  • Is there a language more general than Lisp?

    - by Jon Purdy
    I've been programming for a long time, and writing in Lisp (well, mostly Scheme) for a little less. My experience in these languages (and other functional languages) has informed my ability to write clean code even with less powerful tools. Lisp-family languages have lovely facilities for implementing every abstraction in common use: S-expressions generalise structure. Macros generalise syntax. Continuations generalise flow control. But I'm dissatisfied. Somehow, I want more. Is there a language that's more general? More powerful? As great as Lisp is, I find it hard to believe no one has come up with anything (dare I say) better. I'm well aware that ordinarily a question like this ought to be closed for its argumentative nature. But there seems to be a broad consensus that Lisp represents the theoretical pinnacle of programming language design. I simply refuse to accept that without some kind of proof. Which I guess amounts to questioning whether the lambda calculus is in fact the ideal abstraction of computation.

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  • Generalist Languages: Dying or Alive and Well?

    - by dsimcha
    Around here, it seems like there's somewhat of a consensus that generalist programming languages (that try to be good at everything, support multiple paradigms, support both very high- and very low-level programming), etc. are a bad idea, and that it's better to pick the right tool for the job and use lots of different languages. I see three major areas where this is flawed: Interfacing multiple languages is always at least a source of friction and is sometimes practically impossible. How severe a problem this is depends on how fine-grained the interfacing is. Near the boundary between the two languages, though, you're basically limited to the intersection of their features, and you have to care about things like binary interfaces that you usually wouldn't. Passing complex data structures (i.e. not just primitives and arrays of primitives) between languages is almost always a hassle. Furthermore, shifting between different syntaxes, different conventions, etc. can be confusing and annoying, though this is a fairly minor complaint. Requirements are never set in stone. I hate picking a language thinking it's the right tool for the job, then realizing that, when some new requirement surfaces, it's actually a terrible choice for that requirement. This has happened to me several times before, usually when working with languages that are very slow, very domain specific and/or has very poor concurrency/parallelism support. When you program in a language for a while, you start to build up a personal toolbox of small utility functions/classes/programs. The value of these goes drastically down if you're forced to use a different language than the one you've accumulated all this code in. What am I missing here? Why shouldn't more focus be placed on generalist languages? Are generalist languages as a category dying or alive and well?

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  • What's the proper term for a function inverse to a constructor? Deconstructor, destructor, or something else?

    - by Petr Pudlák
    Edit: I'm rephrasing the question a bit. Apparently I caused some confusion because I didn't realize that the term destructor is used in OOP for something quite different - it's a function invoked when an object is being destroyed. In functional programming we (try to) avoid mutable state so there is no such equivalent to it. (I added the proper tag to the question.) Instead, I've seen that the record field for unwrapping a value (especially for single-valued data types such as newtypes) is sometimes called destructor or perhaps deconstructor. For example, let's have (in Haskell): newtype Wrap = Wrap { unwrap :: Int } Here Wrap is the constructor and unwrap is what? I've seen both, for example: ... Most often, one supplies smart constructors and destructors for these to ease working with them. ... at Haskell wiki, or ... The general theme here is to fuse constructor - deconstructor pairs like ... at Haskell wikibook (here it's probably meant in a bit more general sense). The questions are: How do we call unwrap in functional programming? Deconstructor? Destructor? Or by some other term? And to clarify, is this terminology applicable to other functional languages, or is it used just in the Has

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  • Everything has an Interface [closed]

    - by Shane
    Possible Duplicate: Do I need to use an interface when only one class will ever implement it? I am taking over a project where every single real class is implementing an Interface. The vast majority of these interfaces are implemented by a single class that share a similar name and the exact same methods (ex: MyCar and MyCarImpl). Almost no 2 classes in the project implement more than the interface that shares its name. I know the general recommendation is to code to an interface rather than an implementation, but isn't this taking it a bit too far? The system might be more flexible in that it is easier to add a new class that behaves very much like an existing class. However, it is significantly harder to parse through the code and method changes now require 2 edits instead of 1. Personally, I normally only create interfaces when there is a need for multiple classes to have the same behavior. I subscribe to YAGNI, so I don't create something unless I see a real need for it. Am I doing it all wrong or is this project going way overboard?

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  • Benefits of classic OOP over Go-like language

    - by tylerl
    I've been thinking a lot about language design and what elements would be necessary for an "ideal" programming language, and studying Google's Go has led me to question a lot of otherwise common knowledge. Specifically, Go seems to have all of the interesting benefits from object oriented programming without actually having any of the structure of an object oriented language. There are no classes, only structures; there is no class/structure inheritance -- only structure embedding. There aren't any hierarchies, no parent classes, no explicit interface implementations. Instead, type casting rules are based on a loose system similar to duck-typing, such that if a struct implements the necessary elements of a "Reader" or a "Request" or an "Encoding", then you can cast it and use it as one. Does such a system obsolete the concept of OOP? Or is there something about OOP as implemented in C++ and Java and C# that is inherently more capable, more maintainable, somehow more powerful that you have to give up when moving to a language like Go? What benefit do you have to give up to gain the simplicity that this new paradigm represents?

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