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• Pitching My Software-Should I Get a Patent? [closed]

  - by Mike

  This Thursday I will be filming for a Canadian TV Show where I will be pitching my software to 5 Canadian Millionaires to invest in. The software is ridiculously basic but it is for sports teams, specifically football and basketball teams. (The show won't air till September) I made this in Adobe Flash using Actionscript. I have been selling the software to sports teams in the USA mostly including University Teams for $20. I have only sold 32 copies ($640), but I don't advertise, I just write articles on the subject. Now my question is this: I have no patent on this software since I have been doing this casually. Is it a bad idea to go onto this TV show and ask them for money for a software patent? Or should I be asking money for marketing/other things? Note: I also have no idea how much I should ask for. I know absolutely nothing about software patents but if it matters no other software exists that does this exact thing (however it could be easily duplicated).

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• Is learning how to use C (or C++) a requirement in order to be a good (excellent) programmer?

  - by blueberryfields

  When I first started to learn how to program, real programmers could write assembly in their sleep. Any serious schooling in computer science would include a hefty bit of training and practice in programming using assembly. That has since changed, to the point where I see Computer Science degrees with assembly, if included at all, is relegated to one assignment, and one chapter, for a total of two weeks' work out of 4 years' schooling. C/C++ programming seems to have followed a similar path. I'm no longer surprised to interview university graduates who have not spent more than two weeks programming in C++, and have only read of C in a book somewhere. While the most serious CS degrees still seem to include significant time learning and using one or both of the languages, the trend is clearly towards less enforced C/C++ in school. It's clearly possible to make a career producing good work without ever reading or writing a single line of C or C++ code. Given all of that, is learning the two languages worth the effort? Are they at all required to excel? (beyond the obvious, non-language specific advice, such as "a good selection of languages is probably important for a comprehensive education", and "it's probably a good idea to keep trying out and learning new languages throughout a programmers' career, just to stretch the gray cells")

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• TechEd 2010 Day Four: Learning how to help others learn

  - by BuckWoody

  I do quite a few presentations, and teach at the University of Washington, and also teach other classes. But I'm always learning from others how to help others learn. At events like TechEd I have access to some of the best speakers around, so I try to find out what they do that works. I attended a great session by allen White, in which he demonstrated a set of PowerShell scripts. He said that Dan Jones of the Microsoft Manageability team told him while he demonstrated a script he needed to provide some visual way to represent the process. Allen used one of the oldest visualizations around - a flowchart. It was the first time I'd seen one used to illustrate a PowerShell script, and it was very effective. I'm totally stealing the idea. All of us are teachers - we help others on our team understand what we're up to. Make sure you make notes for what you find effective in dealing with you, and then meld that into your own way of teaching. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Work experience before masters

  - by RJadhav

  I dont know if its the right place to ask such questions: I have a bachelors degree from an Indian university. I want to persue masters in one of the universities in usa, my profile is good enough to get me admitted to the school that I want to get into. I also have an offer letter from one of the top software companies in India (Infosys). I dont know which path to take, I know a masters degree will be of great help in future both in terms of money and career but I do not know whether I want to do it at this moment. I have signed up for both edx and coursera for some of the courses and I really liked learning them online. I am not sure if taking these courses can be a substitute for a masters degree. Also how will i be able to differentiate myself in the real world if I do not have a masters degree, since there are many in india who dont have it. And is it advisable for me to take some work experience say 1-2 years and then apply for a masters degree. Although universities do not explicitly mention work experience as a criteria, will any kind of work experience help me in deciding whether i want to do masters? finally I want to know what are the cons of not doing a masters.

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• How to install custom c library?

  - by arijit

  I just wanted to add a c library to Ubuntu which was created by Harvard University for cs50 course. They provided instructions for how to install the library which is listed below. Debian, Ubuntu First become root, as with: sudo su - Then install the CS50 Library as follows: apt-get install gcc wget http://mirror.cs50.net/library/c/cs50-library-c-3.1.zip unzip cs50-library-c-3.1.zip rm -f cs50-library-c-3.1.zip cd cs50-library-c-3.1 gcc -c -ggdb -std=c99 cs50.c -o cs50.o ar rcs libcs50.a cs50.o chmod 0644 cs50.h libcs50.a mkdir -p /usr/local/include chmod 0755 /usr/local/include mv -f cs50.h /usr/local/include mkdir -p /usr/local/lib chmod 0755 /usr/local/lib mv -f libcs50.a /usr/local/lib cd .. rm -rf cs50-library-c-3.1 I did exactly as directed. But the compiler reported “Undefined reference to a function”--the function was Get String. So, I searched for a solution and found one. It said to use the -l switch. Now when I compile I use something like: gcc –o hello.c hello –lcs50 (I don’t remember the exact command.) However, I cannot use the make command, which is easier to use. I understand that there is some problem with linking the library. What is a good solution to this problem?

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• OpenGL setup on Windows

  - by kevin james

  I have been trying to use OpenGL for two days now. First on Mac, then on Windows. The problem with Mac is that it doesn't support the newer versions of OpenGL. I ran a tutorial that actually did get some things working, but it only works in XCode (i.e., I can't create a new file, paste in the same code, and get it to work). Because of these issues, I moved to Windows. My Windows 7 has OpenGL 4.3, which is the same that is used in alot of other tutorials. However, not one of these tutorials gives any instruction on how to set it up for the first time. I have come across some vague posts saying that some libraries need to be linked. But WHAT libraries, and HOW do I link them? Please help. I am pretty desperate to set this up as this project is due for work soon. I have actually used OpenGL before at my university, but the computers already had everything set up. The project itself is very easy, but setting up OpenGL is not something I know how to do.

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• Why, when on Kubuntu I lose internet connection, am I unable to reconnect?

  - by Jonathan

  Using Kubuntu 11.10. Sony Vaio computer. Network controller: Intel Corporation WiFi Link 5100. If I connect to a wireless network, and the signal drops, then I am unable to connect to any network without a reboot. I can assure that the issue has nothing to do with the computer going to sleep, as I have experienced the above while using my computer continuously. Here is exactly what happens: Connect to network (at University, where the connection is not so great). The connection is broken There are three other possible networks available, but none of them can be connected to. I have tried off and on sometimes for hours. I am always able to reestablish a connection after a reboot. I can only think of two explanations. The first is that a temp file is corrupted when the internet connection is abruptly dropped. The second is that my computer actually corrupts something before the loss of internet connection, which causes the loss in signal, and inability to reconnect. However, I am not confident that my explanations are complete, nor do I have any idea how to test these things.

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• When to use each user research method

  - by user12277104

  There are a lot of user research methods out there, but sometimes we get stuck in a rut, conducting all formative usability testing before coding, or running surveys to gather satisfaction data. I'll be the first to admit that it happens to me, but to get out of a rut, it just takes a minute to look at where I am in the design & development cycle, what kind(s) of data I need, and what methods are available to me. We need reminders, or refreshers, every once in a while. One tool I've found useful is a graphic organizer that I created many years ago. It's been through several revisions, as I've adapted it to the product cycles of the places I've worked, changed my mind about how to categorize it, and added methods that I've used or created over time. I shared a version of this table at the 2012 International UPA conference, and I was contacted by someone yesterday who wanted to use it in a university course on user-center design. I was flattered at the the thought, but embarrassed, because I was sure it needed updating -- that was a year ago, after all. But I opened it today, and really, there's not much I'd change -- sure, I could add some nuance regarding what types of formative testing, such as modality (remote, unmoderated remote, or in-person) or flavor of testing (RITE, RITE-Krug, comparative, performance), but I think it's pretty much ok as is. Click on the image below, to get the full-size PDF. And whether it's entirely "right" or "wrong" isn't the whole value of looking at these methods across the product lifecycle. The real value lies in the reminder that I have options. And what those options are change as the field changes, so while I don't expect this graphic to have an eternal shelf life, it's still ok a year after I last updated it. That said, if you find something missing or out of place, let me know :) 

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• Oracle Users - Are You Ready?!?!?

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

   By Karen Shamban At long last, it's time for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 to begin. After months of planning by attendees and at Oracle, the conference is about to begin. What's happening on the first day, Sunday, September 30? Registration Moscone West, Moscone South, and Hilton San Francisco, 7:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. Westin St. Francis, 3:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. Oracle University Pre-Conference Training Hotel Nikko and Hilton San Francisco, 8:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. Oracle Users Forum Moscone West, 8:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Oracle OpenWorld Opening Keynote, featuring Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Moscone North Hall D, 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Oracle OpenWorld Welcome Reception sponsored by Fujitsu Howard Street Tent and Yerba Buena Gardens, 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival Various times and locations It's never too late to attend Oracle OpenWorld - hope to see you there!

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• How do I become a developer?

  - by ATester

  Since many of you are already there I figured this might be a great place to invite ideas and suggestion for becoming a software developer. My background I have some basic knowledge of programming in VB and C++ from a course I had pursued 8 years ago. My main drawback is a lack of experience in software since I was in a teaching career until a year ago. I am working as a QA tester and finally got a chance to write some automation tests scripts using C#. I didn't have any prior knowledge of C# but I was able to figure my way through it. Questions Given this context: Would anyone have any ideas as to what would be a good approach to learn enough to actually be able to work as a developer? Does anyone have any suggestions as to what kind of learning path to adopt and which approaches speed up learning curve? Would pursuing university course be helpful in terms of knowledge gained? Are certification exams a way to go for a beginner? Are community college courses useful? What about courses offered by private institutes/centers? Any suggestion for some good books?

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• I need some career/education advice regarding computer science [on hold]

  - by user2521987

  So I'm a senior mathematics major this fall and I have only taken three CS classes (Java I, Java II, and C++). This summer, I am participating in a mathematics REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates), and I program in C++ about 8 hours a day...and I find that I absolutely love it. I love using programming to solve math problems in my research. I think I want to pursue a career in programming. I have a few options Stay at my university an extra 1-1.5 years (beyond the 4) and do a double major in Math/CS. This will put me in up to around 7-10k in debt (currently I have no debt and am scheduled to graduate debt free). Then apply to a masters in CS. Apply directly to a masters in CS from a math undergraduate degree. I don't like this idea because I likely won't get into a good program or funded with such little background. Go to graduate school, funded, in applied mathematics and try to further my knowledge in computer science while there. Then apply to a masters in CS. I'm not sure if 1 or 3 would be better. My end goal would be to go to a top 20-30 CS graduate program and to get a cool, good job. What would you recommend?

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• Choosing open source vs. proprietary CMS

  - by jkneip

  Hi- I've been tasked with redesigning a website for a small academic library. While only in charge of the site for 6 months, we've been maintaining static html pages edited in Dreamweaver for years. Last count of our total pages is around 400. Our university is going with an enterprise level solution called Sitefinity, although we maintain our own domain and are responsible to maintain our own presense. Some background-my library has a couple Microsoft IIS servers on which this static html site has been running. I'm advocating for the implementation of a CMS while doing this redesign. The problem is I'm basically the lone webmaster so I have no one to agree or disagree with my choice. There are also only 1-2 content editors right know for the site but a CMS could change that factor. I would like to use the functionality of having servers that run .NET and MS SQL but am more experience setting up and maintaining open source software like Wordpress or Drupal on web hosts. My main concern is choosing a CMS that will be easy to update / maintain / deal with upgrades (i.e., support) in case I'm not there in the future. So I'm wondering how to factor in the open source CMS vs. a relatively inexpensive commercial CMS decision and whether choosing PHP/MySQL vs. ASP.net framework for development environment will play into my decision. Thanks for any input that can be offered based on the details I've given. Thanks, Jason

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• The Start of a Blog

  - by dbradley

  So, here's my new blog up and running, who am I and what am I planning to write here?First off - here's a little about me:I'm a recent graduate from university (coming up to a year ago since I finished) studying Software Engineering on a four year course where the third year was an industrial placement. During the industrial placement I went to work for a company called Adfero in a "Technical Consultant" role as well as a junior "Information Systems Developer". Once I completed my placement I went back to complete my final year but also continued in my developer role 2/3 days a week with the company.Working part time while at uni always seems like a great idea until you get half way through the year. For me the problem was not so much having a lack of time, but rather a lack of interest in the course content having got a chance at working on real projects in a live environment. Most people who have been graduated a little while also find this - when looking back at uni work, it seem to be much more trivial from a problem solving point of view which I found to be true and I found key to uni work to actually be your ability to prove though how you talk about something that you comprehensively understand the basics.After completing uni I then returned full time to Adfero purely in the developer role which is where I've now been for almost a year and have now also taken on the title of "Information Systems Architect" where I'm working on some of the more high level design problems within the products.What I'm wanting to share on this blog is some of the interesting things I've learnt myself over the last year, the things they don't teach you in uni and pretty much anything else I find interesting! My personal favorite areas are text indexing, search and particularly good software engineering design - good design combined with good code makes the first step towards a well-written, maintainable piece of software.Hopefully I'll also be able to share a few of the products I've worked on, the mistake I've made and the software problems I've inherited from previous developers and had to heavily re-factor.

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• DDDNorth2 Bradford, 13th October 2012 - Async Patterns presentation and source code

  - by Liam Westley

  Many thanks to Andy Westgarth and his team for organising a fantastic conference at the rather elegant Bradford University School of Management. Also, a big congratulations to all the delegates who gave up there free time to come and hear us speak and who were, in general, enthusiastic and asked some cracking questions to keep us speakers on our toes. For those who attended my Async my source code and presentation are now available on GitHub, https://github.com/westleyl/DDDNorth2-AsyncPatterns If you are new to Git then the easiest client to install is GitHub for Windows, a graphical UI for accessing GitHub. Personally, I also have TortoiseGit installed – the file explorer add-in that works in a familiar manner to TortoiseSVN. As I mentioned during the presentation I have not included the sample data, the music files, in the source code placed on GitHub but I have included instructions on how to download them from http://silents.bandcamp.com and place them in the correct folders. What I forgot to mention is that Windows Media Player by default does not play Ogg Vorbis and Flac music files, however you can download the codec installer for these, for free, from http://xiph.org/dshow. I am planning to break down this little project into a series of blog posts, with each pattern being a single blog post over several weeks. In these I will flesh out the background behind the pattern, the basic goal being achieved and how to monitor the progress of the sample data being processed. Basically, what I said during the presentation and is missing from the slides.

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• Where to look for challenging jobs with a relaxed atmosphere?

  - by RBTree

  I'm a dev at one of the big-name tech companies. I like the job for many reasons: I do interesting work on a cool product I solve challenging problems and use a lot of high-level skills (quantitative, creative, writing, presenting) It pays well The problem is that I feel I need a more relaxed atmosphere (shorter hours, less performance pressure, and more flexibility), in order to free up time for other pursuits and reduce stress. The ideal would be a job that's around 30-35 hours a week, where there is flexibility to work more or less in a given week. Can anyone suggest where to look for a job like this, where I wouldn't have to sacrifice too much on the above points? (Obviously I would have to sacrifice pay.) My employer does not generally offer part-time employment. The closest thing I can think of is when I did summer internships at my university's CS department. The work was very intellectually challenging, but if I needed to go home a couple hours early or get flexibility on a due date, nobody batted an eyelash. However, I'd like to find out if there are alternatives to academia since from what I've seen the pay there is a gigantic drop from what I'm currently making. I've done freelance development before, but I do like that as an employee of a large company I have a lot of things taken care of for me (e.g. benefits and guaranteed stable employment).

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• TechEd 2010 Day Four: Learning how to help others learn

  - by BuckWoody

  I do quite a few presentations, and teach at the University of Washington, and also teach other classes. But I'm always learning from others how to help others learn. At events like TechEd I have access to some of the best speakers around, so I try to find out what they do that works. I attended a great session by allen White, in which he demonstrated a set of PowerShell scripts. He said that Dan Jones of the Microsoft Manageability team told him while he demonstrated a script he needed to provide some visual way to represent the process. Allen used one of the oldest visualizations around - a flowchart. It was the first time I'd seen one used to illustrate a PowerShell script, and it was very effective. I'm totally stealing the idea. All of us are teachers - we help others on our team understand what we're up to. Make sure you make notes for what you find effective in dealing with you, and then meld that into your own way of teaching. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Planning milestones and time

  - by Ignas

  I was hired by a marketing company a year ago initially for link building / SEO stuff, but I'm actually a Web developer and took the job just in desperation to have one (I'm still quite young and just finished 2nd year of University). From the 3rd day my boss realised that I'm not into that stuff at all and since he had an idea of a web based app we started to plan it. I estimated that it shouldn't take me longer than two months to do it, but as I was making it we soon realised that we want to add more and more stuff to make it even better. So the development on my own lasted for about 4 months, but then it became an enterprise size app and we hired another programmer to work along me. The guy was awesome at what he did, but because I was assigned to be programmer/project manager I had to set up milestones with deadlines and we missed most of them, because most of the time it was too much work, and my lack of experience kept me setting really optimistic deadlines. We still kept adding features and had changed the architecture of the application twice. My boss is a great guy and he gets that when we add features it expands the time frame in which things should be done so he wasn't angry at me nor the other guy. But I was feeling bad (I still am) that I suck at planning. I gained loads of experience from the programming side, but I still lack the management/planning skills which make me go nuts. So over the last year I have dedicated probably about 8 months of work to this app (obviously my studies affected it) and we're launching as a closed beta this month. So my question is how do I get better at planning/managing a project, how do you estimate the times? What do you take into consideration when setting goals. I'm working alone again because the other guy moved from the city. But I'm sure we'll be hiring to help me maintain it so I need to get better at it. Any hints, points or anything on the topic are appreciated.

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• How to REALLY start thinking in terms of objects?

  - by Mr Grieves

  I work with a team of developers who all have several years of experience with languages such as C# and Java. Most of them are young enough to have been shown OOP as a standard way to develop software in university and are very comfortable with concepts such as inheritance, abstraction, encapsulation and polymorphism. Yet, many of them, and I have to include myself, still tend to create classes which are meant to be used in a very functional fashion. The resulting software is often several smaller classes which correctly represent business objects which get passed through larger classes which only supply ways to modify and use those objects (functions). Large complex difficult-to-maintain classes named Manager are usually the result of such behaviour. I can see two theoretical reasons why people might write this type of code: It's easy to start thinking of everything in terms of the database Deep down, for me, a computer handling a web request feels more like a functional operation than an object oriented operation when you think about Request Handlers, Threads, Processes, CPU Cores and CPU operations... I want source code which is easy to read and easy to modify. I have seen excellent examples of OO code which meet these objectives. How can I start writing code like this? How I can I really start thinking in an object oriented fashion? How can I share such a mentality with my colleagues?

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• Learning node.js

  - by john smith

  I am not sure if this is the right place to ask but, I thought this was the most suitable. I recently graduated from university. Learned the full php stack; basically all the LAMP stuff, obviously without counting all the other subjects. Not even got my degree and this whole node.js booming out of nowhere. You can imagine how one can feel about this, the story is always the same: you never end learning, and studying. So I recently got my hands on node.js; reading books, tutorials, and everything imaginable on the internet. The problem is one and simple: this is nowhere near to having a teacher standing near you helping you understanding and solving your problems, especially when all you can do is post your doubts on a website and patiently wait for replies. It's not that it isn't good, it's just much slower than what I just expressed above. So, in short words: is there a place where one can find someone willing to teach you about such contents? This would obviously done via remote means, like skype and such. Can anyone here point me into the right direction? Or just downvote me for being in the wrong website? Thanks in advance.

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• Joining a company to get experience vs. going alone [closed]

  - by daniels

  My goal is to build a successful web startup, say the next Digg or Twitter, and I am in doubt regarding what is the best route to follow as a programmer. I see basically two options: Get an internship/job with an established online company, so that I could get a mentor and learn from more experienced programmers, learn their processes, methodology and so on. I could do this for 1-2 years, and then quit to start working on my own stuff. Start working on my own projects right away, starting with small ones and moving up gradually. This would give me more control on the things I would be working with, but I would lack contact with more experienced people, so I would need to figure basic things on my own. Doing both is not an option in my opinion, cause I would need to put a lot of effort/time into each if I was to learn/improve as a programmer. So is one route definitely better than the other? Is there a third one I am not considering? Background: I already work by myself developing content-based websites and doing SEO, and I am decent at it so money is not a problem. Last year I started learning to program, first by myself and now I enrolled in a CS degree on a good university.

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• Sample domain model for online store

  - by Carel

  We are a group of 4 software development students currently studying at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Currently, we are tasked with developing a web application that functions as a online store. We decided to do the back-end in Java while making use of Google Guice for persistence(which is mostly irrelevant for my question). The general idea so far to use PHP to create the website. We decided that we would like to try, after handing in the project, and register a business to actually implement the website. The problem we have been experiencing is with the domain model. These are mostly small issues, however they are starting to impact the schedule of our project. Since we are all young IT students, we have virtually no experience in the business world. As such, we spend quite a significant amount of time planning the domain model in the first place. Now, some of the issues we're picking up is say the reference between the Customer entity and the order entity. Currently, we don't have the customer id in the order entity and we have a list of order entities in the customer entity. Lately, I have wondered if the persistence mechanism will put the client id physically in the order table, even if it's not in the entity? So, I started wondering, if you load a customer object, it will search the entire order table for orders with the customer's id. Now, say you have 10 000 customers and 500 000 orders, won't this take an extremely long time? There are also some business processes that I'm not completely clear on. Finally, my question is: does anyone know of a sample domain model out there that is similar to what we're trying to achieve that will be safe to look at as a reference? I don't want to be accused of stealing anybody's intellectual property, especially since we might implement this as a business.

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• Using Clojure instead of Python for scalability (multi core) reasons, good idea?

  - by Vandell

  After reading http://clojure.org/rationale and other performance comparisons between Clojure and many languages, I started to think that apart from ease of use, I shouldn't be coding in Python anymore, but in Clojure instead. Actually, I began to fill irresponsisble for not learning clojure seeing it's benefits. Does it make sense? Can't I make really efficient use of all cores using a more imperative language like Python, than a lisp dialect or other functional language? It seems that all the benefits of it come from using immutable data, can't I do just that in Python and have all the benefits? I once started to learn some Common Lisp, read and done almost all exercices from a book I borrowod from my university library (I found it to be pretty good, despite it's low popularity on Amazon). But, after a while, I got myself struggling to much to do some simple things. I think there's somethings that are more imperative in their nature, that makes it difficult to model those thins in a functional way, I guess. The thing is, is Python as powerful as Clojure for building applications that takes advantages of this new multi core future? Note that I don't think that using semaphores, lock mechanisms or other similar concurrency mechanism are good alternatives to Clojure 'automatic' parallelization.

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• 3D space game development

  - by user1693061

  I want to develop a 3D game (sci-fi type with spaceships) which can be played on multiplayer mode and by multiplayer i mean around 10 players for start as it will be a personal testing project and mostly educational. I have been searching for some days about the available languages and engines but i am kinda confused. Since i have been learning Java for my 1st year in I.T university and i have pretty good understanding i thought i would go with the Java language and develop that game on an applet so it could be played on a browser. After going through an applet game tutorial i understood how graphics work on an applet. So.. 1st question: Could an applet carry the burden of a 3D game especially on multiplayer? My thinking: It's a space game so the graphics should not be such a big problem since it wont be that crowded with entities apart from ships, planets and some effects. If the java applet is not the way for my project i would't mind "developing it on desktop"(i mean not making it a browser game). 2nd question: Should i use Unity engine for my purpose(space game)? If not name other language/engine combo.

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• Why is CS never a topic of conversation of the layman? [closed]

  - by hydroparadise

  Granted, every profession has it's technicalities. If you are an MD, you better know the anatomy of the human body, and if you are astronomer, you better know your calculus. Yet, you don't have to know these more advance topics to know that smoking might give you lung cancer because of carcinogens or the moon revolves around the earth because of gravity (thank you Discovery Channel). There's sort of a common knowledge (at least in more developed countries) of these more advanced topics. With that said, why are things like recursive descent parsing, BNF, or Turing machines hardly ever mentioned outsided 3000 or 4000 level classes in a university setting or between colleagues? Even back in my days before college in my pursuit of knowledge on how computers work, these very important topics (IMHO) never seem to get the light of day. Many different sources and sites go into "What is a processor?" or "What is RAM?", or "What is an OS?". You might get lucky and discover something about programming languages and how they play a role in how applications are created, but nothing about the tools for creating the language itself. To extend this idea, Dennis Ritchie died shortly after Steve Jobs, yet Dennis Ritchie got very little press compared to Steve Jobs. So, the heart of my question: Does the public in general not care to hear about computer science topics that make the technology in their lives work, or does the computer science community not lend itself to the general public to close the knowledge gap? Am I wrong to think the general public has the same thirst for knowledge on how things work as I do? Please consider the question carefully before answering or vote closing please.

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• How do I use an API?

  - by GRardB

  Background I have no idea how to use an API. I know that all APIs are different, but I've been doing research and I don't fully understand the documentation that comes along with them. There's a programming competition at my university in a month and a half that I want to compete in (revolved around APIs) but nobody on my team has ever used one. We're computer science majors, so we have experience programming, but we've just never been exposed to an API. I tried looking at Twitter's documentation, but I'm lost. Would anyone be able to give me some tips on how to get started? Maybe a very easy API with examples, or explaining essential things about common elements of different APIs? I don't need a full-blown tutorial on Stack Overflow; I just need to be pointed in the right direction. Update The programming languages that I'm most fluent in are C (simple text editor usually) and Java (Eclipse). In an attempt to be more specific with my question: I understand that APIs (and yes, external libraries are what I was referring to) are simply sets of functions. Question I guess what I'm trying to ask is how I would go about accessing those functions. Do I need to download specific files and include them in my programs, or do they need to be accessed remotely, etc.?

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