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• Quantifying the value of refactoring in commercial terms

  - by Myles McDonnell

  Here is the classic scenario; Dev team build a prototype. Business mgmt like it and put it into production. Dev team now have to continue to deliver new features whilst at the same time pay the technical debt accrued when the code base was a prototype. My question is this (forgive me, it's rather open ended); how can the value of the refactoring work be quantified in commercial terms? As developers we can clearly understand and communicate the value in technical terms, such a the removal of code duplication, the simplification of an object model and so on. But this means little to an executive focussed on the commercial elements. What will mean something to this executive is the dev. team being able to deliver requirements at faster velocity. Just making this statement without any metrics that clearly quantify return on investment (increased velocity in return for resource allocated to refactoring) carries little weight. I'm interested to hear from anyone who has had experience, positive or negative, in relation to the above. ----------------- EDIT ---------------- Thanks for the responses so far, all of which I think are good. What I want to develop is a metric that proves (or disproves!) all of these statements. A report that ties velocity to refactoring and shows a positive effect.

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• EMEA Analytics & Data Integration Oracle Partner Forum

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  MONDAY 12TH NOVEMBER, 2012 IN LONDON (UK) For Oracle Partners across Europe, Middle East and Africa: come to hear the latest news from Oracle OpenWorld about Oracle BI & Data Integration, and propel your business growth as an Oracle partner. This event should appeal to BI or Data Integration specialised partners, Executives, Sales, Pre-sales and Solution architects: with a choice of participation in the plenary day and then a set of special interest (technical) sessions. The follow on breakout sessions from the 13th November provide deeper dives and technical training for those of you who wish to stay for more detailed and hands-on workshops. Keynote: Andrew Sutherland, SVP Oracle Technology Hot agenda items will include: The Fusion Middleware Stack: Engineered to work together A complete Analytics and Data Integration Solution Architecture: Big Data and Little Data combined In-Memory Analytics for Extreme Insight Latest Product Development Roadmap for Data Integration and Analytics Venue:  Oracles London CITY Moorgate Offices Places are limited, Register from this Link {see Register button at bottom right of page}. Note: Registration for the conference and the deeper dives and technical training is free of charge to OPN member Partners, but you will be responsible for your own travel and hotel expenses. Event Schedule During this event you can learn about partner success stories, participate in an array of break-out sessions, exchange information with other partners and enjoy a vibrant panel discussion. Nov. 12th  : Day 1 Main Plenary Session : Full day, starting 10.30 am.     Oracle Hosted Dinner in the Evening Nov. 13th  onwards Architecture Masterclass : IM Reference Architecture – Big Data and Little Data combined (1 day) BI-Apps Bootcamp  (4-days) Oracle GoldenGate workshop (1 day) Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle Enterprise Data Quality workshop (1 day)   For further information and detail download the Agenda (pdf) or contact Michael Hallett at [email protected].

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• Handling extremely large numbers in a language which can't?

  - by Mallow

  I'm trying to think about how I would go about doing calculations on extremely large numbers (to infinitum - intergers no floats) if the language construct is incapable of handling numbers larger than a certain value. I am sure I am not the first nor the last to ask this question but the search terms I am using aren't giving me an algorithm to handle those situations. Rather most suggestions offer a language change or variable change, or talk about things that seem irrelevant to my search. So I need a little guideance. I would sketch out an algorithm like this: Determine the max length of the integer variable for the language. If a number is more than half the length of the max length of the variable split it in an array. (give a little play room) Array order [0] = the numbers most to the right [n-max] = numbers most to the left Ex. Num: 29392023 Array[0]:23, Array[1]: 20, array[2]: 39, array[3]:29 Since I established half the length of the variable as the mark off point I can then calculate the ones, tenths, hundredths, etc. Place via the halfway mark so that if a variable max length was 10 digits from 0 to 9999999999 then I know that by halfing that to five digits give me some play room. So if I add or multiply I can have a variable checker function that see that the sixth digit (from the right) of array[0] is the same place as the first digit (from the right) of array[1]. Dividing and subtracting have their own issues which I haven't thought about yet. I would like to know about the best implementations of supporting larger numbers than the program can.

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• Open Source sponsored feature development

  - by Suma

  I am considering to sponsor a development of some particular features in some Open Source tools. I would like the results of the work to be available publicly, and if possible, to be included in the main product line. The features are usually something which is of general use, but not very critical, and no one has currently a plan to develop it. For illustration, imagine I would like to use MinGW for Win32 development, but I miss a post mortem debugging option, I would like this feature to be implemented and I am willing to pay $1000 for it. Is there some common way how to proceed, or is this wildly per-project dependent? Are there some general guidelines how to contact the product developers, or are there some common meeting places where smart open source people who might interested to participate in such sponsored development meet, which I should visit to advertise the sponsoring option? Are there some specific ways how to talk about the job to be more attractive to people participating in open source (e.g. it might be more interesting for them to participate in a contest than just to take a payed job, which might have a bit of mundane feel)? Or perhaps is this something which you think has little chance to succeed, because perhaps money has very little value for open source developers? Any tips and experiences from someone who has some experience of open source sponsorhip from any side (sponsor or the developer) are welcome.

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• Image 1 becomes image 2 with sliding effect from left to right?

  - by Paul

  I would like to show a second image appearing while a "door" is closing on my character. I've got my character in the middle of the screen and a door coming from the left. When the door passes my character, I would like to have this second image appearing little by little. So far, I've gotten by with fadingOut the character and then fadingIn my second image of the character at the same position when the door is completely closed, but I would like to have both of them at the same time. (the effect that image 1 becomes image 2 when the door is sliding from left to right). Would you know how to do this with Cocos2d? Here are the images : at first, the character is blue, and the door is coming from the left : Then, behind the black door, the character becomes red, but only behind this door, so it stays blue when the door is not on him, and will become completely red when the door passes the character : EDIT : with this code, the black door hides the red and blue rectangles : (And if i add each of my layers at a different depth, and only use GL_LESS, same thing) blue.position = ccp( size.width*0.5 , size.height/2 ); red.position = ccp( size.width*0.46 , size.height/2 ); black.position = ccp( size.width*0.1 , size.height/2 ); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); [batch addChild:red z:0]; [batch addChild:black z:2]; glDepthFunc(GL_GREATER); [batch addChild:blue z:1]; glDepthFunc(GL_LESS); id action1 = [CCMoveTo actionWithDuration:3 position:ccp(size.width,size.height/2)]; [black runAction: [CCSequence actions:action1, nil]];

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• Library Organization in .NET

  - by Greg Ros

  I've written a .NET bitwise operations library as part of my projects (stuff ranging from get MSB set to some more complicated bitwise transformations) and I mean to release it as free software. I'm a bit confused about a design aspect of the library, though. Many of the methods/transformations in the library come with different endianness. A simple example is a getBitAt method that regards index 0 as the least significant bit, or the most significant bit, depending on the version used. In practice, I've found that using separate functions for different endianness results in much more comprehensible and reusable code than assuming all operations are little-endian or something. I'm really stumped regarding how best to package the library. Should I have methods that have LE and BE versions take an enum parameter in their signature, e.g. Endianness.Little, Endianness.Big? Should I have different static classes with identically named methods? such as MSB.GetBit and LSB.GetBit On a much wider note, is there a standard I could use in cases like this? Some guide? Is my design issue trivial? I have a perfectionist bent, and I sometimes get stuck on tricky design issues like this... Note: I've sort of realized I'm using endianness somewhat colloquially to refer to the order/place value of digital component parts (be they bits, bytes, or words) in a larger whole, in any setting. I'm not talking about machine-level endianness or serial transmission endianness. Just about place-value semantics in general. So there isn't a context of targeting different machines/transmission techniques or something.

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• Does F# kill C++?

  - by MarkPearl

  Okay, so the title may be a little misleading… but I am currently travelling and so have had very little time and access to resources to do much fsharping – this has meant that I am right now missing my favourite new language. I was interested to see this post on Stack Overflow this evening concerning the performance of the F# language. The person posing the question asked 8 key points about the F# language, namely… How well does it do floating-point? Does it allow vector instructions How friendly is it towards optimizing compilers? How big a memory foot print does it have? Does it allow fine-grained control over memory locality? Does it have capacity for distributed memory processors, for example Cray? What features does it have that may be of interest to computational science where heavy number processing is involved? Are there actual scientific computing implementations that use it? Now, I don’t have much time to look into a decent response and to be honest I don’t know half of the answers to what he is asking, but it was interesting to see what was put up as an answer so far and would be interesting to get other peoples feedback on these questions if they know of anything other than what has been covered in the answer section already.

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• Confused about javascript module pattern implementation

  - by Damon

  I have a class written on a project I'm working on that I've been told is using the module pattern, but it's doing things a little differently than the examples I've seen. It basically takes this form: (function ($, document, window, undefined) { var module = { foo : bar, aMethod : function (arg) { className.bMethod(arg); }, bMethod : function (arg) { console.log('spoons'); } }; window.ajaxTable = ajaxTable; })(jQuery, document, window); I get what's going on here. But I'm not sure how this relates to most of the definitions I've seen of the module (or revealing?) module pattern. like this one from briancray var module = (function () { // private variables and functions var foo = 'bar'; // constructor var module = function () { }; // prototype module.prototype = { constructor: module, something: function () { } }; // return module return module; })(); var my_module = new module(); Is the first example basically like the second except everything is in the constructor? I'm just wrapping my head around patterns and the little things at the beginnings and endings always make me not sure what I should be doing.

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• Which web site gives the most accurate indication of a programmer's capabilities?

  - by Jerry Coffin

  If you were hiring programmers, and could choose between one of (say) the top 100 coders on topcoder.com, or one of the top 100 on stackoverflow.com, which would you choose? At least to me, it would appear that topcoder.com gives a more objective evaluation of pure ability to solve problems and write code. At the same time, despite obvious technical capabilities, this person may lack any hint of social skills -- he may be purely a "lone coder", with little or no ability to help/work with others, may lack mentoring ability to help transfer his technical skills to others, etc. On the other hand, stackoverflow.com would at least appear to give a much better indication of peers' opinion of the coder in question, and the degree to which his presence and useful and helpful to others on the "team". At the same time, the scoring system is such that somebody who just throws up a lot of mediocre (or even poor answers) will almost inevitably accumulate a positive total of "reputation" points -- a single up-vote (perhaps just out of courtesy) will counteract the effects of no fewer than 5 down-votes, and others are discouraged (to some degree) from down-voting because they have to sacrifice their own reputation points to do so. At the same time, somebody who makes little or no technical contribution seems unlikely to accumulate a reputation that lands them (even close to) the top of the heap, so to speak. So, which provides a more useful indication of the degree to which this particular coder is likely to be useful to your organization? If you could choose between them, which set of coders would you rather have working on your team?

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• Circle to Circle collision, checking each circle against all others

  - by user14861

  I'm currently coding a little circle to circle collision demo but I've got a little stuck. I think I currently have the code to detect collision but I'm not sure how to loop through my list of circles and check them off against one another. Collision check code: public static Vector2 GetIntersectionDepth(Circle a, Circle b) { float xValue = a.Center.X - b.Center.X; float yValue = a.Center.Y - b.Center.Y; Vector2 depth = Vector2.Zero; float distance = Vector2.Distance(a.Center, b.Center); if (a.Radius + b.Radius > distance) { float result = (a.Radius + b.Radius) - distance; depth.X = (float)Math.Cos(result); depth.Y = (float)Math.Sin(result); } return depth; } Loop through code: Vector2 depth = Vector2.Zero; for (int i = 0; i < bounds.Count; i++) for (int j = i+1; j < bounds.Count; j++) { depth = CircleToCircleIntersection.GetIntersectionDepth(bounds[i], bounds[j]); } Clearly I'm a complete newbie, wondering if anyone can give any suggestions or point out my errors, thanks in advance. :)

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• Understanding how memory contents map into a struct

  - by user95592

  I am not able to understand how bytes in memory are being mapped into a struct. My machine is a little-endian x86_64. The code was compiled with gcc 4.7.0 from the Win64 mingw32-64 distribution for Win64. These are contents of the relevant memory fragment: ...450002cf9fe5000040115a9fc0a8fe... And this is the struct definition: typedef struct ip4 { unsigned int ihl :4; unsigned int version :4; uint8_t tos; uint16_t tot_len; uint16_t id; uint16_t frag_off; // flags=3 bits, offset=13 bits uint8_t ttl; uint8_t protocol; uint16_t check; uint32_t saddr; uint32_t daddr; /*The options start here. */ } ip4_t; When a pointer to such an structure (let it be *ip4) is initialized to the starting address of the above pasted memory region, this is what the debugger shows for the struct's fields: ip4: address=0x8da36ce ip4->ihl: address=0x8da36ce, value=0x5 ip4->version: address=0x8da36ce, value=0x4 ip4->tos: address=0x8da36d2, value=0x9f ip4->tot_len: address=0x8da36d4, value=0x0 ... I see how ihl and version are mapped: 4 bytes for a long integer, little-endian. But I don't understand how tos and tot_len are mapped; which bytes in memory correspond to each one of them. Thank you in advance.

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• Booting Error while using 12.04 booting from GRUB

  - by Paul Z.

  my name is Paul. I have encountered an issue relating to GRUB booting and the booting process in general. I have been running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on my machine for quite a while. Before that, i had (before) 10.04, 11.04, 11.10, etc. I have been running Ubuntu, in general, but more specifically 12.04 for a long time with little to no problems. The problem: Earlier today, i was using my machine and then decided to take a little break. I shut down my machine (laptop, in case anyone was wondering) and left. Later, I came back ready to start it up and continue. I started it up and it took me to the Toshiba screen (like normal) then to the GRUB screen. I guessed that nothing was truly wrong, and chose the first option (something around the lines of: Ubuntu, with linux 3.22.0-35-generic). I waited for a bit and it still displayed the same purple screen. I restarted it and now chose the option like the first but with recovery at the end. Same result. Later, I waited longer and found that my computer came up with a bunch of lines of script. I waited longer but nothing new happened. What are your suggestions as to fix this problem? I will let my computer run overnight with the recovery setting and will let you know what the result is. Until then, please help. Thank you, your time and effort is greatly appreciated!

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• UPDATE FOR BI PUBLISHER ENTERPRISE 10.1.3.4.2 NOVEMBER 2011

  - by Tim Dexter

  It's Friday, that means its patch release time. Why do we do this to ourselves, 'we'll release on Friday!' It might 11.59 on Friday but by golly we'll have released on Friday. I can remember a release of BIP years ago that for some reason we went for 12/31 as a release date ... were we mad? I seem to remember we made it but talk about ridiculous pressure! The latest 10g rollup is out in the wild and available from Oracle support. A bug fixing rollup but worth getting to and know that support will want you to get to it and re-test before going forward on an SR. One simple but very useful fix or enhancement:[Cause of the bug] @ ================== @ Customer reports that despite the clock being shown, end users are clicking @ on the View button repeatedly as the initial generation is taking some time.   @ If the button were to be grayed out then  this would prevent the users @ requesting the report more than  once.  Repeated requests are causing a @ system overload and as this is their Production  instance this is extremely @ important to the customer. @ . @ [The Fix] @ ========= @ Added the logic to disable the button after the user clicks on the "view" @ button and re-enable it when the report is loaded. I told a group of customers once that they have a headache and we have a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, alright, I actually said 'aspirin'. This little gem of a fix helps relieve another little headache that our aspirin was causing. The patch number for all this BIP pain killing is 13399232, enjoy!

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• Scheme vs Haskell for an Introduction to Functional Programming?

  - by haziz

  I am comfortable with programming in C and C#, and will explore C++ in the future. I may be interested in exploring functional programming as a different programming paradigm. I am doing this for fun, my job does not involve computer programming, and am somewhat inspired by the use of functional programming, taught fairly early, in computer science courses in college. Lambda calculus is certainly beyond my mathematical abilities, but I think I can handle functional programming. Which of Haskell or Scheme would serve as a good intro to functional programming? I use emacs as my text editor and would like to be able to configure it more easily in the future which would entail learning Emacs Lisp. My understanding, however, is that Emacs Lisp is fairly different from Scheme and is also more procedural as opposed to functional. I would likely be using "The Little Schemer" book, which I have already bought, if I pursue Scheme (seems to me a little weird from my limited leafing through it). Or would use the "Learn You a Haskell for Great Good" if I pursue Haskell. I would also watch the Intro to Haskell videos by Dr Erik Meijer on Channel 9. Any suggestions, feedback or input appreciated. Thanks. P.S. BTW I also have access to F# since I have Visual Studio 2010 which I use for C# development, but I don't think that should be my main criteria for selecting a language.

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• Automatic Generalization

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have been interested in functional programming since college. I played around a little with LISP back then, but I have not had an opportunity since then. Now that F# ships standard with VS 2010, I figured now is my chance. So, I was reading up on it a little over the weekend when I came across a very interesting topic. F# includes a concept called "Automatic Generalization". As I understand it, the compiler will look at your method and analyze how you are using parameters. It will automatically switch to a generic parameter if it is possible based on your usage. Wow! I am looking forward to playing with this. I have long been an advocate of using the most generic types possible especially when developing library classes. Use the highest level base class that you can get away with. Use an interface instead of a specific implementation. I don't advocate passing object around, but you get the idea. Tools like resharper, fxCop, and most static code analysis tools provide guidance to help you identify when a more generalized type is possible, but this is the first time I have heard about the compiler taking matters into its own hands. I like the sound of this. We'll see if it is a good idea or not. What are your thoughts? Am I missing the mark on what Automatic Generalization does in F#? How would this work in C#? Do you see any problems with this?

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• Does anybody know of any resources to achieve this particular "2.5D" isometric engine effect?

  - by Craig Whitley

  I understand this is a little vague, but I was hoping somebody might be able to describe a high-level workflow or link to a resource to be able to achieve a specific isometric "2.5D" tile engine effect. I fell in love with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6ISVaM5Ww this engine. Especially with the lighting and the shaders! He has a brief description of how he achieved what he did, but I could really use a brief flow of where you would start, what you would read up on and learn and the logical order to implement these things. A few specific questions: 1) Is there a heightmap on the ground texture that lets the light reflect brighter on certain parts of it? 2) "..using a special material which calculates the world-space normal vectors of every pixel.." - is this some "magic" special material he has created himself, or can you hazard a guess at what he means? 3) with relation to the above quote - what does he mean by 'world-space normal vectors of every pixel'? 4) I'm guessing I'm being a little bit optimistic when I ask if there's any 'all-in-one' tutorial out there? :)

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• Showing Egde Shaped Event Duration in StreamInsight using Debugger

  Whilst writing some courseware I wanted to be able to see the start and end times of Edge shaped events from within the debugger.  A quick recap on Edge events At the start of the event you do not know the end time and most probably cannot work it out or you should be using one of the other shapes. You enqueue an event (Start Edge) with the start time and payload of the event.  The end time of the event is set to infinity When you see the end edge come through, you enqueue another event (End Edge) with the previous start time and payload and restate the event’s end time.  This is the Retract Event All seems simple enough.  The problem is the debugger is a little shy about showing you what you need but you can get it to show you everything by also reading this article Here’s what I mean. Here is what the Event Debugger looks like by default when viewing 2 complete edge events.  Notice how all the end times are set to infinity   The above does not tell you for how long an event was valid.  I then add the “NewEndTime” column to the debugger output and there I can now see the duration of events.  You will see the Retract events (End Edge) have the same start time and payload as their respective start events (Start Edge)   You can follow the exact same logic when looking at Interval shape events.  They look a little different on the output adapter but using this article you can easily see what is happening.

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• Windows 8 App Downloads Increasing + Over 5,000 Apps Available

  - by David Paquette

  Windows 8 will be unleashed on the general public tomorrow and I thought it would be a good time to review some of the numbers I have been tracking over the last month. Downloads of Windows 8 Apps have been steadily increasing over the last month.  Below is screenshot from the App Summary page for my Windows 8 app.  The blue line is my app, while the orange line is average for the top 5 apps in that subcategory.  Considering the large gap between the 2, I think it is safe to assume that my app is NOT in the top 5 in the subcategory. The spike in the last couple of days is fairly dramatic and I am a little surprised by that.  I would have expected that kind of spike on the days following the official release as opposed to the days leading up to the release.   Finally, the all important App count.  There have been some stories floating around that the Window 8 Store is a ghost town and that there are no apps available.  I think these might be exaggerating the situation a little.  As of this morning, in the US store there are over 5000 apps available for download.  Obviously a far cry from the hundreds of thousands available in other app stores, but we are seeing solid growth in this number. Less than a month ago, that number was 2000. That means the store more than doubled in less than a month. If the growth continues, it won’t be long before the Widows 8 Store is filled with all the apps you need (and a whole lot you don’t need).

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• Developer momentum on open source projects

  - by sashang

  Hi I've been struggling to develop momentum contributing to open source projects. I have in the past tried with gcc and contributed a fix to libstdc++ but it was a once off and even though I spent months in my spare time on the dev mailing list and reading through things I just never seemed to develop any momentum with the code. Eventually I unsubscribed and got my free time back and uncluttered my mailbox. Like a lot of people I have some little open source defunct projects lying around on the net, but they're not large and I'm the only contributor. At the moment I'm more interested in contributing to a large open source project and want to know how people got started because I find it difficult while working full time to develop any momentum with the code base. Other more regular contributors, who are on the project full-time, are able to make changes at will and as result enter that positive feedback cycle where they understand the code and also know where it's heading. It makes the barrier to entry higher for those that come along later. My questions are to people who actively contribute to large opensource projects, like the Linux kernel, or gcc or clang/llvm or anything else with say a developer head count of more than 10. How did you get started? Was there a large chunk of time in your life that you just could dedicate to working on the project? I know in Linus's case he had a chunk of time (6 months) to get it started. What barriers to entry did you encounter? Can you describe the initial stages of the time spent with the project, from when you had little understanding of the code to when you understood enough to commit regularly. Thanks

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• Software Licencing [closed]

  - by Craig

  A colleague of mine wanted a means to do something, so it was suggested that I write some software to do this. The software has turned into more than the original specification and is now something rather complex, however it is not fully functional still. My colleague has not paid me anything so far and I am unwilling to continue writing the software until some faith has been reciprocated in my direction, as I have put a lot of effort into writing the software. I am also unwilling to finish the software as I do not want to give away a huge chunk of my time and effort away as free, neither do I want to be under compensated for my efforts. Some concerns I have. If I finish the software, what if the client doesn't pay me anything or pays too little, or what if I write the software to a usable level, but not complete and the client pays me a too little. I have lost my motivation to finish the software, as more and more specifications have been added to the software and I have developed a substantially complex piece of software and been effectively paid nothing. To finish the software, I need motivation, money would do this, however the client doesn't want to pay for something that isn't complete, yet keeps adding more requirements. I seem to be in a catch 22 with this, as I have developed some software on faith and have had no faith reciprocated in my direction. I'm really not sure how to get some payment from the client or on how to develop a licencing model so that I get some money from the client and development resumes.

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• Introducing Code Map for Visual Studio 2012 September CTP

  - by krislankford

  As part of the Visual Studio 2012 CTP for September, Visual Studio got a little sexier at helping you discover and visualize your code. The introduction of the Code Map feature helps compliment the variety of other tools that are included with Visual Studio to help you analyze and visualize your projects and solutions. Code Map leverages the dgml format within Visual Studio that is currently used b the Architecture and Modeling tools. This is a nice addition that gets us from point A to point B a little faster. The great thing about Code Map is that you can gain access to the functionality from directly within your code from the context menu. This Code Map functionality is also context specific based on your cursor. You can evaluate and add items such as methods and variables directly to the Code Map window. As you add items the Code Map surface is updated to show your new item plus any relationships and dependencies that have been introduced in your code. Something that is also very nice is that the Code Map surface is interactive and allows you to use the F12 button (Go To Definition) which can help you navigate your code especially is you are adding items that span multiple files or projects. To get started all you have to do is go out and download the September CTP for Visual Studio 2012 located here. Happy Coding!   Code Map Window

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• Earmarks of a Professional PHP Programmer

  - by Scotty C.

  I'm a 19 year old student who really REALLY enjoys programming, and I'm hoping to glean from your years of experience here. At present, I'm studying PHP every chance I get, and have been for about 3 years, although I've never taken any formal classes. I'd love to some day be a programmer full time, and make a good career of it. My question to you is this: What do you consider to be the earmarks or traits of a professional programmer? Mainly in the field of PHP, but other, more generalized qualifications are also more than welcome, as I think PHP is more of a hobbyist language and may not be the language of choice in the eyes of potential employers. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Above all, I don't want to wast time on something that isn't worth while. I'm currently feeling pretty confident in my knowledge of PHP as a language, and I know that I could build just about anything I need and have it "work", but I feel sorely lacking in design concepts and code structure. I can even write object oriented code, but in my personal opinion, that isn't worth a hill of beans if it isn't organized well. For this reason, I bought Matt Zandstra's book "PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice" and have been reading that a little every day. Anyway, I'm starting to digress a little here, so back to the original question. What advice would you give to an aspiring programmer who wants to make an impact in this field? Also, on a side note, I've been working on a project with a friend of mine that would give a fairly good idea of where I'm at coding wise. I'm gonna give a link, I don't want anyone to feel as though I'm pushing or spamming here, so don't click it if you don't want to. But if you are interested on giving some feedback there as well, you can see the code on github. I'm known as The Craw there. https://github.com/PureChat/PureChat--Beta-/tree/

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• Never Bet Against the Impossible

  - by BuckWoody

  My uncle used to say “If a man tells you that his car squirts milk in his eye when you lift the hood, don’t bet against that. You’ll end up with milk in your eye.” My friend Allen White tells me this is taken from a play (and was said about playing cards), but I think the sentiment holds, even in database work. I mentioned the other day that you should allow the other person to talk and actively listen before you propose a solution. Well, I saw a consultant “bet against the impossible”  the other day – and it bit her. She explained to the person telling her the problem that the situation simply couldn’t exist that way, and he proceeded to show her that it did. She got silent, typed a few things, muttered a little, and then said “well, must be something else.” She just couldn’t admit she was wrong. So don’t go there. If someone explains a problem to you with their database, listen with purpose, and then explore the troubleshooting steps you know to find the problem. But keep your absolutes to yourself. In fact, I have a friend that has recently sent me one of those. He connects to a system with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) version 2008 (if I recall correctly) and it shows a certain version number of the target system in the connection tab. Then he connects to it using SSMS 2008 R2 and gets a different number. Now, as far as I know, we didn’t change the connection string information, and that’s provided by the target system, so this is impossible. But I won’t tell him that. Not until I look a little more. :) Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Transition from 2D to 3D Game development [closed]

  - by jakebird451

  I have been working in the 2D world for a long time from manual blitting in windows to SDL to Python (pygame, pyopengl) and a bunch in between. Needless to say I have been programming for a while. So a while ago I started to program in OpenGL via C++ on my Mac. I then got a little intricate with my work after a while (3D models with skeleton structure and terrain development). After a long time of tinkering, I stopped due to the heavy work just to yield a low level understanding of how OpenGL works. Still interested in Graphics and Game Development I went on a search for a stable game engine with some features to grow on. Licence Requirement: Anything other than GPL (LGPL will do) OS Requirement: Mac & Windows Shader: GLSL or CG (GLSL preferred due to experience) Models: Any model structure with rigging (bone) support & animation I am looking at http://www.ogre3d.org/ currently and am starting to meddle around with some examples. However I am a little reluctant to spend a lot of time on it only to yield another dead end. So instead of falling down a spiraling black pit, I am posting my question to you guys to lead me in the right direction based on my requirements. How was your experience with the engine you recommend? Is it well documented? Does it have well documented examples? Any library requirements (Boost, libpng, etc)?

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• Developing momentum on open source projects

  - by sashang

  Hi I've been struggling to develop momentum contributing to open source projects. I have in the past tried with gcc and contributed a fix to libstdc++ but it was a once off and even though I spent months in my spare time on the dev mailing list and reading through things I just never seemed to develop any momentum with the code. Eventually I unsubscribed and got my free time back and uncluttered my mailbox. Like a lot of people I have some little open source defunct projects lying around on the net, but they're not large and I'm the only contributor. At the moment I'm more interested in contributing to a large open source project and want to know how people got started because I find it difficult while working full time to develop any momentum with the code base. Other more regular contributors, who are on the project full-time, are able to make changes at will and as result enter that positive feedback cycle where they understand the code and also know where it's heading. It makes the barrier to entry higher for those that come along later. My questions are to people who actively contribute to large opensource projects, like the Linux kernel, or gcc or clang/llvm or anything else with say a developer head count of more than 10. How did you get started? Was there a large chunk of time in your life that you just could dedicate to working on the project? I know in Linus's case he had a chunk of time (6 months) to get it started. What barriers to entry did you encounter? Can you describe the initial stages of the time spent with the project, from when you had little understanding of the code to when you understood enough to commit regularly. Thanks

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