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• Good ruby book with exercises? [closed]

  - by watabou

  I find that I learn the best with a book that has a number of exercises at the end of each chapters. A great example of this is C++ Primer Plus by Stephen Prata or Scientific Programming with Python or the Horstmann Java books. All of those books have a number of programming exercises at the end tailored to that specific chapter. I love the styles of those book and was wondering if there is anything similar for Ruby. I've extensively searched google for this and people have been suggesting different stuff like different websites like Ruby Koans and LRTHW but honestly, I've tried those and they aren't for me. I taught myself Python with the the Hard Way book and to be honest, it's not for me. Now, forgive me if I'm blunt but does anyone have a Ruby programming BOOK (i.e. not a website), that has EXERCISES in it? I do NOT want a website, unless the book is only or is freely available online by the author, similar to the Hard Way books. I would say that I'm a intermediate level programmer with only some Ruby experience but if you know of a beginner book on Ruby, that is fine too. Thanks in advance, I would really really appreciate the help.

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• What is your unique programming problem-solving style? [closed]

  - by gcc

  Everyone has their own styles and technique for approaching and solving real world problems. These distinguish us from other people or other programmers. (Actually, I think it make us more desirable as programmers and improves computer science) To improve, we read a lot of books; for example, programming style, how to solve problems, how to approach problems, software and algorithms, et al. Can I learn your technique? In other words, if someone gives you a problem, at first step, what are you doing to solve it? I want learn the style in which you approach, analyze, and solve a problem. EDIT: every programmer is a unique instance; each of us approach problems and converge on solutions in our own... idiomatic manner. This manner is sometimes a quirk of training, a bias of tools, but often it is an insightful nugget, a little golden hammer that cracks nuts just slightly faster then others. When answering, give your general approaches but also take a moment to identify how you look at things in ways that your peers do not. Let's call this your Unique Solving Perspective, or USP.

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• Does it make sense to develop open source python library for database inspection?

  - by gruszczy

  Some time ago I came up with an idea for a library for database inspection. I started developing it and got some very basic functionality, just to check if that's possible. Recently however, I get second thoughts, whether such project would really be useful. I am actually planning to develop following software suite: library for python, that would provide easy interface to inspect database structure, desktop application in PyQt that would use the interface to provide graphical database inspection, web application in Django that would use the interface to provide database inspection through the browser. Do you think such suite would be useful for other developers/database administrators/analysts? I know, that there is pgadmin for PostgreSQL and some tool for sqlite3 and that there is Java tool called DBInspect. Usually I would be against creating new tool and rather join existing project, but I am not Java programmer (and I would rather stick to python or C, which I like) and none of these projects provide a library for database inspection. Anyway I would like to hear some opinions from fellow developers, whether such project make sense or I should try to spend my free time on developing something else.

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• Visual WebGui helps Dawsons put its Windows Forms HR system on the web

  - by Webgui

  Dawsons needed to upgrade their existing Windows Forms LAN human resources system to allow better and flexible access to the ever increasing data size as labor hire clients are demanding easy access to copies of tickets and licenses and etc. The company has some 30,000 applicants on file, but access to this data has been complex and limited with the current system. Therefore the IT department was asked to find a possible solutions that would allow creating a web based application while utilizing as much of the existing Windows Forms code as possible. Visual WebGui was found to be highly regarded in many frameworks comparisons so the team decided to give Visual WebGui a try. It didn’t take long for them to recognize that the Visual WebGui controls appear and react over the web the same as desktop controls. This and the fact that most of the code was directly ported which saved Dawsons hundreds of development hours are what make Visual WebGui so unique and productive. “My first impression of Visual WebGui was perhaps disbelief. Not being a seasoned Web programmer, I initially found it hard to accept so much functionality from a web based application. Also, the speed is exceptional” said John Sainsbury, Financial Controller of the Dawsons Group who added “Since working with Visual WebGui, I have showcased parts of the application to our major clients, some of whom use SAP portals, and they are amazed.” The result was so satisfying that the company is now looking to produce a mobile version for accessing the labor pool on the go. “By removing the barriers of the local network, Visual WebGui has changed how we can do business” said Lloyd Everist, General Manager Dawsons Group. Read more about this story

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• using cin and cout in textmate [migrated]

  - by That Guy

  I am usually a Java programmer, and have used textmate for that almost exclusively, but lately I started using C++ with it. but when i use even the most basic programs and incorporate the cin keyword, and run the program, I dont get an oppurtunity to put in anything during runtime and sometimes it inserts random values by itself! for example, if i ran this in textmate: #include <iostream> int stonetolb(int); int main() { using namespace std; int stone; cout << "enter the weight in stone"; cin >> stone; int pounds = stonetolb(stone); cout << stone << "stone = "; cout << pounds <<" pounds."; return 0; } int stonetolb(int sts) { return 14 * sts; } I would come out with the output: enter the weight in stone32767stone = 458738 pounds. Why is this happening, and how do I stop it?

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• Screen lock broken when using separate x screens

  - by Wolf

  For some reason, the screen lock appears to be broken when I use separate x screens (it works fine if I use twin view or just one monitor, though). If I wait for the screen to lock (or if I tell it to lock), it fades to black, showing only the mouse cursor. However, when I move the mouse to bring up the password prompt, nothing happens, the screens remain completely blank. Furthermore, it would appear that the screen lock never activated in the first place, for two reasons: one, if I blindly enter my password and press enter, nothing happens; and two, if I press ctrl+alt+delete and then enter it logs me out (which shouldn't happen if the password prompt is there, right), losing any progress I have on any of the open programs (meaning, not a very friendly option for a programmer ;) ). So yeah, does anyone know why this is happening, and how to fix it? Thanks! Notes: I am using Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit. I am using gnome-classic, but the same problem occurs when I use unity. I do not have xscreensaver, nor do I have any screen savers running (except, I guess for the default blank one).

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• Facilitating XNA game deployments for non programmers

  - by Sal

  I'm currently working on an RPG, using the RPG starter kit from XNA as a base. (http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/roleplaying_game) I'm working with a small team (two designers and one music/sound artist), but I'm the only programmer. Currently, we're working with the following (unsustainable) system: the team creates new pics/sounds to add to the game, or they modify existing sounds/pics, then they commit their work to a repository, where we keep a current build of everything. (Code, images, sound, etc.) Every day or so, I create a new installer, reflecting the new images, code changes, and sound, and everyone installs it. My issue is this: I want to create a system where the rest of the team can replace the combat sounds, for instance, and they can immediately see the changes, without having to wait for me to build. The way XNA's setup, if I publish, it encodes all of the image and sound files, so the team can't "hot swap." I can set up Microsoft VS on everyone's machine and show them how to quickly publish, but I wanted to know if there was a simpler way of doing this. Has anyone come up against this when working with teams using XNA?

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• Ruby or Python?

  - by Bobby Tables

  Hi all, This question is extremely subjective and open-ended. It might even sound like something I should just research for myself and make my own decision. But I'd like to put it out there and get some thoughts from others. Long story short - I burned out with the rat race and am on a self-funded sabbatical this year. Much of it is to take a break from the corporate grind and travel around, but I also want to play around with new technologies and do some self-learning projects, to stay up to speed on programming, and well - I just love tinkering with programming, when there's no pressure! Here's the thing: I am a lifetime C/C++/Java programmer. I'm a bit of a squiggly bracket snob since I've been working with this family of languages for my entire programming career. So I'd like to learn a language which isn't so closely syntactically related to this group. What I'm basically looking for is a language which is relatively general purpose, fun to learn, has some new concepts that are different from C++/Java, and has a good community. A secondary consideration is that it has good web development frameworks. A tertiary consideration is that it's not totally academic (read: there are real world jobs out there using it). I've narrowed it down to Ruby or Python. My impression of Ruby is that it is extremely web oriented - that the only real application of it is as a server side scripting language for doing web stuff (mainly Ruby on Rails). For Python I'm not so sure. TL;DR and to put it as succinctly as possible: which of these would be better for a C++/Java guy to learn to get some new perspectives on programming? And which is more open and general purpose and applicable to a wider set of applications? I'm leaning towards Ruby at the moment, but I worry to an extent that it looks like it's used as nothing but a server side web language.

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• How to Export Flash Animation Data

  - by charliep

  I'd love for my partner, the artist, to be able to animate using flash movieclips and timelines. Then I, the programmer, would like to read the raw Flash info and re-program it into my engine of choice (which happens to be Torque2D). The data I'd want is the bitmap images that were used in Flash, like the head and body the links between the images, like where the head connects to the body the motion data from the flash animation, like move, rotate (at what speed), shear, etc. for the head or arms or whatever. Is there any way to get this data? Here's what I know so far. There are tools like SWFSheet and Spriteloq that convert the entire flash animation into a frame by frame sprite animation (in a sprite sheet). This would take too much space in my case, so I'd like to avoid that. Re-animating on the fly would take much less texture memory. There is a PDF that describes the SWF file format but NOT the individual components like the movieclips. So anyone know of a library I can use, or how I can learn more about the movieclip components and whatnot? (more better tags: transform, export, convert)

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• Which shopping cart / ecommerce platform to choose?

  - by fabien7474

  I need to build an ecommerce website within a tight budget and schedule. Of course, I have never done that before, so I have googled out what my solutions are and I have concluded that the following were not valid candidates anymore : Magento : Steep learning curve osCommerce : old, bad design, buggy and not user-friendly Zencart, CRE Loaded, CubeCart : based on osCommerce Virtuemart, uberCart, eCart : based on CMS (Joomal, Drupal, WordPress) that is not necessary for my use-case So I finally narrowed down my choices to these solutions : PrestaShop : easy-to-use, great templating engine (smarty) but many modules are not free buy yet indispensable OpenCart : security issues and not a great support from the main developer. See here and here. So, as you can see, I am a little bit confused and if you can help me choosing an easy-to-use, lightweight and cheap (not-necessarily free) ecommerce solution, I would really appreciate. By the way, I am a Java/Grails programmer but I am also familiar with PHP and .NET. (not with Python or Ruby/Rails) EDIT: It seems that this question is more appropriate for the Webmaster StackExchange site. So please move this question to where it belongs (I cannot do that) instead of downvoting it. BTW, I have found out a question quite similar on SO (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3315638/php-ecommerce-system-which-one-is-easiest-to-modify) which is quite popular.

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• Free NOSQL database for use with C# client [closed]

  - by Mitten

  I've never used NOSQL databases before, but so far it seems like the best data storage solution for my project. I am going to implement a datamining application. The data I would like to mine is thousands of documents which cannot be imported into datamining applications. To make to import easier and faster (than importing thousands of documents) I am planning to import these documents into a NOSQL database first and when import NOSQL database into datamining software. At the very least once I have all the data in NOSQL database I should be able to code simplest datamining logic myself. Am I correct that NOSQL databases allow to creates records of data, but they don't mandate all the records to adhere to the same data schema (same column names/types in a classic table oriended SQL databases)? I think for each document I would create a row/entry/object (not sure what is the correct term is in use in NOSQL world) which would be a string id, few (columns) with unstructured text data, and a dozens of columns mostly of datetime and integer types. From its name NOSQL does not support SQL query syntax, but it support locating the object(row/entry?) by its unique id. Does NOSQL support qyuering objects using property=value syntax? Unfortunately most of free NOSQL db only support Java/C++ clients, which free NOSQL db would you recommend for a C# programmer?

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• How to keep word document, html and pdf documentation aligned

  - by dendini

  Is there a way to write documentation in a WYSIWYG editor which can then export into HTML, WORD and PDF and keep copies synchronized? This documentation are mostly technical notes and some contextual help for some softwares so they must contain images and some styling, they are not programmer's documentation (API list or functions list) for which probably a program like Javadoc or Doxygen would be the best choice. For example how do companies with hundreds different software lines and thousands of programmers deal with this? I have several solutions but they all seem lacking in some aspect: Latex/Tex : very good pdf and html export, not very user friendly and no full-blown WYSIWYG editor available. LibreOffice/OpenOffice : full blown WYSIWYG editor however html export not so good (need to edit manually exported html which needs to be maintained separately ) Mediawiki or any other wiki : could be keeping documentation in wikitext format, so html is automatically generated, pdf exportation is quite good with many available plugins. Again however need some formation for the staff to use it and need to setup a server for this. Notice I'm not asking for software A vs software B, I'm asking for general advice, big companies procedures for documentation and yes some software product names if available.

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• Business Analyst role in development process

  - by Ryan

  I work as a business analyst and I currently oversee much of the development efforts of an internal project. I'm responsible for the requirements, specs, and overall testing. I work closely with the developers (onshore and offshore). The offshore team produces all of the reports. Version 1.0 had a 9 month development cycle and I had about 4-5 months to test all the reports. There was the usual back and forth to get the implementation right. Version 2.0 had a much shorter development cycle (3 months). I received the first version of the reports about 3 weeks ago and noticed a lot of things wrong with it. Many of the requirements were wrong and the performance of the queries was horrendous at 5x - 6x longer than it should have been. The onshore lead developer was out and did not supervise the offshore development team in generating the reports. Without consulting management, I took a look at the SQL in the reports and was able to improve performance greatly (by a factor of 6x) which is acceptable for this version. I sent the updated queries as guidelines to the offshore team and told them they should look at doing X instead of Y to improve performance and also to fix some specific logic issues. I then spoke to my managers about this because it doesn't feel right that I was developing SQL queries, but given our time crunch I saw no other way. We were able to fix the issue quite fast which I'm happy with. Current situation: the onshore managers aren't too pleased that the offshore team did not code for performance. I know there are some things I could have done better throughout this process and I do not in any way consider myself a programmer. My question is, if an offshore team that works apart from the onshore project resources fails to deliver an acceptable release, is it appropriate to clean up their work to meet a deadline? What kind of problems could this create in the future?

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• Did the developers of Java conciously abandon RAII?

  - by JoelFan

  As a long-time C# programmer, I have recently come to learn more about the advantages of Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII). In particular, I have discovered that the C# idiom: using (my dbConn = new DbConnection(connStr) { // do stuff with dbConn } has the C++ equivalent: { DbConnection dbConn(connStr); // do stuff with dbConn } meaning that remembering to enclose the use of resources like DbConnection in a using block is unnecessary in C++ ! This seems to a major advantage of C++. This is even more convincing when you consider a class that has an instance member of type DbConnection, for example class Foo { DbConnection dbConn; // ... } In C# I would need to have Foo implement IDisposable as such: class Foo : IDisposable { DbConnection dbConn; public void Dispose() { dbConn.Dispose(); } } and what's worse, every user of Foo would need to remember to enclose Foo in a using block, like: using (var foo = new Foo()) { // do stuff with "foo" } Now looking at C# and its Java roots I am wondering... did the developers of Java fully appreciate what they were giving up when they abandoned the stack in favor of the heap, thus abandoning RAII? (Similarly, did Stroustrup fully appreciate the significance of RAII?)

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• XNA Masking Mayhem

  - by TropicalFlesh

  I'd like to start by mentioning that I'm just an amateur programmer of the past 2 years with no formal training and know very little about maximizing the potential of graphics hardware. I can write shaders and manipulate a multi-layered drawing environment, but I've basically stuck to minimalist pixel shaders. I'm working on putting dynamic point light shadows in my 2d sidescroller, and have had it working to a reasonable degree. Just chucking it in without working on serious optimizations outside of basic culling, I can get 50 lights or so onscreen at once and still hover around 100 fps. The only issue is that I'm on a very high end machine and would like to target the game at as many platforms I can, low and high end. The way I'm doing shadows involves a lot of masking before I can finally draw the light to my light layer. Basically, my technique to achieveing such shadows is as follows. See pics in this album http://imgur.com/a/m2fWw#0 The dark gray represents the background tiles, the light gray represents the foreground tiles, and the yellow represents the shadow-emitting foreground tile. I'll draw the light using a radial gradient and a color of choice I'll then exclude light from the mask by drawing some geometry extending through the tile from my point light. I actually don't mask the light yet at this point, but I'm just illustrating the technique in this image Finally, I'll re-include the foreground layer in my mask, as I only want shadows to collect on the background layer and finally multiply the light with it's mask to the light layer My question is simple - How can I go about reducing the amount of render target switches I need to do to achieve the following: a. Draw mask to exclude shadows from the foreground to it's own target once per frame b. For each light that emits shadows, -Begin light mask as full white -Render shadow geometry as transparent with an opaque blendmode to eliminate shadowed areas from the mask -Render foreground mask back over the light mask to reintroduce light to the foreground c. Multiply light texture with it's individual mask to the main light layer.

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• Which algorithms/data structures should I "recognize" and know by name?

  - by Earlz

  I'd like to consider myself a fairly experienced programmer. I've been programming for over 5 years now. My weak point though is terminology. I'm self-taught, so while I know how to program, I don't know some of the more formal aspects of computer science. So, what are practical algorithms/data structures that I could recognize and know by name? Note, I'm not asking for a book recommendation about implementing algorithms. I don't care about implementing them, I just want to be able to recognize when an algorithm/data structure would be a good solution to a problem. I'm asking more for a list of algorithms/data structures that I should "recognize". For instance, I know the solution to a problem like this: You manage a set of lockers labeled 0-999. People come to you to rent the locker and then come back to return the locker key. How would you build a piece of software to manage knowing which lockers are free and which are in used? The solution, would be a queue or stack. What I'm looking for are things like "in what situation should a B-Tree be used -- What search algorithm should be used here" etc. And maybe a quick introduction of how the more complex(but commonly used) data structures/algorithms work. I tried looking at Wikipedia's list of data structures and algorithms but I think that's a bit overkill. So I'm looking more for what are the essential things I should recognize?

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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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• Optimizing lifestyle and training

  - by Gabe

  I am a college freshman who has recently discovered a passion for computer science. Having had my first lick of formal python training last semester, I have cast aside my previously hedonist way of life and tunneled my sights on becoming the most rounded and proficient programmer I can be. I know that I'm taking strides in the right direction (I've stopped smoking, I've been exercising every day, I've taught myself C++ and OpenGL, and I've begun training in kung-fu and meditation), yet I am still finding myself struggling to achieve satisfactory results. I would like to be able to spend a good 3-4 hours every day burning through textbooks. I have the time cleared and the resources allocated. The problem lies in the logistics-- I have never taken anything seriously before. Recently I've realized that I am clueless when it comes to taking care of myself and gaining control of my mind, and it drastically hinders my productivity. My question is this: How can I learn to manage my time and take care of myself such that I can spend the maximum amount of time every day studying with steady concentration? Personal tricks would be key here: techniques you use to get yourself to sleep, a diet that yields focus, even computer break stretching routines or active reading techniques. Anything you could think of here would be great. I was a low-life in high school and I have the drive to turn my life around, I'm just quite a bit behind in the way of good habits :)

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• Intelligence as a vector quantity

  - by Senthil Kumaran

  I am reading this wonderful book called "Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming" by Peter Seibel and I am at part wherein the conversation is with Joshua Bloch and I found this answer which is an important point for a programmer. The paragraph, goes something like this. There's this problem, which is, programming is so much of an intellectual meritocracy and often these people are the smartest people in the organization; therefore they figure they should be allowed to make all the decisions. But merely the fact they are the smartest people in the organization does not mean that they should be making all the decisions, because intelligence is not a scalar quantity; it's a vector quantity. Here at the last sentence, I fail to get the insight which is he trying to share. Can someone explain it in a little further as what he means by a vector quantity, possibly trying to present the same insight. Further down, I get the point that he is not taking about having an organization where non-technical people (sometimes clueless) can be managers of the technical people for some reason that they can spend more time to write emails well, because the very next statement following the above paragraph was. And if you lack empathy or emotional intelligence, then you shouldn't be designing APIs or GUIs or languages. I understand that he is saying that in Software engineering, programmers should know how the users will see their product and design for them. I felt the above paragraph was very interesting.

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• Java web app, with plugin framework and ability to connect to source for updates

  - by lessthancommon

  I've searched all around for some good sources, but either have been searching for the wrong keywords, or I'm just missing something. I'm looking to redevelop a web app I've been using for some time now. Many parts are out of date, and we're constantly throwing in little hacks to attempt to give it new life. So what I'd like to do is re-engineer it from the ground up, built on some sort of plug-in framework. Before I continue, I'm more or less an intermediate Java programmer. In some ways, I'm hoping to use this project as a big learning experience. I've read a lot about OSGi, and it seems that's the most complete framework. Ideally, I would like an end result web app which I can run one instance as my hosting environment, and other instances can connect to it to grab new and updated plug-ins. Eventually I'll want to lock down these plug-ins based on some undecided criteria of who can get them (basically some will simply be updates, others will provide new functionality and should be "purchased" through an external system). But that will probably be handled in a later phase. There should be an administration view for managing bundles in a hot environment (looking to avoid having to restart the server for an update). I know all these things are possible, I'm just trying to find some good resources for reference. All the OSGi tutorials I'm finding seem to be too simplistic. If anyone here can guide me in the right direction on any or all of the items I'm looking for, it would be much appreciated. Also, this is my first post, so I'll take any comments/criticisms about the content of my post. Thanks!

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• exact answer for “what is j2ee?” - job interview

  - by shuuchan

  I'd like to ask if someone of you knows the exact meaning of JEE. That's because a collegue of mine was asked this question in a job interview, and was "unable to answer properly"... to speak with his interwiewer's words. And when he told me what he said to his interviewer I got really surprised, since it was more or less what I would have answered myself - in a concise form, the first paragraph of this article. J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) is a Java platform designed for the mainframe-scale computing typical of large enterprises. Sun Microsystems (together with industry partners such as IBM) designed J2EE to simplify application development in a thin client tiered environment. J2EE simplifies application development and decreases the need for programming and programmer training by creating standardized, reusable modular components and by enabling the tier to handle many aspects of programming automatically. That seems not to be enough, since the interviewer asked for "more precise and less general definition". Is there really a more precise definition for JEE? Or did my colleague just find the fussiest-interviewer-ever? :)

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• Finding the right back-end developer

  - by John Watson

  I am creating a websites for mobile phone tests. Users can post their own tests and combine it with an existing rating of each product. I do only front-end development and I have no idea about back-end - php, sql, etc. I am not sure I should operate the website without this knowledge but my first thought is to get a professional whom I would give my website to, so that he can do the rest. Only thing is that I need to update it regularly and post my own tests. I don't know how that works and how I should approach this. My understanding is that, after I have finished the website (written in HTML, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery), I would go and find a php programmer and tell me to put it online, make it secure, make sure that the open-source facility (users post their own tests) and that it runs smoothly with the host/server I've chosen. Could you tell me if my approach makes sense (is that the way how to do it)? What should I consider when searching the right back-end developer concerning the right price performance, trust, etc. ?

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• Correct level of abstraction for a 3d rendering component?

  - by JohnB

  I've seen lots of questions around this area but not this exact question so apologies if this is a duplicate. I'm making a small 3d game. Well to be honest, it's just a little hobby project and likely won't turn out to be an actual game, I'll be happy to make a nice graphics demo and learn about 3d rendering and c++ design. My intent is to use direct3d9 for rendering as I have some little experience of it, and it seems to meet my requirements. However if I've learned one thing as a programmer it's to ask "is there any conceivable reason that this component might be replaced by a different implmentation" and if the answer is yes then I need to design a proper abstraction and interface to that component. So even though I intend to implment d3d9 I need to design a 3d interface that could be implemented for d3d11, opengl... My question then is what level is it best to do this at? I'm thinking that an interface capable of creating and later drawing Vertex buffers and index buffers Textures Vertex and Pixel "shaders" Some representation of drawing state (blending modes etc...) In other words a fairly low level interface where my code to draw for example an animated model would use the interface to obtain abstract vertex buffers etc. I worry though that it's too low level to abstract out all the functionallity I need efficiently. The alternative is to do this at a higher level where the interface can draw objects, animations, landscapes etc, and implement them for each system. This seems like more work, but it more flexible I guess. So that's my question really, when abstracting out the drawing system, what level of interface works best?

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• Do you ever worry that you're more concerned with how something is built rather than what you are actually building?

  - by Rob Stevenson-Leggett

  As a programmer I have an inherent nagging annoyance at my tools, other peoples code, my code, the world in general. I always want to improve it. So I refactor, I stay on top of the latest techniques. I try and learn patterns, I try to use frameworks so as not to reinvent the wheel. I can write a tech spec that will blow your socks off with the amount of patterns I can squeeze in. However, lately I feel I actually know more about the tools I use than how to actually implement successful software. I feel like I'm lacking in the human factors skill set and I believe that to be a successful software engineer takes more than knowing the coolest framework. I think it needs some of the following skillsets too. Interaction design User experience Marketing I've got a bit of this that I've learned from people I've worked with and great projects I've worked on but I don't feel like I "own" these skills. Am I right? Should I be trying to develop these skills further, or should these be left to the people who do these for a career? How do you make sure you don't get too tied up in how you're doing something and make sure you "make your users awesome"? Does anyone know of good resources for learning these skills from a programming point of view?

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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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