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• Finite state machine in C++

  - by Electro

  So, I've read a lot about using FSMs to do game state management, things like what and FSM is, and using a stack or set of states for building one. I've gone through all that. But I'm stuck at writing an actual, well-designed implementation of an FSM for that purpose. Specifically, how does one cleanly resolve the problem of transitioning between states, (how) should a state be able to use data from other states, and so on. Does anyone have any tips on designing and writing a implementation in C++, or better yet, code examples?

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• What are the canonical problem sets or problem domains for the different types of languages?

  - by SnOrfus

  I'm just wondering what some of the canonical problem sets are for certain types of languages? ie. Fill in the blanks: __ is the perfect language to use for solving __. The question was arrived at reading or hearing people say statements like such and such module in our codebase would be much easier to implement using a functional language. Fee free to include examples that would seem obvious to you.

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• Style bits vs. Separate bool's

  - by peterchen

  My main platform (WinAPI) still heavily uses bits for control styles etc. (example). When introducing custom controls, I'm permanently wondering whether to follow that style or rather use individual bool's. Let's pit them against each other: enum EMyCtrlStyles { mcsUseFileIcon = 1, mcsTruncateFileName = 2, mcsUseShellContextMenu = 4, }; void SetStyle(DWORD mcsStyle); void ModifyStyle(DWORD mcsRemove, DWORD mcsAdd); DWORD GetStyle() const; ... ctrl.SetStyle(mcsUseFileIcon | mcsUseShellContextMenu); vs. CMyCtrl & SetUseFileIcon(bool enable = true); bool GetUseFileIcon() const; CMyCtrl & SetTruncteFileName(bool enable = true); bool GetTruncteFileName() const; CMyCtrl & SetUseShellContextMenu(bool enable = true); bool GetUseShellContextMenu() const; ctrl.SetUseFileIcon().SetUseShellContextMenu(); As I see it, Pro Style Bits Consistent with platform less library code (without gaining complexity), less places to modify for adding a new style less caller code (without losing notable readability) easier to use in some scenarios (e.g. remembering / transferring settings) Binary API remains stable if new style bits are introduced Now, the first and the last are minor in most cases. Pro Individual booleans Intellisense and refactoring tools reduce the "less typing" effort Single Purpose Entities more literate code (as in "flows more like a sentence") No change of paradim for non-bool properties These sound more modern, but also "soft" advantages. I must admit the "platform consistency" is much more enticing than I could justify, the less code without losing much quality is a nice bonus. 1. What do you prefer? Subjectively, for writing the library, or for writing client code? 2. Any (semi-) objective statements, studies, etc.?

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• Use the latest technology or use a mature technology as a developer?

  - by Ted Wong

  I would like to develop an application for a group of people to use. I have decided to develop using python, but I am thinking of using python 2.X or python 3.X. If I use python 2.X, I need to upgrade it for the future... But it is more mature, and has many tools and libraries. If I develop using 3.X, I don't need to think of future integration, but currenttly it doesn't have many libraries, even a python to executable is not ready for all platforms. Also, one of the considerations is that it is a brand new application, so I don't have the history burden to maintain the old libraries. Any recommendation on this dilemma? More information about this application: Native application Time for maintenance: 5 years+ Library/Tools must need: don't have idea, yet. Must need feature that in 2.X: Convert to an executable for both Windows and Mac OS X

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• Obtaining In game Warcraft III data to program standalone AI

  - by Slav

  I am implementing common purpose behavioral algorithm and would like to test it under my lovely Warcraft III game and watch how it will fight against real players. The problem is how to obtain information about in game state (units, structures, environment, etc. ). Algorithm needs access to hard drive and possibly distributed computing, that's why JASS (WC3 Editor language) usage doesn't solve the issue. Direct 3D hooking is an approach, but it wasn't done for WC3 yet and significant drawback is inability to watch online at how AI performs since it uses the viewport to issue commands. How in game data can be obtained to a different process in a fastest and easiest way? Thank you.

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• What is the best practice for when to check if something needs to be done?

  - by changokun

  Let's say I have a function that does x. I pass it a variable, and if the variable is not null, it does some action. And I have an array of variables and I'm going to run this function on each one. Inside the function, it seems like a good practice is to check if the argument is null before proceeding. A null argument is not an error, it just causes an early return. I could loop through the array and pass each value to the function, and the function will work great. Is there any value to checking if the var is null and only calling the function if it is not null during the loop? This doubles up on the checking for null, but: Is there any gained value? Is there any gain on not calling a function? Any readability gain on the loop in the parent code? For the sake of my question, let's assume that checking for null will always be the case. I can see how checking for some object property might change over time, which makes the first check a bad idea. Pseudo code example: for(thing in array) { x(thing) } Versus: for(thing in array) { if(thing not null) x(thing) } If there are language-specific concerns, I'm a web developer working in PHP and JavaScript.

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• Resources for improving your comprehension of recursion?

  - by Andrew M

  I know what recursion is (when a patten reoccurs within itself, typically a function that calls itself on one of its lines, after a breakout conditional... right?), and I can understand recursive functions if I study them closely. My problem is, when I see new examples, I'm always initially confused. If I see a loop, or a mapping, zipping, nesting, polymorphic calling, and so on, I know what's going just by looking at it. When I see recursive code, my thought process is usually 'wtf is this?' followed by 'oh it's recursive' followed by 'I guess it must work, if they say it does.' So do you have any tips/plans/resources for building up your skills in this area? Recursion is kind of a wierd concept so I'm thinking the way to tackle it may be equally wierd and inobvious.

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• Should one always know what an API is doing just by looking at the code?

  - by markmnl

  Recently I have been developing my own API and with that invested interest in API design I have been keenly interested how I can improve my API design. One aspect that has come up a couple times is (not by users of my API but in my observing discussion about the topic): one should know just by looking at the code calling the API what it is doing. For example see this discussion on GitHub for the discourse repo, it goes something like: foo.update_pinned(true, true); Just by looking at the code (without knowing the parameter names, documentation etc.) one cannot guess what it is going to do - what does the 2nd argument mean? The suggested improvement is to have something like: foo.pin() foo.unpin() foo.pin_globally() And that clears things up (the 2nd arg was whether to pin foo globally, I am guessing), and I agree in this case the later would certainly be an improvement. However I believe there can be instances where methods to set different but logically related state would be better exposed as one method call rather than separate ones, even though you would not know what it is doing just by looking at the code. (So you would have to resort to looking at the parameter names and documentation to find out - which personally I would always do no matter what if I am unfamiliar with an API). For example I expose one method SetVisibility(bool, string, bool) on a FalconPeer and I acknowledge just looking at the line: falconPeer.SetVisibility(true, "aerw3", true); You would have no idea what it is doing. It is setting 3 different values that control the "visibility" of the falconPeer in the logical sense: accept join requests, only with password and reply to discovery requests. Splitting this out into 3 method calls could lead to a user of the API to set one aspect of "visibility" forgetting to set others that I force them to think about by only exposing the one method to set all aspects of "visibility". Furthermore when the user wants to change one aspect they almost always will want to change another aspect and can now do so in one call.

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• Non-zero exit status for clean exit

  - by trinithis

  Is it acceptable to return a non-zero exit code if the program in question ran properly? For example, say I have a simple program that (only) does the following: Program takes N arguments. It returns an exit code of min(N, 255). Note that any N is valid for the program. A more realistic program might return different codes for successfully ran programs that signify different things. Should these programs instead write this information to a stream instead, such as to stdout?

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• 2D graphics - why use spritesheets?

  - by Columbo

  I have seen many examples of how to render sprites from a spritesheet but I havent grasped why it is the most common way of dealing with sprites in 2d games. I have started out with 2d sprite rendering in the few demo applications I've made by dealing with each animation frame for any given sprite type as its own texture - and this collection of textures is stored in a dictionary. This seems to work for me, and suits my workflow pretty well, as I tend to make my animations as gif/mng files and then extract the frames to individual pngs. Is there a noticeable performance advantage to rendering from a single sheet rather than from individual textures? With modern hardware that is capable of drawing millions of polygons to the screen a hundred times a second, does it even matter for my 2d games which just deal with a few dozen 50x100px rectangles? The implementation details of loading a texture into graphics memory and displaying it in XNA seems pretty abstracted. All I know is that textures are bound to the graphics device when they are loaded, then during the game loop, the textures get rendered in batches. So it's not clear to me whether my choice affects performance. I suspect that there are some very good reasons most 2d game developers seem to be using them, I just don't understand why.

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• How to teach computer science ?

  - by proferikson

  I am just starting to teach computer science. It's just the basic level. I'm finding that I sometimes don't know how to approach topics in a way that lets students easily understand. I've found that the best thing is to use analogies. A terrible one, that worked well, was presenting recursion by using the process of eating a burger. (You eat one bite, then you eat the rest). Interesting real world examples do wonders here. I'd like to know the techniques you have used for teaching, or teachers you've had have used that proved particularly effective. I'd also like to know your best analogies and examples for topics in CS101, especially for those harder to grasp topics. I'm teaching the class in Java (as required).

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• Are programmers tied to their code?

  - by Jason

  Assuming you are working for a company or in a team of developers, is the code bound to the person who did it? When someone develops a particular functionnality or an area of the application, is this person the only one who can, is allowed or is just able to make changes to it? I personnally think that a well-done piece of code or program should be easily modified by any programmers, but what about what you see in your environment? At my work, I'd say that the majority of the code can be modified by anyone (that's what coding standards are for right?). There are some things though that are 'property' of some coworkers like the module that handles the pay or some important functionality of the production module (we are developing an ERP system). What about your work place? Am I the only one living this?

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• Beat detection and FFT

  - by Quincy

  So I am working on a platformer game which includes music with beat detection. I am currently using a simple if the energy that is stored in the history buffer is smaller then the current energy there is a beat. The problem with this is that ofcourse if you use songs like rock songs where you have a pretty steady amplitude this isn't going to work. So I looked further and found algorithms splitting the sound into multiple bands using FFT. I then found this : http://en.literateprograms.org/Cooley-Tukey_FFT_algorithm_(C) The only problem I'm having is that I am quite new to audio and I have no idea how to use that to split the signal up into multiple signals. So my question is : How do you use a FFT to split a signal into multiple bands ? Also for the guys interested, this is my algorithm in c# : // C = threshold, N = size of history buffer / 1024 public void PlaceBeatMarkers(float C, int N) { List<float> instantEnergyList = new List<float>(); short[] samples = soundData.Samples; float timePerSample = 1 / (float)soundData.SampleRate; int sampleIndex = 0; int nextSamples = 1024; // Calculate instant energy for every 1024 samples. while (sampleIndex + nextSamples < samples.Length) { float instantEnergy = 0; for (int i = 0; i < nextSamples; i++) { instantEnergy += Math.Abs((float)samples[sampleIndex + i]); } instantEnergy /= nextSamples; instantEnergyList.Add(instantEnergy); if(sampleIndex + nextSamples >= samples.Length) nextSamples = samples.Length - sampleIndex - 1; sampleIndex += nextSamples; } int index = N; int numInBuffer = index; float historyBuffer = 0; //Fill the history buffer with n * instant energy for (int i = 0; i < index; i++) { historyBuffer += instantEnergyList[i]; } // If instantEnergy / samples in buffer < instantEnergy for the next sample then add beatmarker. while (index + 1 < instantEnergyList.Count) { if(instantEnergyList[index + 1] > (historyBuffer / numInBuffer) * C) beatMarkers.Add((index + 1) * 1024 * timePerSample); historyBuffer -= instantEnergyList[index - numInBuffer]; historyBuffer += instantEnergyList[index + 1]; index++; } }

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• Where's Randall Hyde?

  - by user1124893

  This probably doesn't belong here, but I couldn't think of any other StackExchange site that would fit it. Quick question, what ever happened to Randall Hyde, author of The Art of Assembly, HLA, and other works? I ask this because I was just exploring some of the content on his website and a lot of it is now gone. His website was hosted on Apple's MobileMe. As of the writing of this question, Apple has closed off all MobileMe content a few days ago. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Apple warn of this a year in advance? If so, then where's Randall Hyde? Come to think of it, all of the content on his website that I have seen is several years old. A lot of it is rather useful but unfinished.

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• Finding complexity of a program as a service [on hold]

  - by Seshu

  I would like to find the complexity of a specific code chunk written in Java. Is there a place/web site/service where I can find out the complexity of any arbitrary program. This program might include loops/recursion. Using theory we can compute complexity ourselves. But, just curious in finding if any service is out there to find such complexity. We have several code quality related tools does any of such tools will also find complexity of given code? Could any one point me or direct me to such a utility/site/service?

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• Why should we use low level languages if a high level one like python can do almost everything? [closed]

  - by killown

  I know python is not suitable for things like microcontrolers, make drivers etc, but besides that, you can do everything using python, companys get stuck with speed optimizations for real hard time system but does forget other factors which one you can just upgrade your hardware for speed proposes in order to get your python program fit in it, if you think how much cust can the company have to maintain a system written in C, the comparison is like that: for example: 10 programmers to mantain a system written in c and just one programmer to mantain a system written in python, with python you can buy some better hardware to fit your python program, I think that low level languages tend to get more cost, since programmers aren't so cheaply than a hardware upgrade, then, this is my point, why should a system be written in c instead of python?

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• Should I be an algorithm developer, or java web frameworks type developer?

  - by Derek

  So - as I see it, there are really two kinds of developers. Those that do frameworks, web services, pretty-making front ends, etc etc. Then there are developers that write the algorithms that solve the problem. That is, unless the problem is "display this raw data in some meaningful way." In that case, the framework/web developer guy might be doing both jobs. So my basic problem is this. I have been an algorithms kind of software developer for a few years now. I double majored in Math and Computer science, and I have a master's in systems engineering. I have never done any web-dev work, with the exception of a couple minor jobs, and some hobby level stuff. I have been job interviewing lately, and this is what happens: Job is listed as "programmer- 5 years of experience with the following: C/C++, Java,Perl, Ruby, ant, blah blah blah" Recruiter calls me, says they want me to come in for interview In the interview, find out they have some webservices development, blah blah blah When asked in the interview, talk about my experience doing algorithms, optimization, blah blah..but very willing to learn new languages, frameworks, etc Get a call back saying "we didn't think you were a fit for the job you interviewed wtih, but our algorithm team got wind of you and wants to bring you on" This has happened to me a couple times now - see a vague-ish job description looking for a "programmer" Go in, find out they are doing some sort of web-based tool, maybe with some hardcore algorithms running in the background. interview with people for the web-based tool, but get an offer from the algorithms people. So the question is - which job is the better job? I basically just want to get a wide berth of experience at this level of my career, but are algorithm developers so much in demand? Even more so than all these supposed hot in demand web developer guys? Will I be ok in the long run if I go into the niche of math based algorithm development, and just little to no, or hobby level web-dev experience? I basically just don't want to pigeon hole myself this early. My salary is already starting to get pretty high - and I can see a company later on saying "we really need a web developer, but we'll hire this 50k/year college guy, instead of this 100k/year experience algorithm guy" Cliffs notes: I have been doing algorithm development. I consider myself to be a "good programmer." I would have no problem picking up web technologies and those sorts of frameworks. During job interviews, I keep getting "we think you've got a good skillset - talk to our algorithm team" instead of wanting me to learn new skills on the job to do their web services or whhatever other new technology they are doing. Edit: Whenever I am talking about algorithm development here - I am talking about the code that produces the answer. Typically I think of more math-based algorithms: solving a financial problem, solving a finite element method, image processing, etc

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• Drawing particles as a smooth blob

  - by Nömmik

  I'm new to game/graphics development and I'm playing around with particles (in 2D). I want to draw particles close to each other as a blob, just as liquid/water. I do not want to draw big circles overlapping as the blob won't be smooth (and too big). I don't really know physics but I assume what I want is something looking similar to surface tension. I haven't been able to find anything on stackexchange or on Google (maybe I do not know the correct keywords?). So far I have found two possible solutions, but I am unable to find any concrete information about algorithms. One of them is to calculate the concave hull of particles I consider being a blob. I can calculate the blob by creating an equivalence class (on the relation "close to each other"). Strangely enough I haven't been able to find any algorithm explaining how to calculate the concave hull. Many posts (and among stackexchange) links to libraries or commercial products that do this (I need libraries to work in C#), but never any algorithm. Also this solution might have a problem with a circle of particles, which would not detect the empty space in the middle. While researching concave hull I stumbled upon something called alpha shapes. Which seems to be exactly what I want to do, however just as with concave hull I haven't found any source explaining how they actually work. I have found some presentation materials but not enough to go on. It's like a big secret everyone knows except me :-/ After calculating the concave hull or alpha shape I want to make it a Bézier curve to make it smooth and nice. Although I do find my approach a bit too complex, maybe I am trying to solve this the wrong way? If you can either suggest any other solution to my problem, or explain the pieces I am missing I would be very happy and grateful :-) Thanks.

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• Calling methods on Objects

  - by Mashael

  Let's say we have a class called 'Automobile' and we have an instance of that class called 'myCar'. I would like to ask why do we need to put the values that our methods return in a variable for the object? Why just don't we call the method? For example: Why should we write: string message = myCar.SpeedMessage(); Console.WriteLine(message); instead of: Console.WriteLine(myCar.SpeedMessage());

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• How should programmers handle email-username identity theft?

  - by Craige

  Background I recently signed up for an iTunes account, and found that somebody had fraudulently used MY email to register their iTunes account. Why Apple did not validate the email address, I will never know. Now I am told that I cannot use my email address to register a new iTunes account, as this email address is linked to an existing account. This got be thinking... Question How should we as developers handle email/identity theft? Obviously, we should verify that an email address belongs to the person it is said to belong to. Why Apple did not do this in my case, I have no idea. But lets pretend we use email address for login/account identification, and something slipped though the cracks (be it our end, or the users). How should we handle reports of fraudulent accounts?

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• What are the pros and cons about developing under MAC OS? [closed]

  - by user827992

  Sometimes i get the chance to program under MAC OS, i knew about this OS since Apple shipped its computers with a PowerPC by Motorola ( since Panther, more or less ), these days they are all X86 and i see no particular advantages about adopting this platform, also i see only downsides for the main part, i do not want to cause flames, please reply if you have a good answer or you can contribute in some constructive way. I'm trying to write a list of the natively supported languages, or the languages that comes only under MAC OS with some particular technology, my list is this: Objective C with Cocoa/Carbon I'm not considering personal preferences here, if a person X likes to code under Xcode it's probably ok to have a MAC, if a person Y likes to code under Visual Studio it's probably ok to not having a MAC, my purpose is to clarify what MAC OS is good for. I also do not get why people glorify the MAC for historical reasons, I mean a language like Java just comes for MAC only in the 7th edition of its JDK, things like GCC are just a porting and many technologies are out of the question like C# ( I'm sorry, i do not consider MonoDevelop like a serious alternative ) , .Net, ASP, DirectX, and many others are just, again, porting or free software, like PHP, MySQL, Javascript, XML, CSS, OpenGL, etc etc. My question is: what is so special about being a programmer under MAC OS? There is something that I have not seen? I also noticed that a significant portion of MAC users end up using their MAC like a normal Windows PC with Parallels or something like that. I can afford to buy a MAC, show me why this machine is so unique.

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• How can I compare between web development technologies?

  - by Steve

  I would like experts to explain for me how can I compare between web development tools or technologies in order to be able to choose the right one. I'm tired from searching always in the regular way: X Technology vs Y Technology. I'm tired from peoples' biased opinions and usually I don't find a fair comparison. I have decided to put my question here about how can I compare them so you may identify to me the main standards for comparisons so I can compare them by myself and becoming able to choose the technology that is appropriate for the project I will develop. Note: in web development technologies I mean server side languages (e.g. PHP). One important requirement for me that can be defined as major one is cost efficiency and I mean that I don't care about the cost in the near future or the current cost, but what is more important for me is the cost in the future. If, for example, the site becomes one of the most 100 visited sites.   So, how can I compare the cost of different technologies for a future status of a site (such as being very famous site) so I can scale my option easily without missing a good technology like what happened with some sites when they chose not the most effective tool.

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• How do I improve my code reading skills

  - by Andrew

  Well the question is in the title - how do I improve my code reading skills. The software/hardware environment I currently do development in is quite slow with respect to compilation times and time it takes the whole system to test. The system is quite old/complex and thus splitting it into a several smaller, more manageable sub-projects is not feasible in a neare future. I have realized is what really hinders the development progress is my code reading skills. How do I improve my code reading skills, so I can spot most of the errors and issues in the code even before I hit the "do compile" key, even before I start the debugger?

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• Is it possible to extract textures or sprites from compiled game files?

  - by Brian Reindel

  For instance, every map in Portal has what appear to be sprites over a texture indicating the obstacles you'll face (see screenshot). Are these resources compiled into the source as byte code, or is it possible to extract them from installation files? Obviously I understand copyright implications, and I am only interested in using it for a recreational project. Instead of recreating them, I wonder if they can be extracted.

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• Is there any reason lazy initialization couldn't be built into Java?

  - by Renesis

  Since I'm working on a server with absolutely no non-persisted state for users, every User-related object we have is rolled out on every request. Consequently I often find myself doing lazy initialization of properties of objects that may go unused. protected EventDispatcher dispatcher = new EventDispatcher(); Becomes... protected EventDispatcher<EventMessage> dispatcher; public EventDispatcher<EventMessage> getEventDispatcher() { if (dispatcher == null) { dispatcher = new EventDispatcher<EventMessage>(); } return dispatcher; } Is there any reason this couldn't be built into Java? protected lazy EventDispatcher dispatcher = new EventDispatcher();

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