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• Negamax implementation doesn't appear to work with tic-tac-toe

  - by George Jiglau

  I've implemented Negamax as it can be found on wikipedia, which includes alpha/beta pruning. However, it seems to favor a losing move, which should be an invalid result. The game is Tic-Tac-Toe, I've abstracted most of the game play so it should be rather easy to spot an error within the algorithm. Here is the code, nextMove, negamax or evaluate are probably the functions that contain the fault: #include <list> #include <climits> #include <iostream> //#define DEBUG 1 using namespace std; struct Move { int row, col; Move(int row, int col) : row(row), col(col) { } Move(const Move& m) { row = m.row; col = m.col; } }; struct Board { char player; char opponent; char board[3][3]; Board() { } void read(istream& stream) { stream >> player; opponent = player == 'X' ? 'O' : 'X'; for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) { for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) { char playa; stream >> playa; board[row][col] = playa == '_' ? 0 : playa == player ? 1 : -1; } } } void print(ostream& stream) { for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) { for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) { switch(board[row][col]) { case -1: stream << opponent; break; case 0: stream << '_'; break; case 1: stream << player; break; } } stream << endl; } } void do_move(const Move& move, int player) { board[move.row][move.col] = player; } void undo_move(const Move& move) { board[move.row][move.col] = 0; } bool isWon() { if (board[0][0] != 0) { if (board[0][0] == board[0][1] && board[0][1] == board[0][2]) return true; if (board[0][0] == board[1][0] && board[1][0] == board[2][0]) return true; } if (board[2][2] != 0) { if (board[2][0] == board[2][1] && board[2][1] == board[2][2]) return true; if (board[0][2] == board[1][2] && board[1][2] == board[2][2]) return true; } if (board[1][1] != 0) { if (board[0][1] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][1]) return true; if (board[1][0] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[1][2]) return true; if (board[0][0] == board[1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][2]) return true; if (board[0][2] == board [1][1] && board[1][1] == board[2][0]) return true; } return false; } list<Move> getMoves() { list<Move> moveList; for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) if (board[row][col] == 0) moveList.push_back(Move(row, col)); return moveList; } }; ostream& operator<< (ostream& stream, Board& board) { board.print(stream); return stream; } istream& operator>> (istream& stream, Board& board) { board.read(stream); return stream; } int evaluate(Board& board) { int score = board.isWon() ? 100 : 0; for(int row = 0; row < 3; row++) for(int col = 0; col < 3; col++) if (board.board[row][col] == 0) score += 1; return score; } int negamax(Board& board, int depth, int player, int alpha, int beta) { if (board.isWon() || depth <= 0) { #if DEBUG > 1 cout << "Found winner board at depth " << depth << endl; cout << board << endl; #endif return player * evaluate(board); } list<Move> allMoves = board.getMoves(); if (allMoves.size() == 0) return player * evaluate(board); for(list<Move>::iterator it = allMoves.begin(); it != allMoves.end(); it++) { board.do_move(*it, -player); int val = -negamax(board, depth - 1, -player, -beta, -alpha); board.undo_move(*it); if (val >= beta) return val; if (val > alpha) alpha = val; } return alpha; } void nextMove(Board& board) { list<Move> allMoves = board.getMoves(); Move* bestMove = NULL; int bestScore = INT_MIN; for(list<Move>::iterator it = allMoves.begin(); it != allMoves.end(); it++) { board.do_move(*it, 1); int score = -negamax(board, 100, 1, INT_MIN + 1, INT_MAX); board.undo_move(*it); #if DEBUG cout << it->row << ' ' << it->col << " = " << score << endl; #endif if (score > bestScore) { bestMove = &*it; bestScore = score; } } if (!bestMove) return; cout << bestMove->row << ' ' << bestMove->col << endl; #if DEBUG board.do_move(*bestMove, 1); cout << board; #endif } int main() { Board board; cin >> board; #if DEBUG cout << "Starting board:" << endl; cout << board; #endif nextMove(board); return 0; } Giving this input: O X__ ___ ___ The algorithm chooses to place a piece at 0, 1, causing a guaranteed loss, do to this trap(nothing can be done to win or end in a draw): XO_ X__ ___ Perhaps it has something to do with the evaluation function? If so, how could I fix it?

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• Site Review: MortgageCalculator.org - Forms Evaluation

  This site allows users to enter basic loan information into a form and when the user clicks the submit button the information is used to calculate a loan summary which includes: monthly payment, total interest paid, and the last payment date. This site uses server side validation and replaces any value not within a normal range with the calculator default for the form field. In addition, they also use server side code to calculate the items on the loan summary which is then displayed to the user. I personally think that by adding client side validation, it would improve the users experience because it would ensure that the data being submitted is within an acceptable norm and if the data entered was not within this range then it would allow the user to adjust the data.

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• VS 2012 Code Review &ndash; Before Check In OR After Check In?

  - by Tarun Arora

  “Is Code Review Important and Effective?” There is a consensus across the industry that code review is an effective and practical way to collar code inconsistency and possible defects early in the software development life cycle. Among others some of the advantages of code reviews are, Bugs are found faster Forces developers to write readable code (code that can be read without explanation or introduction!) Optimization methods/tricks/productive programs spread faster Programmers as specialists "evolve" faster It's fun “Code review is systematic examination (often known as peer review) of computer source code. It is intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase, improving both the overall quality of software and the developers' skills. Reviews are done in various forms such as pair programming, informal walkthroughs, and formal inspections.” Wikipedia No where does the definition mention whether its better to review code before the code has been committed to version control or after the commit has been performed. No matter which side you favour, Visual Studio 2012 allows you to request for a code review both before check in and also request for a review after check in. Let’s weigh the pros and cons of the approaches independently. Code Review Before Check In or Code Review After Check In? Approach 1 – Code Review before Check in Developer completes the code and feels the code quality is appropriate for check in to TFS. The developer raises a code review request to have a second pair of eyes validate if the code abides to the recommended best practices, will not result in any defects due to common coding mistakes and whether any optimizations can be made to improve the code quality.                                             Image 1 – code review before check in Pros Everything that gets committed to source control is reviewed. Minimizes the chances of smelly code making its way into the code base. Decreases the cost of fixing bugs, remember, the earlier you find them, the lesser the pain in fixing them. Cons Development Code Freeze – Since the changes aren’t in the source control yet. Further development can only be done off-line. The changes have not been through a CI build, hard to say whether the code abides to all build quality standards. Inconsistent! Cumbersome to track the actual code review process.  Not every change to the code base is worth reviewing, a lot of effort is invested for very little gain. Approach 2 – Code Review after Check in Developer checks in, random code reviews are performed on the checked in code.                                                      Image 2 – Code review after check in Pros The code has already passed the CI build and run through any code analysis plug ins you may have running on the build server. Instruct the developer to ensure ZERO fx cop, style cop and static code analysis before check in. Code is cleaner and smell free even before the code review. No Offline development, developers can continue to develop against the source control. Cons Bad code can easily make its way into the code base. Since the review take place much later in the cycle, the cost of fixing issues can prove to be much higher. Approach 3 – Hybrid Approach The community advocates a more hybrid approach, a blend of tooling and human accountability quotient.                                                               Image 3 – Hybrid Approach 1. Code review high impact check ins. It is not possible to review everything, by setting up code review check in policies you can end up slowing your team. More over, the code that you are reviewing before check in hasn't even been through a green CI build either. 2. Tooling. Let the tooling work for you. By running static analysis, fx cop, style cop and other plug ins on the build agent, you can identify the real issues that in my opinion can't possibly be identified using human reviews. Configure the tooling to report back top 10 issues every day. Mandate the manual code review of individuals who keep making it to this list of shame more often. 3. During Merge. I would prefer eliminating some of the other code issues during merge from Main branch to the release branch. In a scrum project this is still easier because cheery picking the merges is a possibility and the size of code being reviewed is still limited. Let the tooling work for you, if some one breaks the CI build often, put them on a gated check in build course until you see improvement. If some one appears on the top 10 list of shame generated via the build then ensure that all their code is reviewed till you see improvement. At the end of the day, the goal is to ensure that the code being delivered is top quality. By enforcing a code review before any check in, you force the developer to work offline or stay put till the review is complete. What do the experts say? So I asked a few expects what they thought of “Code Review quality gate before Checking in code?" Terje Sandstrom | Microsoft ALM MVP You mean a review quality gate BEFORE checking in code????? That would mean a lot of code staying either local or in shelvesets, and not even been through a CI build, and a green CI build being the main criteria for going further, f.e. to the review state. I would not like code laying around with no checkin’s. Having a requirement that code is checked in small pieces, 4-8 hours work max, and AT LEAST daily checkins, a manual code review comes second down the lane. I would expect review quality gates to happen before merging back to main, or before merging to release.  But that would all be on checked-in code.  Branching is absolutely one way to ease the pain.   Another way we are using is automatic quality builds, running metrics, coverage, static code analysis.  Unfortunately it takes some time, would be great to be on CI’s – but…., so it’s done scheduled every night. Based on this we get, among other stuff,  top 10 lists of suspicious code, which is then subjected to reviews.  If a person seems to be very popular on these top 10 lists, we subject every check in from that person to a review for a period. That normally helps.   None of the clients I have can afford to have every checkin reviewed, so we need to find ways around it. I don’t disagree with the nicety of having all the code reviewed, but I find it hard to find those resources in today’s enterprises. David V. Corbin | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I tend to agree with both sides. I hate having code that is not checked in, but at the same time hate having “bad” code in the repository. I have found that branching is one approach to solving this dilemma. Code is checked into the private/feature branch before the review, but is not merged over to the “official” branch until after the review. I advocate both, depending on circumstance (especially team dynamics)   - The “pre-checkin” is usually for elements that may impact the project as a whole. Think of it as another “gate” along with passing unit tests. - The “post-checkin” may very well not be at the changeset level, but correlates to a review at the “user story” level.   Again, this depends on team dynamics in play…. Robert MacLean | Microsoft ALM MVP I do not think there is no right answer for the industry as a whole. In short the question is why do you do reviews? Your question implies risk mitigation, so in low risk areas you can get away with it after check in while in high risk you need to do it before check in. An example is those new to a team or juniors need it much earlier (maybe that is before checkin, maybe that is soon after) than seniors who have shipped twenty sprints on the team. Abhimanyu Singhal | Visual Studio ALM Ranger Depends on per scenario basis. We recommend post check-in reviews when: 1. We don't want to block other checks and processes on manual code reviews. Manual reviews take time, and some pieces may not require manual reviews at all. 2. We need to trace all changes and track history. 3. We have a code promotion strategy/process in place. For risk mitigation, post checkin code can be promoted to Accepted branches. Or can be rejected. Pre Checkin Reviews are used when 1. There is a high risk factor associated 2. Reviewers are generally (most of times) have immediate availability. 3. Team does not have strict tracking needs. Simply speaking, no single process fits all scenarios. You need to select what works best for your team/project. Thomas Schissler | Visual Studio ALM Ranger This is an interesting discussion, I’m right now discussing details about executing code reviews with my teams. I see and understand the aspects you brought in, but there is another side as well, I’d like to point out. 1.) If you do reviews per check in this is not very practical as a hard rule because this will disturb the flow of the team very often or it will lead to reduce the checkin frequency of the devs which I would not accept. 2.) If you do later reviews, for example if you review PBIs, it is not easy to find out which code you should review. Either you review all changesets associate with the PBI, but then you might review code which has been changed with a later checkin and the dev maybe has already fixed the issue. Or you review the diff of the latest changeset of the PBI with the first but then you might also review changes of other PBIs. Jakob Leander | Sr. Director, Avanade In my experience, manual code review: 1. Does not get done and at the very least does not get redone after changes (regardless of intentions at start of project) 2. When a project actually do it, they often do not do it right away = errors pile up 3. Requires a lot of time discussing/defining the standard and for the team to learn it However code review is very important since e.g. even small memory leaks in a high volume web solution have big consequences In the last years I have advocated following approach for code review - Architects up front do “at least one best practice example” of each type of component and tell the team. Copy from this one. This should include error handling, logging, security etc. - Dev lead on project continuously browse code to validate that the best practices are used. Especially that patterns etc. are not broken. You can do this formally after each sprint/iteration if you want. Once this is validated it is unlikely to “go bad” even during later code changes Agree with customer to rely on static code analysis from Visual Studio as the one and only coding standard. This has HUUGE benefits - You can easily tweak to reach the level you desire together with customer - It is easy to measure for both developers/management - It is 100% consistent across code base - It gets validated all the time so you never end up getting hammered by a customer review in the end - It is easy to tell the developer that you do not want code back unless it has zero errors = minimize communication You need to track this at least during nightly builds and make sure team sees total # issues. Do not allow #issues it to grow uncontrolled. On the project I run I require code analysis to have run on code before checkin (checkin rule). This means -  You have to have clean compile (or CA wont run) so this is extra benefit = very few broken builds - You can change a few of the rules to compile as errors instead of warnings. I often do this for “missing dispose” issues which you REALLY do not want in your app Tip: Place your custom CA rules files as part of solution. That  way it works when you do branching etc. (path to CA file is relative in VS) Some may argue that CA is not as good as manual inspection. But since manual inspection in reality suffers from the 3 issues in start it is IMO a MUCH better (and much cheaper) approach from helicopter perspective Tirthankar Dutta | Director, Avanade I think code review should be run both before and after check ins. There are some code metrics that are meant to be run on the entire codebase … Also, especially on multi-site projects, one should strive to architect in a way that lets men manage the framework while boys write the repetitive code… scales very well with the need to review less by containment and imposing architectural restrictions to emphasise the design. Bruno Capuano | Microsoft ALM MVP For code reviews (means peer reviews) in distributed team I use http://www.vsanywhere.com/default.aspx  David Jobling | Global Sr. Director, Avanade Peer review is the only way to scale and its a great practice for all in the team to learn to perform and accept. In my experience you soon learn who's code to watch more than others and tune the attention. Mikkel Toudal Kristiansen | Manager, Avanade If you have several branches in your code base, you will need to merge often. This requires manual merging, when a file has been changed in both branches. It offers a good opportunity to actually review to changed code. So my advice is: Merging between branches should be done as often as possible, it should be done by a senior developer, and he/she should perform a full code review of the code being merged. As for detecting architectural smells and code smells creeping into the code base, one really good third party tools exist: Ndepend (http://www.ndepend.com/, for static code analysis of the current state of the code base). You could also consider adding StyleCop to the solution. Jesse Houwing | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I gave a presentation on this subject on the TechDays conference in NL last year. See my presentation and slides here (talk in Dutch, but English presentation): http://blog.jessehouwing.nl/2012/03/did-you-miss-my-techdaysnl-talk-on-code.html  I’d like to add a few more points: - Before/After checking is mostly a trust issue. If you have a team that does diligent peer reviews and regularly talk/sit together or peer review, there’s no need to enforce a before-checkin policy. The peer peer-programming and regular feedback during development can take care of most of the review requirements as long as the team isn’t under stress. - Under stress, enforce pre-checkin reviews, it might sound strange, if you’re already under time or budgetary constraints, but it is under such conditions most real issues start to be created or pile up. - Use tools to catch most common errors, Code Analysis/FxCop was already mentioned. HP Fortify, Resharper, Coderush etc can help you there. There are also a lot of 3rd party rules you can add to Code Analysis. I’ve written a few myself (http://fccopcontrib.codeplex.com) and various teams from Microsoft have added their own rules (MSOCAF for SharePoint, WSSF for WCF). For common errors that keep cropping up, see if you can define a rule. It’s much easier. But more importantly make sure you have a good help page explaining *WHY* it's wrong. If you have small feature or developer branches/shelvesets, you might want to review pre-merge. It’s still better to do peer reviews and peer programming, but the most important thing is that bad quality code doesn’t make it into the important branch. So my philosophy: - Use tooling as much as possible. - Make sure the team understands the tooling and the importance of the things it flags. It’s too easy to just click suppress all to ignore the warnings. - Under stress, tighten process, it’s under stress that the problems of late reviews will really surface - Most importantly if you do reviews do them as early as possible, but never later than needed. In other words, pre-checkin/post checking doesn’t really matter, as long as the review is done before the code is released. It’ll just be much more expensive to fix any review outcomes the later you find them. --- I would love to hear what you think!

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• 2011 PASS Board Applicants: Adam Jorgensen

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction I am interviewing 2011 PASS Board Nominee Applicants. As listed on the PASS Board Elections site the applicants are: Rob Farley Geoff Hiten Adam Jorgensen Denise McInerney Sri Sridharan Kendal Van Dyke I'm asking everyone the same questions and blogging the responses in the order received. Adam Jorgensen is next up: Interview With Adam Jorgensen 1. What's your day job? I am currently the President of Pragmatic Works Consulting ( http://www.pragmaticworks.com ). I also participate with...(read more)

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• 2011 PASS Board Applicants: Kendal Van Dyke

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction I am interviewing 2011 PASS Board Nominee Applicants. As listed on the PASS Board Elections site the applicants are: Rob Farley Geoff Hiten Adam Jorgensen Denise McInerney Sri Sridharan Kendal Van Dyke I'm asking everyone the same questions and blogging the responses in the order received. Kendal Van Dyke is next up: Interview With Kendal Van Dyke 1. What's your day job? I'm a Senior Technical Consultant with Insource Technologies ( http://www.insource.com/ ) in Houston, TX (but I work...(read more)

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• 2011 PASS Board Applicants: Geoff Hiten

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction I am interviewing 2011 PASS Board Nominee Applicants. As listed on the PASS Board Elections site the applicants are: Rob Farley Geoff Hiten Adam Jorgensen Denise McInerney Sri Sridharan Kendal Van Dyke I'm asking everyone the same questions and blogging the responses in the order received. Geoff Hiten is next up: Interview With Geoff Hiten 1. What's your day job? I am a Principal Consultant for Intellinet, a business technology consulting company based in Atlanta.  I work in our...(read more)

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• 2011 PASS Board Applicants: Denise McInerney

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction I am interviewing 2011 PASS Board Nominee Applicants. As listed on the PASS Board Elections site the applicants are: Rob Farley Geoff Hiten Adam Jorgensen Denise McInerney Sri Sridharan Kendal Van Dyke I'm asking everyone the same questions and blogging the responses in the order received. Denise McInerney is next up: Interview With Denise McInerney 1. What's your day job? I'm a development DBA at Intuit. Intuit provides financial software and services to small business and consumers....(read more)

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• The PASS Board of Directors Q&A Session

  - by andyleonard

  Friday afternoon (18 Oct 2013), the PASS Board of Directors met with interested members of the SQL Server Community to answer questions. Paraphrases of some questions and notes I collected during the session follow (Please note: this is not a transcript): Elections Kendall Van Dyke asked about duplicate voting. The Board responded that they had looked into the matter and identified duplicate memberships based on names and addresses, but with different email addresses. After filtering for duplicate...(read more)

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• Tool to aid Code Review

  - by Prakash

  For our small team of 20 developers, we used do code review like: Make a label in svn and publish the label to the reviewers Reviewers checkout the code and add comments in line (with marker like: // REVIEWER_NAME::REVIEW COMMENT:) After all comments are in, reviewer checks in the code, preferably with new label. Developer checks the comments and makes changes (if appropriate) Developer keeps an excel sheet report for considered changes and reasons for ignored comments Problem: Developer needs to keep track of multiple labels which might have same comments Sometimes we even do One on One review and if we really have time, even do Table review (team of reviewers looks at the code on projector, on the fly, and pass comment) I was wondering: Are you guys using any specific tool which helps to do code reviews smoother? I have heard of Code Collaborator. But have anyone used that? Is it worth the money?

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• JavaOne 2011: Content review process and Tips for submissions

  - by arungupta

  The Technical Sessions, Birds of Feather, Panels, and Hands-on labs (basically all the content delivered at JavaOne) forms the backbone of the conference. At this year's JavaOne conference you'll have access to the rock star speakers, the ability to engage with luminaries in the hallways, and have beer (or 2) with community peers in designated areas. Even though the conference is Oct 2-6, 2011, and will be bigger and better than last year's conference, the Call for Paper submission and review/selection evaluation started much earlier.In previous years, I've participated in the review process and this year I was honored to serve as co-lead for the "Enterprise Service Architecture and Cloud" track with Ludovic Champenois. We had a stellar review team with an equal mix of Oracle and external community reviewers. The review process is very overwhelming with the reviewers going through multiple voting iterations on each submission in order to ensure that the selected content is the BEST of the submitted lot. Our ultimate goal was to ensure that the content best represented the track, and most importantly would draw interest and excitement from attendees. As always, the number and quality of submissions were just superb, making for a truly challenging (and rewarding) experience for the reviewers. As co-lead I tried to ensure that I applied a fair and balanced process in the evaluation of content in my track. . Here are some key steps followed by all track leads: Vote on sessions - Each reviewer is required to vote on the sessions on a scale of 1-5 - and also provide a justifying comment. Create buckets - Divide the submissions into different buckets to ensure a fair representation of different topics within a track. This ensures that if a particular bucket got higher votes then the track is not exclusively skewed towards it. Top 7 - The review committee provides a list of the top 7 talks that can be used in the promotional material by the JavaOne team. Generally these talks are easy to identify and a consensus is reached upon them fairly quickly. First cut - Each track is allocated a total number of sessions (including panels), BoFs, and Hands-on labs that can be approved. The track leads then start creating the first cut of the approvals using the casted votes coupled with their prior experience in the subject matter. In our case, Ludo and I have been attending/speaking at JavaOne (and other popular Java-focused conferences) for double digit years. The Grind - The first cut is then refined and refined and refined using multiple selection criteria such as sorting on the bucket, speaker quality, topic popularity, cumulative vote total, and individual vote scale. The sessions that don't make the cut are reviewed again as well to ensure if they need to replace one of the selected one as a potential alternate. I would like to thank the entire Java community for all the submissions and many thanks to the reviewers who spent countless hours reading each abstract, voting on them, and helping us refine the list. I think approximately 3-4 hours cumulative were spent on each submission to reach an evaluation, specifically the border line cases. We gave our recommendations to the JavaOne Program Committee Chairperson (Sharat Chander) and accept/decline notifications should show up in submitter inboxes in the next few weeks. Here are some points to keep in mind when submitting a session to JavaOne next time: JavaOne is a technology-focused conference so any product, marketing or seemingly marketish talk are put at the bottom of the list.Oracle Open World and Oracle Develop are better options for submitting product specific talks. Make your title catchy. Remember the attendees are more likely to read the abstract if they like the title. We try our best to recategorize the talk to a different track if it needs to but please ensure that you are filing in the right track to have all the right eyeballs looking at it. Also, it does not hurt marking an alternate track if your talk meets the criteria. Make sure to coordinate within your team before the submission - multiple sessions from the same team or company does not ensure that the best speaker is picked. In such case we rely upon your "google presence" and/or review committee's prior knowledge of the speaker. The reviewers may not know you or your product at all and you get 750 characters to pitch your idea. Make sure to use all of them, to the last 750th character. Make sure to read your abstract multiple times to ensure that you are giving all the relevant information ? Think through your presentation and see if you are leaving out any important aspects.Also look if the abstract has any redundant information that will not required by the reviewers. There are additional sections that allow you to share information about the speaker and the presentation summary. Use them to blow the horn about yourself and any other relevant details. Please don't say "call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx to find out the details" :-) The review committee enjoyed reviewing the submissions and we certainly hope you'll have a great time attending them. Happy JavaOne!

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• 2011 PASS Board Applicants: Rob Farley

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction I am interviewing 2011 PASS Board Nominee Applicants. As listed on the PASS Board Elections site the applicants are: Rob Farley Geoff Hiten Adam Jorgensen Denise McInerney Sri Sridharan Kendal Van Dyke I'm asking everyone the same questions and blogging the responses in the order received. Rob Farley is first up: Interview With Rob Farley 1. What's your day job? I run LobsterPot Solutions out of Adelaide, Australia. We're a SQL & BI consultancy, and were the first Microsoft Partner...(read more)

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• 2011 PASS Board Applicants: Sri Sridharan

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction I am interviewing 2011 PASS Board Nominee Applicants. As listed on the PASS Board Elections site the applicants are: Rob Farley Geoff Hiten Adam Jorgensen Denise McInerney Sri Sridharan Kendal Van Dyke I'm asking everyone the same questions and blogging the responses in the order received. Sri Sridharan is next up: Interview With Sri Sridharan 1. What's your day job? I work for VHA as a Data Architect. I am responsible for 3 main goals. · Responsible for Data Governance initiatives in...(read more)

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• code review: Is it subjective or objective(quantifiable) ?

  - by Ram

  I am putting together some guidelines for code reviews. We do not have one formal process yet, and trying to formalize it. And our team is geographically distributed We are using TFS for source control (used it for tasks/bug tracking/project management as well, but migrated that to JIRA) with VS2008 for development. What are the things you look for when doing a code review ? These are the things I came up with Enforce FXCop rules (we are a Microsoft shop) Check for performance (any tools ?) and security (thinking about using OWASP- code crawler) and thread safety Adhere to naming conventions The code should cover edge cases and boundaries conditions Should handle exceptions correctly (do not swallow exceptions) Check if the functionality is duplicated elsewhere method body should be small(20-30 lines) , and methods should do one thing and one thing only (no side effects/ avoid temporal coupling -) Do not pass/return nulls in methods Avoid dead code Document public and protected methods/properties/variables What other things do you generally look for ? I am trying to see if we can quantify the review process (it would produce identical output when reviewed by different persons) Example: Saying "the method body should be no longer than 20-30 lines of code" as opposed to saying "the method body should be small" Or is code review very subjective ( and would differ from one reviewer to another ) ? The objective is to have a marking system (say -1 point for each FXCop rule violation,-2 points for not following naming conventions,2 point for refactoring etc) so that developers would be more careful when they check in their code.This way, we can identify developers who are consistently writing good/bad code.The goal is to have the reviewer spend about 30 minutes max, to do a review (I know this is subjective, considering the fact that the changeset/revision might include multiple files/huge changes to the existing architecture etc , but you get the general idea, the reviewer should not spend days reviewing someone's code) What other objective/quantifiable system do you follow to identify good/bad code written by developers? Book reference: Clean Code: A handbook of agile software craftmanship by Robert Martin

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• Book review: SQL Server Transaction Log Management

  - by Hugo Kornelis

  It was an offer I could not resist. I was promised a free copy of one of the newest books from Red Gate Books , SQL Server Transaction Log Management (by Tony Davis and Gail Shaw ), with the caveat that I should write a review after reading it. Mind you, not a commercial, “make sure we sell more copies” kind of review, but a review of my actual thoughts. Yes, I got explicit permission to be my usual brutally honest self. A total win/win for me! First, I get a free book – and free is always good,...(read more)

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• Turning a board game idea into a browser based, slow paced gameplay

  - by guillaume31

  Suppose I want to create a strategy game with global mutable state shared between all players (think game board). But unlike a board game, I don't want it to be real time action and/or turn-based. Instead, players should be able to log in at any time of the day and spend a fixed number of action points per day as they wish. As opposed to a few hours, game sessions would run over a few weeks. This is meant to reward good strategy rather than time spent playing (as an alternative, hardcore players could always play multiple games in parallel instead) as well as all kind of issues related to live playing like disconnections and synchronization. The game should remain addictive still have a low time investment footprint for casual players. So far so good, but this still leaves open the question of when to solve actions and when they should be visible. I want to avoid "ninja play" like doing all your moves just a few minutes before daily point reset to take other players by surprise, or people spamming F5 to place a well-timed action which would defeat the whole point of a non real-time game. I thought of a couple of approaches to that : Resolve all events in a single scheduled process running once a day. This basically means a "blind" gameplay where players can take actions but don't see their results immediately. The thing is, I played a similar browser game a few years ago and didn't like the fact that you feel disconnected and powerless until there's that deus ex machina telling you what really happened during all that time. You see the world evolve in large increments of one day, which often doesn't seem like seeing it evolve at all. For actions that have an big impact on the game or on other players (attacks, big achievements), make them visible to everyone immediately but delay their effect by something like 24 hours. Opposing players could be notified when such an event happens, so that they can react to it. Do you have any other ideas how I could go about solving this ? Are there any known approaches in similar existing games ?

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• create a simple game board android

  - by user2819446

  I am a beginner in Android and I want to create a very simple 2D game. I've already programmed a Tic-Tac-Toe game. The drawing of the game board and connecting it with my game and input logic was quite difficult (as it was done separately, canvas drawing, calculating positions, etc). By now I figured out that there must be a simpler way. All I want is a simple grid; something like this: http://www.blelb.com/deutsch/blelbspots/spot29/images/hermannneg.gif. The edges should be visible and black, and each cell editable, containing either an image or nothing, so I can detect if the player is on that cell or not, move it... Think of it as Chess or something similar. Searching the internet during the last days, I am a bit overwhelmed of all the different options. After all, I think Gridview or Gridlayout is what I am searching for, but I'm still stuck. I hope you can help me with some good advice or maybe a link to a nice tutorial. I have checked several already, and none were exactly what I was searching for.

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• Assigning valid moves on board game

  - by Kunal4536

  I am making a board game in unity 4.3 2d similar to checkers. I have added an empty object to all the points where player can move and added a box collider to each empty object.I attached a click to move script to each player token. Now I want to assign valid moves. e.g. as shown in picture... Players can only move on vertex of each square.Player can only move to adjacent vertex.Thus it can only move from red spot to yellow and cannot move to blue spot.There is another condition which is : if there is the token of another player at the yellow spot then the player cannot move to that spot. Instead it will have to go from red to green spot. How can I find the valid moves of the player by scripting. I have another problem with click to move. When I click all the objects move to that position.But I only want to move a single token. So what can i add to script to select a specific object and then click to move the specific object.Here is my script for click to move. var obj:Transform; private var hitPoint : Vector3; private var move: boolean = false; private var startTime:float; var speed = 1; function Update () { if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Mouse0)) { var hit : RaycastHit; // no point storing this really var ray = Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay (Input.mousePosition); if (Physics.Raycast (ray, hit, 10000)) { hitPoint = hit.point; move = true; startTime = Time.time; } } if(move) { obj.position = Vector3.Lerp(obj.position, hitPoint, Time.deltaTime * speed); if(obj.position == hitPoint) { move = false; } } }`

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• SQLAuthority Book Review – DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA

  - by pinaldave

  DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA – Thomas LaRock Link to Amazon Link to Flipkart First of all, I thank all my readers when I wrote that I could not get this book in any local book stores, because they offered me to send a copy of this good book. A very special mention goes to Sripada and Jayesh for they gave so much effort in finding my home address and sending me the hard copy. Before, I did not have the copy of the book, but now I have two of it already! It surprises me how my readers were able to find my home address, which I have not publicly shared. Quick Review: This is indeed a one easy-to-read and fun book. We all work day and night with technology yet we should not forget to show our love and care for our family at home. For our souls that starve for peace and guidance, this one book is the “it” book for all the technology enthusiasts. Though this book was specifically written for DBAs, the reach is not limited to DBAs only because the lessons incorporated in it actually applies to all. This is one of the most motivating technical books I have read. Detailed Review: Let us go over a few questions first: Who wants to be as famous as rockstars in the field of Database Administration? How can one learn what it takes to become a top notch software developer? If you are a beginner in your field, how will you go to next level? Your boss may be very kind or like Dilbert’s Boss, what will you do? How do you keep growing when Eco-system around you does not support you? You are almost at top but there is someone else at the TOP, what do you do and how do you avoid office politics? As a database developer what should be your basic responsibility? and many more… I was able to completely read book in one sitting and I loved it. Before I continue with my opinion, I want to echo the opinion of Kevin Kline who has written the Forward of the book. He has truly suggested that “You hold in your hands a collection of insights and wisdom on the topic of database administration gained through many years of hard-won experience, long nights of study, and direct mentorship under some of the industry’s most talented database professionals and information technology (IT) experts.” Today, IT field is getting bigger and better, while talking about terabytes of the database becomes “more” normal every single day. The gods and demigods of database professionals are taking care of these large scale databases and are carefully maintaining them. In this world, there are only a few beginnings on the first step. There are many experts in different technology fields who are asked to address the issues with databases. There is YOU and ME, who is just new to this work. So we ask ourselves WHERE to begin and HOW to begin. We adore and follow the religion of our rockstars, but oftentimes we really have no idea about their background and their struggles. Every rockstar has his success story which needs to be digested before learning his tricks and tips. This book starts with the same note and teaches the two most important lessons for anybody who wants to be a DBA Rockstar –  to focus on their single goal of learning and to excel the technology. The story starts with three simple guidelines – Get Prepared, Get Trained, Get Certified. Once a person learns the skills, and then, it would be about time that he needs to enrich or to improve those skills you have learned. I am sure that the right opportunity will come finding themselves and they will not have to go run behind it. However, the real challenge for any person is the first day or first week. A new employee, no matter how much experienced he is, sometimes has no clue about what should one do at new job. Chapter 2 and chapter 3 precisely talk about what one should do as soon as the new job begins. It is also written with keeping the fact in focus that each job can be very much different but there are few infrastructure setups and programming concepts are the same. Learning basics of database was really interesting. I like to focus on the roots of any technology. It is important to understand the structure of the database before suggesting what indexes needs to be created, the same way this book covers the most essential knowledge one must learn by most database developers. I think the title of the fourth chapter is my favorite sentence in this book. I can see that I will be saying this again and again in the future – “A Development Server Is a Production Server to a Developer“. I have worked in the software industry for almost 8 years now and I have seen so many developers sitting on their chairs and waiting for instructions from their lead about how to improve the code or what to do the next. When I talk to them, I suggest that the experiment with their server and try various techniques. I think they all should understand that for them, a development server is their production server and needs to pay proper attention to the code from the beginning. There should be NO any inappropriate code from the beginning. One has to fully focus and give their best, if they are not sure they should ask but should do something and stay active. Chapter 5 and 6 talks about two essential skills for any developer and database administration – what are the ethics of developers when they are working with production server and how to support software which is running on the production server. I have met many people who know the theory by heart but when put in front of keyboard they do not know where to start. The first thing they do opening the browser and searching online, instead of opening SQL Server Management Studio. This can very well happen to anybody who is experienced as well. Chapter 5 and 6 addresses that situation as well includes the handy scripts which can solve almost all the basic trouble shooting issues. “Where’s the Buffet?” By far, this is the best chapter in this book. If you have ever met me, you would know that I love food. I think after reading this chapter, I felt Thomas has written this just keeping me in mind. I think there will be many other people who feel the same way, too. Even my wife who read this chapter thought this was specifically written for me. I will not talk any more about this chapter as this is one must read chapter. And of course this is about real ‘FOOD‘. I am an SQL Server Trainer and Consultant and I totally agree with the point made in the chapter 8 of this book. Yes, it says here that what is necessary to train employees and people. Millions of dollars worth the labor is continuously done in the world which has faults and incorrect. Once something goes wrong, very expensive consultant comes in and fixes the problem. This whole cycle which can be stopped and improved if proper training is done. There is plenty of free trainings available as well, if one cannot afford paid training. “Connect. Learn. Share” – I think this is a great summary and bird’s eye view of this book. Networking is the key. Everything which is discussed in this book can be taken to next level if one properly uses this tips and continuously grow with it. Connecting with others, helping learn each other and building the good knowledge sharing environment should be the goal of everyone. Before I end the review I want to share a real experience. I have personally met one DBA who has worked in a single department in a company for so long that when he was put in a different department in his company due to closing that department, he could not adjust and quit the job despite the same people and company around him. Adjusting in the new environment gets much tougher as one person gets more and more experienced. This book precisely addresses the same issue along with their solutions. I just cannot stop comparing the book with my personal journey. I found so many things which are coincidently in the book is written as how we developer and DBA think. I must express special thanks to Thomas for taking time in his personal life and write this book for us. This book is indeed a book for everybody who wants to grow healthy in the tough and competitive environment. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – Book Review – Beginning T-SQL 2008 by Kathi Kellenberger

  - by pinaldave

  Beginning T-SQL 2008 by Kathi Kellenberger Amazon Link Detail Review: Beginning T-SQL 2008 is one of the best books on the market if you are just beginning to work with Microsoft SQL, or have a little bit of experience and need to learn more quickly. Each chapter of the book introduces a new subject, and builds upon topics covered in previous chapters.  The author of the book, Kathi Kellenberger understands that you need to form a solid foundation of knowledge before moving on to new topics, and sets up each subject nicely.  Because the chapters move in an orderly progression, you continue to use skills you learned earlier. One of the best features of Beginning T-SQL 2008 is that each chapter has multiple examples and exercises.  Many books introduce a topic and then never go back to it.  This book gives enough examples that you will be familiar with the subject when you come across it in real life.  The exercises at the end of the chapter mean that you will be using the skills you learned – and there is no better way to cement a subject in your brain. The book also includes discussions of the common errors that programmers will come across, how to avoid them, and how to fix them if they happen.  Ms. Kellenberger understands that not only do mistakes happen, but they are bound to happen if you aren’t trained properly.  Mistakes are part of the learning process! The book begins by discussions relational theory, so that programmers will understand the way T-SQL works from the ground up.  It also walks readers through writing accurate queries, combining set-based and procedural processing, embedding logic in stored functions, and so much more. Overall, the main goal of Beginning T-SQL 2008 is to introduce novices to SQL programming, and quickly familiarize them with the basics of running the program.  The book is written with the idea that readers will not know any of the technical terms or vocabulary.  However, if you are a little more familiar with SQL and looking to become better, you will still find this book very helpful. Ratting: 4.5+ Stars Summary: I must recommend Beginning T-SQL 2008 highly enough.  If you are going to buy any beginners guide to Transect-SQL, this is the one you should spend your money on.  You can save yourself a lot of time and effort later by using this very affordable manual to learn the basics, which will allow you to become an expert much faster. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority Book Review – Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting

  - by pinaldave

  Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting by Christian Bolton, Justin Langford, Brent Ozar, James Rowland-Jones, Steven Wort Link to Amazon (Worldwide) Link to Flipkart (India) Brief Review: Having a book on internal and associating that with real life is “almost” an impossible task. The reason for using the word “almost” is because this book has accomplished this [...]

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• Book Review (Book 10) - The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

  - by BuckWoody

  This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for March 2012 was: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick. I was traveling at the end of last month so I’m a bit late posting this review here. Why I chose this book: My personal belief about computing is this: All computing technology is simply re-arranging data. We take data in, we manipulate it, and we send it back out. That’s computing. I had heard from some folks about this book and it’s treatment of data. I heard that it dealt with the basics of data - and the semantics of data, information and so on. It also deals with the earliest forms of history of information, which fascinates me. It’s similar I was told, to GEB which a favorite book of mine as well, so that was a bonus. Some folks I talked to liked it, some didn’t - so I thought I would check it out. What I learned: I liked the book. It was longer than I thought - took quite a while to read, even though I tend to read quickly. This is the kind of book you take your time with. It does in fact deal with the earliest forms of human interaction and the basics of data. I learned, for instance, that the genesis of the binary communication system is based in the invention of telegraph (far-writing) codes, and that the earliest forms of communication were expensive. In fact, many ciphers were invented not to hide military secrets, but to compress information. A sort of early “lol-speak” to keep the cost of transmitting data low! I think the comparison with GEB is a bit over-reaching. GEB is far more specific, fanciful and so on. In fact, this book felt more like something fro Richard Dawkins, and tended to wander around the subject quite a bit. I imagine the author doing his research and writing each chapter as a book that followed on from the last one. This is what possibly bothered those who tended not to like it, I think. Towards the middle of the book, I think the author tended to be a bit too fragmented even for me. He began to delve into memes, biology and more - I think he might have been better off breaking that off into another work. The existentialism just seemed jarring. All in all, I liked the book. I recommend it to any technical professional, specifically ones involved with data technology in specific. And isn’t that all of us? :)

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• Book Review (Book 11) - Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform

  - by BuckWoody

  This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for April 2012 was: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform. I was traveling at the end of last month so I’m a bit late posting this review here. Why I chose this book: I actually know a few of the authors on this book, so when they told me about it I wanted to check it out. The premise of the book is exactly as it states in the title - to learn how to solve a problem using products from Microsoft. What I learned: I liked the book - a lot. They've arranged the content in a "Solution Decision Framework", that presents a few elements to help you identify a need and then propose alternate solutions to solve them, and then the rationale for the choice. But the payoff is that the authors then walk through the solution they implement and what they ran into doing it. I really liked this approach. It's not a huge book, but one I've referred to again since I've read it. It's fairly comprehensive, and includes server-oriented products, not things like Microsoft Office or other client-side tools. In fact, I would LOVE to have a work like this for Open Source and other vendors as well - would make for a great library for a Systems Architect. This one is unashamedly aimed at the Microsoft products, and even if I didn't work here, I'd be fine with that. As I said, it would be interesting to see some books on other platforms like this, but I haven't run across something that presents other systems in quite this way. And that brings up an interesting point - This book is aimed at folks who create solutions within an organization. It's not aimed at Administrators, DBA's, Developers or the like, although I think all of those audiences could benefit from reading it. The solutions are made up, and not to a huge level of depth - nor should they be. It's a great exercise in thinking these kinds of things through in a structured way. The information is a bit dated, especially for Windows and SQL Azure. While the general concepts hold, the cloud platform from Microsoft is evolving so quickly that any printed book finds it hard to keep up with the improvements. I do have one quibble with the text - the chapters are a bit uneven. This is always a danger with multiple authors, but it shows up in a couple of chapters. I winced at one of the chapters that tried to take a more conversational, humorous style. This kind of academic work doesn't lend itself to that style. I recommend you get the book - and use it. I hope they keep it updated - I'll be a frequent customer. :)  

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• Paid Website Code Review

  - by clifgray

  I have written a pretty extensive webapp and it is going to go live in the next fews weeks and before I really publicize it I want to get some professionals to review it for optimization and best practices. Is there any online service or way to find local software engineers who would be willing to do this? Just to give some specifics that may be helpful, my site is on Google App Engine and written in Python and it is tough to find someone with extensive experience in that area.

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• Review of my 2010 and what's I have in mind during 2011

  - by NeilHambly

  Firstly let me quickly give you a quick review of my community activities during 2010 Although it was a HUGE improvement on any previous years I still feel I could have achieved more, so as a result I have sat myself down and actually set some actual goals I would like to attempt to achieve. I will list those below but before here is a quick summary of my events during 2010 Presentations : Having started to present regular UG presentations in 2010 (March) I have done 10 Presentations, throughout...(read more)

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• Book Review (Book 12) - 20 Master Plots

  - by BuckWoody

  This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for a year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for May 2012 was:20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias. This is my final book review - at least for this year. I'll explain what I've learned in this book in particular, and in the last twelve months in general. Why I chose this book: Stories and themes are part of software, presenting, and working in teams. This book claims there are only 20 plots, ever. I wanted to find out. What I learned: Probably my most favorite read of the year. Deceptively small, amazingly insightful. The premise is that there are only a few "base" themes, and that once you learn them you can put together an interesting set of stories on most any topic. Yes, the author admits that this number has been different throughout history - some have said 50, others 14, and still others claim only one or two basic plots. This doesn't change the fact that you can build very complex stories from a simple set of circumstances and characters. Be warned - if you read this book it takes away much of the wonder from almost every movie or book you'll read from here on! I loved it. My favorite part is that the author gives you exercises to build stories, right from the start. I've actually used these as the start of a meeting to foster creativity. Amazing stuff. One of my favorite sections of the book deals with plot and story. Plot: The king died, and the queen died. Story: The king died, and the queen died of heartbreak. Add one or two words, and you have the essence of storytelling. A highly recommended read, for all folks of all ages. You'll like it, your spouse will like it, and your kids will like it. I learned to be a better storyteller, and it helped me understand that plots and stories are not just things in books - they are a direct reflection of human nature. That makes me a better manager of myself and others.   And this is the last of the reviews - at least for this year. I probably won't post many more book reviews here, but I will keep up the practice. As a reminder, the goal was to select 12 books that will help you reach your career goals. They don't have to be technical, or even apply directly to your job - but they do need to be books that you mindfully select as getting you closer to what you want to be. Each month, jot down what you learned from the work. And see if it doesn't in fact get you closer to your goals. These readings helped me - I got a promotion this year, and I attribute at least some of that to the things I learned.

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