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  • Evolution of mainstream programming languages: simplicity versus complexity.

    - by Giorgio
    I had posted this question on http://stackoverflow.com but I was suggested that it may be more appropriate to post it on this forum. I did a quick search on this site and it seems to me that this question has not been asked yet. Please give me a hint if the topic has been raised already by someone else. Update I have rephrased this question, removed personal opinions and made it shorter. I hope in this way it is better suited for this forum. By looking at the recent development of Java (Java 7) and C++ (C++0x) I see that new features are added to these languages. For sure this makes it easier to use certain programming idioms, adding to the productivity of developers. On the other hand, there might be the following risks A language becomes too big, complex, and difficult to understand. It lacks coherence in the design, e.g. if it mixes different paradigms like object-orientation and functional programming, which might not fit well together. Questions: what is more important to you as a developer: to have a rich language that captures a large collection of programming idioms or to have a small language that aims at coherence and simplicity (of course, with a good deal of libraries and tools accompanying it)? Or is it possible to have both? With respect to these issues: How do you judge the current evolutions of main-stream programming languages like Java or C++? Are they becoming too complex, less intuitive? Do they have enough features? Do they need more? Are they still easy enough to understand and use?

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  • What Counts For a DBA: Simplicity

    - by Louis Davidson
    Too many computer processes do an apparently simple task in a bizarrely complex way. They remind me of this strip by one of my favorite artists: Rube Goldberg. In order to keep the boss from knowing one was late, a process is devised whereby the cuckoo clock kisses a live cuckoo bird, who then pulls a string, which triggers a hat flinging, which in turn lands on a rod that removes a typewriter cover…and so on. We rely on creating automated processes to keep on top of tasks. DBAs have a lot of tasks to perform: backups, performance tuning, data movement, system monitoring, and of course, avoiding being noticed.  Every day, there are many steps to perform to maintain the database infrastructure, including: checking physical structures, re-indexing tables where needed, backing up the databases, checking those backups, running the ETL, and preparing the daily reports and yes, all of these processes have to complete before you can call it a day, and probably before many others have started that same day. Some of these tasks are just naturally complicated on their own. Other tasks become complicated because the database architecture is excessively rigid, and we often discover during “production testing” that certain processes need to be changed because the written requirements barely resembled the actual customer requirements.   Then, with no time to change that rigid structure, we are forced to heap layer upon layer of code onto the problematic processes. Instead of a slight table change and a new index, we end up with 4 new ETL processes, 20 temp tables, 30 extra queries, and 1000 lines of SQL code.  Report writers then need to build reports and make magical numbers appear from those toxic data structures that are overly complex and probably filled with inconsistent data. What starts out as a collection of fairly simple tasks turns into a Goldbergian nightmare of daily processes that are likely to cause your dinner to be interrupted by the smartphone doing the vibration dance that signifies trouble at the mill. So what to do? Well, if it is at all possible, simplify the problem by either going into the code and refactoring the complex code to simple, or taking all of the processes and simplifying them into small, independent, easily-tested steps.  The former approach usually requires an agreement on changing underlying structures that requires countless mind-numbing meetings; while the latter can generally be done to any complex process without the same frustration or anger, though it will still leave you with lots of steps to complete, the ability to test each step independently will definitely increase the quality of the overall process (and with each step reporting status back, finding an actual problem within the process will be definitely less unpleasant.) We all know the principle behind simplifying a sequence of processes because we learned it in math classes in our early years of attending school, starting with elementary school. In my 4 years (ok, 9 years) of undergraduate work, I remember pretty much one thing from my many math classes that I apply daily to my career as a data architect, data programmer, and as an occasional indentured DBA: “show your work”. This process of showing your work was my first lesson in simplification. Each step in the process was in fact, far simpler than the entire process.  When you were working an equation that took both sides of 4 sheets of paper, showing your work was important because the teacher could see every step, judge it, and mark it accordingly.  So often I would make an error in the first few lines of a problem which meant that the rest of the work was actually moving me closer to a very wrong answer, no matter how correct the math was in the subsequent steps. Yet, when I got my grade back, I would sometimes be pleasantly surprised. I passed, yet missed every problem on the test. But why? While I got the fact that 1+1=2 wrong in every problem, the teacher could see that I was using the right process. In a computer process, the process is very similar. We take complex processes, show our work by storing intermediate values, and test each step independently. When a process has 100 steps, each step becomes a simple step that is tested and verified, such that there will be 100 places where data is stored, validated, and can be checked off as complete. If you get step 1 of 100 wrong, you can fix it and be confident (that if you did your job of testing the other steps better than the one you had to repair,) that the rest of the process works. If you have 100 steps, and store the state of the process exactly once, the resulting testable chunk of code will be far more complex and finding the error will require checking all 100 steps as one, and usually it would be easier to find a specific needle in a stack of similarly shaped needles.  The goal is to strive for simplicity either in the solution, or at least by simplifying every process down to as many, independent, testable, simple tasks as possible.  For the tasks that really can’t be done completely independently, minimally take those tasks and break them down into simpler steps that can be tested independently.  Like working out division problems longhand, have each step of the larger problem verified and tested.

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  • Workshops, online content show how Oracle infuses simplicity, mobility, extensibility into user experience

    - by mvaughan
    By Kathy Miedema & Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle has made a huge investment into the user experience of its many different software product families, and recent releases showcase big changes and features that aim to promote end user engagement and efficiency by streamlining navigation and simplifying the user interface. But making Oracle’s enterprise software great-looking and usable doesn’t stop when Oracle products go out the door. The Applications User Experience (UX) team recognizes that our customers may need to customize software to fit their work processes. And that’s why we provide tools such as user experience design patterns to help you maintain the Oracle user experience as you tailor your application to fit your business needs. Often, however, customers may need some context around user experience. How has the Oracle user experience been designed and constructed? Why is a good user experience important for users? How does understanding what goes into the user experience benefit the people who purchase the software for users? There’s a short answer to these questions, and you can read about it on Usable Apps. But truly understanding Oracle’s investment and seeing how it applies across product families occasionally requires a deeper dive into the Oracle user experience, especially if you’re an influencer or decision-maker about Oracle products. To help frame these decisions, the Communications & Outreach team has developed several targeted workshops that explore what Oracle means when it talks about user experience, and provides a roadmap into where the Oracle user experience is going. These workshops require non-disclosure agreements, and have been delivered to Oracle sales folks, Oracle partners, Oracle ACE Directors and ACEs, and a few customers. Some of these audience members have been developers or have a technical background; just as many did not. Here’s a breakdown of the kind of training you can get around the Oracle user experience from the OAUX Communications & Outreach team.For Partners: George Papazzian, Principal, Naviscent with Joyce Ohgi, Oracle Oracle Fusion Applications HCM Pre-Sales Seminar:  In concert with Worldwide Alliances  and  Channels under Applications Partner Enablement Director Jonathan Vinoskey’s guidance, the Applications User Experience team delivers a two-day workshop.  Day one focuses on Oracle Fusion Applications HCM and pre-sales strategy, and Day two focuses on positioning and leveraging Oracle’s investment in the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience.  The next workshops will occur on the following dates: December 4-5, 2013 @ Manchester, UK January 29-30, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia February 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico (email: Shannon Whiteman) March 11-12, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates April 1-2, 2014 @ Chicago, Illinois Partner Advisory Board: A two-day board meeting in the U.S. and U.K. to discuss four main user experience areas for Oracle Fusion Applications: simplicity, visualization & analytics, mobility, & futures. This event is limited to Oracle Diamond Partners, UX bloggers, and key UX influencers and requires legal documentation.  We will be talking about the Oracle applications UX strategy and roadmap. Partner Implementation Training on User Interface: How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps:  In this two-day, hands-on workshop built around Oracle’s Application Development Framework, learn how to build desktop and mobile user interfaces and mobile user interfaces based on Oracle’s experience with Fusion Applications. This workshop is for partners with a technology background who are looking for ways to tailor Fusion Applications using ADF, or have built their own custom solutions using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs. Nov 5-6, 2013 @ Redwood Shores, CA, USA January 28-29th, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia, USA February 25-26, 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico March 9-10, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates To register, contact [email protected] Simplified UI Customization & Extensibility:  Pilot workshop:  We will be reviewing the proposed content for communicating the user experience tool kit available with the next release of Oracle Fusion Applications.  Our core focus will be on what toolkit components our system implementors and independent software vendors will need to respond to customer demand, whether they are extending Fusion Applications, or building custom applications, that will need to leverage the simplified UI. Dec 11th, 2013 @ Reading, UK For information: contact [email protected] Private lab tour and demos: Interested in seeing what’s going on in the Apps UX Labs?  If you are headed to the San Francisco Bay Area, let us know. We can arrange a spin through our usability labs at headquarters. OAUX Expo: This open-house forum gives partners a look at what the UX team is working on, and showcases the next-generation user experiences in a demo environment where attendees can see and touch the applications. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For CustomersAngela Johnston, Gozel Aamoth, Teena Singh, and Yen Chan, Oracle Lab tours: See demos of soon-to-be-released products, and take a spin on usability research equipment such as our eye-tracker. Watch this video to get an idea of what you’ll see. Get our newsletter: Learn about newly released products and see where you can meet us at user group conferences. Participate in a feedback session: Join a focus group or customer feedback session to get an early look at user experience designs for the next generation of software, and provide your thoughts on how well it will work. Join the OUAB: The Oracle Usability Advisory Board meets several times a year to discuss trends in the workforce and provide direction on user experience designs. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Developers (customers, partners, and consultants): Plinio Arbizu, SP Solutions, Richard Bingham, Oracle, Balaji Kamepalli, EiSTechnoogies, Praveen Pillalamarri, EiSTechnologies How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps: This workshop is for attendees with a strong technology background who are looking for ways to tailor customer software using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs.  See above for dates and times. UX design patterns web site: Cut the length of your project down by months. Use these patterns to build out the task flow you need to develop for your users. The patterns have already been usability-tested and represent the best practices that the Oracle UX research team has found in its studies. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Oracle Sales Mike Klein, Jeremy Ashley, Brent White, Oracle Contact your local sales person for more information about the Oracle user experience and the training available from the Applications User Experience Communications & Outreach team. See customer-friendly user experience collateral ranging from the new simplified UI in Oracle Fusion Applications Release 7, to E-Business Suite user experience highlights, to Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards user experience highlights.   Receive access to the same pre-sales and implementation training we provide to partners. For Oracle Sales only: Oracle-only training on the Oracle Fusion Applications UX Innovation Sales Kit.

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  • The Simplicity of the Oracle Stack

    - by user801960
    For many retailers, technology is something they know they need to optimise business operations, but do they really understand it and how can they select the solutions they need from the many vendors on the market? Retail is a data heavy industry, with the average retailer managing thousands of SKUs and hundreds of categories through multiple channels. Add to this the exponential growth in data driven by social media and mobile activities, and the process can seem overwhelming. Handling data of this magnitude and analyzing it effectively to gain actionable insight is a huge task, and needs several IT components to work together harmoniously to make the best use of the data available and make smarter decisions. With this in mind, Oracle has produced a video to make it easier for businesses to understand its global data IT solutions and how they integrate seamlessly with Oracle’s other solutions to enable organisations to operate as effectively as possible. The video uses an orchestra as an analogy for IT solutions and clever illustration to demonstrate the value of the Oracle brand. This video can be viewed at http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1622148401001. To find out more about how Oracle’s products and services can help retailers to deliver better results, visit the Oracle Retail website.

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  • Simplicity-efficiency tradeoff

    - by sarepta
    The CTO called to inform me of a new project and in the process told me that my code is weird. He explained that my colleagues find it difficult to understand due to the overly complex, often new concepts and technologies used, which they are not familiar with. He asked me to maintain a simple code base and to think of the others that will inherit my changes. I've put considerable time into mastering LINQ and thread-safe coding. However, others don't seem to care nor are impressed by anything other than their paycheck. Do I have to keep it simple (stupid), just because others are not familiar with best practices and efficient coding? Or should I continue to do what I find best and write code my way?

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  • Simplicity-effecincy tradeoff

    - by sarepta
    The CTO called to inform me of a new project and in the process told me that my code is weird. He explained that my colleagues find it difficult to understand due to the overly complex, often new concepts and technologies used, which they are not familiar with. He asked me to maintain a simple code base and to think of the others that will inherit my changes. I've put considerable time into mastering LINQ and thread-safe coding. However, others don't seem to care nor are impressed by anything other than their paycheck. Do I have to keep it simple (stupid), just because others are not familiar with best practices and efficient coding? Or should I continue to do what I find best and write code my way?

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  • The Lure of Simplicity in IT

    A deceptively simple solution to a business re-engineering problem can beguile companies into selecting a compromise that doesn't actually meet all their needs. Simple is great, but not at the expense of functionality. Some IT solutions are complex because the problem is complex, but they can be made conceptually clearer. Get smart with SQL Backup ProGet faster, smaller backups with integrated verification.Quickly and easily DBCC CHECKDB your backups. Learn more.

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  • Denormalize for Simplicity: Ungood idea?

    - by yar
    After reading this question, I've learned that denormalization is not a solution for simplicity. What about this case? I have news-articles which have a list of sites-article-will-be-published-to. The latter can be expressed in normalized fashion either by table and a many-to-many relationship (via a cross-table, I think). But the simple solution is to just throw a bunch of booleans for the sites-article-will-be-published-to. Assuming the sites are: small in number will not change over time have no fields themselves, except a name Is this still a terrible idea? The many-to-many relationship seems somewhat cumbersome, but I've done it before in cases like this (and it seemed cumbersome). Note: I'm doing this in Rails, where it's not that painful.

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  • OO vs Simplicity when it comes to user interaction

    - by Oetzi
    Firstly, sorry if this question is rather vague but it's something I'd really like an answer to. As a project over summer while I have some downtime from Uni I am going to build a monopoly game. This question is more about the general idea of the problem however, rather than the specific task I'm trying to carry out. I decided to build this with a bottom up approach, creating just movement around a forty space board and then moving on to interaction with spaces. I realised that I was quite unsure of the best way of proceeding with this and I am torn between two design ideas: Giving every space its own object, all sub-classes of a Space object so the interaction can be defined by the space object itself. I could do this by implementing different land() methods for each type of space. Only giving the Properties and Utilities (as each property has unique features) objects and creating methods for dealing with the buying/renting etc in the main class of the program (or Board as I'm calling it). Spaces like go and super tax could be implemented by a small set of conditionals checking to see if player is on a special space. Option 1 is obviously the OO (and I feel the correct) way of doing things but I'd like to only have to handle user interaction from the programs main class. In other words, I don't want the space objects to be interacting with the player. Why? Errr. A lot of the coding I've done thus far has had this simplicity but I'm not sure if this is a pipe dream or not for larger projects. Should I really be handling user interaction in an entirely separate class? As you can see I am quite confused about this situation. Is there some way round this? And, does anyone have any advice on practical OO design that could help in general?

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  • Why are there so many man-made edge cases in IT, and is there any hope for simplification / unificat

    - by Hamish Grubijan
    This question is meant to generate discussion and so it is marked as community wiki. My observation is that the field of information technology grows so rapidly and randomly, that for many it takes a lot of time to learn many intricacies of some tools that will be obsolete in just short 3 years. If you look at the questions asked on StackOverflow ... at least half of them stem from the fact that some language / tool / API / protocol was poorly designed, is backwards and has gotchas. There are so many things which distract developers from converting English into machine code; instead they spend their time configuring stuff and gluing together things that do not really fit. How many times do you pick up somebody else's project (or someone picks up yours :) ) and realize that this program does not need half of the dialogs that it has, and that the logic can be simplified a great deal? But, it had to be made and sold here before a better thing is made and sold elsewhere, and hence all this rush. I often wish that things would just slow down. I do not want Microsoft Windows to run on my car's computer, my watch, my table, my toaster oven, and my toilet seat. I'd rather have Windows that DOES NOT HAVE WINDOWS REGISTRY, I'd rather have Windows that allows two different programs to work on the same file at the same time, the way it works on Unix systems. Microsoft is just an example. I am looking forward to the day when I do not have to worry about Windows vs Unix new line break, when System32 actually means that this directory contains 32-bit binaries, and not 64-bit ones, the day when dll hell and manifest hell are no longer an issue, the day when it takes me a lot less than 3 months on a new job to learn the system. I do not mean learning the entire code base of a product (depending on the size of it, it can take a long time). I mean - remembering which build-assisting scripts are written in Perl and which version of it, and which ones are done through .bat files, when do I need to manually make every file in some directory writable before running a script, or else a critical step of a database maintenance home-grown tool will bomb, and it will take 2 days to clean that up. Makes me wonder if humans enslaved computers, or if it is the other way around. The key is that improving those things will not bring extra revenue, and hence those taking the time to fix crap like that are not "business focused". However, these imperfections irritate me immensely, particularly because my memory is limited - I can hold only a small portion of that useless knowledge of a system in my head at any given point in time. I must not be alone. Did you also happen to notice that a programmer can waste a lot of time on things that should have been a lot more straight-forward? Is there hope? Will things get better/simpler in the future, or will there be a lot more IT crap floating around? I suppose I see diversity of tools, protocols, etc. as a bad thing. Thank you for participation.

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  • multi-dimensional ArrayList

    - by wishi
    Hi! Just a very small question... I seem to run into too much complexity here: I have to realize an index-structure like {42, someString}. I tried: Object entry[][] = new Object[1][1]; ArrayList<Object> my_list = new ArrayList<Object>(); However that looks really strange. Isn't there a better much simpler solution to just store some Integer and a String? I need to perfrom search for the Strings and return the Integer... so I thought Collections and ArrayLists are good friends in the Java API.

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  • Technical Article: Oracle Magazine Java Developer of the Year Adam Bien on Java EE 6 Simplicity by Design

    - by janice.heiss(at)oracle.com
    Java Champion and Oracle Magazine Java Developer of the Year, Adam Bien, offers his unique perspective on how to leverage new Java EE 6 features to build simple and maintainable applications in a new article in Oracle Magazine. Bien examines different Java EE 6 architectures and design approaches in an effort to help developers build efficient, simple, and maintainable applications.From the article: "Java EE 6 consists of a set of independent APIs released together under the Java EE name. Although these APIs are independent, they fit together surprisingly well. For a given application, you could use only JavaServer Faces (JSF) 2.0, you could use Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.1 for transactional services, or you could use Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI) with Java Persistence API (JPA) 2.0 and the Bean Validation model to implement transactions.""With a pragmatic mix of available Java EE 6 APIs, you can entirely eliminate the need to implement infrastructure services such as transactions, threading, throttling, or monitoring in your application. The real challenge is in selecting the right subset of APIs that minimizes overhead and complexity while making sure you don't have to reinvent the wheel with custom code. As a general rule, you should strive to use existing Java SE and Java EE services before expanding your search to find alternatives." Read the entire article here.

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  • Why Simplicity is the Best Custom Logo Design Rule?

    When it comes to custom logo design everyone wants a unique and effective logo design. The main purpose of a logo design is to give a business / organization a visual identity. Now if we are talking ... [Author: Emily Matthew - Web Design and Development - March 31, 2010]

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  • How to shift development culture from tech fetish to focusing on simplicity and getting things done?

    - by Serge
    Looking for ways to switch team/individual culture from chasing latest fads, patterns, and all kinds of best practices to focusing on finding quickest and simplest solutions and shipping features. My definition of "tech fetish": Chasing latest fads, applying new technologies and best practices without considering product/project impact, focusing on micro optimization, creating platforms and frameworks instead of finding simple and quick ways to ship product features. Few examples of culture differences: From "Spent a day on trying to map database query with five complex joins in NHibernate" to "Wrote a SQL query and used DataReader to pull data in" From "Wrote super-fast JSON parser in C++" to "Used Python to parse JSON response and call C++ code" From "Let's use WCF because it supports all possible communication standards" to "REST is simple text-based format, let's stick with it and use simple HTTP handlers"

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  • Form, function and complexity in rule processing

    - by Charles Young
    Tim Bass posted on ‘Orwellian Event Processing’. I was involved in a heated exchange in the comments, and he has more recently published a post entitled ‘Disadvantages of Rule-Based Systems (Part 1)’. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our exchange, it clearly failed to generate any agreement or understanding of our different positions. I don't particularly want to promote further argument of that kind, but I do want to take the opportunity of offering a different perspective on rule-processing and an explanation of my comments. For me, the ‘red rag’ lay in Tim’s claim that “...rules alone are highly inefficient for most classes of (not simple) problems” and a later paragraph that appears to equate the simplicity of form (‘IF-THEN-ELSE’) with simplicity of function.   It is not the first time Tim has expressed these views and not the first time I have responded to his assertions.   Indeed, Tim has a long history of commenting on the subject of complex event processing (CEP) and, less often, rule processing in ‘robust’ terms, often asserting that very many other people’s opinions on this subject are mistaken.   In turn, I am of the opinion that, certainly in terms of rule processing, which is an area in which I have a specific interest and knowledge, he is often mistaken. There is no simple answer to the fundamental question ‘what is a rule?’ We use the word in a very fluid fashion in English. Likewise, the term ‘rule processing’, as used widely in IT, is equally difficult to define simplistically. The best way to envisage the term is as a ‘centre of gravity’ within a wider domain. That domain contains many other ‘centres of gravity’, including CEP, statistical analytics, neural networks, natural language processing and so much more. Whole communities tend to gravitate towards and build themselves around some of these centres. The term 'rule processing' is associated with many different technology types, various software products, different architectural patterns, the functional capability of many applications and services, etc. There is considerable variation amongst these different technologies, techniques and products. Very broadly, a common theme is their ability to manage certain types of processing and problem solving through declarative, or semi-declarative, statements of propositional logic bound to action-based consequences. It is generally important to be able to decouple these statements from other parts of an overall system or architecture so that they can be managed and deployed independently.  As a centre of gravity, ‘rule processing’ is no island. It exists in the context of a domain of discourse that is, itself, highly interconnected and continuous.   Rule processing does not, for example, exist in splendid isolation to natural language processing.   On the contrary, an on-going theme of rule processing is to find better ways to express rules in natural language and map these to executable forms.   Rule processing does not exist in splendid isolation to CEP.   On the contrary, an event processing agent can reasonably be considered as a rule engine (a theme in ‘Power of Events’ by David Luckham).   Rule processing does not live in splendid isolation to statistical approaches such as Bayesian analytics. On the contrary, rule processing and statistical analytics are highly synergistic.   Rule processing does not even live in splendid isolation to neural networks. For example, significant research has centred on finding ways to translate trained nets into explicit rule sets in order to support forms of validation and facilitate insight into the knowledge stored in those nets. What about simplicity of form?   Many rule processing technologies do indeed use a very simple form (‘If...Then’, ‘When...Do’, etc.)   However, it is a fundamental mistake to equate simplicity of form with simplicity of function.   It is absolutely mistaken to suggest that simplicity of form is a barrier to the efficient handling of complexity.   There are countless real-world examples which serve to disprove that notion.   Indeed, simplicity of form is often the key to handling complexity. Does rule processing offer a ‘one size fits all’. No, of course not.   No serious commentator suggests it does.   Does the design and management of large knowledge bases, expressed as rules, become difficult?   Yes, it can do, but that is true of any large knowledge base, regardless of the form in which knowledge is expressed.   The measure of complexity is not a function of rule set size or rule form.  It tends to be correlated more strongly with the size of the ‘problem space’ (‘search space’) which is something quite different.   Analysis of the problem space and the algorithms we use to search through that space are, of course, the very things we use to derive objective measures of the complexity of a given problem. This is basic computer science and common practice. Sailing a Dreadnaught through the sea of information technology and lobbing shells at some of the islands we encounter along the way does no one any good.   Building bridges and causeways between islands so that the inhabitants can collaborate in open discourse offers hope of real progress.

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  • Alternatives to a leveling system

    - by Bane
    I'm currently designing a rough prototype of a mecha fighting game. These are the basics I came up with: Multiplayer (matchmaking for up to 10 people, for now) Browser based (HTML5) 2D (<canvas>) Persistent (as in, players have accounts and don't have to use a new mech each time they start a match) Players earn money upon destroying another mech, which is used to buy parts (guns, armor, boosters, etc) Simplicity (both of the game itself, and of the development of said game) No "leveling" (as in, players don't get awarded with XP) The last part is bothering me. At first, I wanted to have players gain experience points (XP) when destroying other mechs, but gaining two things at once (money and XP) seemed to be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity. If I were to have a leveling system, that would require additional development. But, the biggest problem is that I simply couldn't fit it anywhere! Adding levels would require adding meaning to these levels, and most of the things that I hoped to achieve could already be achieved with the money mechanic I introduced. So I decided to drop leveling off completely. That, in turn, removed a fairly popular and robust mean of progression in games from my game (not that I would use it well anyway). Is there another way of progression in games, aside from leveling and XP points, that wouldn't get rendered redundant by my money mechanic, would be somehow meaningful (even on a symbolic level), and wouldn't be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity?

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  • Keepin’ It Simple with StorageTek SL150

    - by Kristin Rose
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Are your customers archive and data protection environments getting out of hand?  Are they looking for a little simplicity in their lives? How about some scalability? Or are they looking for a way to save on capital and operational expenses? If you answered yes to any of these, then  Oracle's new StorageTek SL150 Modular Tape Library is the product for you. It beats the competition in terms of simplicity, scalability and savings, and provides some seriously wallet friendly revenue opportunities for you. If the long-term service annuities on the SL150 aren’t convincing enough, then the resale margins, rebates and follow-on revenue from modular upgrades will be!  The SL150 simplifies StorageTek’s tape portfolio by replacing three products with one scalable solution that  provides an entry point for repeat business within accounts. The SL150 expands your potential storage customer base to smaller companies with low cost, simple upgrades and streamlined management that help alleviate key customer pain points. With the SL150, your customers will be able to simplify growth of their archive and data protection environments with small entry configurations and 10x growth, something that would require multiple box swaps across up to three product categories with competitive products. With the SL150, Oracle can help you provide greater customer satisfaction with  Simplicity, Scalability and Savings! We know you’re probably wondering how you can get started and sell this new and magnificent product… Well, look no further because the only thing you need to do is complete the SL150 Guided Learning Paths (GLPs). For some extra insight, watch the video below on the new StorageTek SL150 modular tape library, and don’t forget to ‘tweet’ this post, and share it on Facebook to spread the good news! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Wishing you Simplicity, Scalability and Savings, The OPN Communications Team

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  • Cloud Application Management for Platforms

    - by user756764
    Today Oracle, along with CloudBees, Cloudsoft, Huawei, Rackspace, Red Hat, and Software AG, published the Cloud Application Management for Platforms (CAMP) specification. This spec deals with application management in the context of PaaS. It defines a model (consisting of a set resources and their relationships), a REST-based API for manipulating that model, and a packaging format for getting applications (and their attendant metadata) into and out of the platform. My colleague, Mark Carlson, has already provided an excellent writeup on the spec here. The following, additional points bear emphasizing: CAMP is language, framework and platform neutral; it should be equally applicable to the task of deploying and managing Ruby on Rails applications as Java/Spring applications (as Node.js applications, etc.) CAMP only covers the interactions between a Cloud Consumer and a Cloud Provider (using the definitions of these terms provided in the NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture). The internal APIs used by the Cloud Provider to, for example, deploy additional platform services (e.g. a new message queuing service) are out of CAMP's scope. CAMP supports the management of the entire lifecycle of the application (e.g. start/stop, suspend/resume, etc.) not just the deployment of the components that make up the application. Complexity is the antithesis of interoperability. One of CAMP's goals is to be as broadly interoperable as possible. To this end, the authors of CAMP tried to "make things as simple as possible, but no simpler". For example, JSON is the only serialization format used in the spec (although Providers can extend this to support additional serialization formats such as XML). It remains to be seen whether we can preserve this simplicity as the spec is processed by OASIS. So far, those who have indicated an interest in collaborating on the spec seem to be of a like mind with regards to the need for simplicity. The flip side to simplicity is the knowledge that you undoubtedly missed something that is important to someone. To make up for this, CAMP is designed to be extensible. The idea is to ship what we know will work, allow implementers to extend the spec, then re-factor the spec to incorporate the most popular extensions. Anyone interested in this effort, particularly those of you using PaaS-level services, is encouraged to join the forthcoming OASIS TC. As you may have noticed, CAMP is a bit of a departure from some of the more monolithic management standards that have preceded it. The idea is to develop simple, discrete standards targeted to address specific interoperability and portability problems and tie these standards together with common patterns based on REST and HATEOAS. I'm excited to see how this idea plays out.

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  • Mobile Apps: An Ongoing Revolution

    - by Steve Walker
    a guest post from Suhas Uliyar, VP Mobile Strategy, Product Management, Oracle The rise of smartphone apps have proved transformational for businesses, increasing the productivity of employees while simultaneously creating some seriously cool end user experiences. But this is a revolution that is only just beginning. Over the next few years, apps will change everything about the way enterprises work as well as overhauling the experiences of customers. The spark for this revolution is simplicity. Simplicity has already proved important for the front-end of apps, which are now often as compelling and intuitive as consumer apps. Businesses will encourage this trend, both to further increase employee productivity and to attract ‘digital natives’ (as employees and customers). With the variety of front-end development tools available already, this should be a simple mission for developers to accomplish – but front-end simplicity alone is not enough for the enterprise mobile revolution. Without the right content even the most user-friendly app is useless. Yet when it comes to integrating apps with ‘back-end’ systems to enable this content, developers often face a complex, costly and time-consuming task. Then there is security: how can developers strike a balance between complying with enterprise security policies and keeping the user experience simple? Complexity has acted as a brake on innovation, with integration and security compliance swallowing enterprise resources. This is why the simplification of integration, security and scalability is so important: it frees time and money for revolutionary innovation. The key is to put in place a complete and unified SOA integration platform that runs across the entire enterprise and enables organizations to easily integrate and connect applications across IT environments. The platform must also be capable of abstracting apps from the underlying OS and enabling a ‘write-once, run- anywhere’ capability for mobile devices - essential for BYOD environments and integrating third-party apps. Mobile Back-end-as-a-Service can also be very important in streamlining back-end integration. Mobile services offered through the cloud can simplify mobile application development with a standard approach to dealing with complex server-side programming and integration issues. This allows the business to innovate at its own pace while providing developers with a choice of tools to speed development and integration. Finally, there is security, which must be done in a way that encourages users to make the most of their mobile devices and applications. As mobile users, we want convenience and that is why we generally approve of businesses that adopt BYOD policies. Enterprises can safely encourage BYOD as they can separate, protect, and wipe corporate applications by installing a secure ‘container’ around corporate applications on any mobile device. BYOD management also means users’ personal applications and data can be kept separate from the enterprise information – giving them the confidence they need to embrace the use of their devices for corporate apps. Enterprises that place mobility at the heart of what they do will fundamentally transform their businesses and leap ahead of the competition. As businesses take to mobile platforms that simplify integration, security and scalability we will see a blossoming of innovation that will drive new levels of user convenience and create new ways of working that we are only beginning to imagine.

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  • Could it be more efficient for systems in general to do away with Stacks and just use Heap for memory management?

    - by Dark Templar
    It seems to me that everything that can be done with a stack can be done with the heap, but not everything that can be done with the heap can be done with the stack. Is that correct? Then for simplicity's sake, and even if we do lose a little amount of performance with certain workloads, couldn't it be better to just go with one standard (ie, the heap)? Think of the trade-off between modularity and performance. I know that isn't the best way to describe this scenario, but in general it seems that simplicity of understanding and design could be a better option even if there is a potential for better performance.

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  • Oracle’s New Approach to Cloud-based Applications User Experiences

    - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team
    By Misha Vaughan It was an exciting Oracle OpenWorld this year for customers and partners, as they got to see what their input into the Oracle user experience research and development process has produced for cloud-delivered applications. The result of all this engagement and listening is a focus on simplicity, mobility, and extensibility. These were the core themes across Oracle OpenWorld sessions, executive roundtables, and analyst briefings given by Jeremy Ashley, Oracle's vice president of user experience. The highlight of every meeting with a customer featured the new simplified UI for Oracle’s cloud applications.    Attendees at some sessions and events also saw a vision of what is coming next in the Oracle user experience, and they gave direct feedback on whether this would help solve their business problems.  What did attendees think of what they saw this year? Rebecca Wettemann of Nucleus Research was part of  an analyst briefing on next-generation user experiences from Oracle. Here’s what she told CRM Buyer in an interview just after the event:  “Many of the improvements are incremental, which is not surprising, as Oracle regularly updates its application,” Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research, told CRM Buyer. "Still, there are distinct themes to this latest set of changes. One is usability. Oracle Sales Cloud, for example, is designed to have zero training for onboarding sales reps, which it does," she explained. "It is quite impressive, actually—the intuitive nature of the application and the design work they have done with this goal in mind. The software uses as few buttons and fields as possible," she pointed out. "The sales rep doesn't have to ask, 'what is the next step?' because she can see what it is."  What else did we hear? Oracle OpenWorld is a time when we can take a broader pulse of our customers’ and partners’ concerns. This year we heard some common user experience themes on the following: · A desire to continue to simplify widely used self-service tasks · A need to understand how customers or partners could take some of the UX lessons learned on simplicity and mobility into their own custom areas and projects  · The continuing challenge of needing to support bring-your-own-device and corporate-provided mobile devices to end users · A desire to harmonize user experiences across platforms for specific business-use cases  What does this mean for next year? Well, there were a lot of things we could only show to smaller groups of customers in our Oracle OpenWorld usability labs and HQ lab tours, to partners at our Expo, and to analysts under non-disclosure agreements. But we used these events as a way to get some early feedback about where we are focusing for the year ahead. Attendees gave us a positive response: @bkhan Saw some excellent UX innovations at the expo “@usableapps: Great job @mishavaughan and @vinoskey on #oow13 UX partner expo!” @WarnerTim @usableapps @mishavaughan @vinoskey @ultan Thanks for an interesting afternoon definitely liked the UX tool kits for partners. You can expect Oracle to continue pushing themes of simplicity, mobility, and extensibility even more aggressively in the next year.  If you are interested to find out what really goes on in the UX labs, such as what we are doing with smartphones, tablets, heads-up displays, and the AppsLab robots, feel free to reach out to me for more information: Misha Vaughan or on Twitter: @mishavaughan.

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  • C#/.NET &ndash; Finding an Item&rsquo;s Index in IEnumerable&lt;T&gt;

    - by James Michael Hare
    Sorry for the long blogging hiatus.  First it was, of course, the holidays hustle and bustle, then my brother and his wife gave birth to their son, so I’ve been away from my blogging for two weeks. Background: Finding an item’s index in List<T> is easy… Many times in our day to day programming activities, we want to find the index of an item in a collection.  Now, if we have a List<T> and we’re looking for the item itself this is trivial: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // can find the exact item using IndexOf() 5: var pos = list.IndexOf(64); This will return the position of the item if it’s found, or –1 if not.  It’s easy to see how this works for primitive types where equality is well defined.  For complex types, however, it will attempt to compare them using EqualityComparer<T>.Default which, in a nutshell, relies on the object’s Equals() method. So what if we want to search for a condition instead of equality?  That’s also easy in a List<T> with the FindIndex() method: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // finds index of first even number or -1 if not found. 5: var pos = list.FindIndex(i => i % 2 == 0);   Problem: Finding an item’s index in IEnumerable<T> is not so easy... This is all well and good for lists, but what if we want to do the same thing for IEnumerable<T>?  A collection of IEnumerable<T> has no indexing, so there’s no direct method to find an item’s index.  LINQ, as powerful as it is, gives us many tools to get us this information, but not in one step.  As with almost any problem involving collections, there are several ways to accomplish the same goal.  And once again as with almost any problem involving collections, the choice of the solution somewhat depends on the situation. So let’s look at a few possible alternatives.  I’m going to express each of these as extension methods for simplicity and consistency. Solution: The TakeWhile() and Count() combo One of the things you can do is to perform a TakeWhile() on the list as long as your find condition is not true, and then do a Count() of the items it took.  The only downside to this method is that if the item is not in the list, the index will be the full Count() of items, and not –1.  So if you don’t know the size of the list beforehand, this can be confusing. 1: // a collection of extra extension methods off IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item in the collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // note if item not found, result is length and not -1! 8: return list.TakeWhile(i => !finder(i)).Count(); 9: } 10: } Personally, I don’t like switching the paradigm of not found away from –1, so this is one of my least favorites.  Solution: Select with index Many people don’t realize that there is an alternative form of the LINQ Select() method that will provide you an index of the item being selected: 1: list.Select( (item,index) => do something here with the item and/or index... ) This can come in handy, but must be treated with care.  This is because the index provided is only as pertains to the result of previous operations (if any).  For example: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // you'd hope this would give you the indexes of the even numbers 5: // which would be 2, 3, 8, but in reality it gives you 0, 1, 2 6: list.Where(item => item % 2 == 0).Select((item,index) => index); The reason the example gives you the collection { 0, 1, 2 } is because the where clause passes over any items that are odd, and therefore only the even items are given to the select and only they are given indexes. Conversely, we can’t select the index and then test the item in a Where() clause, because then the Where() clause would be operating on the index and not the item! So, what we have to do is to select the item and index and put them together in an anonymous type.  It looks ugly, but it works: 1: // extensions defined on IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // finds an item in a collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // if you don't name the anonymous properties they are the variable names 8: return list.Select((item, index) => new { item, index }) 9: .Where(p => finder(p.item)) 10: .Select(p => p.index + 1) 11: .FirstOrDefault() - 1; 12: } 13: }     So let’s look at this, because i know it’s convoluted: First Select() joins the items and their indexes into an anonymous type. Where() filters that list to only the ones matching the predicate. Second Select() picks the index of the matches and adds 1 – this is to distinguish between not found and first item. FirstOrDefault() returns the first item found from the previous clauses or default (zero) if not found. Subtract one so that not found (zero) will be –1, and first item (one) will be zero. The bad thing is, this is ugly as hell and creates anonymous objects for each item tested until it finds the match.  This concerns me a bit but we’ll defer judgment until compare the relative performances below. Solution: Convert ToList() and use FindIndex() This solution is easy enough.  We know any IEnumerable<T> can be converted to List<T> using the LINQ extension method ToList(), so we can easily convert the collection to a list and then just use the FindIndex() method baked into List<T>. 1: // a collection of extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // find the index of an item in the collection similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: return list.ToList().FindIndex(finder); 8: } 9: } This solution is simplicity itself!  It is very concise and elegant and you need not worry about anyone misinterpreting what it’s trying to do (as opposed to the more convoluted LINQ methods above). But the main thing I’m concerned about here is the performance hit to allocate the List<T> in the ToList() call, but once again we’ll explore that in a second. Solution: Roll your own FindIndex() for IEnumerable<T> Of course, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method for IEnumerable<T>.  It would be a very simple for loop which scans for the item and counts as it goes.  There’s many ways to do this, but one such way might look like: 1: // extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item matching a predicate in the enumeration, much like List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: int index = 0; 8: foreach (var item in list) 9: { 10: if (finder(item)) 11: { 12: return index; 13: } 14:  15: index++; 16: } 17:  18: return -1; 19: } 20: } Well, it’s not quite simplicity, and those less familiar with LINQ may prefer it since it doesn’t include all of the lambdas and behind the scenes iterators that come with deferred execution.  But does having this long, blown out method really gain us much in performance? Comparison of Proposed Solutions So we’ve now seen four solutions, let’s analyze their collective performance.  I took each of the four methods described above and run them over 100,000 iterations of lists of size 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 and here’s the performance results.  Then I looked for targets at the begining of the list (best case), middle of the list (the average case) and not in the list (worst case as must scan all of the list). Each of the times below is the average time in milliseconds for one execution as computer over the 100,000 iterations: Searches Matching First Item (Best Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 Select 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 ToList 0.0002 0.0003 0.0013 0.0121 Manual 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001   Searches Matching Middle Item (Average Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0004 0.0020 0.0191 0.1889 Select 0.0008 0.0042 0.0387 0.3802 ToList 0.0002 0.0007 0.0057 0.0562 Manual 0.0002 0.0013 0.0129 0.1255   Searches Where Not Found (Worst Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0006 0.0039 0.0381 0.3770 Select 0.0012 0.0081 0.0758 0.7583 ToList 0.0002 0.0012 0.0100 0.0996 Manual 0.0003 0.0026 0.0253 0.2514   Notice something interesting here, you’d think the “roll your own” loop would be the most efficient, but it only wins when the item is first (or very close to it) regardless of list size.  In almost all other cases though and in particular the average case and worst case, the ToList()/FindIndex() combo wins for performance, even though it is creating some temporary memory to hold the List<T>.  If you examine the algorithm, the reason why is most likely because once it’s in a ToList() form, internally FindIndex() scans the internal array which is much more efficient to iterate over.  Thus, it takes a one time performance hit (not including any GC impact) to create the List<T> but after that the performance is much better. Summary If you’re concerned about too many throw-away objects, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method, but for sheer simplicity and overall performance, using the ToList()/FindIndex() combo performs best on nearly all list sizes in the average and worst cases.    Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Litte Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,Software,LINQ,List

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