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• Why do old programming languages continue to be revised?

  - by SunAvatar

  This question is not, "Why do people still use old programming languages?" I understand that quite well. In fact the two programming languages I know best are C and Scheme, both of which date back to the 70s. Recently I was reading about the changes in C99 and C11 versus C89 (which seems to still be the most-used version of C in practice and the version I learned from K&R). Looking around, it seems like every programming language in heavy use gets a new specification at least once per decade or so. Even Fortran is still getting new revisions, despite the fact that most people using it are still using FORTRAN 77. Contrast this with the approach of, say, the typesetting system TeX. In 1989, with the release of TeX 3.0, Donald Knuth declared that TeX was feature-complete and future releases would contain only bug fixes. Even beyond this, he has stated that upon his death, "all remaining bugs will become features" and absolutely no further updates will be made. Others are free to fork TeX and have done so, but the resulting systems are renamed to indicate that they are different from the official TeX. This is not because Knuth thinks TeX is perfect, but because he understands the value of a stable, predictable system that will do the same thing in fifty years that it does now. Why do most programming language designers not follow the same principle? Of course, when a language is relatively new, it makes sense that it will go through a period of rapid change before settling down. And no one can really object to minor changes that don't do much more than codify existing pseudo-standards or correct unintended readings. But when a language still seems to need improvement after ten or twenty years, why not just fork it or start over, rather than try to change what is already in use? If some people really want to do object-oriented programming in Fortran, why not create "Objective Fortran" for that purpose, and leave Fortran itself alone? I suppose one could say that, regardless of future revisions, C89 is already a standard and nothing stops people from continuing to use it. This is sort of true, but connotations do have consequences. GCC will, in pedantic mode, warn about syntax that is either deprecated or has a subtly different meaning in C99, which means C89 programmers can't just totally ignore the new standard. So there must be some benefit in C99 that is sufficient to impose this overhead on everyone who uses the language. This is a real question, not an invitation to argue. Obviously I do have an opinion on this, but at the moment I'm just trying to understand why this isn't just how things are done already. I suppose the question is: What are the (real or perceived) advantages of updating a language standard, as opposed to creating a new language based on the old?

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• Should developers make their games easier with new versions?

  - by Gil Kalai

  It seems that the game Angry Birds is becoming gradually easier with new versions. Maybe so people get the illusion of progress and satisfaction of breaking new records? I would like to know if gradual small modifications of games to enhance the sense of improvement and learning by users is known/common/standard practice in game developing. (I don't mean to say that there is anything wrong with such a practice.)

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• Semantic coupling vs. large class

  - by user106587

  I have hardware I communicate with via TCP. This hardware accepts ~40 different commands/requests with about 20 different responses. I've created a HardwareProxy class which has a TcpClient to send and receive data. I didn't like the idea of having 40 different methods to send the commands/requests, so I started down the path of having a single SendCommand method which takes an ICommand and returns an IResponse, this results in 40 different SpecificCommand classes. The problem is this requires semantic coupling, i.e. the method that invokes SendCommand receives an IResponse which it has to downcast to SpecificResponse, I use a future map which I believe ensures the appropriate SpecificResponse, but I get the impression this code smells. Besides the semantic coupling, ICommand and IResponse are essentially empty abstract classes (Marker Interfaces) and this seems suspicious to me. If I go with the 40 methods I don't think I have broken the single responisbility principle as the responsibility of the HardwareProxy class is to act as the hardware, which has all of these commands. This route is just ugly, plus I'd like to have Asynchronous versions, so there'd be about 80 methods. Is it better to bite the bullet and have a large class, accept the coupling and MarkerInterfaces for a smaller soultuion, or am I missing a better way? Thanks.

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• Cliché monsters to populate a steampunk fantasy setting dwarven dungeon?

  - by Alexander Gladysh

  I'm looking for a list of cliché monsters for a steampunk computer game (assume one kind or another of casual rogue-like RPG), to populate lower levels of ancient dwarven-built dungeons. Dwarves are a technology/science race in the setting I am aiming for. The world is a low-magic one. I'm stuck after listing various mechanical golems, gigantic spiders (every dungeon must have some of them!), and maybe a mechanical barlog as a megaboss. What would player expect? What are the key cultural references for such setting? I know a couple of games with suitable steampunk dwarves, but none are detailed enough in the underworld monsters area. Please point me in the right direction. (If you have a single funny monster suggestion, please mention it in comments, not in answer. ;-) )

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• Implementing new required feature after software release

  - by TiagoBrenck

  Fake Scenario There is a software that was released 1 year ago. The software is to map and register all kind of animals on our planet. When the software was released, the client only needed to know the scientific name of the animal, a flag if it is in risk of extinction and a scale of dangerous(that is a fake software and specification, I don't want to discuss this here). There are already 100.000 animals records saved on DB. New Feature One year later, the client wants a new feature. It is really important to him to know the animals classes, and this is a required field. So he asks me to put a field to input the animal class, and this field is required. Or maybe where this animal was discovered. Problem I have already 100.000 recorded animals without a class or where it was discovered, but I need to insert a new column to storage this information and this column can't be null. I don't have a default value for this situation (there isn't a default animal class or where it was discovered). I don't want to keep the requirement rule only on my software, my DB must have this requirement too(I like to keep business rules on DB too). What are the alternatives to solve this situation? I am on a situation that this new feature cannot be previewed or reviewed for the existing records. The time already passed and I can't go back on time to get it

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• Triggering Data Changes in N-Tier

  - by Ryan Kinal

  I've been studying n-tier architectures as of late, particularly in VB.NET with Entity Framework and/or LINQ to SQL. I understand the basic concepts, but have been wondering about best practices in regard to triggering CRUD-type operations from user input/action. So, the arcitecture looks something like the following: [presentation layer] - [business layer] - [data layer] - (database) Getting information from the database into the presentation layer is simple and abstracted. It's just a matter of instantiating a new object from the business layer, which in turn uses the data layer to get at the correct information. However, saving (updating and inserting), and deleting seem to require particular APIs on the relevant business objects. I have to assume this is standard practice, unless a business object will save itself on various operations (which seems inefficient), or on disposal (which seems like it just wouldn't work, or may be unwieldy and unreliable). Should my "savable" business objects all implement a particular "ISavable" or "IDatabaseObject" interface? Is this a recognized (anti-)pattern? Are there other, better patterns I should be using that I'm just unaware of? The TLDR question, I suppose, is How does the presentation layer trigger database changes?

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• Traverse tree with results. Maybe type in Java?

  - by Angelo.Hannes

  I need to check a tree's node state. It can either be OK or NOT_OK. But that state is dependent on its children. So for a node to be OK, every of its children needs to be OK. If one or more of its children is NOT_OK the whole node is NOT_OK. To determine the state of a node I need to aggregate some properties of the node. So I thought of two possible implementations. And they are more or less covered in this question: Why is Option/Maybe considered a good idea and checked exceptions are not? Exception I could pass the properties up the recursion path, and throw an exception if something went wrong. Maybe I implement an Maybe type and let it either hold an error or the aggregated properties. Maybe it is more an Either. I tend towards the last option. And I'm thinking of an enum with two objects. Where I can additionally set those aggregated properties. Am I on the right track? I'm not familiar with the new JDK8 functional stuff. But I'm stuck on JDK7 anyway, so please focus on JDK7.

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• Is it okay to showcase templates/layouts recreated in different codes in a portfolio?

  - by Souta

  I have several different templates/layouts, both simple and complex. I recreated these templates multiple times, just using different codes. (Say, a complex one was originally made in only HTML and CSS, I recreated it using HTML, Javascript, CSS, then again with a HTML and PHP concoction, and etc.) I wanted to showcase my work and skills by doing this, but I don't know if it would be okay for that all to go into a resumé/portfolio. This is why: Freelancing Does potential business really care about how their site is made, as long as it looks and functions to their liking? (As in, should I just only show the one example of each template/layout and not the multiple recreations?) Potential Hire However, if a potential employer were to stumble across my resumé/portfolio, would having the multiple recreations do any good for a career outlook? (As in, this potential employer is a company where I could be working on a team to create/develop sites and not be freelancing; would a lack of skill-shining turn this employer away because I didn't set myself apart and show that I'm not just like every other budding web designer?) Those two issues have me wondering if it is okay to have a resumé/portfolio combined for this specific reason. Or does something like this not matter to potential business (as a freelancer) because they wouldn't care either way as long as it looks and functions to their liking and therefore it is okay to showcase the recreations with the originals?

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• How to handle sorting of complex objects?

  - by AedonEtLIRA

  How would one sort a list of objects that have more than one sortable element? Suppose you have a simple object Car and car is a defined as such: class Car { public String make; public String model; public int year; public String color; // ... No methods, just a structure / container } I designed a simple framework that would allow for multiple SortOptions to be provided to a Sorter that would then sort the list. interface ISorter<T> { List<T> sort(List<T> items); void addSortOption(ISortOption<T> option); ISortOption<T>[] getSortOptions(); void setSortOption(ISortOption<T> option); } interface ISortOption<T> { String getLabel(); int compare(T t1, T t2); } Example use class SimpleStringSorter extends MergeSorter<String> { { addSorter(new AlphaSorter()); } private static final class AlphaSorter implements ISortOption<String> { // ... implementation of alpha compare and get label } } The issue with this solution is that it is not easily expandable. If car was to ever receive a new field, say, currentOwner. I would need to add the field, then track down the sorter class file, implement a new sort option class then recompile the application for redistribution. Is there an easier more expandable/practical way to sort data like this?

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• Preferred lambda syntax?

  - by Roger Alsing

  I'm playing around a bit with my own C like DSL grammar and would like some oppinions. I've reserved the use of "(...)" for invocations. eg: foo(1,2); My grammar supports "trailing closures" , pretty much like Ruby's blocks that can be passed as the last argument of an invocation. Currently my grammar support trailing closures like this: foo(1,2) { //parameterless closure passed as the last argument to foo } or foo(1,2) [x] { //closure with one argument (x) passed as the last argument to foo print (x); } The reason why I use [args] instead of (args) is that (args) is ambigious: foo(1,2) (x) { } There is no way in this case to tell if foo expects 3 arguments (int,int,closure(x)) or if foo expects 2 arguments and returns a closure with one argument(int,int) - closure(x) So thats pretty much the reason why I use [] as for now. I could change this to something like: foo(1,2) : (x) { } or foo(1,2) (x) -> { } So the actual question is, what do you think looks best? [...] is somewhat wrist unfriendly. let x = [a,b] { } Ideas?

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• Designing a simple snake A.I

  - by DillPixel

  I've looked at some stuff online regarding this specific topic, and a lot of the info that I read involved graphs and path finding. I really don't want to get involved in something too complex & out of my level, and also I don't need my snake to be that intelligent (it will be a large board with the snake not growing in size on every munch). How could you structure a simpler AI for the snake that gets the job done relatively well? I would be able to get the snake to move towards the food item correctly, but my issue is that I'm not sure how to deal with the snake colliding with itself. Say the snake has a look ahead, and it finds that its tail is in the way, it could change direction, but what happens next? Any ideas on how to tackle this? Should the snake build an instruction set from every square, or should it think on the go?

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• I have an "amoeba" game mechanic. Any idea on how to implement it?

  - by Jason

  Outside of a tetris clone, a crappy 2D top-down shooter, and some messing around with stuff like Unity and Flixel, I realize that I have yet to complete a single, polished, bells-and-whistles game. I want to change this, and I have an idea for my next project. The idea is that you're an amoeba. Amoebas have these eye-like cores (or something like that, I don't know biology), and you have two of 'em. You control one with WASD and the other with IJKL. There has to be a constant radius of stuff around each of the cores: And the area of the amoeba has to stay constant. So if you move a core in one direction, you increase the amoeba's area, but that increase is compensated by a decrease somewhere else: Aaaaaand I'd like to implement a vagination mechanic. You absorb things by engulfing them, like a boss. Maybe even an extra core, or a needle that pops you and causes all your inner stuff to start gushing out: But here's the problem: I don't know how to make this. However, I would like some ideas on how to implement it. Should I explore physics libraries like Box2D? Or maybe something involving fluid physics? Any help would be much appreciated. P.S. Feel free to steal this idea. I have plenty of ideas. If you do, please tell me how you made it so I can try it myself.

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• Master Data Management

  - by Logicalj

  I am looking for a very flexible, easy to integrate and dynamic application with as many features as possible for Master Data Management. As Master Data Management is used to Manage Operational Data, Analytical Data and Master Data so, I want guidance about "What is exactly expected from Master Data Management and What are the Basic and Challenging Scenarios to be covered or resolved in Master Data Management". Please guide me with all the possible aspects of Master Data Management like Data Cleansing, Data Management and Start Data Analyzing, etc.

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• Is programming in layers real?

  - by Aura

  I am fairly new in product development and I am trying to work over a product. The problem that I have realized is that people draw diagrams and charts showing different modules and layers. But as I am working alone (I am my own team) I got a bit confused about the interaction I am facing in the development within the programs and I am wondering whether developing a product in modules is real or not? Maybe I am not a great programmer, but I see no boundaries when data start to travel from frontend to backend.

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• Rails: The Law of Demeter [duplicate]

  - by user2158382

  This question already has an answer here: Rails: Law of Demeter Confusion 4 answers I am reading a book called Rails AntiPatterns and they talk about using delegation to to avoid breaking the Law of Demeter. Here is their prime example: They believe that calling something like this in the controller is bad (and I agree) @street = @invoice.customer.address.street Their proposed solution is to do the following: class Customer has_one :address belongs_to :invoice def street address.street end end class Invoice has_one :customer def customer_street customer.street end end @street = @invoice.customer_street They are stating that since you only use one dot, you are not breaking the Law of Demeter here. I think this is incorrect, because you are still going through customer to go through address to get the invoice's street. I primarily got this idea from a blog post I read: http://www.dan-manges.com/blog/37 In the blog post the prime example is class Wallet attr_accessor :cash end class Customer has_one :wallet # attribute delegation def cash @wallet.cash end end class Paperboy def collect_money(customer, due_amount) if customer.cash < due_ammount raise InsufficientFundsError else customer.cash -= due_amount @collected_amount += due_amount end end end The blog post states that although there is only one dot customer.cash instead of customer.wallet.cash, this code still violates the Law of Demeter. Now in the Paperboy collect_money method, we don't have two dots, we just have one in "customer.cash". Has this delegation solved our problem? Not at all. If we look at the behavior, a paperboy is still reaching directly into a customer's wallet to get cash out. EDIT I completely understand and agree that this is still a violation and I need to create a method in Wallet called withdraw that handles the payment for me and that I should call that method inside the Customer class. What I don't get is that according to this process, my first example still violates the Law of Demeter because Invoice is still reaching directly into Customer to get the street. Can somebody help me clear the confusion. I have been searching for the past 2 days trying to let this topic sink in, but it is still confusing.

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• Player & Level class structure in 2D python console game?

  - by Markus Meskanen

  I'm trying to create a 2D console game, where I have a player who can freely move around in a level (~map, but map is a reserved keyword) and interfere with other objects. Levels construct out of multiple Blocks, such as player(s), rocks, etc. Here's the Block class: class Block(object): def __init__(self, x=0, y=0, char=' ', solid=False): self.x = x self.y = y self.char = char self.solid = solid As you see, each block has a position (x, y) and a character to represent the block when it's printed. Each block also has a solid attribute, defining whether it can overlap with other solids or not. (Two solid blocks cannot overlap) I've now created few subclasses from Block (Rock might be useless for now) class Rock(Block): def __init__(self, x=0, y=0): super(Rock, self).__init__(x, y, 'x', True) class Player(Block): def __init__(self, x=0, y=0): super(Player, self).__init__(x, y, 'i', True) def move_left(self, x=1): ... # How do I make sure Player wont overlap with rocks? self.x -= x And here's the Level class: class Level(object): def __init__(self, name='', blocks=None): self.name = name self.blocks = blocks or [] Only way I can think of is to store a Player instance into Level's attributes (self.player=Player(), or so) and then give Level a method: def player_move_left(self): for block in self.blocks: if block.x == self.player.x - 1 and block.solid: return False But this doesn't really make any sense, why have a Player class if it can't even be moved without Level? Imo. player should be moved by a method inside Player. Am I wrong at something here, if not, how could I implement such behavior?

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• What is MVC, really?

  - by NickC

  As a serious programmer, how do you answer the question What is MVC? In my mind, MVC is sort of a nebulous topic — and because of that, if your audience is a learner, then you're free to describe it in general terms that are unlikely to be controversial. However, if you are speaking to a knowledgeable audience, especially an interviewer, I have a hard time thinking of a direction to take that doesn't risk a reaction of "well that's not right!...". We all have different real-world experience, and I haven't truly met the same MVC implementation pattern twice. Specifically, there seem to be disagreements regarding strictness, component definition, separation of parts (what piece fits where), etc. So, how should I explain MVC in a way that is correct, concise, and uncontroversial?

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• does class reference itself static anti pattern in prism

  - by Michael Riva

  I have an application and my desing approach look like this: class Manager { public int State; static Manager _instance = null; public static Manager Instance { get { return _instance; } set { if (_instance == value) return; _instance = value; } } public Manager() { State = 0; Instance=this; } } class Module1 { public void GetState() { Console.WriteLine(Manager.Instance.State); } } class Module2 { public void GetState() { Console.WriteLine(Manager.Instance.State); } } class Module3 { public void GetState() { Console.WriteLine(Manager.Instance.State); } } Manager class already registered in Bootstrapper like : protected override void ConfigureContainer() { base.ConfigureContainer(); Container.RegisterType<Manager>(new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager()); } protected override void InitializeModules() { Manager man= Container.Resolve<Manager>(); } Question is do I need to define my manager object as static in its field to be able to reach its state? Or this is anti pattern or bad for performance?

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• How to explain bad software to non-technical people?

  - by mtutty

  In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a "house" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say "just take this pill," but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine): The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem.

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• Is acoustic fingerprinting too broad for one audio file only?

  - by IBG

  We were looking for some topics related to audio analysis and found acoustic fingerprinting. As it is, it seems like the most famous application for it is for identification of music. Enter our manager, who requested us to research and possible find an algorithm or existing code that we can use for this very simple approach (like it's easy, source codes don't show up like mushrooms): Always-on app for listening Compare the audio patterns to a single audio file (assume sound is a simple beep) If beep is detected, send notification to server With a flow this simple, do you think acoustic fingerprinting is a broad approach to use? Should we stop and take another approach? Where to best start? We haven't started anything yet (on the development side) on this regard, so I want to get other opinion if this is pursuit is worth it or moot.

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• What are common patterns for handling possible pluralization in message properties?

  - by C. Ross

  Obviously users like to see text properly pluralized, and pluralization schemes vary in the various written languages one may encounter. When internationalizing an app, what pattern(s) are useful for handling messages with possible pluralization? What about messages with multiple possible pluralization? For example: "N review(s):" One pattern would be reviews.title.singular="{0} review:" reviews.title.singular="{0} reviews:" And this may not support all languages. Or a more complicated case: "Found M question(s) with N comment(s)." This would be difficult to support in English?

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• best way to send messages to all subscribers with multiple subscriptions and multiple providers

  - by coding_idiot

  I'm writing an application in which - Many users can subsribe to posts made by another users. So for a single publisher there can be many subscribers. When a message is posted by an user X, all users who have subscribed to messages of User X will be sent an email. How to achieve this ? I'm thinking of using publish-subscribe pattern. And then I came through JMS. Which is the best JMS implementation to use according to your experience ? Or else what else solution do you propose to the given problem ? Shall I go for a straight-forward solution ?: User x posts a message, I find all users (from database) who subscribe to user x and then for every user, I call the sendEmail() method. [EDIT] My intention here is not to send-emails. I'm really sorry if it wasn't clear. I also have to send kind of system-notifications apart from Email to all subscribers. Right now, I've implemented the email-sending as a threadPool

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• Javascript: Avoid this and new - further reading? [closed]

  - by Thomas Deutsch

  I do not want this to end in a sort of religious discussion, i want to collect some sources for further reading on this topic. As shown here: Node.js Style and Structure Point 1: Avoid this and new you can find a good example when it could be better to use closures instead of a prototype, and to make every argument explicit. Ok, i agree - could be nice, but i need to know more. Can anyone recommend a good link? Would this make my code 100% object-pattern-free ? (no factory-, repository-, module- pattern?)

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• C++: calling non-member functions with the same syntax of member ones

  - by peoro

  One thing I'd like to do in C++ is to call non-member functions with the same syntax you call member functions: class A { }; void f( A & this ) { /* ... */ } // ... A a; a.f(); // this is the same as f(a); Of course this could only work as long as f is not virtual (since it cannot appear in A's virtual table. f doesn't need to access A's non-public members. f doesn't conflict with a function declared in A (A::f). I'd like such a syntax because in my opinion it would be quite comfortable and would push good habits: calling str.strip() on a std::string (where strip is a function defined by the user) would sound a lot better than calling strip( str );. most of the times (always?) classes provide some member functions which don't require to be member (ie: are not virtual and don't use non-public members). This breaks encapsulation, but is the most practical thing to do (due to point 1). My question here is: what do you think of such feature? Do you think it would be something nice, or something that would introduce more issues than the ones it aims to solve? Could it make sense to propose such a feature to the next standard (the one after C++0x)? Of course this is just a brief description of this idea; it is not complete; we'd probably need to explicitly mark a function with a special keyword to let it work like this and many other stuff.

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• What are good ways to find collaborators for a coding weekend?

  - by tarrasch

  Not sure if this belongs here, feel free to push it somewhere else if needed. When i was at university we would sometimes come together into a room full of beer and fast food and crank out software in a weekend. Unfortunately the group has kind of split up and its just not possible any more. My question is now: Where can i find like-minded people on the Internet that would like to do something like this? I have an idea what i wanted to do next, but of course other people have ideas too.

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