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  • How do I overcome paralysis by analysis when coding?

    - by LuxuryMode
    When I start a new project, I often times immediately start thinking about the details of implementation. "Where am I gonna put the DataBaseHandler? How should I use it? Should classes that want to use it extend from some Abstract superclass..? Should I an interface? What level of abstraction am I going to use in my class that contains methods for sending requests and parsing data?" I end up stalling for a long time because I want to code for extensibility and reusability. But I feel it almost impossible to get past thinking about how to implement perfectly. And then, if I try to just say "screw it, just get it done!", I hit a brick wall pretty quickly because my code isn't organized, I mixed levels of abstractions, etc. What are some techniques/methods you have for launching into a new project while also setting up a logical/modular structure that will scale well?

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  • Should these concerns be separated into separate objects?

    - by Lewis Bassett
    I have objects which implement the interface BroadcastInterface, which represents a message that is to be broadcast to all users of a particular group. It has a setter and getter method for the Subject and Body properties, and an addRecipientRole() method, which takes a given role and finds the contact token (e.g., an email address) for each user in the role and stores it. It then has a getContactTokens() method. BroadcastInterface objects are passed to an object that implements BroadcasterInterface. These objects are responsible for broadcasting a passed BroadcastInterface object. For example, an EmailBroadcaster implementation of the BroadcasterInterface will take EmailBroadcast objects and use the mailer services to email them out. Now, depending on what BroadcasterInterface implementation is used to broadcast, a different implementation of BroadcastInterface is used by client code. The Single Responsibility Principle seems to suggest that I should have a separate BroadcastFactory object, for creating BroadcastInterface objects, depending on what BroadcasterInterface implementation is used, as creating the BroadcastInterface object is a different responsibility to broadcasting them. But the class used for creating BroadcastInterface objects depends on what implementation of BroadcasterInterface is used to broadcast them. I think, because the knowledge of what method is used to send the broadcasts should only be configured once, the BroadcasterInterface object should be responsible for providing new BroadcastInterface objects. Does the responsibility of “creating and broadcasting objects that implement the BroadcastInterface interface” violate the Single Responsibility Principle? (Because the contact token for sending the broadcast out to the users will differ depending on the way it is broadcasted, I need different broadcast classes—though client code will not be able to tell the difference.)

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  • Using XML as data storage

    - by Kian Mayne
    I was thinking about the XML format and the following quote: “XML is not a database. It was never meant to be a database. It is never going to be a database. Relational databases are proven technology with more than 20 years of implementation experience. They are solid, stable, useful products. They are not going away. XML is a very useful technology for moving data between different databases or between databases and other programs. However, it is not itself a database. Don't use it like one.“ -Effective XML: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your XML by Elliotte Rusty Harold (page 230, Part 4, Item 41, 2nd paragraph) This seems to really stress that XML should not be used for data storage and should only be used for program to program interoperability. Personally, I disagree and .NET's app.config file that's used to store a program's settings is an example of data storage in an XML file. However for databases rather than configurations etc XML should not be used. To develop my point, I will use two examples: A) Data about customers with fields that are all on one level i.e. there are a number of fields all relating to one customer with no children B) Data about configuration of an application where nested fields and properties make a lot of sense So my question is, Is this still a valid statement and is it now acceptable to store data using XML? EDIT: I've sent an email to the author of that quote to ask for his input/extra context.

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  • Builder Pattern: When to fail?

    - by skiwi
    When implementing the Builder Pattern, I often find myself confused with when to let building fail and I even manage to take different stands on the matter every few days. First some explanation: With failing early I mean that building an object should fail as soon as an invalid parameter is passed in. So inside the SomeObjectBuilder. With failing late I mean that building an object only can fail on the build() call that implicitely calls a constructor of the object to be built. Then some arguments: In favor of failing late: A builder class should be no more than a class that simply holds values. Moreover, it leads to less code duplication. In favor of failing early: A general approach in software programming is that you want to detect issues as early as possible and therefore the most logical place to check would be in the builder class' constructor, 'setters' and ultimately in the build method. What is the general concensus about this?

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  • Solid principles vs YAGNI

    - by KeesDijk
    When do the SOLID principles become YAGNI. As programmers we make trade-off's all the time, between complexity, maintainabillity, time to build and so forth.Amongst others. two of the smartest guidelines for making choices are in my mind the SOLID principles and YAGNI. If you don't need it, dont build it and keep it clean. Now for example when i watch the dimecast series on SOLID I see it start out as a fairly simple programm and ending up prettty complex (end yes complexity is also in the eye of the beholder) but it still makes me wonder, when do SOLID principles turn into something you don't need. All solid principles are ways of working that enable use te make changes at a later stage. But what if the problem to solve is a pretty simple one and it's a through away application, than what ? Or are the SOLID principles something that apply always ?

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  • C++ - Constructor or Initialize Method to Startup

    - by Bob Fincheimer
    I want to determine when to do non-trivial initialization of a class. I see two times to do initialization: constructor and other method. I want to figure out when to use each. Choice 1: Constructor does initialization MyClass::MyClass(Data const& data) : m_data() { // does non-trivial initialization here } MyClass::~MyClass() { // cleans up here } Choice 2: Defer initialization to an initialize method MyClass::MyClass() : m_data() {} MyClass::Initialize(Data const& data) { // does non-trivial initialization here } MyClass::~MyClass() { // cleans up here } So to try and remove any subjectivity I want to figure out which is better in a couple of situations: Class that encapsulates a resource (window/font/some sort of handle) Class that composites resources to do something (a control/domain object) Data structure classes (tree/list/etc.) [Anything else you can think of] Things to analyze: Performance Ease of use by other developers How error-prone/opportunities for bugs [Anything else you can think of]

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  • RTS game diplomacy heuristics

    - by kd304
    I'm reimplementing an old 4X space-rts game which has diplomacy options. The original was based on a relation scoring system (0..100) and a set of negotiation options (improve relations, alliance, declare war, etc.) The AI player usually had 3 options: yes, maybe and no; each adding or removing some amount to the relation score. How should the AI chose between the options? How does the diplomacy work in other games and how are they imlemented? Any good books/articles on the subject? (Googling the term diplomacy yields the game Diplomacy, which is unhelpful.)

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  • Style bits vs. Separate bool's

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

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

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

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  • multi user web game with scheduled processing?

    - by Rooq
    I have an idea for a game which I am in the process of designing, but I am struggling to establish if the way I plan to implement it is possible. The game is a text based sports management simulation. This will require players to take certain actions through a web browser which will interact with a database - adding/updating and selecting. Most of the code required to be executed at this point will be fairly straightforward. The main processing will take place by applications which are scheduled to run on the server at certain times. These apps will process transactions added by the players and also perform some automatic processing based on the game date. My plan was to use an SQL server database (at last count I require about 20 tables) and VB.net for all the coding (coming from a mainframe programming background this language is the simplist for me to get to grips with). I will also need a scheduling tool on the server. Can anyone tell me if what I am planning is feasible before I dive into the actual coding stage of my project?

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  • How do I approach large companies if I have a killer mobile game idea?

    - by Balázs Dávid
    I have an idea for a game that has potential, but I'm not a programmer. How do I tell this to development companies without having my idea stolen? All I want from the company is for somebody to watch a three minute long video presentation about my idea and if they see potential in it then we can talk about the details. I have already sent an e-mail to several big companies that have the expertise needed to code the game, they haven't answered me. Actually the idea is nothing fancy, no 3D, but fun and unique.

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  • controlling an object through another object ?

    - by Stefano Borini
    Today I've seen the following pattern: you have an object A and an object B. Object B accepts a pointer to A at its constructor. Once B is created, there's a method B.doCalc() that performs a calculation (internally using A's information). The result is obtained with method B.getResult(). In order to perform another calculation, A is modified, and B.doCalc() is called again. What is your opinion on this choice ? I would have designed it differently, but I want to hear your voice. Edit : note that my main objection is to modify A to have a different result from B, without touching B. Although similar, I think that just this discipline expresses a much better feeling of what's going on. Instead of a = new A a.whatever = 5 b = new B(a) b.doCalc() res = b.getResult() a.whatever = 6 b.doCalc() res = b.getResult() You get the a pointer object from b itself. a = new A a.whatever = 5 b = new B(a) b.doCalc() res = b.getResult() a = b.getAPointer() a.whatever = 6 b.doCalc() res = b.getResult() because it makes more explicit the fact that a is taken from b and then modified. I still don't like it, though...

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  • Developing a Cost Model for Cloud Applications

    - by BuckWoody
    Note - please pay attention to the date of this post. As much as I attempt to make the information below accurate, the nature of distributed computing means that components, units and pricing will change over time. The definitive costs for Microsoft Windows Azure and SQL Azure are located here, and are more accurate than anything you will see in this post: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/  When writing software that is run on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering like Windows Azure / SQL Azure, one of the questions you must answer is how much the system will cost. I will not discuss the comparisons between on-premise costs (which are nigh impossible to calculate accurately) versus cloud costs, but instead focus on creating a general model for estimating costs for a given application. You should be aware that there are (at this writing) two billing mechanisms for Windows and SQL Azure: “Pay-as-you-go” or consumption, and “Subscription” or commitment. Conceptually, you can consider the former a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan, where you pay by the unit used (at a slightly higher rate) and the latter as a standard cell phone plan where you commit to a contract and thus pay lower rates. In this post I’ll stick with the pay-as-you-go mechanism for simplicity, which should be the maximum cost you would pay. From there you may be able to get a lower cost if you use the other mechanism. In any case, the model you create should hold. Developing a good cost model is essential. As a developer or architect, you’ll most certainly be asked how much something will cost, and you need to have a reliable way to estimate that. Businesses and Organizations have been used to paying for servers, software licenses, and other infrastructure as an up-front cost, and power, people to the systems and so on as an ongoing (and sometimes not factored) cost. When presented with a new paradigm like distributed computing, they may not understand the true cost/value proposition, and that’s where the architect and developer can guide the conversation to make a choice based on features of the application versus the true costs. The two big buckets of use-types for these applications are customer-based and steady-state. In the customer-based use type, each successful use of the program results in a sale or income for your organization. Perhaps you’ve written an application that provides the spot-price of foo, and your customer pays for the use of that application. In that case, once you’ve estimated your cost for a successful traversal of the application, you can build that into the price you charge the user. It’s a standard restaurant model, where the price of the meal is determined by the cost of making it, plus any profit you can make. In the second use-type, the application will be used by a more-or-less constant number of processes or users and no direct revenue is attached to the system. A typical example is a customer-tracking system used by the employees within your company. In this case, the cost model is often created “in reverse” - meaning that you pilot the application, monitor the use (and costs) and that cost is held steady. This is where the comparison with an on-premise system becomes necessary, even though it is more difficult to estimate those on-premise true costs. For instance, do you know exactly how much cost the air conditioning is because you have a team of system administrators? This may sound trivial, but that, along with the insurance for the building, the wiring, and every other part of the system is in fact a cost to the business. There are three primary methods that I’ve been successful with in estimating the cost. None are perfect, all are demand-driven. The general process is to lay out a matrix of: components units cost per unit and then multiply that times the usage of the system, based on which components you use in the program. That sounds a bit simplistic, but using those metrics in a calculation becomes more detailed. In all of the methods that follow, you need to know your application. The components for a PaaS include computing instances, storage, transactions, bandwidth and in the case of SQL Azure, database size. In most cases, architects start with the first model and progress through the other methods to gain accuracy. Simple Estimation The simplest way to calculate costs is to architect the application (even UML or on-paper, no coding involved) and then estimate which of the components you’ll use, and how much of each will be used. Microsoft provides two tools to do this - one is a simple slider-application located here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/  The other is a tool you download to create an “Return on Investment” (ROI) spreadsheet, which has the advantage of leading you through various questions to estimate what you plan to use, located here: https://roianalyst.alinean.com/msft/AutoLogin.do?d=176318219048082115  You can also just create a spreadsheet yourself with a structure like this: Program Element Azure Component Unit of Measure Cost Per Unit Estimated Use of Component Total Cost Per Component Cumulative Cost               Of course, the consideration with this model is that it is difficult to predict a system that is not running or hasn’t even been developed. Which brings us to the next model type. Measure and Project A more accurate model is to actually write the code for the application, using the Software Development Kit (SDK) which can run entirely disconnected from Azure. The code should be instrumented to estimate the use of the application components, logging to a local file on the development system. A series of unit and integration tests should be run, which will create load on the test system. You can use standard development concepts to track this usage, and even use Windows Performance Monitor counters. The best place to start with this method is to use the Windows Azure Diagnostics subsystem in your code, which you can read more about here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sumitm/archive/2009/11/18/introducing-windows-azure-diagnostics.aspx This set of API’s greatly simplifies tracking the application, and in fact you can use this information for more than just a cost model. After you have the tracking logs, you can plug the numbers into ay of the tools above, which should give a representative cost or in some cases a unit cost. The consideration with this model is that the SDK fabric is not a one-to-one comparison with performance on the actual Windows Azure fabric. Those differences are usually smaller, but they do need to be considered. Also, you may not be able to accurately predict the load on the system, which might lead to an architectural change, which changes the model. This leads us to the next, most accurate method for a cost model. Sample and Estimate Using standard statistical and other predictive math, once the application is deployed you will get a bill each month from Microsoft for your Azure usage. The bill is quite detailed, and you can export the data from it to do analysis, and using methods like regression and so on project out into the future what the costs will be. I normally advise that the architect also extrapolate a unit cost from those metrics as well. This is the information that should be reported back to the executives that pay the bills: the past cost, future projected costs, and unit cost “per click” or “per transaction”, as your case warrants. The challenge here is in the model itself - statistical methods are not foolproof, and the larger the sample (in this case I recommend the entire population, not a smaller sample) is key. References and Tools Articles: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/patrick_butler_monterde/archive/2010/02/10/windows-azure-billing-overview.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg213848.aspx http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2011/06/05/azure-faq-how-much-will-it-cost-me-to-run-my-application-on-windows-azure/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/johnalioto/archive/2010/08/25/10054193.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/02/08/qampa-how-can-i-calculate-the-tco-and-roi-when.aspx   Other Tools: http://cloud-assessment.com/ http://communities.quest.com/community/cloud_tools

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  • When should a method of a class return the same instance after modifying itself?

    - by modiX
    I have a class that has three methods A(), B() and C(). Those methods modify the own instance. While the methods have to return an instance when the instance is a separate copy (just as Clone()), I got a free choice to return void or the same instance (return this;) when modifying the same instance in the method and not returning any other value. When deciding for returning the same modified instance, I can do neat method chains like obj.A().B().C();. Would this be the only reason for doing so? Is it even okay to modify the own instance and return it, too? Or should it only return a copy and leave the original object as before? Because when returning the same modified instance the user would maybe admit the returned value is a copy, otherwise it would not be returned? If it's okay, what's the best way to clarify such things on the method?

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  • How can I screen clients that try to register multiple times?

    - by Aba Dov
    My company offers a bonus to every client that register. We would like to prevent people from abusing this by registering several times. we thought about filtering clients by ip (there is a problem with workplaces where all stations have the same ip) cookies (if cookies are not allowed we might lose a client) I would like your opinions on these two methods and will be glad to hear about new ones. thanks

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  • Simple 2d game pathfinding

    - by Kooi Nam Ng
    So I was trying to implement a simple pathfinding on iOS and but the outcome seems less satisfactory than what I intended to achieve.The thing is units in games like Warcraft and Red Alert move in all direction whereas units in my case only move in at most 8 directions as these 8 directions direct to the next available node.What should I do in order to achieve the result as stated above?Shrink the tile size? The screenshot intended for illustration. Those rocks are the obstacles whereas the both ends of the green path are the starting and end of the path.The red line is the path that I want to achieve. http://i.stack.imgur.com/lr19c.jpg

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  • Working with data and meta data that are separated on different servers

    - by afuzzyllama
    While developing a product, I've come across a situation where my group wants to store meta data for data entry forms (questions, layout, etc) in a different database then the database where the collected data is stored. This is mostly for security because we want to be able to have our meta data public facing, while keeping collected data as secure as possible. I was thinking about writing a web service that provides the meta information that the data collection program could access. The only issue I see with this approach is the front end is going to have to match the meta data with the collected data, which would be more efficient as a join on the back end. Currently, this system is slated to run on .NET and MSSQL. I haven't played around with .NET libraries running in SQL, but I'm considering trying to create logic that would pull from the web service, convert the meta data into a table that SQL can join on, and return the combined data and meta data that way. Is this solution the wrong way to approach the problem? Is there a pattern or "industry standard" way of bringing together two datasets that don't live in the same database?

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  • Is it appropriate for a class to only be a collection of information with no logic?

    - by qegal
    Say I have a class Person that has instance variables age, weight, and height, and another class Fruit that has instance variables sugarContent and texture. The Person class has no methods save setters and getters, while the Fruit class has both setters and getters and logic methods like calculateSweetness. Is the Fruit class the type of class that is better practice than the Person class. What I mean by this is that the Person class seems like it doesn't have much purpose; it exists solely to organize data, while the Fruit class organizes data and actually contains methods for logic.

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  • Open source level editor for HTML5 platform game?

    - by Lai Yu-Hsuan
    A natty GUI editor is very helpful to create level map. I want to use some open-source choices rather than build my own from scratch. I found Tiled Map Editor but it doesn't work for what I want. Though I'm building HTML5 game, I don't have to use a HTML5 level editor as long as it can output well-formatted map files which my javascript can read. Edit: Sorry for the confusion. Tiled does not work for me because to make the player perform a 'tricky' jump, sometimes I want to set the distance between two platforms to, say, 7/3 or 8/3 tiles. But in Tiled I get only 2 or 3. If Tiled can do this, please teach me.

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  • Designing configuration for subobjects

    - by Stefano Borini
    I have the following situation: I have a class (let's call it Main) encapsulating a complex process. This class in turn orchestrates a sequence of subalgorithms (AlgoA, AlgoB), each one represented by an individual class. To configure Main, I have a configuration stored into a configuration object MainConfig. This object contains all the config information for AlgoA and AlgoB with their specific parameters. AlgoA has no interest to the information relative to the configuration of AlgoB, so technically I could have (and in practice I have) a contained MainConfig.AlgoAConfig and MainConfig.AlgoBConfig instances, and initialize as AlgoA(MainConfig.AlgoAConfig) and AlgoB(MainConfig.AlgoBConfig). The problem is that there is some common configuration data. One example is the printLevel. I currently have MainConfig.printLevel. I need to propagate this information to both AlgoA and AlgoB, because they have to know how much to print. MainConfig also needs to know how much to print. So the solutions available are I pass the MainConfig to AlgoA and AlgoB. This way, AlgoA has technically access to the whole configuration (even that of AlgoB) and is less self-contained I copy the MainConfig.printLevel into AlgoAConfig and AlgoBConfig, so I basically have three printLevel information repeated. I create a third configuration class PrintingConfig. I have an instance variable MainConfig.printingConfig, and then pass to AlgoA both MainConfig.AlgoAConfig and MainConfig.printingConfig. Have you ever found this situation? How did you solve it ? Which one is stylistically clearer to a new reader of the code ?

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  • Is it a bad practice to store large files (10 MB) in a database?

    - by B Seven
    I am currently creating a web application that allows users to store and share files, 1 MB - 10 MB in size. It seems to me that storing the files in a database will significantly slow down database access. Is this a valid concern? Is it better to store the files in the file system and save the file name and path in the database? Are there any best practices related to storing files when working with a database? I am working in PHP and MySQL for this project, but is the issue the same for most environments (Ruby on Rails, PHP, .NET) and databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL).

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  • LSP vs OCP / Liskov Substitution VS Open Close

    - by Kolyunya
    I am trying to understand the SOLID principles of OOP and I've come to the conclusion that LSP and OCP have some similarities (if not to say more). the open/closed principle states "software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification". LSP in simple words states that any instance of Foo can be replaced with any instance of Bar which is derived from Foo and the program will work the same very way. I'm not a pro OOP programmer, but it seems to me that LSP is only possible if Bar, derived from Foo does not change anything in it but only extends it. That means that in particular program LSP is true only when OCP is true and OCP is true only if LSP is true. That means that they are equal. Correct me if I'm wrong. I really want to understand these ideas. Great thanks for an answer.

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  • How do you structure a 2D level format with collisions etc. in Java (Slick 2D)?

    - by liamzebedee
    I am developing a game in Java. 2D Fighter, Kind of like the 2d flash game Raze(http://armorgames.com/play/5395/raze). I currently am using the Slick 2D game library and am researching how to structure my levels. I am currently stuck on the problem of the level format(e.g. file format). How do you structure a 2d level with collisions etc.? Level Notes: Will go up down left right NOTE: New to gamedev

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  • Do immutable objects and DDD go together?

    - by SnOrfus
    Consider a system that uses DDD (as well: any system that uses an ORM). The point of any system realistically, in nearly every use case, will be to manipulate those domain objects. Otherwise there's no real effect or purpose. Modifying an immutable object will cause it to generate a new record after the object is persisted which creates massive bloat in the datasource (unless you delete previous records after modifications). I can see the benefit of using immutable objects, but in this sense, I can't ever see a useful case for using immutable objects. Is this wrong?

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