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• Good free CSS Sprite for icons

  - by Saif Bechan

  I am working on a small project where I need some of the basic icons: edit, favorite, delete. You know them. Now i can download them all seperate, and put them together in a sprite, but I was wondering if there are ready to download sprites which I can use. Now I am working on an accounting app, so it would be nice if the icons were not too childish. A little but of fancy business type icons. Thanks

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• What to include in metadata?

  - by shyam

  I'm wondering if there are any general guidelines or best practices regarding when to split data into a metadata format, as oppose to directly embedding it within the data. (Specific example below). My understanding of metadata is that it describes data (without the need to actually look at the data), allowing for data to be quickly search/filtered for easy access. Let's take for example a simple 3D model format. The actual data file itself is a binary file containing vertices and colors. Things like creation date, modified data and author name would be things that describe the binary data, so I would say these belong as metadata (outside of the binary file). But what if the application had no need to search or filter by these fields? Would it be acceptable to embed these fields directly into the binary data itself? Could they be duplicated in both the binary data and the meta data, or would this be considered bad practice? What about more ambiguous fields such as the model name, which could be considered part of the data itself, but also as data describing the binary data?... How do you decide which data to embed in the actual binary file, as opposed to separating into a more flexible metadata format? Thanks!

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• Solid principles vs YAGNI

  - by KeesDijk

  When do the SOLID principles become YAGNI? As programmers we make trade-offs all the time, between complexity, maintainability, 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; don't build it, and keep it clean. Now for example, when I watch the dimecast series on SOLID, I see it starts out as a fairly simple program, and ends up as a pretty complex one (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 to make changes at a later stage. But what if the problem to solve is a pretty simple one and it's a throwaway application, then what? Or are the SOLID principles something that always apply? As asked in the comments: Solid Principles YAGNI

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• Can someone recommend an appriopriate drawing tablet that fits my needs?

  - by Syg

  I'm looking for something that can help me to easily create small hand drawn graphics and mock-ups digitalize technical drawings I would normally draw on a whiteboard. I'm a developer, not a designer, so it doesn't have to be high-end I guess. Just something to help make it easier, more fun and more productive to quickly draw mockups etc. After a quick search I landed on the wacom site, but it's hard for me to tell the difference between the offerings never having used something like this. Is small too small? is it annoying? Other suggestion are also welcome ofcourse. Thanx for any help you can give me

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• Moving camera, or camera with discrete "screens"?

  - by Jacob Millward

  I'm making a game with a friend, but having trouble deciding on a camera style. The basic idea for the game, is having a randomly generated 2-dimensional world, with settlements in it. These settlements would have access to different resources, and it would be the job of the player to create bridges and ladders and links between these villages so they can trade. The player would advance personally by getting better gear, fighting monsters and looking for materials in the world, in order to craft and trade them at the settlements. My friend wants to use an old-style camera, where the world is split into a discrete number of screens that the player moves between. Similar to early Zelda dungeons, or Knytt Stories. This is opposite to me, as I want a standard camera that follows the player around as I feel the split-screen style camera limits the game. Can anyone argue the case either way? We've hit a massive roadblock here and can't seem to get past it.

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• Variable declaration versus assignment syntax

  - by rwallace

  Working on a statically typed language with type inference and streamlined syntax, and need to make final decision about syntax for variable declaration versus assignment. Specifically I'm trying to choose between: // Option 1. Create new local variable with :=, assign with = foo := 1 foo = 2 // Option 2. Create new local variable with =, assign with := foo = 1 foo := 2 Creating functions will use = regardless: // Indentation delimits blocks square x = x * x And assignment to compound objects will do likewise: sky.color = blue a[i] = 0 Which of options 1 or 2 would people find most convenient/least surprising/otherwise best?

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• Recommended method towards making custom maps for a 2d game?

  - by Qasim

  I am planning on making a 2D game, however different from my last personal projects I want this one to have enhanced graphics, with custom-designed levels. My previous 2d platformers were tile-based, in which I made a map editor for to create levels. However, I am wondering the best way to implement custom designed maps? For say, some grass is a litter higher than others, flowers here and there, cool drawings and structures along the way, etc. instead of just the same old tiles over and over again. I am thinking but I just can't grasp the idea of how to implement it. I have seen it done in other games and am interested to see how they accomplish it, but can't get my hands on some source code. :(

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• Requiring multithreading/concurrency for implementation of scripting language

  - by Ricky Stewart

  Here's the deal: I'm looking at designing my own scripting/interpreted language for fun. I'm only in the planning stages right now; I want to make sure I have a very strong hold on exactly how I will implement everything before I start coding. What I'm currently struggling with is concurrency. It seems to me like an easy way to avoid the unpredictable performance that comes with garbage collection would be to put the garbage collector in its own thread, and have it run concurrently with the interpreter itself. (To be clear, I don't plan to allow the scripts to be multithreaded themselves; I would simply put a garbage collector to work in a different thread than the interpreter.) This doesn't seem to be a common strategy for many popular scripting languages, probably for portability reasons; I would probably write the interpreter in the UNIX/POSIX threading framework initially and then port it to other platforms (Windows, etc.) if need be. Does anyone have any thoughts in this issue? Would whatever gains I receive by exploiting concurrency be nullified by the portability issues that will inevitably arise? (On that note, am I really correct in my assumption that I would experience great performance gains with a concurrent garbage collector?) Should I move forward with this strategy or step away from it?

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• More Tables or More Databases?

  - by BuckWoody

  I got an e-mail from someone that has an interesting situation. He has 15,000 customers, and he asks if he should have a database for their data per customer. Without a LOT more data it’s impossible to say, of course, but there are some general concepts to keep in mind. Whenever you’re segmenting data, it’s all about boundary choices. You have not only boundaries around how big the data will get, but things like how many objects (tables, stored procedures and so on) that will be involved, if there are any cross-sections of data (do they share location or product information) and – very important – what are the security requirements? From the answer to these types of questions, you now have the choice of making multiple tables in a single database, or using multiple databases. A database carries some overhead – it needs a certain amount of memory for locking and so on. But it has a very clean boundary – everything from objects to security can be kept apart. Having multiple users in the same database is possible as well, using things like a Schema. But keeping 15,000 schemas can be challenging as well. My recommendation in complex situations like this is similar to a post on decisions that I did earlier – I lay out the choices on a spreadsheet in rows, and then my requirements at the top in the columns. I  give each choice a number based on how well it meets each requirement. At the end, the highest number wins. And many times it’s a mix – perhaps this person could segment customers into larger regions or districts or products, in a database. Within that database might be multiple schemas for the customers. Of course, he needs to query across all customers, that becomes another requirement. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• what making a good soundtrack for social game

  - by Maged

  there are many successful social games in Facebook and other social sites like brain buddies, who has the biggest brain and word challenge.both of them have a great soundtrack while playing and in the beginning of the game . my question is how to find a good soundtrack or what's i should look for to find a good soundtrack like this that's help to attract the user specially for games that need concentration ?

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• Java Desktop Application For Network users

  - by Motasem Abu Aker

  I'm developing a desktop application using Java. My application will run in a network environment where multiple users will access the same database through the application. There will be basic CRUD opreations (Insert, Update, Delete, & select), which means there will be chances of deadlock, or two users trying to update the same record at same time. I'm using the following Java Swing for Clients (MVC). MySQL Server for database (InnODB). Java Web start. Now, MySQL is centralized on the network, and all of the clients connect to it. The Application for ERP Purpose. I searched the internet to find a very good solution to ensure data integrity & to make sure that when updating one record from one client, other clients are aware of it. I read about Socket-server-client & RESTful web services. I don't want to go web application & don't want to use any extra libraries. So how can I handle this scenario: If User A updates a record: Is there a way to update User B's screen with the new value? If user A starts updating a record, how can I prevent other users from attempting to update the same record?

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• Will a polled event system cause lag for a server?

  - by Milo

  I'm using a library called ENet. It is a reliable UDP library. The way it works is a polled event system like this: ENetEvent event; /* Wait up to 1000 milliseconds for an event. */ while (enet_host_service (client, & event, 1000) > 0) { switch (event.type) { case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_CONNECT: printf ("A new client connected from %x:%u.\n", event.peer -> address.host, event.peer -> address.port); /* Store any relevant client information here. */ event.peer -> data = "Client information"; break; case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_RECEIVE: printf ("A packet of length %u containing %s was received from %s on channel %u.\n", event.packet -> dataLength, event.packet -> data, event.peer -> data, event.channelID); /* Clean up the packet now that we're done using it. */ enet_packet_destroy (event.packet); break; case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_DISCONNECT: printf ("%s disconected.\n", event.peer -> data); /* Reset the peer's client information. */ event.peer -> data = NULL; } } It waits up to 1000 milliseconds for an event. If I'm hosting say 75 event driven card games and a lobby on the same thread as this code, will it cause any problems. If my understanding is correct, the process will simply sleep until there is an event, when there is one, it will process the event then come back here where potentially 5 or so events have queued up since so enet_host_services would return right away and not cause lag. I have been advised not to use multiple threads, will that be alright like this? Thanks

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• Use Those Schemas, People!

  - by BuckWoody

  Database Schemas are just containers – they aren’t users or anything else – think of a sub-directory on the hard drive. In early versions of SQL Server we “hid” schemas, placing all objects under “dbo”, which gave the erroneous perception that Schemas are users. In SQL Server 2005, we “un-hid” or re-introduced schemas within the database. Users can have a default schema (a place where their new objects go), you can add new schemas and transfer objects between them, and they have many other benefits. But I still see a lot of applications, developed by shops I know as well as vendors, that don’t make use of a Schema. Everything is piled under dbo. I completely understand this – since permissions can be granted to a schema, they feel a lot like a user, so it’s just easier not to worry about both users and schemas when you create a database. But if you’ll use them properly you can make your application more understandable and portable. You should at least take a few minutes and read more about them – you owe it to your users: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190387.aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Why are Javascript for/in loops so verbose?

  - by Matthew Scharley

  I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind why the language designers would make the for (.. in ..) loops so verbose. For example: for (var x in Drupal.settings.module.stuff) { alert("Index: " + x + "\nValue: " + Drupal.settings.module.stuff[x]); } It makes trying to loop over anything semi-complex like the above a real pain as you either have to alias the value locally inside the loop yourself, or deal with long access calls. This is especially painful if you have two to three nested loops. I'm assuming there is a reason why they would do things this way, but I'm struggling with the reasoning.

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• Is my Document Type Definition Still Up to Date?

  - by Sam

  Hi folks, currently all my php generated rich html webpages start with this line, which I have been adding to my tempaltes YEARS ago... <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> Am I still up to date and 2011-proof? or Should I be changing this into something fasterloaden/more agile/more flexible? I have heard of XHTML 1.1. When I remove this line all still works fine. Is it very much needed still? What are my alternatives? Thanks very much for your suggestions.

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• How to handle a player's level and its consequent privileges?

  - by Songo

  I'm building a game similar to Mafia Wars where a player can do tasks for his gang and gain experience and thus advancing his level. The game is built using PHP and a Mysql database. In the game I want to limit the resources allowed to player based on his level. For example: ________| (Max gold) | (Max army size) | (Max moves) | ... Level 1 | 1000 | 100 | 10 | ... Level 2 | 1500 | 200 | 20 | ... Level 3 | 3000 | 300 | 25 | ... . . . In addition certain features of the game won't be allowed until a certain level is reached such as players under Level 10 can't trade in the game market, players under Level 20 can't create alliances,...etc. The way I have modeled it is by implementing a very loooong ACL (Access Control List) with about 100 entries (an entry for each level). However, I think there may be a simpler approach to this seeing that this feature have been implemented in many games before.

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• Is true multithreading really necessary?

  - by Jonathan Graef

  So yeah, I'm creating a programming language. And the language allows multiple threads. But, all threads are synchronized with a global interpreter lock, which means only one thread is allowed to execute at a time. The only way to get the threads to switch off is to explicitly tell the current thread to wait, which allows another thread to execute. Parallel processing is of course possible by spawning multiple processes, but the variables and objects in one process cannot be accessed from another. However the language does have a fairly efficient IPC interface for communicating between processes. My question is: Would there ever be a reason to have multiple, unsynchronized threads within a single process (thus circumventing the GIL)? Why not just put thread.wait() statements in key positions in the program logic (presuming thread.wait() isn't a CPU hog, of course)? I understand that certain other languages that use a GIL have processor scheduling issues (cough Python), but they have all been resolved.

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• Code and Slides: Techniques, Strategies, and Patterns for Structuring JavaScript Code

  - by dwahlin

  This presentation was given at the spring 2012 DevConnections conference in Las Vegas and is based on my Structuring JavaScript Code course from Pluralsight. The goal of the presentation is to show how closures combined with code patterns can be used to provide structure to JavaScript code and make it more re-useable, maintainable, and less susceptible to naming conflicts.  Topics covered include: Closures Using Object literals Namespaces The Prototype Pattern The Revealing Module Pattern The Revealing Prototype Pattern View more of my presentations here. Sample code from the presentation can be found here. Check out the full-length course on the topic at Pluralsight.com.

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• Microkernel architectural pattern and applicability for business applications

  - by Pangea

  We are in the business of building customizable web applications. We have the core team that provides what we call as the core platform (provides services like security, billing etc.) on top of which core products are built. These core products are industry specific solutions like telecom, utility etc. These core products are later used by other teams to build customer specific solutions in a particular industry. Until now we have a loose separation between platform and core product. The customer specific solutions are build by customizing 20-40% of the core offering and re-packaging. The core-platform and core products are released together as monolithic apps (ear). I am looking to improvise the current situation so that there is a cleaner separation on these 3. This allows us to have evolve each of these 3 separately etc. I've read through the Mircokernel architecture and kind of felt that I can take apply the principles in my context. But most of my reading about this pattern is always in the context of operating systems or application servers etc. I am wondering if there are any examples on how that pattern was used for architecting business applications. Or you could provide some insight on how to apply that pattern to my problem.

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• Which Game Engine to Use for an Angry Bird style game? [JAVA] [on hold]

  - by Arch1tect

  Our team is building an Angry Bird Style game, and we have only about ten days. The game is a little more complex than Angry Bird because there are two players, they each have a castle with pigs to protect(not destroy:)). And the goal is to destroy the other player's pigs. I wonder what Game Engine would help us finish this game most efficiently. We at least need a physics engine but I guess game engine is more helpful since it usually includes physics engine. Correct me if I'm wrong. (So I'm wondering which game engine I should use, if it's just physics engine, I'll use box2d) Networking may or may not be added later depend on time we have. Thanks in advance for any advice! EDIT: image looks small, I'll add one:

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• Naming a predicate: "precondition" or "precondition_is_met"?

  - by RexE

  In my web app framework, each page can have a precondition that needs to be satisfied before it can be displayed to the user. For example, if user 1 and user 2 are playing a back-and-forth role-playing game, user 2 needs to wait for user 1 to finish his turn before he can take his turn. Otherwise, the user is displayed a waiting page. This is implemented with a predicate: def precondition(self): return user_1.completed_turn The simplest name for this API is precondition, but this leads to code like if precondition(): ..., which is not really obvious. Seems to me like it is more accurate to call it precondition_is_met(), but not sure about that either. Is there a best practice for naming methods like this?

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• How to refactor and improve this XNA mouse input code?

  - by Andrew Price

  Currently I have something like this: public bool IsLeftMouseButtonDown() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed; } public bool IsLeftMouseButtonPressed() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released; } public bool IsLeftMouseButtonUp() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released; } public bool IsLeftMouseButtonReleased() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed; } This is fine. In fact, I kind of like it. However, I'd hate to have to repeat this same code five times (for right, middle, X1, X2). Is there any way to pass in the button I want to the function so I could have something like this? public bool IsMouseButtonDown(MouseButton button) { return currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } public bool IsMouseButtonPressed(MouseButton button) { return currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && !previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } public bool IsMouseButtonUp(MouseButton button) { return !currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } public bool IsMouseButtonReleased(MouseButton button) { return !currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } I suppose I could create some custom enumeration and switch through it in each function, but I'd like to first see if there is a built-in solution or a better way.. Thanks!

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• Overloading interface buttons, what are the best practices?

  - by XMLforDummies

  Imagine you'll have always a button labeled "Continue" in the same position in your app's GUI. Would you rather make a single button instance that takes different actions depending on the current state? private State currentState = State.Step1; private ContinueButton_Click() { switch(currentState) { case State.Step1: DoThis(); currentState = State.Step2; break; case State.Step2: DoThat(); break; } } Or would you rather have something like this? public Form() { this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = false; } private ContinueStep1Button_Click() { DoThis(); this.ContinueStep1Button.Visible = false; this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = true; } private ContinueStep2Button_Click() { DoThat(); }

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• null values vs "empty" singleton for optional fields

  - by Uko

  First of all I'm developing a parser for an XML-based format for 3D graphics called XGL. But this question can be applied to any situation when you have fields in your class that are optional i.e. the value of this field can be missing. As I was taking a Scala course on coursera there was an interesting pattern when you create an abstract class with all the methods you need and then create a normal fully functional subclass and an "empty" singleton subclass that always returns false for isEmpty method and throws exceptions for the other ones. So my question is: is it better to just assign null if the optional field's value is missing or make a hierarchy described above and assign it an empty singleton implementation?

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• Code Smell: Inheritance Abuse

  - by dsimcha

  It's been generally accepted in the OO community that one should "favor composition over inheritance". On the other hand, inheritance does provide both polymorphism and a straightforward, terse way of delegating everything to a base class unless explicitly overridden and is therefore extremely convenient and useful. Delegation can often (though not always) be verbose and brittle. The most obvious and IMHO surest sign of inheritance abuse is violation of the Liskov Substitution Principle. What are some other signs that inheritance is The Wrong Tool for the Job even if it seems convenient?

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