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• Why has C prevailed over Pascal?

  - by Konrad Morawski

  My understanding is that in the 1980s and perhaps in the 1990s, too - Pascal and C were pretty much head-to-head as production languages. Is the ultimate demise of Pascal only due to Borland's neglection of Delphi? Or was there more of such bad luck; or perhaps something inherently wrong with Pascal (any hopes for its revival?). I hope it's not an open, unanswerable question. I'm interested in historical facts and observations one can back up, rather than likes and dislikes. I also failed to find a duplicate question, which actually surprised me somewhat.

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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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• Why would Copying a Large Image to the Clipboard Freeze a Computer?

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  Sometimes, something really odd happens when using our computers that makes no sense at all…such as copying a simple image to the clipboard and the computer freezing up because of it. An image is an image, right? Today’s SuperUser post has the answer to a puzzled reader’s dilemna. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Original image courtesy of Wikimedia. The Question SuperUser reader Joban Dhillon wants to know why copying an image to the clipboard on his computer freezes it up: I was messing around with some height map images and found this one: (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Srtm_ramp2.world.21600×10800.jpg) The image is 21,600*10,800 pixels in size. When I right click and select “Copy Image” in my browser (I am using Google Chrome), it slows down my computer until it freezes. After that I must restart. I am curious about why this happens. I presume it is the size of the image, although it is only about 6 MB when saved to my computer. I am also using Windows 8.1 Why would a simple image freeze Joban’s computer up after copying it to the clipboard? The Answer SuperUser contributor Mokubai has the answer for us: “Copy Image” is copying the raw image data, rather than the image file itself, to your clipboard. The raw image data will be 21,600 x 10,800 x 3 (24 bit image) = 699,840,000 bytes of data. That is approximately 700 MB of data your browser is trying to copy to the clipboard. JPEG compresses the raw data using a lossy algorithm and can get pretty good compression. Hence the compressed file is only 6 MB. The reason it makes your computer slow is that it is probably filling your memory up with at least the 700 MB of image data that your browser is using to show you the image, another 700 MB (along with whatever overhead the clipboard incurs) to store it on the clipboard, and a not insignificant amount of processing power to convert the image into a format that can be stored on the clipboard. Chances are that if you have less than 4 GB of physical RAM, then those copies of the image data are forcing your computer to page memory out to the swap file in an attempt to fulfil both memory demands at the same time. This will cause programs and disk access to be sluggish as they use the disk and try to use the data that may have just been paged out. In short: Do not use the clipboard for huge images unless you have a lot of memory and a bit of time to spare. Like pretty graphs? This is what happens when I load that image in Google Chrome, then copy it to the clipboard on my machine with 12 GB of RAM: It starts off at the lower point using 2.8 GB of RAM, loading the image punches it up to 3.6 GB (approximately the 700 MB), then copying it to the clipboard spikes way up there at 6.3 GB of RAM before settling back down at the 4.5-ish you would expect to see for a program and two copies of a rather large image. That is a whopping 3.7 GB of image data being worked on at the peak, which is probably the initial image, a reserved quantity for the clipboard, and perhaps a couple of conversion buffers. That is enough to bring any machine with less than 8 GB of RAM to its knees. Strangely, doing the same thing in Firefox just copies the image file rather than the image data (without the scary memory surge). Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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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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• How do I improve my code reading skills

  - by Andrew

  Well the question is in the title - how do I improve my code reading skills. The software/hardware environment I currently do development in is quite slow with respect to compilation times and time it takes the whole system to test. The system is quite old/complex and thus splitting it into a several smaller, more manageable sub-projects is not feasible in a neare future. I have realized is what really hinders the development progress is my code reading skills. How do I improve my code reading skills, so I can spot most of the errors and issues in the code even before I hit the "do compile" key, even before I start the debugger?

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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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• Non-zero exit status for clean exit

  - by trinithis

  Is it acceptable to return a non-zero exit code if the program in question ran properly? For example, say I have a simple program that (only) does the following: Program takes N arguments. It returns an exit code of min(N, 255). Note that any N is valid for the program. A more realistic program might return different codes for successfully ran programs that signify different things. Should these programs instead write this information to a stream instead, such as to stdout?

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• Should I be an algorithm developer, or java web frameworks type developer?

  - by Derek

  So - as I see it, there are really two kinds of developers. Those that do frameworks, web services, pretty-making front ends, etc etc. Then there are developers that write the algorithms that solve the problem. That is, unless the problem is "display this raw data in some meaningful way." In that case, the framework/web developer guy might be doing both jobs. So my basic problem is this. I have been an algorithms kind of software developer for a few years now. I double majored in Math and Computer science, and I have a master's in systems engineering. I have never done any web-dev work, with the exception of a couple minor jobs, and some hobby level stuff. I have been job interviewing lately, and this is what happens: Job is listed as "programmer- 5 years of experience with the following: C/C++, Java,Perl, Ruby, ant, blah blah blah" Recruiter calls me, says they want me to come in for interview In the interview, find out they have some webservices development, blah blah blah When asked in the interview, talk about my experience doing algorithms, optimization, blah blah..but very willing to learn new languages, frameworks, etc Get a call back saying "we didn't think you were a fit for the job you interviewed wtih, but our algorithm team got wind of you and wants to bring you on" This has happened to me a couple times now - see a vague-ish job description looking for a "programmer" Go in, find out they are doing some sort of web-based tool, maybe with some hardcore algorithms running in the background. interview with people for the web-based tool, but get an offer from the algorithms people. So the question is - which job is the better job? I basically just want to get a wide berth of experience at this level of my career, but are algorithm developers so much in demand? Even more so than all these supposed hot in demand web developer guys? Will I be ok in the long run if I go into the niche of math based algorithm development, and just little to no, or hobby level web-dev experience? I basically just don't want to pigeon hole myself this early. My salary is already starting to get pretty high - and I can see a company later on saying "we really need a web developer, but we'll hire this 50k/year college guy, instead of this 100k/year experience algorithm guy" Cliffs notes: I have been doing algorithm development. I consider myself to be a "good programmer." I would have no problem picking up web technologies and those sorts of frameworks. During job interviews, I keep getting "we think you've got a good skillset - talk to our algorithm team" instead of wanting me to learn new skills on the job to do their web services or whhatever other new technology they are doing. Edit: Whenever I am talking about algorithm development here - I am talking about the code that produces the answer. Typically I think of more math-based algorithms: solving a financial problem, solving a finite element method, image processing, etc

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• Where's Randall Hyde?

  - by user1124893

  This probably doesn't belong here, but I couldn't think of any other StackExchange site that would fit it. Quick question, what ever happened to Randall Hyde, author of The Art of Assembly, HLA, and other works? I ask this because I was just exploring some of the content on his website and a lot of it is now gone. His website was hosted on Apple's MobileMe. As of the writing of this question, Apple has closed off all MobileMe content a few days ago. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Apple warn of this a year in advance? If so, then where's Randall Hyde? Come to think of it, all of the content on his website that I have seen is several years old. A lot of it is rather useful but unfinished.

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• Do most programmers copy and paste code?

  - by John MacIntyre

  I learned very early on that cutting & pasting somebody else's code takes longer in the long run that writing it yourself. In my opinion unless you really understand it, cut & paste code will probably have issues which will be a nightmare to resolve. Don't get me wrong, I mean finding other peoples code and learning from it is essential, but we don't just paste it into our app. We rewrite the concepts into our app. But I'm constantly hearing about people who cut & paste, and they talk about it like it's common practice. I also see comments by others which indicate it's common practice. So, do most programmers cut & paste code?

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• Finite state machine in C++

  - by Electro

  So, I've read a lot about using FSMs to do game state management, things like what and FSM is, and using a stack or set of states for building one. I've gone through all that. But I'm stuck at writing an actual, well-designed implementation of an FSM for that purpose. Specifically, how does one cleanly resolve the problem of transitioning between states, (how) should a state be able to use data from other states, and so on. Does anyone have any tips on designing and writing a implementation in C++, or better yet, code examples?

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• Are programmers tied to their code?

  - by Jason

  Assuming you are working for a company or in a team of developers, is the code bound to the person who did it? When someone develops a particular functionnality or an area of the application, is this person the only one who can, is allowed or is just able to make changes to it? I personnally think that a well-done piece of code or program should be easily modified by any programmers, but what about what you see in your environment? At my work, I'd say that the majority of the code can be modified by anyone (that's what coding standards are for right?). There are some things though that are 'property' of some coworkers like the module that handles the pay or some important functionality of the production module (we are developing an ERP system). What about your work place? Am I the only one living this?

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• Should my colleagues review each others code from source control system?

  - by Daniel Excinsky

  Hi everybody. So that's my story: one of my colleagues uses to review all the code, hosted to revision system. I'm not speaking about adequate review of changes in parts that he belongs to. He watches the code file to file, line to line. Every new file and every modified. I feel just like being spied on! My guess is that if code was already hosted to control system, you should trust it as workable at least. My question is, maybe I'm just too paranoiac and practice of reviewing each others code is good? P.S: We're team of only three developers, and I fear that if there will be more of us, colleague just won't have time to review all the the code we'll write.

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• How to teach computer science ?

  - by proferikson

  I am just starting to teach computer science. It's just the basic level. I'm finding that I sometimes don't know how to approach topics in a way that lets students easily understand. I've found that the best thing is to use analogies. A terrible one, that worked well, was presenting recursion by using the process of eating a burger. (You eat one bite, then you eat the rest). Interesting real world examples do wonders here. I'd like to know the techniques you have used for teaching, or teachers you've had have used that proved particularly effective. I'd also like to know your best analogies and examples for topics in CS101, especially for those harder to grasp topics. I'm teaching the class in Java (as required).

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• How can I compare between web development technologies?

  - by Steve

  I would like experts to explain for me how can I compare between web development tools or technologies in order to be able to choose the right one. I'm tired from searching always in the regular way: X Technology vs Y Technology. I'm tired from peoples' biased opinions and usually I don't find a fair comparison. I have decided to put my question here about how can I compare them so you may identify to me the main standards for comparisons so I can compare them by myself and becoming able to choose the technology that is appropriate for the project I will develop. Note: in web development technologies I mean server side languages (e.g. PHP). One important requirement for me that can be defined as major one is cost efficiency and I mean that I don't care about the cost in the near future or the current cost, but what is more important for me is the cost in the future. If, for example, the site becomes one of the most 100 visited sites.   So, how can I compare the cost of different technologies for a future status of a site (such as being very famous site) so I can scale my option easily without missing a good technology like what happened with some sites when they chose not the most effective tool.

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• Finding complexity of a program as a service [on hold]

  - by Seshu

  I would like to find the complexity of a specific code chunk written in Java. Is there a place/web site/service where I can find out the complexity of any arbitrary program. This program might include loops/recursion. Using theory we can compute complexity ourselves. But, just curious in finding if any service is out there to find such complexity. We have several code quality related tools does any of such tools will also find complexity of given code? Could any one point me or direct me to such a utility/site/service?

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• Beat detection and FFT

  - by Quincy

  So I am working on a platformer game which includes music with beat detection. I am currently using a simple if the energy that is stored in the history buffer is smaller then the current energy there is a beat. The problem with this is that ofcourse if you use songs like rock songs where you have a pretty steady amplitude this isn't going to work. So I looked further and found algorithms splitting the sound into multiple bands using FFT. I then found this : http://en.literateprograms.org/Cooley-Tukey_FFT_algorithm_(C) The only problem I'm having is that I am quite new to audio and I have no idea how to use that to split the signal up into multiple signals. So my question is : How do you use a FFT to split a signal into multiple bands ? Also for the guys interested, this is my algorithm in c# : // C = threshold, N = size of history buffer / 1024 public void PlaceBeatMarkers(float C, int N) { List<float> instantEnergyList = new List<float>(); short[] samples = soundData.Samples; float timePerSample = 1 / (float)soundData.SampleRate; int sampleIndex = 0; int nextSamples = 1024; // Calculate instant energy for every 1024 samples. while (sampleIndex + nextSamples < samples.Length) { float instantEnergy = 0; for (int i = 0; i < nextSamples; i++) { instantEnergy += Math.Abs((float)samples[sampleIndex + i]); } instantEnergy /= nextSamples; instantEnergyList.Add(instantEnergy); if(sampleIndex + nextSamples >= samples.Length) nextSamples = samples.Length - sampleIndex - 1; sampleIndex += nextSamples; } int index = N; int numInBuffer = index; float historyBuffer = 0; //Fill the history buffer with n * instant energy for (int i = 0; i < index; i++) { historyBuffer += instantEnergyList[i]; } // If instantEnergy / samples in buffer < instantEnergy for the next sample then add beatmarker. while (index + 1 < instantEnergyList.Count) { if(instantEnergyList[index + 1] > (historyBuffer / numInBuffer) * C) beatMarkers.Add((index + 1) * 1024 * timePerSample); historyBuffer -= instantEnergyList[index - numInBuffer]; historyBuffer += instantEnergyList[index + 1]; index++; } }

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• Writing use cases for XML mapping scenarios between two different systems

  - by deepak_prn

  I am having some trouble writing use cases for XML mapping after a certain trigger invoked by the system. For example, one of the scenarios goes: the store cashier sells an item, the transaction data is sent to Data management system. Now, I am writing a functional design for the scenario which deals with mapping XML fields between our system and the data management system. Question : I was wondering if some one had to deal with writing use cases or extension use cases for mapping XML fields between two systems? (There is no XSLT involved) and if you used a table to represent the fields mapping (example is below) or any other visualization tool which does not break the bank ? I searched many questions on SO and here but nothing came close to my requirement.

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• What simple game is good to learn OO principles?

  - by Bogdan Gavril

  I have to come up with a project propsal for my students, here are some details: The design should be gove over OO concepts: encapsulation, interfaces, inheritance, abstract classes Idealy a game, to keep interest high No GUI, just the console Effective time to finish this: ~ 6 days (1 person per proj) I have found one nice example of a game with carnivore and herbivore cells in a drop of water (array), it's a game of life twist. It is a bit too simple. Any ideeas? Aditional info: - language is C#

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• Why should we use low level languages if a high level one like python can do almost everything? [closed]

  - by killown

  I know python is not suitable for things like microcontrolers, make drivers etc, but besides that, you can do everything using python, companys get stuck with speed optimizations for real hard time system but does forget other factors which one you can just upgrade your hardware for speed proposes in order to get your python program fit in it, if you think how much cust can the company have to maintain a system written in C, the comparison is like that: for example: 10 programmers to mantain a system written in c and just one programmer to mantain a system written in python, with python you can buy some better hardware to fit your python program, I think that low level languages tend to get more cost, since programmers aren't so cheaply than a hardware upgrade, then, this is my point, why should a system be written in c instead of python?

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• how to programtically build a grid of interlocking but random sized squares

  - by Mrwolfy

  I want to create a two dimensional layout of rectangular shapes, a grid made up of random sized cubes. The cubed should fit together and have equal padding or margin (space between). Kind of like a comic book layout, or more like the image attached. How could I do this procedurally? Practically, I would probably be using Python and some graphic software to render an image, but I don't know the type of algorithm (or whatnot) I would need to use to generate the randomized grid.

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• Calling methods on Objects

  - by Mashael

  Let's say we have a class called 'Automobile' and we have an instance of that class called 'myCar'. I would like to ask why do we need to put the values that our methods return in a variable for the object? Why just don't we call the method? For example: Why should we write: string message = myCar.SpeedMessage(); Console.WriteLine(message); instead of: Console.WriteLine(myCar.SpeedMessage());

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• How important do you find exception safety to be in your C++ code?

  - by Kai

  Every time I consider making my code strongly exception safe, I justify not doing it because it would be so time consuming. Consider this relatively simple snippet: Level::Entity* entity = new Level::Entity(); entity->id = GetNextId(); entity->AddComponent(new Component::Position(x, y)); entity->AddComponent(new Component::Movement()); entity->AddComponent(new Component::Render()); allEntities.push_back(entity); // std::vector entityById[entity->id] = entity; // std::map return entity; To implement a basic exception guarantee, I could use a scoped pointer on the new calls. This would prevent memory leaks if any of the calls were to throw an exception. However, let's say I want to implement a strong exception guarantee. At the least, I would need to implement a shared pointer for my containers (I'm not using Boost), a nothrow Entity::Swap for adding the components atomically, and some sort of idiom for atomically adding to both the Vector and Map. Not only would these be time consuming to implement, but they would be expensive since it involves a lot more copying than the exception unsafe solution. Ultimately, it feels to me like that time spent doing all of that wouldn't be justified just so that the a simple CreateEntity function is strongly exception safe. I probably just want the game to display an error and close at that point anyway. How far do you take this in your own game projects? Is it generally acceptable to write exception unsafe code for a program that can just crash when there is an exception?

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• Is it possible to extract textures or sprites from compiled game files?

  - by Brian Reindel

  For instance, every map in Portal has what appear to be sprites over a texture indicating the obstacles you'll face (see screenshot). Are these resources compiled into the source as byte code, or is it possible to extract them from installation files? Obviously I understand copyright implications, and I am only interested in using it for a recreational project. Instead of recreating them, I wonder if they can be extracted.

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• Drawing particles as a smooth blob

  - by Nömmik

  I'm new to game/graphics development and I'm playing around with particles (in 2D). I want to draw particles close to each other as a blob, just as liquid/water. I do not want to draw big circles overlapping as the blob won't be smooth (and too big). I don't really know physics but I assume what I want is something looking similar to surface tension. I haven't been able to find anything on stackexchange or on Google (maybe I do not know the correct keywords?). So far I have found two possible solutions, but I am unable to find any concrete information about algorithms. One of them is to calculate the concave hull of particles I consider being a blob. I can calculate the blob by creating an equivalence class (on the relation "close to each other"). Strangely enough I haven't been able to find any algorithm explaining how to calculate the concave hull. Many posts (and among stackexchange) links to libraries or commercial products that do this (I need libraries to work in C#), but never any algorithm. Also this solution might have a problem with a circle of particles, which would not detect the empty space in the middle. While researching concave hull I stumbled upon something called alpha shapes. Which seems to be exactly what I want to do, however just as with concave hull I haven't found any source explaining how they actually work. I have found some presentation materials but not enough to go on. It's like a big secret everyone knows except me :-/ After calculating the concave hull or alpha shape I want to make it a Bézier curve to make it smooth and nice. Although I do find my approach a bit too complex, maybe I am trying to solve this the wrong way? If you can either suggest any other solution to my problem, or explain the pieces I am missing I would be very happy and grateful :-) Thanks.

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