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• Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code?

  - by Donnied

  This question is phrased in a very specific way - it asks for references. There was a similar question posted which was closed because it was considered a duplicate to a good code question. The Programmers FAQ points out that answers should have references - or its just an unproductive sharing of (seemingly) baseless opinions. There is a difference between shortest code and most elegant code. This becomes clear in several seminal texts: Dijkstra, E. W. (1972). The humble programmer. Communications of the ACM, 15(10), 859–866. Kernighan, B. W., & Plauger, P. J. (1974). Programming style: Examples and counterexamples. ACM Comput. Surv., 6(4), 303–319. Knuth, D. E. (1984). Literate programming. The Computer Journal, 27(2), 97–111. doi:10.1093/comjnl/27.2.97 They all note the importance of clarity over brevity. Kernighan & Plauger (1974) provide descriptions of "good" code, but "good code" is certainly not synonymous with "elegant". Knuth (1984) describes the impo rtance of exposition and "excellence of style" to elegant programs. He cites Hoare - who describes that code should be self documenting. Dijkstra (1972) indicates that beautiful programs optimize efficiency but are not opaque. This sort of conversation is qulaitatively different than a random sharing of opinions. Therefore, the question - Which reference provides your definition of "elegant" or "beautiful" code? "Which *reference*" is not subjective - anything else will most likely shut the thread down, so please supply *references* not opinions.

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• The best way to have a pointer to several methods - critique requested

  - by user827992

  I'm starting with a short introduction of what i know from the C language: a pointer is a type that stores an adress or a NULL the * operator reads the left value of the variable on its right and use this value as address and reads the value of the variable at that address the & operator generate a pointer to the variable on its right so i was thinking that in C++ the pointers can work this way too, but i was wrong, to generate a pointer to a static method i have to do this: #include <iostream> class Foo{ public: static void dummy(void){ std::cout << "I'm dummy" << std::endl; }; }; int main(){ void (*p)(); p = Foo::dummy; // step 1 p(); p = &(Foo::dummy); // step 2 p(); p = Foo; // step 3 p->dummy(); return(0); } now i have several questions: why step 1 works why step 2 works too, looks like a "pointer to pointer" for p to me, very different from step 1 why step 3 is the only one that doesn't work and is the only one that makes some sort of sense to me, honestly how can i write an array of pointers or a pointer to pointers structure to store methods ( static or non-static from real objects ) what is the best syntax and coding style for generating a pointer to a method?

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• Setting up Cluster Configuration using an existing web server as a Primary Node?

  - by RapidWebs

  Thanks in advance for any help which is issued! I am having a slight issue, and need help with the decision making process when it comes to setting up my Cluster Configuration, consisting on a line of Ubuntu Servers (12.04). We currently have a Primary node, which resides in the US within a Datacenter, but we are going to be using this for all serious bandwidth and resource intensive websites, and through a configuration of Virtualmin + Webmin, will be setup as a sort of pseudo-cluster, using Virtualmins Cluster Modules. Anyways, on to the issue: We also have a business line setup locally, with three servers. here are their specs: Intel P4 2.4 ghz, 1GB Ram, 110 gb sata, Ubuntu 12.04* AMD 1.3 ghz, 512MB Ram, 20 GB IDE P3 Xeon 800mhz (dual physical processors), 1GB Ram, 3 * 25 GB Raid Configuration (one in use for host operating system). The first machine is currently IN USE and is serving virtual hosts off a sub-domain. My question is this: How can I integrate the Secondary node (which will be the Primary node per say, in this smaller configuration...) which is currently in use, into the cluster configuration w/ the other two servers for: Sharing Resources Redundancy (HA?) NFS /w the two Raid Disks without having the FORMAT the secondary node, and start fresh moving all my services in to a DRBD network drive or something similar, and than restoring all active virtualmin's Virtual hosts. the idea is that I want minimal downtime to people currently being served from server2.mywebsite.com, and from what I understand, all services need to be on a NFS so that they can be mounted on demand and accessed from the other machine taking over (i.e. Heartbeat + DRBD Config.) but my issue is that i already have all these services installed to their default directory structure: how can i most easily setup this NFS and HA system, move all my desires services to this new drive, and do it with minimal down time, and without breaking Virtualmin and everything else on my server? even just some pointers, a thread i could read, or a step by step check list or run down of commands i could issue to get started would be great! thanks!

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• Back button after doing posts on the same page

  - by user441521

  I have 3 pages to my site. The 1st page allows you to select a bunch of options. Those options get sent to the 2nd page to be displayed with some data about those options. From here I can click on a link to get to page 3 on 1 of the options. On page 3 I can create a new/edit/delete all on the same page where reloads come back to page 3. I want a "back" button on page 3 to go back to page 2, but retain the options it had from the original page 1 request. Page 1 has a bunch of check boxes which are passed to page 2 as arrays to the controller. My thought is that I have to pass these arrays (I converted them to lists) to page 3 (even thought page 3 directly doesn't need them) so that page 3 can use them in the back link to it can recreate the values page 1 sent to page 2 originally. I'm using asp.net MVC and when I pass the converted array it seems to convert it to the type instead of actually showing the values: "types=System.Collections.Generic.List" (where types is a List. Is this what is needed or are there other options to getting a "back" button in this case to go back to page 2. It's sort of a pain to pass information to page 3 that isn't really relevant to page 3 except the back button.

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• SQL Server DBA - How to get a good one!

  - by ETFairfax

  I'm a lone developer. I am currently developing an application which is seeing me get way way way out of my depth when it comes to SQL DBA'ing, and have come to realise that I should hire a DBA to help me (which has full support from the company). Problem is - who? This SO thread sees someone hire a DBA only to realise that they will probably cause more harm then good! Also, I have just had a bad experience with a ASP.NET/C# contractor that has let us down. So, can anyone out there on SO either... a) Offer their services. b) Forward me onto someone that could help. c) Give some tips on vetting a DBA. I know this isn't a recruitment site, so maybe some good answers for c) would be a benefit for other readers!! BTW: The database is SQL Server 2008. I'm running into performance issues (mainly timeouts) which I think would be sorted out by some proper indexing. I would also need the DBA to provide some sort of maintenance plan, and to review how our database will deal what we intend at throwing at it in the future!

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• What Is The Formula for the 3 of 9 Bar Code Alphabet?

  - by Chris Moschini

  Background: 3 of 9 Barcode Alphabet A simple syntax for 3 of 9 bar codes What is the formula behind the alphabet and digits in a 3 of 9 bar code? For example, ASCII has a relatively clear arrangement. Numbers start at 33, capitals at 65, lowercase at 97. From these starting points you can infer the ASCII code for any number or letter. The start point for each range is also a multiple of 32 + 1. Bar codes seem random and lacking sequence. If we use the syntax from the second link, this is the first six characters in 3 of 9: A 100-01 B 010-01 C 110-00 D 001-01 E 101-00 F 011-00 I see no pattern here; what is it? I'm as much interested in the designer's intended pattern behind these as I am in someone devising an algorithm of their own that can give you the above code for a given character based on its sequence. I struggled with where to put this question; is it history, computer science, information science? I chose Programmers because a StackExchange search had the most barcode hits here, and because I wanted to specifically relate it to ASCII to explain what sort of formula/explanation I'm looking for.

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• c++ How to use angular velocity that derived from inertia and force(torque) in 3d

  - by user1217203

  I am relatively new to game development. May my terminology and description are not appropriate. Please excuse my poor phrasing and help me by giving advice on how to question better if this question seems less fitting. I really appreciate your efforts. Hi. I am having hard time interpreting the set of values I have. I have inertia and force(torque) in terms of x y z. FYI I used x and y coordinates as my ground, flat coordinates and z as my up/down. I am assuming that since f = ma, that angular acceleration must be a = f / m. So I divide my torque by inertia. Then I add those x y z values to my angular velocity variable's x y z. However these x y z values confuse me. Don't I need angle/sec or radian/sec sort of values in order to apply rotation? The x y z values I have seemed to not say anything about radians or angular movement. Question : If I have ( 1, 2, 3 ) or any ( x, y, z ) as my angular velocity, how do I actually apply it as angular movement? FYI Here I am pasting my code : float mass = 100; float devidedMass = 1.0/12 * mass; Vec3 innertia( devidedMass* (_box._size.z*_box._size.z + _box._size.x*_box._size.x), devidedMass* (_box._size.y*_box._size.y + _box._size.x*_box._size.x), devidedMass* (_box._size.y*_box._size.y + _box._size.z*_box._size.z )); box._angAccel += forceAng/innertia; box._angVelo += box._angAccel; box._angAccel.allZero(); source of my inertia calculation http://www.health.uottawa.ca/biomech/courses/apa4311/solids.pdf

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• Are Intel compilers really better than the Microsoft ones?

  - by Rocket Surgeon

  Years ago, I was surprised when I discovered that Intel sells Visual Studio compatible compilers. I tried it in particular for C/C++ as well as fantastic diagnostic tools. But the code was simply not that computationally intensive to notice the difference. The only impression was: did Intel really do it for me just now, wow, amazing tools with nanoseconds resolution, unbelievable. But the trial ended and the team never seriously considered a purchase. From your experience, if license cost does not matter, which vendor is the winner? It is not a broad or vague question or attemt to spark a holy war. This sort of question is about two very visible tools. Nobody likes when tools have any mysteries or surprises. And choices between best and best are always the pain. I also understand the grass is always greener argument. I want to hear all "what ifs" stories. What if Intel just locally optimizes it for the chip stepping of the month, and not every hardware target will actually work as well as Microsoft compiled? What if AMD hardware is the target and everything will slow down for no reason? Or on the other hand, what if Intel's hardware has so many unnoticable opportunities, that Microsoft compiler writers are too slow to adopt and never implement it in the compiler? What if both are the same exactly, actually a single codebase just wrapped into two different boxes and licensed to both vendors by some third-party shop? And so on. But someone knows some answers.

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• Strange spam posts not making sense

  - by Paaland

  I'm running a web site with a forum where one small part is open for posting from unregistered users. The site uses captcha, but still some spam posts get through every day. Here is the thing. All of the messages follow the same pattern, but all also come from different IP's. That makes me thing this is some sort of automated scripted "attack" from a botnet of some sorts. The strange thing is that all the messages start with six random characters and contains a couple of links. The words have no meaning and the domains in the links does not even exist. Why would anyone use time and resources spreading these things? Below you can see two of these messages: A5Zfs6 exrzvrbspntz, [url=http://nktqoqllnuab.com/]nktqoqllnuab[/url], [link=http://wtrenldadvsy.com/]wtrenldadvsy[/link], [http://rnlrqfgdvdot.com/] O2oLpL nqeffxhryfdk, [url=http://jutyurbpfxow.com/]jutyurbpfxow[/url], [link=http://jpcdtmdalpow.com/]jpcdtmdalpow[/link], [http://qopqwqxwjdjx.com/] Since all the messages come from different IP's I can't see blocking those will help much. For now I'm considering just dropping all messages following this pattern since it's quite easy to match with a regexp. Have anyone else seen these kinds of messages or know the point of posting them?

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• Chromebook C720 - issue suspending and booting

  - by user72727

  I recently bought an Acer C720 chromebook (Celeron, 2GB RAM, 16GB SSD) with the intention of loading Linux and using it as a cheap development laptop while on my holiday. The installation sort of went ok but initially the trackpad didn't work so I ran a script that mostly fixed that. My current issues are: Booting: it still goes to the chrome "unknown os" white screen - I have to press ctrl L - then escape then 1 then wait for 30 secs while it seems to be searching for something. Then Ubunto loads up fine. Any idea how to fix this? Suspend: if I close the lid of the laptop then it doesn't seem to suspend properly. At least when I open the lid the screen appears to be on but the screen is blank with a cursor. Nothing responds on the keyboard and I have to hold the power down to restart it. The suspend from the top menu has the same issue. Moving windows: I don't have a mouse click button so how do I move windows around the screen? Launcher bar: I've set mine to auto hide (which it does) but what exactly do you have to do to get it back? I just repeatedly jab the mouse at the side of the screen and eventually it pops up. I don't mind starting all over again but obviously a quick fix is preferred ;) Mike Ubunto 14.04.1 LTS Kernel 3.13.0-32-generic PS Sorry for so many questions.

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• Remote Debugging

  - by Pemdas

  Obviously, the easiest way to solve a bug is to be able to reproduce it in house. However, sometimes that is not practical. For starters, users are often not very good at providing you with useful information. Costumer Service: "what seems to be the issue?" User: "It crashed!" To further compound that, sometimes the bug only occurs under certain environmentally conditions that can not be adequately replicated in house. With that in mind, it is important to build some sort of diagnostic framework into your product. What type of solutions have you seen or used in your experience? Logging seems to be the predominate method, which makes sense. We have a fairly sophisticated logging frame work in place with different levels of verbosity and the ability to filter on specific modules (actually we can filter down to the granularity of a single file). Error logs are placed strategically to manufacture a pretty good representation of a stack trace when an error occurs. We don't have the luxury of 10 million terabytes of disk space since I work on embedded platforms, so we have two ways of getting them off the system: a serial port and a syslog server. However, an issue we run into sometimes is actually getting the user to turn the logs on. Our current framework often requires some user interaction.

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• White screen with pointer after removing Unity

  - by Sameer Pandit

  I have the same problem . I am a newbie. I added the repository with sudo add apt-get-repository ppa:canonical-dx-team/une then i went to ubuntu software center and installed "unity interface of ubuntu netbook edition" . after installing i found a problem with User interface as it kept on flashing when mouse points to side panel . so i decided to remove it . I removed it form Ubuntu software center . there were other unity related apps installed , but i did not remove then as i had no idea what they were about . Now i ended up with a blank white screen with mouse pointer whenever i login. though i m able to login using gdm , but the screen is blank white. I tried to these commands also sudo apt-get remove gnome-shell sudo apt-get remove unity sudo restart gdm but they did not work at all i also tried sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg it too did not work. Note:I donot have any sort of graphics card or video card on my pc please help !!!

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• Bazaar - pull the last revision only (and not the whole branch)

  - by Sandman4

  Shortly: How can I take the latest revision (only) from a remote bazaar repository and add it as a new revision to a local repository. Background: I have a development system and a production system. On a development system there's a bazaar repository having branch with lots of development revisions. Once in a while I want to incorporate the latest developments into production system. I want to do so by some sort of "pulling" (development system can not connect to production for security reasons, but production can initiate connection to development). On the production, I don't want the whole development revision history, only those revisions which actually go into production (normally it's the branch tip). Yet I want version control on the production system to keep track of what actually goes into production each time. bzr pull pulls the whole branch. bzr pull --revision=last:1 also pulls the whole branch, up to the specified revision. bzr merge --pull --revision=last:1 also pulls the whole branch. bzr merge --pull --revision=last:2..last:1 and bzr merge --pull --change=last:1 both pull only the new changes introduced in the latest revision, but not changes introduced in the older revisions. With lightweight checkout I have no track of revisions which are pulled into production - local working tree remains part of the remote repository The only way I see so far is importing the working tree using some rsync or scp and committing them to a local branch afterwards. Any better ideas ?

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• Best Method of function parameter validation

  - by Aglystas

  I've been dabbling with the idea of creating my own CMS for the experience and because it would be fun to run my website off my own code base. One of the decisions I keep coming back to is how best to validate incoming parameters for functions. This is mostly in reference to simple data types since object validation would be quite a bit more complex. At first I debated creating a naming convention that would contain information about what the parameters should be, (int, string, bool, etc) then I also figured I could create options to validate against. But then in every function I still need to run some sort of parameter validation that parses the parameter name to determine what the value can be then validate against it, granted this would be handled by passing the list of parameters to function but that still needs to happen and one of my goals is to remove the parameter validation from the function itself so that you can only have the actual function code that accomplishes the intended task without the additional code for validation. Is there any good way of handling this, or is it so low level that typically parameter validation is just done at the start of the function call anyway, so I should stick with doing that.

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• GCC: assembly listing for IA64 without an Itanium machine

  - by KD04

  I need to try the following thing: I would like to compile some simple C code samples and see the assembly listing generated by GCC for IA64 architecture, i.e. I just want to run GCC with the -S switch and see the resultant .s file. I don't have an Itanium machine, so in order to do it myself I'll probably need a cross-compiling version of GCC built for x86 RedHat. I'm not interested in full cross-compilation, meaning that I don't need to generate the binaries at all. The easiest way, of course, would be to find an Itanium machine with with GCC and just try it there. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have access to any. Another option is to build a cross-compiling version GCC on my RedHat, but apparently that's quite an endeavor for someone who hasn't done it before (I assume that the fact that I only need .s output doesn't make it simpler). What other options are there, if any? Maybe there's some sort of a web front to an Itanium GCC compiler on the Net (something like Comeau Online or ideone.com, but with .s output)? Anything else? I would appreciate any help.

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• Another big year for the ADF EMG at OOW12

  - by Chris Muir

  Oracle Open World 2012 has only just started, but in one way it's just finished!  All the ADF EMG's OOW content is over for another year! The unique highlight this year for me was the first ever ADF EMG social night held on Saturday, where I finally had the chance to meet so many ADF community members who I've known over the internet, but never met in person.  What?  You didn't get an invite?  Oh well, better luck next year ;-) Seriously our budget was limited, so in the happy-dictatorship sort of way I had to limit RSVPs to just 40 people.  Hopefully next year we can do something bigger and better for the wider community. Following directly on from the Saturday social night the ADF EMG ran a full day of sessions at the user group Sunday.  I wont go over the content again, but to say thank you very much to all our presenters and helpers, including Gert Poel, Pitier Gillis, Aino Andriessen, Simon Haslam, Ken Mizuta, Lucas Jellema and the FMW roadshow team, Ronald van Luttikhuizen, Guido Schmutz, Luc Bors, Aino Andriessen and Lonneke Dikmans. Also special thanks must go to Doug Cockroft and Bambi Price for their time and effort in organizing the ADF EMG room behind the scenes via the APOUC. To be blunt Doug and Bambi really do deserve serious thanks because they had to wear a lot of Oracle politics behind the scenes to get the rooms organized (oh, and deal with me fretting too! ;-). Finally thanks to all the members and OOW delegates for turning up and supporting the group on the day.  In the end the ADF EMG exists for you, and I hope you found it worthwhile. Onto 2013 (oh, and the rest of OOW12 ;-) 

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• DIY Halloween Decoration Uses Simple Silohuettes

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  While many of the Halloween decorating tricks we’ve shared over the years involve lots of wire, LEDs, and electronic guts, this one is thoroughly analog (and easy to put together). A simple set of silhouettes can cheaply and quickly transform the front of your house. Courtesy of Matt over at GeekDad, the transformation is easy to pull off. He explains: It’s really just about as simple as you could hope for. The materials needed are: black posterboard or black-painted cardboard; colored cellophane or tissue paper; and tape. The only tools needed are: measuring tape; some sort of drawing implement — chalk works really well; and scissors and/or X-Acto knife. And while you need some drawing talent, the scale is big enough and the need for precision little enough that you don’t need that much. For a more thorough rundown of the steps hit up the link below or hit up Google Images to find some monster silhouette inspiration. Window Monsters [Geek Dad] How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

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• Use jQuery and ASP.NET to Build a News Ticker

  Many websites display a news ticker of one sort or another. A news ticker is a user interface element that displays a subset of a list of items, cycling through them one at a time after a set interval. For example, on Cisco's website there is a news ticker that shows the company's latest news items. Each news item is a one sentence link, such as "Desktop Virtualization Gathers Steam," or "Cisco Reports First Quarter Earnings." Clicking a headline whisks you to a page that shows the full story. Cisco's news ticker shows one headline at a time; every few seconds the currently displayed headline fades out and the next one appears. In total, Cisco has five different headlines - the ticker displays each of the five and then starts back from the beginning. This article is the first in a series that explores how to create your own news ticker widget using jQuery and ASP.NET. jQuery is a free, popular, open-source JavaScript library that simplifies many common client-side tasks, like event handling, DOM manipulation, and Ajax. This article kicks off the series and shows how to build a fairly simple news ticker whose contents can be specified statically in HTML markup or created dynamically from server-side code. Future installments will explore adding bells and whistles, such as: stopping the news ticker rotation when the mouse is hovered over it; adding controls to start, stop and pause the headlines; loading new headlines dynamically using Ajax; and packaging the JavaScript used by the ticker into a jQuery plugin. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Legacy Code Retreat Questions

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently heard of the concept of a Legacy Code Retreat. Since I have attended and helped facilitate some normal Code Retreats I thought it might be interesting in trying a Legacy Code Retreat, but I have a few questions on how a legacy CR differs from a normal one. If anyone has attended a Legacy CR and has some suggestions on how best to host these event’s please leave a comment on what has worked for you in the past or if you have any answers to my questions below… Should you restrict the languages that people can do the sessions in? In the normal CR’s I have been involved in the past we have had people attend and code in their programming language of choice. A normal CR lends itself to  this because each session starts with no code. With a legacy CR each session seems to start with an existing code base. Is there some sort of limitation on the languages that people can work in during the sessions? If not, how do you give them a base to start from? What happens as the beginning of each session? In the normal CR that I have attended each session would have a constraint set on it – i.e. no if statements used, no primitives, etc. With a legacy CR it seems more like patterns for refactoring are learned. Does the facilitator explain the pattern used before the session starts or are they just given a code base to start from and an objective to achieve

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• Conflict resolution for two-way sync

  - by K.Steff

  How do you manage two-way synchronization between a 'main' database server and many 'secondary' servers, in particular conflict resolution, assuming a connection is not always available? For example, I have an mobile app that uses CoreData as the 'database' on the iOS and I'd like to allow users to edit the contents without Internet connection. In the same time, this information is available on a website the devices will connect to. What do I do if/when the data on the two DB servers is in conflict? (I refer to CoreData as a DB server, though I am aware it is something slightly different.) Are there any general strategies for dealing with this sort of issue? These are the options I can think of: 1. Always use the client-side data as higher-priority 2. Same for server-side 3. Try to resolve conflicts by marking each field's edit timestamp and taking the latest edit Though I'm certain the 3rd option will open room for some devastating data corruption. I'm aware that the CAP theorem concerns this, but I only want eventual consistency, so it doesn't rule it out completely, right? Related question: Best practice patterns for two-way data synchronization. The second answer to this question says it probably can't be done.

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• Sorting objects before rendering

  - by dreta

  I'm trying to implement a scene graph and in all the articles i've come across there is talk about object sorting. So you'd sort your objects by "material" for example. Now untill i sat down and started implementing it, i kind of took this for granted, because it made sense. But now i'm wondering what does sorting actually change? In my engine, i have a manager for UBOs, i use those to store data that'll be shared between programs, at the moment that only involves time, camera and projection matrices and lights (i'm not worrying about managing which lights affect which objects ATM). Now for each model i have to change the model to world matrix uniform, no sorting is going to change that. So is the jump from changing this matrix to also setting a material for each object that bad? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that each time you change something in the pipeline, it has to get flushed and that can cause performance issues. But for each drawing call i'm setting up a model to world matrix anyway, so what sense does it make to ever be concerned about this? BTW is there any information about whether changing a uniform and calling glBufferSubData is more (or less) expensive.

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• Almost time to hit the road again

  - by Chris Williams

  I’ve had a few months of not much traveling, but now that the weather is improving… conference season is starting up again. That means it’s time for me to start hitting the road. In June, I have Tech Ed 2010 in New Orleans, LA. I lived in New Orleans for several years, both as military and civilian and I have a few friends still down there. I haven’t been there since before Hurricane Katrina, so I have mixed feelings about returning… but I am still looking forward to it. Also in June, I have Codestock in Knoxville, TN. Codestock is one of my favorite events, primarily because of the excellent people that speak there and also attend sessions. It’s a great mix of people and technologies. Sometime in July or August, I’m headed to Austin, TX for a couple days. I don’t know the exact date yet, but if you have an event down there in that timeframe, let me know and maybe we can sort something out. In September, I’m heading to Seattle for my first PAX (Penny Arcade Expo.)  I’m going strictly as an attendee and it looks like a LOT of fun. Really excited to check it out. Also in September, I’m headed to Omaha for the Heartland Developers Conference. This is a FANTASTIC event, and certainly one of my local favorites. (I guess local is relative, it’s about a 6 hour drive.) In addition to speaking on WP7, I’ll be doing a series of hands on labs on XNA they day before the conference starts, so that should be a lot of fun as well.   In addition to all this stuff, I have my own XNA User Group to take care of. In August, Andy “The Z-Man” Dunn is coming to speak and check out the various food on a stick offerings at the Minnesota State Fair!

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• How to manage and estimate unstructured requirements received from customers

  - by user20358

  A lot of the times I receive a software system's requirements from our customers in a very unstructured format. It is usually a bunch of "product development" guys from the customer's who come up with these "proposed solutions" to the business problems they have. While they are the experts at the business domain, a lot of the times they don't have the solutions right. This results in multiple versions of the same requirement mixing up of two requirements into one a few versions of the requirement later down the line, the requirements which were combined together get separated out again, each taking with it some of the new additions How do you work with such requirements coming in and sort them out into proper use cases and before development begins? What tools can we use to track a particular requirement's history, from the first time it was conceived till the time it gets crystallized into a proper use case? Estimating work against requirements received in such a fashion is a nightmare which ends up in making mistakes in understanding the requirement correctly and estimating the effort against it correctly. Any tips, tools, tricks to make this activity more manageable? I'm just trying to get some insights from someone more experienced than I am in requirements management and effort estimation.

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• Is there a LOGO interpreter that actually has a turtle?

  - by Tim Post

  This is not a repeat of the now infamous "How do I move the turtle in LOGO?" Recently, I had the following conversation with my five year old daughter: Daughter: Daddy, do you write programs? Me: Yes! Daughter: Daddy, what's a program? Me: A program is a set of instructions that a computer follows. Daughter: Daddy, can I write a program too? Me: Sure! This got me scrambling to think of a very basic language that a five year old could get some satisfaction from mastering rather quickly. I'm ashamed to admit that the first thing that came to mind was this: 10 INPUT "Tell me a secret" A$ 20 PRINT "Wow really? :" A$ 30 GOTO 10 That isn't going to hold a five year old's attention for very long and it requires too much of a lecture. However, moving a turtle around and drawing neat pictures might just work. Sadly, my search for a LOGO interpreter yielded noting but ad ridden sites, flight simulators and a whole bunch of other stuff that I really don't want. I'm hoping to find a cross platform (Java / Python) LOGO interpreter (dare I call it simulator?) with the following features: Can save / replay commands (stored programs) Has an actual turtle Sound effects are a plus Have you stumbled across something like this, if so, can you provide a link? I hate to ask a 'shopping' sort of question, but it seemed much better than "Is LOGO appropriate for a five year old?"

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• Architecture a for a central renderer rather than self-rendering

  - by The Communist Duck

  For the architectural side of rendering, there's two main ways: having each object render itself, and having a single renderer which renders everything. I'm currently aiming for the second idea, for the following reasons: The list can be sorted to only use shaders once. Else each object would have to bind the shader, because it's not sure if it's active. The objects could be sorted and grouped. Easier to swap APIs. With a few macro lines, it can be easy to swap between a DirectX renderer and an OpenGL renderer (not a reason for my project, but still a good point) Easier to manage rendering code Of course, if anyone has strong recommendations for the first method, I will listen to them. But I was wondering how make this work. First idea The renderer has a list of pointers to the renderable components of each entity, which register themselves on RenderCompoent creation. However, I'm worrying that this may end up as a lot of extra pointer weight. But I can sort the list of pointers every so often. Second idea The entire list of entities is passed to the renderer each render call. The renderer then sorts the list (each call, or maybe once?) and gets what it wants. That's a lot of passing and/or sorting, however. Other ideas ??? PROFIT Anyone got ideas? Thank you.

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