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• TDD: Write a separate test for object initialization or relying on other tests exercising it

  - by DXM

  This seems to be the common pattern that's emerging in some of the tests I've worked on lately. We have a class, and quite often this is legacy code whose design can't be easily altered, which has a bunch of member variables. There's some kind of "Initialize" or "Load" function which would put an object into a valid state. Only after it is initialized/loaded, are the members in the proper state so that other methods can be exercised. So when we start writing tests, first test is "TestLoad" and all we put in there is exercising initialization logic. Then we might add one (or few) TestLoadFailureXXX tests and those are definitely valuable. Then we start writing tests to verify other behaviors but all of them require the object to be loaded. So they all start by running exactly the same code as "TestLoad". So my question: Is TestLoad even necessary? Do you take it and let other tests simply exercise the loading? Or leave it so things are more explicit? I know that each unit test function should have no (or as little as possible) overlap with other test functions, but it seems like in cases of loading, this is unavoidable. And whether we like it or not, if something in the loading code breaks, we will end up with a whole test suite of failures. Is there another approach that I might be missing here? Thank you for the responses. It definitely makes sense that you want to see "InitializationTest" and if that fails you know where to start looking. In case it matters, this question is mostly about C++ and we use CppUnit framework. And now, thanks to sleske, I'll be constantly wishing that CppUnit supported test dependencies. Might have to hack something in one of these days :)

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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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• Introducing Code Map for Visual Studio 2012 September CTP

  - by krislankford

  As part of the Visual Studio 2012 CTP for September, Visual Studio got a little sexier at helping you discover and visualize your code. The introduction of the Code Map feature helps compliment the variety of other tools that are included with Visual Studio to help you analyze and visualize your projects and solutions. Code Map leverages the dgml format within Visual Studio that is currently used b the Architecture and Modeling tools. This is a nice addition that gets us from point A to point B a little faster. The great thing about Code Map is that you can gain access to the functionality from directly within your code from the context menu. This Code Map functionality is also context specific based on your cursor. You can evaluate and add items such as methods and variables directly to the Code Map window. As you add items the Code Map surface is updated to show your new item plus any relationships and dependencies that have been introduced in your code. Something that is also very nice is that the Code Map surface is interactive and allows you to use the F12 button (Go To Definition) which can help you navigate your code especially is you are adding items that span multiple files or projects. To get started all you have to do is go out and download the September CTP for Visual Studio 2012 located here. Happy Coding!   Code Map Window

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• Terminal/Putty showing control characters (^M) after updating

  - by jaycee48

  I updated my system yesterday afternoon using the recommended updates from Update Manager. After it completed, I shutdown my system and went home for the day. I come in this morning and I am getting control characters displayed when using vi in both the standard terminal emulator, putty, and putty inside of my Windows virtual that I run with VirtualBox. I have made no other system changes and I cannot figure out how this occurred. It's as if every text file I have was created in DOS. I've searched the forums and I haven't found any answers. I am using xterm as my emulator and I checked with 3 of my coworkers and none of them are having this problem so we do not believe it is a server side issue. Especially since I've checked 3 different servers. There's nothing in my .profile other than PATH variables so I'm using the same terminal settings as everyone else. Some files are fine (I can open and read both /etc/environment and my .profile) but most of any kind of server generated log file is trash. Running cat or head on the same file displays the contents without the characters. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

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• JustCode &ndash; Color Identifier Basics

  Color identifiers make it easier for developers to quickly read and understand the code on screen.  One of the many features provided by JustCode is the ability to colorize additional items that Visual Studio does not allow you to colorize by default.  The colorization of items such as methods, properties, events, variables, and method parameters can easily be tweaked to your specific needs. Enable / Disable Color Identifiers In the recent release, we turned this option on by default.  You can enable/disable code colorization by going to the JustCode menu in Visual Studio, selecting options, then selecting the general section in the left window.  When you scroll down on general setting you will see a check box that says Color Identifiers.  Check or uncheck this box to enable/disable code colorization.    Color identifiers option   Adjust Color Identifiers Adjusting the color identifiers in JustCode is done in the same place ...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• How to visualize code?

  - by gablin

  I've mostly only had to read my own code. As such, I've had no need to visualize the code as I already know how each and every class and module communicate with one another. But the few times I've had to read someone else's code - let us now assume we are talking about at least one larger module which contains several internal classes - I've almost always found myself wishing "This would have been so much easier to understand if I could just visualize it!" So what are the common methods or tools for enabling this? Which do you use, and why do you prefer them over the others? I've heard stuff like UML, module and class diagrams, but I imagine there are more. Furthermore, any of these is most likely better than anything I can devise on my own. EDIT: For those who answer with "Use pen and paper and just draw it": This isn't very helpful unless you explain this further. What exactly am I supposed to draw? A box for each class? Should I include the public methods? What about its fields? How should I draw connections that explain how one class uses another? What about modules? What if the language isn't object-oriented but functional or logical, or even just imperative (C, for instance)? What about global variables and functions? Is there an already-standardized way of drawing this, or do I need to think up of a method of my own? You get the drift.

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• What determines which Javascript functions are blocking vs non-blocking?

  - by Sean

  I have been doing web-based Javascript (vanilla JS, jQuery, Backbone, etc.) for a few years now, and recently I've been doing some work with Node.js. It took me a while to get the hang of "non-blocking" programming, but I've now gotten used to using callbacks for IO operations and whatnot. I understand that Javascript is single-threaded by nature. I understand the concept of the Node "event queue". What I DON'T understand is what determines whether an individual javascript operation is "blocking" vs. "non-blocking". How do I know which operations I can depend on to produce an output synchronously for me to use in later code, and which ones I'll need to pass callbacks to so I can process the output after the initial operation has completed? Is there a list of Javascript functions somewhere that are asynchronous/non-blocking, and a list of ones that are synchronous/blocking? What is preventing my Javascript app from being one giant race condition? I know that operations that take a long time, like IO operations in Node and AJAX operations on the web, require them to be asynchronous and therefore use callbacks - but who is determining what qualifies as "a long time"? Is there some sort of trigger within these operations that removes them from the normal "event queue"? If not, what makes them different from simple operations like assigning values to variables or looping through arrays, which it seems we can depend on to finish in a synchronous manner? Perhaps I'm not even thinking of this correctly - hoping someone can set me straight. Thanks!

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• Avoid overwriting all the methods in the child class

  - by Heckel

  The context I am making a game in C++ using SFML. I have a class that controls what is displayed on the screen (manager on the image below). It has a list of all the things to draw like images, text, etc. To be able to store them in one list I created a Drawable class from which all the other drawable class inherit. The image below represents how I would organize each class. Drawable has a virtual method Draw that will be called by the manager. Image and Text overwrite this method. My problem is that I would like Image::draw method to work for Circle, Polygon, etc. since sf::CircleShape and sf::ConvexShape inherit from sf::Shape. I thought of two ways to do that. My first idea would be for Image to have a pointer on sf::Shape, and the subclasses would make it point onto their sf::CircleShape or sf::ConvexShape classes (Like on the image below). In the Polygon constructor I would write something like ptr_shape = &polygon_shape; This doesn't look very elegant because I have two variables that are, in fact, just one. My second idea is to store the sf::CircleShape and sf::ConvexShape inside the ptr_shape like ptr_shape = new sf::ConvexShape(...); and to use a function that is only in ConvexShape I would cast it like so ((sf::ConvexShape*)ptr_shape)->convex_method(); But that doesn't look very elegant either. I am not even sure I am allowed to do that. My question I added details about the whole thing because I thought that maybe my whole architecture was wrong. I would like to know how I could design my program to be safe without overwriting all the Image methods. I apologize if this question has already been asked; I have no idea what to google.

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• Name for Osherove's modified singleton pattern?

  - by Kazark

  I'm pretty well sold on the "singletons are evil" line of thought. Nevertheless, there are limited occurrences when you want to limit the creation of an object. Roy Osherove advises, If you're planning to use a singleton in your design, separate the logic of the singleton class and the logic that makes it a singleton (the part that initializes a static variables, for example) into two separate classes. That way, you can keep the single responsibility principle (SRP) and also have a way to override singleton logic. (The Art of Unit Testing 261-262) This pattern still perpetuates the global state. However, it does result in a testable design, so it seems to me to be a good pattern for mitigating the damage of a singleton. However, Osherove does not give a name to this pattern; but naming a pattern, according to the Gang of Four, is important: Naming a pattern immediately increases our design vocabulary. It lets us design at a higher level of abstraction. (3) Is there a standard name for this pattern? It seems different enough from a standard singleton to deserve a separate name. Decoupled Singleton, perhaps?

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• How to tell your boss that he's a bad programmer? [closed]

  - by Doe

  Possible Duplicate: How to tell your boss that his programming style is really bad? There was a question about the boss having a bad programming style (weird booleans, empty loops, etc.) Having a bad/weird style does not imply being a bad programmer, but my situation is different. My boss outputs some really nasty code for the project, on which we are working together (just two of us). Examples: functions that span over several screens (big screens - 1900 x 1200) Deeply nested Conditional and Loop statements (up to 10 levels!!) Too much static variables, singletons, and both (singleton class with all the methods and members also static) Sometimes the code committed to the version control system does not even compile! Copy-Paste code instead of separating it into an independent function. Fail all the deadlines. "This's [C#|Java|Python] it shouldn't be efficient, that's why we loop all over the haystack to find the needle." "This's C/C++, it's fast enough to loop all over the haystack to find the needle." There is much more to mention... But the worst is that I have to redo much of the stuff he does, my code, which I try to keep clean is often polluted with above-mentioned atrocities. He's reaching 30 soon, so all his skills are established, and I don't even know if it's possible to change something. I like the project, but sometimes I just want to quit...

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• 9 Gigapixel Photo Captures 84 Million Stars

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  The European Southern Observatory has released an absolutely enormous picture of the center of the Milky Way captured by their VISTA telescope–the image is 9 gigapixels and captures over 84 million stars. From the press release: The large mirror, wide field of view and very sensitive infrared detectors of ESO’s 4.1-metre Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) make it by far the best tool for this job. The team of astronomers is using data from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea programme (VVV), one of six public surveys carried out with VISTA. The data have been used to create a monumental 108 200 by 81 500 pixel colour image containing nearly nine billion pixels. This is one of the biggest astronomical images ever produced. The team has now used these data to compile the largest catalogue of the central concentration of stars in the Milky Way ever created. Want to check out all 9 billion glorious pixels in their uncompressed state? Be prepared to wait a bit, the uncompressed image is available for download but it weighs in at a massive 24.6GB. 84 Million Stars and Counting [via Wired] 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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• My GLSL shader isn't compiling even though it should. What should I investigate?

  - by reapz

  I'm porting an iOS game to Android. One of the shaders I'm using wouldn't compile until I reduced the number of uniform variables. Here are the uniform definitions: uniform highp mat4 ViewProjMatrix; uniform mediump vec3 LightDirWorld; uniform mediump int BoneCount; uniform highp mat4 BoneMatrixArray[8]; uniform highp mat3 BoneMatrixArrayIT[8]; uniform mediump int LightCount; uniform mediump vec3 LightPos[4]; // This used to be 12, but now 4, next lines also uniform lowp vec3 LightColour[4]; uniform mediump vec3 LightInnerOuterFalloff[4]; My issue is that the GLSL shader wouldn't compile until I reduced the count of the above arrays from 12 to 4. My understanding is that if those 3 lines were arrays of 12 then I would be using 56 vertex uniform vectors. I query the system at startup (GL_MAX_VERTEX_UNIFORM_VECTORS) and it says that 128 are available. Why wouldn't it compile with 56? I'm having issues on the Kindle Fire.

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• OpenGL - Rendering from part of an index and vertex array depending on an element count

  - by user1423893

  I'm currently drawing my shapes as lines by using a VAO and then assigning the dynamic vertices and indices each frame. // Bind VAO glBindVertexArray(m_vao); // Update the vertex buffer with the new data (Copy data into the vertex buffer object) glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, numVertices * sizeof(VertexPosition), m_vertices.data(), GL_DYNAMIC_DRAW); // Update the index buffer with the new data (Copy data into the index buffer object) glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, numIndices * sizeof(unsigned short), indices.data(), GL_DYNAMIC_DRAW); glDrawElements(GL_LINES, numIndices, GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, BUFFER_OFFSET(0)); // Unbind VAO glBindVertexArray(0); What I would like to do is draw the lines using only part of the data stored in the index and vertex buffer objects. The vertex buffer has its vertices set from an array of defined maximum size: std::array<VertexPosition, maxVertices> m_vertices; The index buffer has its elements set from an array of defined maximum size: std::array<unsigned short, maxIndices> indices = { 0 }; A running total is kept of the number of vertices and indices needed for each draw call numVertices numIndices Can I not specify that the buffer data contain the entire array and only read from part of it when drawing? For example using the vertex buffer object glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, numVertices * sizeof(VertexPosition), m_vertices.data(), GL_DYNAMIC_DRAW); m_vertices.data() = Entire array is stored numVertices * sizeof(VertexPosition) = Amount of data to read from the entire array Is this not the correct way to approach this? I do not wish to use std::vector if possible.

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• How to achieve selection of a tile from a tile sheet based on an ID?

  - by Bugster

  Let's say I have a tile sheet that contains 8 sprites per sheet. Each sprite is a tile of 30x30. I wrote my own custom map parser/map loader however I'm having trouble extracting a certain tile sprite from the file. I'll describe my problem better in order for everyone to understand. I wrote an enum of materials, each material has a value according to it's location relative to the tile sheet. For example void is 1, grass is 2, rock is 3, etc. So in my tile sheet they are represented as such: +---+---+---+---+---+ | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | +---+---+---+---+---+ Which is equivalent to: +------+-------+-------+ | void | grass | stone | +------+-------+-------+ Basically when rendering, I created a tile class, each tile has 2 coordinates: X and Y (They are calculated automatically) and a material which can be represented either as a number, either as a value (ID). When rendering, I have a vector of sprites which are all taken from 1 file called tilesheet.png, however each of them must only draw a certain portion of the tile sheet, for example say I have something like this: tile coordinateBounds(topLeftX, topLeftY, tileWidth, tileHeight); During the initialization of the map I calculate an array of tiles, and I give each of them their position, their materials based on the values in a map file and a few other variables such as collision. I need to apply the coordinateBounds to each of them according to their material value. For example if the material is grass it should only take the grass sprite from the tilesheet. I must also mention I'm using SFML, and there are no borders or spacing between the tiles.

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• Strategies for managing use of types in Python

  - by dave

  I'm a long time programmer in C# but have been coding in Python for the past year. One of the big hurdles for me was the lack of type definitions for variables and parameters. Whereas I totally get the idea of duck typing, I do find it frustrating that I can't tell the type of a variable just by looking at it. This is an issue when you look at someone else's code where they've used ambiguous names for method parameters (see edit below). In a few cases, I've added asserts to ensure parameters comply with an expected type but this goes against the whole duck typing thing. On some methods, I'll document the expected type of parameters (eg: list of user objects), but even this seems to go against the idea of just using an object and let the runtime deal with exceptions. What strategies do you use to avoid typing problems in Python? Edit: Example of the parameter naming issues: If our code base we have a task object (ORM object) and a task_obj object (higher level object that embeds a task). Needless to say, many methods accept a parameter named 'task'. The method might expect a task or a task_obj or some other construct such as a dictionary of task properties - it is not clear. It is them up to be to look at how that parameter is used in order to work out what the method expects.

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• How to factorize code in Unreal Kismet (i.e. "Material Function"s for Kismet)

  - by Georges Dupéron

  In the Unreal Development Kit, when using the Material Editor, one can factorize frequently-used groups of nodes by creating a Material Function (content Browser ? right-click ? new matrial function, IIRC). When defining the behaviour of some actor in Kismet, one can easily have a dozen nodes involved. If I have many actors that share the same behaviour, then I'll copy-paste these nodes, and change the variables so they point to the other actors. This leads to inconsistencies (a modification in the behaviour of an actor isn't propagated in the copy-pasted nodes), complexity (you end up with hundreds of nodes), and generally useless effort. My question is : Can I create a "kismet function", just like a material function ? Note: I'd rather avoid using UnrealScript. I don't even know where to type UnrealScripts, don't know where the documentation is and more generally don't have enough time to invest in learning UnrealScript. This "kismet function" feature must be usable by graphists (with little programming knowledge). If a (simple) script suffices to add this feature in the Kismet editor, so that one can create several "functions" without using UnrealScript, then fine, but I don't really want to have to write a script each time I want to factorize a few nodes. Thanks for any information !

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• TXPAUSE : polite waiting for hardware transactional memory

  - by Dave

  Classic locks are an appropriate tool to prevent potentially conflicting operations A and B, invoked by different threads, from running at the same time. In a sense the locks cause either A to run before B or vice-versa. Similarly, we can replace the locks with hardware transactional memory, or use transactional lock elision to leverage potential disjoint access parallelism between A and B. But often we want A to wait until B has run. In a Pthreads environment we'd usually use locks in conjunction with condition variables to implement our "wait until" constraint. MONITOR-MWAIT is another way to wait for a memory location to change, but it only allows us to track one cache line and it's only available on x86. There's no similar "wait until" construct for hardware transactions. At the instruction-set level a simple way to express "wait until" in transactions would be to add a new TXPAUSE instruction that could be used within an active hardware transaction. TXPAUSE would politely stall the invoking thread, possibly surrendering or yielding compute resources, while at the same time continuing to track the transaction's address-set. Once a transaction has executed TXPAUSE it can only abort. Ideally that'd happen when some other thread modifies a variable that's in the transaction's read-set or write-set. And since we're aborting all writes would be discarded. In a sense this gives us multi-location MWAIT but with much more flexibility. We could also augment the TXPAUSE with a cycle-count bound to cap the time spent stalled. I should note that we can already enter a tight spin loop in a transaction to wait for updates to address-set to cause an abort. Assuming that the implementation monitors the address-set via cache-coherence probes, by waiting in this fashion we actually communicate via the probes, and not via memory values. That is the updating thread signals the waiter via probes instead of by traditional memory values. But TXPAUSE gives us a polite way to spin.

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• Google Analytics Social Tracking implementation. Is Google's example correct?

  - by s_a

  The current Google Analytics help page on Social tracking (developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingSocial?hl=es-419) links to this page with an example of the implementation: http://analytics-api-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/tracking/javascript/v5/social/facebook_js_async.html I've followed the example carefully yet social interactions are not registered. This is the webpage with the non-working setup: http://bit.ly/1dA00dY (obscured domain as per Google's Webmaster Central recommendations for their product forums) This is the structure of the page: In the : ga async code copied from the analytics' page a script tag linking to stored in the same domain. the twitter js loading tag In the the fb-root div the facebook async loading js including the _ga.trackFacebook(); call the social buttons afterwards, like so: (with the proper URL) Tweet (with the proper handle) That's it. As far as I can tell, I have implemented it exactly like in the example, but likes and twitts aren't registered. I have also altered the ga_social_tracking.js to register the social interactions as events, adding the code below. It doesn't work either. What could be wrong? Thanks! Code added to ga_social_tracking.js var url = document.URL; var category = 'Social Media'; /* Facebook */ FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(href, widget) { _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', category, 'Facebook', url]); }); /* Twitter */ twttr.events.bind('tweet', function(event) { _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', category, 'Twitter', url]); });

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• Binding BoundingSpheres to a world matrix in XNA

  - by NDraskovic

  I made a program that loads the locations of items on the scene from a file like this: using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(OpenFileDialog1.FileName)) { String line; while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null) { red = line.Split(','); model = row[0]; x = row[1]; y = row[2]; z = row[3]; elements.Add(Convert.ToInt32(model)); data.Add(new Vector3(Convert.ToSingle(x), Convert.ToSingle(y), Convert.ToSingle(z))); sfepheres.Add(new BoundingSphere(new Vector3(Convert.ToSingle(x), Convert.ToSingle(y), Convert.ToSingle(z)), 1f)); } I also have a list of BoundingSpheres (called spheres) that adds a new bounding sphere for each line from the file. In this program I have one item (a simple box) that moves (it has its world matrix called matrixBox), and other items are static entire time (there is a world matrix that holds those elements called simply world). The problem i that when I move the box, bounding spheres move with it. So how can I bind all BoundingSpheres (except the one corresponding to the box) to the static world matrix so that they stay in their place when the box moves?

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• Resource Acquisition is Initialization in C#

  - by codeWithoutFear

  Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII) is a pattern I grew to love when working in C++.  It is perfectly suited for resource management such as matching all those pesky new's and delete's.  One of my goals was to limit the explicit deallocation statements I had to write.  Often these statements became victims of run-time control flow changes (i.e. exceptions, unhappy path) or development-time code refactoring. The beauty of RAII is realized by tying your resource creation (acquisition) to the construction (initialization) of a class instance.  Then bind the resource deallocation to the destruction of that instance.  That is well and good in a language with strong destructor semantics like C++, but languages like C# that run on garbage-collecting runtimes don't provide the same instance lifetime guarantees. Here is a class and sample that combines a few features of C# to provide an RAII-like solution: using System; namespace RAII { public class DisposableDelegate : IDisposable { private Action dispose; public DisposableDelegate(Action dispose) { if (dispose == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("dispose"); } this.dispose = dispose; } public void Dispose() { if (this.dispose != null) { Action d = this.dispose; this.dispose = null; d(); } } } class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.Out.WriteLine("Some resource allocated here."); using (new DisposableDelegate(() => Console.Out.WriteLine("Resource deallocated here."))) { Console.Out.WriteLine("Resource used here."); throw new InvalidOperationException("Test for resource leaks."); } } } } The output of this program is: Some resource allocated here. Resource used here. Unhandled Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: Test for resource leaks. at RAII.Program.Main(String[] args) in c:\Dev\RAII\RAII\Program.cs:line 40 Resource deallocated here. Code without fear! --Don

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• Questions before I revamp my rendering engine to use shaders (GLSL)

  - by stephelton

  I've written a fairly robust rendering engine using OpenGL ES 1.1 (fixed-function.) I've been looking into revamping the engine to use OpenGL ES 2.0, which necessitates that I use shaders. I've been absorbing information all day long and still have some questions. Firstly, lighting. The fixed-function pipeline is guaranteed to have at least 8 lights available. My current engine finds lights that are "close" to the primitives being drawn and enables them; I don't know how many lights are going to be enabled until I draw a given model. Nothing is dynamically allocated in GLSL, so I have to define in a shader some number of lights to be used, right? So if I want to stick with 8, should I write my general purpose shader to have 8 lights and then use uniforms to tell it how many / which lights to use? Which brings me to another question: should I be concerned with the amount of data I'm allocating in a shader? Recent video cards have hundreds of "stream processors." If I've got a fragment shader being used on some number of fragments in a given triangle, I assume they must each have their own stack to work on. Are read-only variables copied here, or read when needed? My initial goal is to rework my code so that it is virtually identical to the current implementation. What I have in mind is to create my own matrix stack so that I can implement something along the lines of push/popMatrix and apply all my translations, rotations, and scales to this matrix, then provide the matrix to the vertex shader so that it can make very quick vertex translations. Is this approach sound? Edit: My original intention was to ask if there was a tutorial that would explain the bare minimum necessary to jump from fixed-function to using shaders. Thanks!

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• Teach Your Kid to Code Coming to Philly.NET

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2014/05/20/teach-your-kid-to-code-coming-to-philly.net.aspxTomorrow night (Wednesday, May 21) my son and I will be at Philly.NET presenting Teach Your Kid to Code. Bring your kid out to Philly.NET with you for a fun evening! After our first talk, I’ll then be giving an introduction to TypeScript. Of any presentation I’ve ever given, this is my favorite: Have you ever wanted a way to teach your kid to code? For that matter, have you ever wanted to simply be able to explain to your kid what you do for a living? Putting things in a context that a kid can understand is not as easy as it sounds. If you are someone curious about these concepts, this is a “can’t miss” presentation that will be co-presented by Justin Michelotti (6th grader) and his father. Bring your kid with you to Philly.NET for this fun and educational session. We will show tools you may not have been aware of like SmallBasic and Kodu – we’ll even throw in a little Visual Studio and JavaScript. Concepts such as variables, conditionals, loops, and functions will be covered while we introduce object oriented concepts without any of the confusing words. Kids are not required for entry!

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• Am I the only one this anal / obsessive about code? [closed]

  - by Chris

  While writing a shared lock class for sql server for a web app tonight, I found myself writing in the code style below as I always do: private bool acquired; private bool disposed; private TimeSpan timeout; private string connectionString; private Guid instance = Guid.NewGuid(); private Thread autoRenewThread; Basically, whenever I'm declaring a group of variables or writing a sql statement or any coding activity involving multiple related lines, I always try to arrange them where possible so that they form a bell curve (imagine rotating the text 90deg CCW). As an example of something that peeves the hell out of me, consider the following alternative: private bool acquired; private bool disposed; private string connectionString; private Thread autoRenewThread; private Guid instance = Guid.NewGuid(); private TimeSpan timeout; In the above example, declarations are grouped (arbitrarily) so that the primitive types appear at the top. When viewing the code in Visual Studio, primitive types are a different color than non-primitives, so the grouping makes sense visually, if for no other reason. But I don't like it because the right margin is less of an aesthetic curve. I've always chalked this up to being OCD or something, but at least in my mind, the code is "prettier". Am I the only one?

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• What language and topics should be covered when teaching non-CS college students how to program?

  - by michaelcarrano

  I have been asked by many of my non-computer science friends to teach them how to program. I have agreed to hold a seminar for them that will last for approximately 1 to 2 hours. My thoughts are to use Python as the language to teach them basic programming skills. I figured Python is relatively easier to learn from what I have researched. It is also a language I want to learn which will make holding this seminar all the more enjoyable. The topics I plan to cover are as followed: Variables / Arrays Logic - If else statements, switch case, nested statements Loops - for, while, do-while and nested loops Functions - pass by value, pass by reference (is this the correct terms for Python? I am mostly a C/C++ person) Object Oriented Programming Of course, I plan to have code examples for all topics and I will try to have each example flow into each other so that at the end of the seminar everyone will have a complete working program. I suppose my question is, if you were given 1 to 2 hours to teach a group of college students how to program, what language would you choose and what topics would you cover? Update: Thank you for the great feedback. I should have mentioned in my earlier post above that a majority of the students attending the seminar have some form of programming experience whether it was with Java or using Matlab. Most of these students are 3rd/4th year Engineering students who want to get a refresher on programming before they graduate.

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• How to debug a fatal system crash - [graphical loop DOTA2]?

  - by Huw

  Whilst playing DOTA2, I occasionally and apparently randomly seem to be experiencing a fatal crash where the display freezes fixed and the audio loops over approx the last .5 of a second. Now, I'm interested in resolving this - but my trouble is I don't know where to start. The error appears non-reproducible (I've tried returning to games and deploying the same combination of events in hopes of pinning to to a certain shader etc), and I don't know which part of 'the stack' it might be coming from. Variables that occur to me: I custom build this system, did I do something wrong - is my PSU not providing enough power to the graphics card? I am running Steam and DOTA under Linux, could this new software have a bug Might it be something to do with my ATI Catalyst graphics drivers Is some other background process interfering I'm usually mid game when this occurs, so i quickly kill the power and reboot (when i'm lucky i can get back in with only 1-2 mins lost!). So my question here relates to logs. Where should I start to look or how might I set up logs to help me pin down a fatal crash of this kind by recording moments up to / before a crash and is this likely to be something I should push Steam to do, or is there something at a system level? Then perhaps I can return with a more specific question and perhaps even a bug report :) Many thanks in advance.

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