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• SQLAuthority News – Learning, Community and Book Signing at #SQLPASS 2012

  - by pinaldave

  SQLPASS event is going excellent we are having great great fun! We are having book signing events and the response is overwhelmingly positive. I am glad that all of you love our books and I totally appreciate your support. Rick and I both are feeling very motivated to write more books in future. Here is our schedule for book signing. SQL Queries 2012 Joes 2 Pros Volume1 Finally a book for the true SQL Server beginner! Whether you are brand new to databases and are thinking of getting your 70-461 certification or already a semi-pro working in the field and need some fingertip support, this is this is the book for you. Joes 2 Pros does not assume you already know anything about databases or SQL server.  This book builds on the success of the previous series and will help anyone transform themselves from a beginner “Joe” into a SQL 2012 “Pro”. Wednesday, November 7, 2012 12pm-1pm – Book Signing at Exhibit Hall Joes Pros booth#117 (FREE BOOK) Rest all the time – I will be at Exhibition Hall Joes 2 Pros Booth #117. Stop by for the goodies! This book is also available on Amazon. SQL 2012 Functions Joes 2 Pros Functions have been around for many years to make our lives easier. Because of them, thousands of lines of valuable programming can be done with one statement. When we know what functions are offered in SQL Server we can get powerful projects done very quickly. Often times, the functions you wished you had are released in the next version. Wednesday, November 7, 2012 7pm-8pm - Embarcadero Booth Book Signing (FREE BOOK) Thursday, November 8, 2012 12pm-1pm - Embarcadero Booth Book Signing (FREE BOOK) This book is also available on Amazon. If you are at SQLPASS stop by Booth #117 – I will be there and many be you can get one of my signed book! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Browser-based GUI for a python application

  - by ack__

  I want to create a web/browser-based GUI for a command-line python application. The goal is to make use of HTML/JS technologies to create this GUI. As the application itself, it needs to run on Linux and Windows, and the interface will be accessible only from localhost (not exposed to internet). The GUI will contain 5 to 10 pages. I don't want a traditional desktop GUI that includes HTML/JS, but just a bunch of html files and some kind of controller between those and the application. I also want to make use of asynchronous programming (ajax like) so I can load and print data in the GUI without refreshing the whole page. I'd probably use jQuery for that and a couple other things. How would you recommend to design this? Performance is not the key here, I'm rather looking at reliability, portability and simplicity. I'm thinking of using a lightweight python HTTP server / framework (like CherryPy) and maybe later a Python templating system (at the begining it will just be a couple pages). EDIT: I'm looking for ideas/recommendations how to build this, not for alternatives to browser/web-based GUI.

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• BUILD 2012 day 1 Keynote recap

  - by pluginbaby

  On October 30, 2012 Steve Ballmer kicked off the first BUILD conference keynote. Steve shared some insights around Windows 8: 4 million customers upgraded to Windows 8 over the weekend since the October 26 release (so in 3 days only!). Focus on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Syncing everything through SkyDrive Xbox Music free streaming and Xbox Smart Glass. He did all the demos himself, showing off great “Windows 8 generation” devices already available (including an 82-inch Windows 8 “slate” by Perceptive Pixel). Steve Guggenheimer (Microsoft's Corporate Vice President DPE) talked about The Business Opportunity with Windows 8.   Notable announcements of day 1: The Windows Phone 8 SDK is now available at dev.windowsphone.com (includes SDK, free version of VS2012, Blend 5, and emulators). Release of the .NET Framework for Windows Phone 8: Ability to use C# 5 or Visual Basic 11 features in your code (async programming mode, ...), share code between WP8 and Windows Store apps. Windows Phone 8 individual developer registration is reduced to $8 for the next 8 days! (hurry up…) Note: strange absence of Steven Sinofsky on stage…   Watch the entire keynote online: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/1-001 Read the full transcript: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Speeches/2012/10-30BuildDay1.aspx

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• Architecture advice for converting biz app from old school to new school?

  - by Aaron Anodide

  I've got a WinForms business application that evolved over the past few years. It's forms over data with a number custom UI experiences taylored to the business, so I don't think it's a candidate to port to something like SharePoint or re-write in LightSwitch (at least not without significant investment). When I started it in 2009 I was new to this type of development (coming from more low level programming and my RDBMS knowledge was just slightly greater than what I got from school). Thus, when I was confronted with a business model that operates on a strict monthly accounting cycle, I made the unfortunate decision to create a separate database for each accounting period. Also, when I started I knew DataSets, then I learned Linq2Sql, then I learned EntityFramework. The screens are a mix and match of those. Now, after a few years developing this thing by myself I've finally got a small team. Ultimately, I want a web front end (for remote access to more straight up screens with grids of data) and a thick client (for the highly customized interfaces). My question is: can you offer me some broad strokes architecture advice that will help me formulate a battle plan to convert over to a single database and lay the foundations for my future goals at the same time? Here's a screen shot showing how an older screen uses DataSets and a newer screen uses EF (I'm thinking this might make it more real for someone reading the question - I'm willing to add any amount of detail if someone is willing to help).

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• Improve speed of "start menu" in Linux Mint 10 - Ubuntu 10.10 derivative [closed]

  - by Gabriel L. Oliveira

  I have a global menu (including application, administration and system tabs) that is taking too much time (for me) to load (about 2.5 seconds). Of course, this time is taken only during first start. After it have loaded, next times are better ( less than 0.2 miliseconds) The menu was taking more time before (about 5 seconds), and I found that was because of the 'Other' part of the menu, that included many applications installed with Wine, so I removed all of them (I didn't need them at all). I have a "normal" knowledge of programming, and I think that the process of starting the menu for the first time has some kind of "cache function", that tries to find which apps are present that need to be placed under menu to be shown to user. But didn't found this function so that I could analyze in details what he is doing (if searching for files under "~/.local/share/applications" or anything else). Also, I found that hitting "Alt-F2" also fires this "cache function", because after waiting it to load, the process of opening the menu took less than 0.2 miliseconds. So, could anyone help me in order to reduce this time? I found on internet that some user could reduce the time by resizing the icons of applications. But found here that most of my icons are already at 25x25 size. Any other idead? Maybe a multiprocess to load it, or include it under startup... don't know. Ps: Sorry if this is an awkward question, but I just do not like waiting for things to happen, and think that this process should be smoother than it's now. Also, thanks in advance!

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• Why is Quicksort called "Quicksort"?

  - by Darrel Hoffman

  The point of this question is not to debate the merits of this over any other sorting algorithm - certainly there are many other questions that do this. This question is about the name. Why is Quicksort called "Quicksort"? Sure, it's "quick", most of the time, but not always. The possibility of degenerating to O(N^2) is well known. There are various modifications to Quicksort that mitigate this problem, but the ones which bring the worst case down to a guaranteed O(n log n) aren't generally called Quicksort anymore. (e.g. Introsort). I just wonder why of all the well-known sorting algorithms, this is the only one deserving of the name "quick", which describes not how the algorithm works, but how fast it (usually) is. Mergesort is called that because it merges the data. Heapsort is called that because it uses a heap. Introsort gets its name from "Introspective", since it monitors its own performance to decide when to switch from Quicksort to Heapsort. Similarly for all the slower ones - Bubblesort, Insertion sort, Selection sort, etc. They're all named for how they work. The only other exception I can think of is "Bogosort", which is really just a joke that nobody ever actually uses in practice. Why isn't Quicksort called something more descriptive, like "Partition sort" or "Pivot sort", which describe what it actually does? It's not even a case of "got here first". Mergesort was developed 15 years before Quicksort. (1945 and 1960 respectively according to Wikipedia) I guess this is really more of a history question than a programming one. I'm just curious how it got the name - was it just good marketing?

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• What to think about when designing a simple GUI for a quiz game

  - by PeterK

  I am coming close to finish my first iPhone game ever, as a matter of fact also my first programming experience ever, which is a quiz game. I have all the functionality i want and is currently polishing it both from a code point of view as well as looking at the GUI. My initial idea was not to use any specific graphics but rather focus on the game experience and simplicity and by that only using background color, orange, and white text as well as buttons. The design is based on that all ages, from learning to read, should be able to host and play this game. However, as i am now getting close to the finish line i am starting to think what is needed from a GUI point of view. I would like to ask for some advice what to think about when designing a GUI. Is it considered OK without any 'fancy' graphics, what is the risk without it etc.? Also, what colors goes well together if i choose to use a simple GUI. I am thinking about color blindness etc. In other words how do i design a good and effective GUI for a simple game as mine? Thanks

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• JSR updates - November 2013

  - by Heather VanCura

   This week has been a busy week for JCP participants! Ten JSRs related to the upcoming Java Standard Edition (Java SE) 8 release posted public reviews--four Public Reviews and six Maintenance Reviews.  All JSRs are operating under the latest version of the JCP program and have public feedback mechanisms and issue trackers.  Please review and comment on these JSRs--your input and participation is wanted and needed!  JSR 308, Annotations on Java Types, published a Public Review. This review closes 4 December. JSR 310, Date and Time API, published a Public Review. This review closes 4 December. JSR 335, Lambda Expressions for the Java Programming Language, published a Public Review. This review closes 4 December. JSR 337, Java SE 8 Release contents, published a Public Review.  This review closes 4 December. JSR 221, JDBC 4.0 API, published a Maintenance Review.  This review closes 4 December. JSR 199, Java Compiler API, published a Maintenance Review.  This review closes 4 December. JSR 160, Java Management Extensions Remote API, published a Maintenance Review.  This review closes 4 December. JSR 114, JDBC Rowset Implementations, published a Maintenance Review.  This review closes 4 December. JSR 3, Java Management Extensions Specification, published a Maintenance Review.  This review closes 4 December. JSR 206, Java API for XML Processing,  published a Maintenance Review.  This review closes 22 November. Two other JSRs also published recent updates:  JSR 354, Money and Currency API, published a Public Review.  This review closes 23 November.  JSR 107, JCACHE - Java Temporary Caching API, published a Proposed Final Draft.

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• Convert a Row to a Column (or Backwards) in Google Docs Spreadsheets

  - by The Geek

  If you have to deal with a lot of spreadsheets, you’re probably really bored right now. You also might be wondering how to turn a row into a column, or a column into a row. Here’s how to do it with Google Docs Spreadsheets. If you’re an Excel user, you’re also in luck, because we’ve already shown you how to turn a row into a column, or vice-versa. It won’t make you any less bored though. Convert a Row to a Column (or backwards) The first thing you’ll need is a column or a row of information that you want to convert into the opposite. For our example, we’ve got this set of data that we created by using the Auto Fill options in Google Docs. Now in another cell, you’ll need to use the TRANSPOSE function, which you can use by simply typing in the following: =TRANSPOSE( And then selecting the cells with the mouse, or manually typing in the range of cells you want to copy. The final function in this example was: =TRANSPOSE(A1:A11) Finish it off with the final ) character to complete the function, hit the Enter key, and there we are… the column was transposed over to the right. You can use the same thing to turn columns into rows, or rows into columns—just change the range you are looking for. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Use AutoFill on a Google Docs Spreadsheet [Quick Tips]Integrate Google Docs with Outlook the Easy WayHow To Export Documents from Google Docs to Your ComputerConvert a Row to a Column in Excel the Easy WayScroll Backwards From the Ubuntu Server Command Line TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7)

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• Java Spotlight Episode 106: Java Security Update @spoofzu

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Java security update with Bruce Lowenthal and Milton Smith. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Apple's Java Mac OS X 2012-006 Update NightHacking Tour Across Europe Four New Java Champions Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Solaris 11.1 and Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 Oracle Announces General Availability of Oracle Application Development Framework Mobile Bean Validation 1.1 Early Draft JSR 107 Early Draft JCP Elections - Meet the Candidates GlassFish switching to JDK-7 only build Events Oct 30-Nov 1, Arm TechCon, Santa Clara, United States of America Oct 31, JFall, Hart van Holland, Netherlands Nov 2-3, JMaghreb, Rabat, Morocco Nov 5-9, Øredev Developer Conference, Malmö, Sweden Nov 13-17, Devoxx, Antwerp, Belgium Nov 20-22, DOAG 2012, Nuremberg, Germany Dec 3-5, jDays, Göteborg, Sweden Dec 4-6, JavaOne Latin America, Sao Paolo, Brazil Dec 14-15, IndicThreads, Pune, India Feature InterviewMilton Smith leads the security program for Java products at Oracle. His responsibilities span from tactical to strategic: definition and communication of the security vision for Java, working with engineering teams and researchers, as well as industry at large. He has over 20+ years of industry experience with emphasis in programming and computer security. Milton previous employer was Yahoo where he lead security for the User Data Analytics(UDA) property.Bruce Lowenthal is the Senior Director of Security Alerts at Oracle Corporation. What’s Cool Andrew Haley on an OpenJDK ARM64 Port Joe Darcy - JDK bug migration: bugs.sun.com now backed by JIRA Marcus Hirt on Using the Mission Control DTrace Plug-in

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• SDL & Windows 8 Metro WinRT

  - by Adrian

  I am just beginning to dip my tow into game programming and have been reading up on SDL, SFML, OpenGL, XNA, MonoGame and of course DirectX. (Needless to say there are a lot of choices out there) As much as I like SFMLs syntax I have chosen to read up and start with SDL as it is pretty ubiquitous and available on every platform (Windows, Linux, Mac) and also available on portable devices (Android, iOS) with the current exception of WinPhone 7 After that pre-amble here is my question. I notice that the docs say that for the windows platform the SDL API calls through to DirectX for higher perf. ( http://www.libsdl.org/intro.en/whatplatforms.html ) Microsoft have said that for Metro Game Apps you can only use DirectX (which means no XNA, no OpenGL, no SFML, etc, etc) My question is: If SDL just wraps DirectX calls will I (we) be able to use SDL to bring games to the new Metro WinRT environment and Windows 8 marketplace? This would be great if possible. Additionally as WinPhone 8 is supposedly built on Win8 then this could mean SDL would be available on the win phone in the future too. Thanks for your time in responding to this question and I look forward to hearing your response. EDIT: Based on DeadMG's answer I have installed Visual Studio 11 (beta) in Windows 8 Consumer Preview (CP) and went file-New to check project types. The project types: "Blank Application", "Direct2D Application" and "Direct3D Application" look of interest. I have selected "Direct2D App" but SDL generates its own window when you call: SDL_INIT Is it possible to link/setup the SDL window to point to the Direct2D surface in the this project?

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• What have you learnt that has a steep learning curve?

  - by Jonathan Khoo

  Recently, I've invested time in learning the intricacies of Git and it has got me thinking about time and learning. (My previous experience with version control systems was only limited use of CVS and SVN.) It took me a whole day's worth of reading to be able to understand the concepts and differences of Git. There are an infinite number of things available for us to learn. Some, more useful than others. I don't know Fortran - I'm relatively young. But looking back at the preceding years of my life, I notice that I'm busier and busier as time goes on. The amount of things I have to get through in a day is increasingly out of my control. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate that information and realise I'll have even less time in the future - unless I get fired, but I have no strong plans relating to that idea for now. So, given that I have much more time and energy now than I will have in the future: what have you learnt, that has a steep learning curve, that you would possibly recommend to a fellow programmer? Edit: I've stumbled upon the excellent question What programming skills have provided you the best return on investment? and hav realised that my way of approaching how to spend learning time was naive - it doesn't matter if ten useful concepts can be learnt in the time of one if they're worth it.

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• Friday Fun: Wake Up the Box

  - by Mysticgeek

  Another Friday and it’s time to waste the rest of your Friday playing a  fun flash game online. Today we take a look at a relaxing physic based puzzle game called Wake Up the Box. Wake Up the Box This goal of this game is to wake up the box character by attaching parts of existing wood objects in each stage. You can start a new game or continue your progress from where you left off. At the beginning you get a tutorial showing what you need to do to wake the box. You get wood parts and can attach them to other wood pieces but not metal or brick. After successfully waking up Mr. Box, you can go to the next level or restart a level at any time if your having problems figuring out the puzzle. Each level gets more difficult and the puzzles are more challenging. Wake Up the Box is a relaxing and challenging game that will allow you to have fun, not working on TPS reports until the whistle blows. Play Wake Up the Box at FreeWebArcade Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stop the Mouse From Waking Up Your Computer from Sleep ModeFix "Sleep Mode Randomly Waking Up" Issue in Windows VistaStop Your Mouse from Waking Up Your Windows 7 ComputerPrevent Windows Asking for a Password on Wake Up from Sleep/StandbyUse Sleep.FM to Wake Up with the Web TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff

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• The lifecycle of "cool"

  - by Dori

  I've been thinking lately about how some programming projects/products become "cool," and in particular, how that trend can later reverse. Here are two examples that might better explain my context: Textmate Whenever someone asks about text editors on OS X, the answer on the SE sites is an automatic "Textmate!" But looked at objectively: Textmate 1.0 shipped October 2004 Textmate 1.5 shipped January 2006 Textmate 2 was announced February 2006 As of September 2010, the currently shipping version is 1.5.9 In all of 2010, there have been a total of three posts on the Textmate blog At what point (if ever) do Textmate fans start thinking about switching to another text editor? When it breaks after some future Apple update? When alpha geeks they respect start recommending something else? Or? jQuery Whenever a JavaScript-related question is asked on the SE sites, the knee-jerk response is "jQuery!" I've seen it happen even when the question itself only required a single line of JavaScript. Or when the question could be better answered by using CSS. Do the answerers understand they're suggesting a blowtorch to light a candle? That they're recommending adding 70K or so of code to do something trivial? Or is it a symptom of "When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail"—that is, jQuery is all they know how to do, so that's their recommendation? And do they understand that while they may know jQuery well, that doesn't necessarily mean that they know JavaScript? Is there a way to explain that learning JavaScript would make them better jQuery programmers? My bigger-picture questions: Is this niche focus primarily a trait of programmers? How do you get programmers to not immediately jump to recommending their personal favorites? What can motivate programmers to review their initial selection criteria and possibly modify their choice? Your thoughts?

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• Integrating Twitter Into An ASP.NET Website

  Twitter is a popular social networking web service for writing and sharing short messages. These tidy text messages are referred to as tweets and are limited to 140 characters. Users can leave tweets and follow other users directly from Twitter's website or by using the Twitter API. Twitter's API makes it possible to integrate Twitter with external applications. For example, you can use the Twitter API to display your latest tweets on your blog. A mom and pop online store could integrate Twitter such that a new tweet was added each time a customer completed an order. And ELMAH, a popular open-source error logging library, can be configured to send error notifications to Twitter. Twitter's API is implemented over HTTP using the design principles of Representational State Transfer (REST). In a nutshell, inter-operating with the Twitter API involves a client - your application - sending an XML-formatted message over HTTP to the server - Twitter's website. The server responds with an XML-formatted message that contains status information and data. While you can certainly interface with this API by writing your own code to communicate with the Twitter API over HTTP along with the code that creates and parses the XML payloads exchanged between the client and server, such work is unnecessary since there are many community-created Twitter API libraries for a variety of programming frameworks. This article shows how to integrate Twitter with an ASP.NET website using the Twitterizer library, which is a free, open-source .NET library for working with the Twitter API. Specifically, this article shows how to retrieve your latest tweets and how to post a tweet using Twitterizer. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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• Annotate source code with diagrams as comments

  - by Steven Lu

  I write a lot of (primarily c++ and javascript) code that touches upon computational geometry and graphics and those kinds of topics, so I have found that visual diagrams have been an indispensable part of the process of solving problems. I have determined just now that "oh, wouldn't it just be fantastic if I could somehow attach a hand-drawn diagram to a piece of code as a comment", and this would allow me to come back to something I worked on, days, weeks, months earlier and far more quickly re-grok my algorithms. As a visual learner, I feel like this has the potential to improve my productivity with almost every type of programming because simple diagrams can help with understanding and reasoning about any type of non-trivial data structure. Graphs for example. During graph theory class at university I had only ever been able to truly comprehend the graph relationships that I could actually draw diagrammatical representations of. So... No IDE to my knowledge lets you save a picture as a comment to code. My thinking was that I or someone else could come up with some reasonably easy-to-use tool that can convert an image into a base64 binary string which I can then insert into my code. If the conversion/insertion process can be streamlined enough it would allow a far better connection between the diagram and the actual code, so I no longer need to chronographically search through my notebooks. Even more awesome: plugins for the IDEs to automatically parse out and display the image. There is absolutely nothing difficult about this from a theoretical point of view. My guess is that it would take some extra time for me to actually figure out how to extend my favorite IDEs and maintain these plugins, so I'd be totally happy with a sort of code post-processor which would do the same parsing out and rendering of the images and show them side by side with the code, inside of a browser or something. Since I'm a javascript programmer by trade. What do people think? Would anyone pay for this? I would.

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• Game software design

  - by L. De Leo

  I have been working on a simple implementation of a card game in object oriented Python/HTML/Javascript and building on the top of Django. At this point the game is in its final stage of development but, while spotting a big issue about how I was keeping the application state (basically using a global variable), I reached the point that I'm stuck. The thing is that ignoring the design flaw, in a single-threaded environment such as under the Django development server, the game works perfectly. While I tried to design classes cleanly and keep methods short I now have in front of me an issue that has been keeping me busy for the last 2 days and that countless print statements and visual debugging hasn't helped me spot. The reason I think has to do with some side-effects of functions and to solve it I've been wondering if maybe refactoring the code entirely with static classes that keep no state and just passing the state around might be a good option to keep side-effects under control. Or maybe trying to program it in a functional programming style (although I'm not sure Python allows for a purely functional style). I feel that now there's already too many layers that the software (which I plan to make incredibly more complex by adding non trivial features) has already become unmanageable. How would you suggest I re-take control of my code-base that (despite being still only at < 1000 LOC) seems to have taken a life of its own?

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• Extreme Optimization Numerical Libraries for .NET – Part 1 of n

  - by JoshReuben

  While many of my colleagues are fascinated in constructing the ultimate ViewModel or ServiceBus, I feel that this kind of plumbing code is re-invented far too many times – at some point in the near future, it will be out of the box standard infra. How many times have you been to a customer site and built a different variation of the same kind of code frameworks? How many times can you abstract Prism or reliable and discoverable WCF communication? As the bar is raised for whats bundled with the framework and more tasks become declarative, automated and configurable, Information Systems will expose a higher level of abstraction, forcing software engineers to focus on more advanced computer science and algorithmic tasks. I've spent the better half of the past decade building skills in .NET and expanding my mathematical horizons by working through the Schaums guides. In this series I am going to examine how these skillsets come together in the implementation provided by ExtremeOptimization. Download the trial version here: http://www.extremeoptimization.com/downloads.aspx Overview The library implements a set of algorithms for: linear algebra, complex numbers, numerical integration and differentiation, solving equations, optimization, random numbers, regression, ANOVA, statistical distributions, hypothesis tests. EONumLib combines three libraries in one - organized in a consistent namespace hierarchy. Mathematics Library - Extreme.Mathematics namespace Vector and Matrix Library - Extreme.Mathematics.LinearAlgebra namespace Statistics Library - Extreme.Statistics namespace System Requirements -.NET framework 4.0  Mathematics Library The classes are organized into the following namespace hierarchy: Extreme.Mathematics – common data types, exception types, and delegates. Extreme.Mathematics.Calculus - numerical integration and differentiation of functions. Extreme.Mathematics.Curves - points, lines and curves, including polynomials and Chebyshev approximations. curve fitting and interpolation. Extreme.Mathematics.Generic - generic arithmetic & linear algebra. Extreme.Mathematics.EquationSolvers - root finding algorithms. Extreme.Mathematics.LinearAlgebra - vectors , matrices , matrix decompositions, solvers for simultaneous linear equations and least squares. Extreme.Mathematics.Optimization – multi-d function optimization + linear programming. Extreme.Mathematics.SignalProcessing - one and two-dimensional discrete Fourier transforms. Extreme.Mathematics.SpecialFunctions

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• Estimating cost of labor for a controlled experiment

  - by Lorin Hochstein

  Let's say you are a software engineering researcher and you are designing a controlled experiment to compare two software technologies or techniques (e.g., TDD vs. non-TDD, Python vs. Go) with respect to some qualities of interest (e.g., quality of resulting code, programmer productivity). According to your study design, participants will work alone to implement a non-trivial software system. You estimate it should take about six months for a single programmer to complete the task. You also estimate via power analysis that you will need around sixty study participants to obtain statistically significant results, assuming the technologies actually do yield different outcomes. To maximize external validity, you want to use professional programmers as study participants. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to find professional programmers who can volunteer for several months to work full-time on implementing a software system. You decide to go the simplest route and contract with a large IT consulting firm to obtain access to programmers to participate in the study. What is a reasonable estimate of the cost range, per person-month, for the programming labor? Assume you are constrained to work with a U.S.-based firm, but it doesn't matter where in the U.S. the firm itself or the programmers or located. Note: I'm looking for a reasonable order-of-magnitude range suitable for back-of-the-envelope calculations so that when people say "Why doesn't somebody just do a study to measure X", I can say, "Because running that study properly would cost $Y", and have a reasonable argument for the value of $Y.

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• SO-overflow induced passivity - how to cope?

  - by Ruben

  After not really working on my pet project for a while, I discovered Stackoverflow and upon perusing it more intensely I was quite amazed. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so when I found eye-openers here highlighting many of the mistakes I made, I first wanted to fix everything. However, it's a pet project for a reason: I'm self-taught and I'm studying psychology, so programming skills can never become priority one (though it often helps, even in this field). Issues that stuck out were numerous security issues (e.g. CSRF-prevention and bcrypt eluded me) not object-oriented (at least the PHP part, the JS-part mostly is) no PHP framework used, so many of my DIY takes on commonly-tackled components (auth, ...) are either bad or inefficient really poor MySQL usage (no prepared statements, mysql extension, heard about setting proper indices two days ago) using mootools even though JQuery seems to be fashionable, so there's more probably always going to be better integration with services I'd like to use (like google visualization) So, my SO-induced frenzy turned into passivity. I can't do it all (soon) in the rather small amount of spare time I can spend on working on my project. I can leave some of the issues be in good conscience (speed stuff: an unfinished & unpublished project will never become popular, right?). No clear conscience without good security though and if I don't use a framework for auth and other complex stuff I'll regret having to do it myself. One obvious answer would probably be going open-source, but I think the project would need to become more impressive before others would commit to it. I can't afford to employ someone either. I do think the project deserves being worked on, though. How should I tackle it anyway? What's the best practice for little-practice people?

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• Silverlight 4, MVVM and Test-Driven Development

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  As part of his UK tour Microsoft's Jesse Liberty will be talking in Edinburgh for an evening on Silverlight 4. [Register Now, there are some places left]  The Talk MVVM and Silverlight to build test-driven programs Understanding Refactoring and Dependency Injection A Walk through of a non-trivial application The Speaker Jesse Liberty, Silverlight Geek, is a Developer Community Program Manager for Microsoft (US). Lately he has been focused on Component-based, Test-Driven, Cross-platform line-of-business application development, and has led the development of the open source  Silverlight HyperVideo Platform. Liberty is the author of over two dozen books, and his blog is a required resource for Silverlight programmers. His twenty years of programming experience include stints as a Distinguished Software Engineer at AT&T; Vice President of Human-Computer Interaction at Citibank and Software Architect at PBS/Learning Link. The Venue We are meeting at Microsoft's offices in Edinburgh in Waterloo Place. This is the building on the corner of North Bridge at the east end of Princes Street. Parking can be found at the nearby Greenside Row car park which is just off Leith Walk (used for the Omni Centre). The venue is approximately 2-3 minutes walk away from Edinburgh Waverly train station. The Agenda 18:30 Doors open 19:00 Welcome 19:10 Part 1 20:00 Break 20:10 Part 2 20:50 Feedback and Prizes 21:00 End   [Register Now, there are some places left] Technorati Tags: Silverlight,MVVM,TDD

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• Microsoft C# Most Valuable Professional

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Recently I was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Visual C#. For those that don’t know it’s an annual award based on nominations from peers and Microsoft. Although there are just over 4,000 MVPs worldwide from all kinds of specializations, there are less than 100 C# MVPs in the US. There is more information at the site: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft. With fewer than 5,000 awardees worldwide, Microsoft MVPs represent a highly select group of experts. MVPs share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. To recognize the contributions they make, MVPs from around the world have the opportunity to meet Microsoft executives, network with peers, and position themselves as technical community leaders. Here is my profile: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/profile/rob.reynolds I want to thank those that nominated me, without nominations this would never have happened. Thanks to Microsoft for liking me and finding my achievements and contributions to the community to be worth something. It’s good to know when you put in a lot of hard work that you get rewarded! I also want to thank many of the people I have worked with over the last 7 years. You guys have been great and I’m definitely standing on the shoulders of giants! Thanks to KDOT for giving me that first shot into professional programming and the experience and all of the training! A special thanks to @drusellers for kick starting me when I went stale in my learning back in 2007 and for always pushing me and bouncing ideas off of me. Without you I don’t think I would have made it this far. Thanks Alt.NET for keeping it fresh and funky! A very special thank you goes out to my wife for supporting me and locking me in the basement to work on all of my initiatives!

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• Duck checker in Python: does one exist?

  - by elliot42

  Python uses duck-typing, rather than static type checking. But many of the same concerns ultimately apply: does an object have the desired methods and attributes? Do those attributes have valid, in-range values? Whether you're writing constraints in code, or writing test cases, or validating user input, or just debugging, inevitably somewhere you'll need to verify that an object is still in a proper state--that it still "looks like a duck" and "quacks like a duck." In statically typed languages you can simply declare "int x", and anytime you create or mutate x, it will always be a valid int. It seems feasible to decorate a Python object to ensure that it is valid under certain constraints, and that every time that object is mutated it is still valid under those constraints. Ideally there would be a simple declarative syntax to express "hasattr length and length is non-negative" (not in those words. Not unlike Rails validators, but less human-language and more programming-language). You could think of this as ad-hoc interface/type system, or you could think of it as an ever-present object-level unit test. Does such a library exist to declare and validate constraint/duck-checking on Python-objects? Is this an unreasonable tool to want? :) (Thanks!) Contrived example: rectangle = {'length': 5, 'width': 10} # We live in a fictional universe where multiplication is super expensive. # Therefore any time we multiply, we need to cache the results. def area(rect): if 'area' in rect: return rect['area'] rect['area'] = rect['length'] * rect['width'] return rect['area'] print area(rectangle) rectangle['length'] = 15 print area(rectangle) # compare expected vs. actual output! # imagine the same thing with object attributes rather than dictionary keys.

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• Input handling between game loops

  - by user48023

  This may be obvious and trivial for you but as I am a newbie in programming I come with a specific question. I have three loops in my game engine which are input-loop, update-loop and render-loop. Update-loop is set to 10 ticks per second with a fixed timestep, render-loop is capped at around 60 fps and the input-loop runs as fast as possible. I am using one of the Javascript frameworks which provide such things but it doesn't really matter. Let's say I am rendering a tile map and the view of which elements are rendered depends on camera-like movement variables which are modified during key pressing. This is only about camera/viewport and rendering, no game physics involved here. And now, how can I handle input events among these loops to keep consistent engine reaction? Am I supposed to read the current variable modified with input and do some needed calculations in a update-loop and share the result so it could be interpolated in a render-loop? Or read the input effect directly inside the render-loop and put needed calculations inside? I thought interpreting user input inside an update-loop with a low tick rate would be inaccurate and kind of unresponsive while rendering with interpolation in the final view. How it is done properly in games overall?

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• How can a large, Fortran-based number crunching codebase be modernized?

  - by Dave Mateer

  A friend in academia asked me for advice (I'm a C# business application developer). He has a legacy codebase which he wrote in Fortran in the medical imaging field. It does a huge amount of number crunching using vectors. He uses a cluster (30ish cores) and has now gone towards a single workstation with 500ish GPUS in it. However where to go next with the codebase so: Other people can maintain it over next 10 year cycle Get faster at tweaking the software Can run on different infrastructures without recompiles After some research from me (this is a super interesting area) some options are: Use Python and CUDA from Nvidia Rewrite in a functional language. For example, F# or Haskell Go cloud based and use something like Hadoop and Java Learn C What has been your experience with this? What should my friend be looking at to modernize his codebase? UPDATE: Thanks @Mark and everyone who has answered. The reasons my friend is asking this question is that it's a perfect time in the projects lifecycle to do a review. Bringing research assistants up to speed in Fortran takes time (I like C#, and especially the tooling and can't imagine going back to older languages!!) I liked the suggestion of keeping the pure number crunching in Fortran, but wrapping it in something newer. Perhaps Python as that seems to be getting a stronghold in academia as a general-purpose programming language that is fairly easy to pick up. See Medical Imaging and a guy who has written a Fortran wrapper for CUDA, Can I legally publish my Fortran 90 wrappers to Nvidias' CUFFT library (from the CUDA SDK)?.

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