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• Tools for game script / storyboard

  - by Pietro Polsinelli

  I am searching for a tool that will help in writing a game script. By "script" I mean the text core of a storyboard - without the drawing drafts, which may or may not be there (yet). What I'm thinking of will let write a piece of text of the script, define a simplified workflow from that step, and then define the text of next steps, and so on. Searching online, I found Inform http://inform7.com/ ("A Design System for Interactive Fiction Based on Natural Language") which in theory is exactly what I am searching for, but trying to use it it has this model of a space (a dungeon, a library) where you are picking up objects and exploring them. In my case I am designing more a Sims like game, the flow is entirely different. Considering non specific software, mind mapping tools miss the linearity of the process. What I am writing is a directed graph - simply a work-flow, but the way I want to design it is more text based than work-flow based. SO what I'm doing now is using a text editor, which I'll transform directly in code. Any suggestions?

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• Software Installation Failure!

  - by NIKOS ANTONIOU

  I get the same error whenever I try to install software on my laptop, for example: I want to install Pavucontrol. So, I open the terminal and I type sudo apt-get install pavucontrol and my terminal output is: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: libgconfmm-2.6-1c2 libglademm-2.4-1c2a libpulse-mainloop-glib0 padevchooser paman paprefs pavumeter pulseaudio-module-zeroconf The following NEW packages will be installed: libgconfmm-2.6-1c2 libglademm-2.4-1c2a libpulse-mainloop-glib0 padevchooser paman paprefs pavucontrol pavumeter pulseaudio-module-zeroconf 0 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 0 to remove and 172 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B/345kB of archives. After this operation, 2044kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y perl: warning: Setting locale failed. perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings: LANGUAGE = (unset), LC_ALL = (unset), LANG = "el_GR.UTF-8" are supported and installed on your system. perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C"). Can't exec "locale": No such file or directory at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Encoding.pm line 16. Use of uninitialized value $Debconf::Encoding::charmap in scalar chomp at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Encoding.pm line 17. dpkg: `ldconfig' not found on PATH. dpkg: 1 expected program(s) not found on PATH. NB: root's PATH should usually contain /usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin and /sbin. E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2) What is the problem and how do I fix it?

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• Automated testing tool development challenges (for embedded software)

  - by Karthi prime

  My boss want to come up with the proposal for the following tool: An IDE: Able to build, compile, debug, via JTAG programming for the micro-controller. A Test Suite, reads the code in the IDE, auto generates the test cases, and it gives the in-target unit testing results(which is done by controlling code execution in the micro-controller via IDE). A no-overhead code coverage tool which interacts with the test suite and IDE. My work is to obtain the high level architecture of this tool, so as to proceed further. My current knowledge: There are tool-chains available from the chip manufacturer for the micro-controllers which can be utilized along with an open-source IDE like Eclipse, and along with an open-source burner, a complete IDE for a micro-controller can be done. Test cases can be auto-generated by reading the source file through the process of parsing, scripting, based on keywords. Test suite must be able to command the IDE to control, through breakpoints, and read the register contents from the microcontroller - This enables the in-target unit testing. An no-overhead code coverage should be done by no-overhead code instrumentation so as to execute those in the resource constraint environment of the micro-controller. I have the following questions: Any advice on the validity of my understanding? What are the challenges I will have during the development? What are the helpful open-source tools regarding this? What is the development time for this software? Thanks

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• Turning a problem into a data

  - by Fogmeister

  OK, I have an app that I'm creating but I'm just really not sure about how to approach the problem. The idea is fairly simple. I'm just not sure how to wrap it in a data model (or even if I should). TBH I feel like I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be. How it works. The app will have circles along the top in a row that need to be connected to circles along the bottom in a row. 10 circles at the top. 10 at the bottom. One connection per pair of dots. Anyway, I can get the dots to connect I'm just not sure how to wrap it in a data model so that I can analyse what has been connected and see if it is right or not. The circles will be questions and answers. I can make an array of question objects with a question and answer properties. I can then display these as the dot pairs. I'm just not sure how to record which questions have been connected to which answers. It is valid for a user to connect a wrong answer as they all get checked at the end. I was thinking of using SpriteKit but this isn't a restriction. I could use UIKit or something else. TBH, this question is fairly language free as I'm just after a way of modelling it.

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• Putting DSMD into Remission

  - by Justin Greenwood

  As a programmer with over ten years of professional experience, I've often suffered from DSMD (distraction surplus/motivation deficit) disorder. I know I'm not alone. Many of my colleagues have shared their experiences with this productivity cancer to me in support groups or in moments of inebriated intimacy. Often, I observe friends unknowingly surrendering to it - sitting at their computer, cycling through the same set of web sites (blogs, facebook, youtube, news providers, wikipeida, etc.), over and over again. Intermittently, they get up, take a walk around the office, make small talk with their colleagues, get another cup of coffee, then sit down and start the cycle all over again. It is completely controlled by the subconscious mind and will destroy your ability to get into that groove you used to live in back in your better days. Programming requires extended periods of focused attention, and this type of behavior will really kill productivity and in the end, when deadlines are near, launch your stress level to near emotional breakdown levels.DiagnosisThe best way to diagnose infection is to completely disconnect your devices from the internet while working. If you find yourself launching web browsers every minute or so, then you're down with the sickness.TreatmentA few techniques I've found that will help send this ailment into regression are as follows:Segment your day into two to three hour work segments. For example: 9:00-11:00, 1:00-3:00, 3:30-5:00.Define a few small one to two hour tasks you want to accomplish in your day. Assign each of those tasks to one of the short work segments.If possible, turn off the internet and any other distractions during these work segments (at least until you regain control of your browsing habits) - this includes instant messaging and email. You can check your email and waste time surfing in the hours between work segments.Reward yourself on productive days with a beer or whatever butters your muffins.

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• Why do programmers write closed source applications and then make them free? [closed]

  - by Ken

  As an entrepreneur/programmer who makes a good living from writing and selling software, I'm dumbfounded as to why developers write applications and then put them up on the Internet for free. You've found yourself in one of the most lucrative fields in the world. A business with 99% profit margin, where you have no physical product but can name your price; a business where you can ship a buggy product and the customer will still buy it. Occasionally some of our software will get a free competitor, and I think, this guy is crazy. He could be making a good living off of this but instead chose to make it free. Do you not like giant piles of money? Are you not confident that people would pay for it? Are you afraid of having to support it? It's bad for the business of programming because now customers expect to be able to find a free solution to every problem. (I see tweets like "is there any good FREE software for XYZ? or do I need to pay $20 for that".) It's also bad for customers because the free solutions eventually break (because of a new OS or what have you) and since it's free, the developer has no reason to fix it. Customers end up with free but stale software that no longer works and never gets updated. Customer cries. Developer still working day job cries in their cubicle. What gives? PS: I'm not looking to start an open-source/software should be free kind of debate. I'm talking about when developers make a closed source application and make it free.

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• good literature for teaching object oriented thinking in C [closed]

  - by Dipan Mehta

  Quite often C is the primary platform for the development. And when things are large scale, I have seen partitioning of the system as different objects is quite a natural thing. Some or many of the object orientated analysis and design principles are used here very well. This is not a debate question about whether or not C is a good candidate for object oriented programming or not. This is also NOT a question how to do OO in C. You can refer to this question and there are probably many such citations. As far as I am concerned, I have learned some of this things while working with many open source and commercial projects. (libjpeg, ffmpeg, Gstreamer which is based on GObject). I can probably extend a few references that explains some of these concepts such as - 1. Event Helix article, 2. Linux Mag article 3. one of my answers which links Schreiner's reference. Unfortunately, when we induct younger folks, it seems too hard to make them learn all of it the hard way. Usually, when we say it's C, a general reaction is to throw away all of the "Object thinking". Looking for help extending above references from those who have been in the similar areas of work. Are there any good formal literature that explains how Object thinking can be made to use while you are working in C? I have seen tons of book on general "object oriented paradigms" but they all focus on advanced languages mostly not in C. You see most C books - but most focus only on the syntax and the obfuscated corners of C and that's it. There are hardly ANY good reference, specially books or any systematic (I mean formal) literature on how to apply OO in C. This is very surprising given that so many large scale open source projects use C which are truly using this very well; but we hardly see any good formal literature on this subject.

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• How to adopt scrum agile methodology for a small .Net team

  - by Thabo

  I am working on a small product based company developing .Net applications. There is a small team with 5-6 developers. I am a person responsible for planning everything. But my primary role is Software developer. Now our current project is very unstable because of poor organization. Today my boss called me and told to submit a report about required resources, appropriate methodology, required man power and their salary scales to make the current project success. I know I don’t have enough organization skills and I need to go deep in my programming skills. So I need to focus only in the development. So I can’t manage the project anymore. Now I am searching some other ways to make ongoing development success. My questions are What is the suitable agile methodology to my team? Is Scrum is suitable for above mentioned scenario? If we adopt Scrum, what we have to do next? (I think hiring new one to manage the project is more suitable. So we have to get Scrum master and some other developers.) Are there any resources (books, Blogs and etc) to get some tips and advices to solve this problem? If Scrum is not a suitable methodology for our scenario, what else can be more suitable methodology to adopt? Can anyone give a good solution for my problem?

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• Dynamic model interactions

  - by Richard

  I am just curious as to how in many games (namely games like arkham asylum/city, manhunt, hitman) do they make it so that your character can "grab" a character in front of you and do stuff to them. I know this may sound very confusing but for an example go to youtube and search "hitman executions", and the first video is an example of what i'm asking. Basically I'm wondering how they make your model dynamically interact with whatever other model you come across, so in hitman when you come up behind some one with the fibre wire you strangle the other character or if you have the anesthetic you come up behind some person and put your hand over there mouth while they struggle and slowly go to the floor where you lay them down. I am confused as to whether it was animated to use two models using specific bone/skeletal identifiers, if it is just two completely separate animations that are played at the correct time to make it look like they are actually interacting or something else all together. I am not an animator so i assume most of what i just said is not right but i hope that some one can understand what i mean and provide an answer. PS) I am a programmer and I am in the process of building a hitmanesque game, just because i love that style of game and I want to increase my skills on something fun, so if you do know what i'm talking about have some examples with involving both models and programming (i use c++ and mainly Ogre3D at the moment but i am getting into unity and XNA) i would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

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• Writing Java in Java

  - by Skeith

  I have been using Java for several months at work now and am becoming mildly competent in it. The problem I think I am having is that I program C++ in Java . By that I mean I have always used C++ and am treating Java as a simple syntax change instead of appreciate if for its own language. For instance a static variable in C++ is the same as a normal variable in Java as Java is all classes so they maintain there values between function calls. Little things like this are tripping me up constantly as I am self taught. What I want is to invest the time to become a good java programmer not just a C++ programmer that can write in Java. The problem is I do not know how to do this. I have tried reading the Java doc pages but I find them very clinical and hard to understand. So what I am looking for is recommendations on how I can learn to think in Java. Books that teach Java concepts not Java syntax, online tutorials that I can work through that give it a context, established Java traditions/best practices and any other thing that you could recommend.

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• What are some efficient ways to set up my environment when working on a remote site?

  - by Prefix

  Hello fellow Programmers, I am still a relatively new programmer and have recently gotten my first on-campus programming position. I am the sole dev responsible for 8 domains as well as 3 small sized PHP web apps. The campus has its web environment divided into staging and live servers -- we develop on the staging via SFTP and then push the updates to the live server through a web GUI. I use Sublime Text 2 and the Sublime SFTP plugin currently for all my dev work (its my preferred editor). If I am just making an edit to a page I'll open that individual file via the ftp browser. If I am working on the PHP web app projects, I have the app directory mapped to a local folder so that when I save locally the file is auto-uploaded through Sublime SFTP. I feel like this workflow is slow and sub-optimal. How can I improve my workflow for working with remote content? I'd love to set up a local environment on my machine as that would eliminate the constant SFTP upload/download, but as I said there are many sites and the space required for a local copy of the entire domain would be quite large and complex; not to mention keeping it updated with whatever the latest on the staging server is would be a nightmare. Anyone know how I can improve my general web dev workflow from what I've described? I'd really like to cut out constantly editing over FTP but I'm not sure where to start other than ripping the entire directory and dumping it into XAMP.

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• Are there any real-world cases for C++ without exceptions?

  - by Martin

  In When to use C over C++, and C++ over C? there is a statement wrt. to code size / C++ exceptions: Jerry answers (among other points): (...) it tends to be more difficult to produce truly tiny executables with C++. For really small systems, you're rarely writing a lot of code anyway, and the extra (...) to which I asked why that would be, to which Jerry responded: the main thing is that C++ includes exception handling, which (at least usually) adds some minimum to the executable size. Most compilers will let you disable exception handling, but when you do the result isn't quite C++ anymore. (...) which I do not really doubt on a technical real world level. Therefore I'm interested (purely out of curiosity) to hear from real world examples where a project chose C++ as a language and then chose to disable exceptions. (Not just merely "not use" exceptions in user code, but disable them in the compiler, so that you can't throw or catch exceptions.) Why does a project chose to do so (still using C++ and not C, but no exceptions) - what are/were the (technical) reasons? Addendum: For those wishing to elaborate on their answers, it would be nice to detail how the implications of no-exceptions are handled: STL collections (vector, ...) do not work properly (allocation failure cannot be reported) new can't throw Constructors cannot fail

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• You are or will be a laid off programmer - what do you do a year ago, right now, tomorrow, and next week?

  - by Adam Davis

  Many programmers, software engineers, and other technology professionals are out of work, facing layoffs, or are unprepared for layoffs though they feel secure right now. What should every programmer do right now (even if secure in their current job) to prepare them for layoffs down the road? If your boss came to your cubicle while you read this and laid you off: What would you do immediately after? What would you do tomorrow? What would you do next week? It obvious that one should always have an up to date resume, always get recommendations from people when they see you at your best (not when you're looking for a new job), etc. What are the things, step by step, that every programmer should do (or should consider doing) long before they are laid off, when they're laid off, and shortly after being laid off? This is a question with many possible facets. While I want to encourage discussion to center around programming career based answers, please reconsider before downvoting someone because they're thinking in terms of how they're going to prevent going into debt. Bonus catch-22 type question: You can study a new language or technology while out of work, but most places want you to have more than 1-2 months experience in a working environment, not just from a learning exercise. Is it worthwhile to place a priority on new (ideally in demand) skills, or should you instead hone existing skills?

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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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• How to get Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition on Windows 7

  - by thanigai

  Visual studio 2010 is an amzing release from Microsoft. I have tried the beta 1,2 of Visual Studio 2010 and finally the full version is released. I am also interested in the latest edition of Windows which nothing but our Windows 7. Next to Vista I like this version very much. Out of curiosity I have installed the prebuild version of Windows 7. I tried installing the express edition here and it failed making me disappointed. I tried two or three times and finally I decided to download the trial version of Windows 7. After that I can install the Visual Studio 2010 express edition easily. I have given the link below from where I have downloaded the file. http://www.microsoft.com/express/downloads/ Here the link give is through Web PI Installer. Other option is you can download the ISO image file and burn them to a disc or use a virtual disc This Visual Web developer will provide the Sql Server engine alone. To get a Sql Server Management Studio get from the following link http://www.microsoft.com/express/Database/InstallOptions.aspx That's it all the things necessary for the web application programming is ready. Ah I forget to tell about the Silverlight. Please find the Silverlight 4 latest tools from the below link (WCF RIA services is the main update) http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/ Silverlight 4 Tools(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eff8a0da-0a4d-48e8-8366-6ddf2ecad801&displaylang=en) Expression Blend 4 trial(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=88484825-1b3c-4e8c-8b14-b05d025e1541&displaylang=en) I think the reader would have enjoyed on how to get these things. Please let me know if you are not clear with any of these things.  Thanks, Thani

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• How do I get my programs to communicate with each other

  - by Benjamin Lindqvist

  I'm basically just getting started with programming. The problem I have with progressing is that I have a hard time learning stuff just for the sake of knowing them - I do better when there's a problem to be solved or a task to be completed so I can learn 'on the job'. So I'm interested in starting some interesting project. I know the basics of Python, Java, Matlab and some C++ aswell and I know enough about microcontrollers to make LED blink etc. The type of stuff I'm looking for is for example scraping some weather forecast site (with Python) and outputting the chance of rain to a LCD display, or a program that makes chrome open and log in to facebook if I say "HAL, time for facebook", or more generally, a program that reads serial/USB input, looks for certain sequences and sends instructions to some other program if it finds one. Do you open some kind of shared stream in which one program reads and one writes? What do I need to read up on to do accomplish this myself? I have no experience with linux or the linux terminal, but looking over peoples shoulders makes me suspect that's what people use. Is that correct?

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• Windows Embedded Compact 7

  - by Valter Minute

  This will be the official name of the new release of Windows CE. Windows Embedded Compact 7 is available as a public CTP and it already supports a wide range of CPUs and both the device emulator and VirtualPC emulated environments. So I’ll have to learn a new (and longer) name for my favorite OS… but I (and all my two readers!) will be able to test it as soon as the download from connect web site completes (I'm sorry for my readers, but you'll have to download it by yourselves). Here’s a link for the download (it's free but you’ll have to register on connect with a valid LiveId): https://connect.microsoft.com/windowsembeddedce Remember that this is still a beta (or “Community Technology Preview” if you speak marketing language) and so it’s better to not install it on your main development PC (or, at least, backup everything before installation) and that the features and performances you’ll get from this beta may not be the same ones of the final release of the OS. You can discover the new features of Windows Embedded Compact on the new “official” webpage on microsoft website: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/compact7.mspx or on Olivier’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/obloch/archive/2010/06/01/windows-embedded-compact-7-announced-and-public-ctp-available.aspx I hope to be able to post some interesting content about Windows Embedded Compact 7 soon (and maybe be able to shorten it’s name in CE7 in my blog posts, when I'll ensure that both my readers are not worketing for Microsoft's marketing department …). Technorati Tags: "Windows Embedded Compact 7"

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• T-SQL select where and group by date

  - by bconlon

  T-SQL has never been my favorite language, but I need to use it on a fairly regular basis and every time I seem to Google the same things. So if I add it here, it might help others with the same issues, but it will also save me time later as I will know where to look for the answers!! 1. How do I SELECT FROM WHERE to filter on a DateTime column? As it happens this is easy but I always forget. You just put the DATE value in single quotes and in standard format: SELECT StartDate FROM Customer WHERE StartDate >= '2011-01-01' ORDER BY StartDate 2. How do I then GROUP BY and get a count by StartDate? Bit trickier, but you can use the built in DATEADD and DATEDIFF to set the TIME part to midnight, allowing the GROUP BY to have a consistent value to work on: SELECT DATEADD (d, DATEDIFF(d, 0, StartDate),0) [Customer Creation Date], COUNT(*) [Number Of New Customers] FROM Customer WHERE StartDate >= '2011-01-01' GROUP BY DATEADD(d, DATEDIFF(d, 0, StartDate),0) ORDER BY [Customer Creation Date] Note: [Customer Creation Date] and [Number Of New Customers] column alias just provide more readable column headers. 3. Finally, how can you format the DATETIME to only show the DATE part (after all the TIME part is now always midnight)? The built in CONVERT function allows you to convert the DATETIME to a CHAR array using a specific format. The format is a bit arbitrary and needs looking up, but 101 is the U.S. standard mm/dd/yyyy, and 103 is the U.K. standard dd/mm/yyyy. SELECT CONVERT(CHAR(10), DATEADD(d, DATEDIFF(d, 0, StartDate),0), 103) [Customer Creation Date], COUNT(*) [Number Of New Customers] FROM Customer WHERE StartDate >= '2011-01-01' GROUP BY DATEADD(d, DATEDIFF(d, 0, StartDate),0) ORDER BY [Customer Creation Date]  #

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• How do I get others to see past my prior inexperience?

  - by Kevin

  My core question is how do I proceed from the following predicament. I will be honest with you, I wasted my College Experience. I slacked off and didn't take any of my comp sci classes that seriously, somehow i still got out with a 3.25 GPA. But truth be told I learned nothing. I befriended most of my professors who went pretty lenient on me in terms of grading. However, I basically came out of College knowing how to program a simple calculator in VB.Net. I was (to my great surprise) hired by a very large respected company in Denver as a Junior developer. Well the long and the short of it is that I knew so little about programming that I quickly became the office pariah and was almost fired due to my incompetence. It has been 8 months now and I feel I have learned some basic things and I am not as picked on as I used to be by the other developers. However, everyone hates me and the first few months have given the other developers a horrible perception of me. I am no longer afraid of code or learning, but I have put my self in the precarious position of being the scapegoat of our department. I hate going to work every day because no one there is my friend and pretty much everyone is hostile to me. What should I do? Any advice?

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• Does Agile force developers to work more?

  - by Shooshpanchick

  Looking at common Agile practices it seems to me that they (intentionally or unintentionally?) force developer to spend more time actually working as opposed to reading blogs/articles, chatting, coffee breaks and just plain procrastinating. In particular: 1) Pair programming - the biggest work-forcer, just because it is inconvenient to do all that procrastination when there are two of you sitting together. 2) Short stories - when you have a HUGE chunk of work that must be done in e.g. a month, it is pretty common to slack off in the first three weeks and switch to OMG DEADLINE mode for the last one. And with the little chunks (that must be done in a day or less) it is exact opposite - you feel that time is tight, there is no space for maneuvering, and you will be held accountable for the task pretty soon, so you start working immediately. 3) Team communication and cohesion - when you underperform in a slow, distanced and silent environment it may feel ok, but when at the end of the day at Scrum meeting everyone boasts what they have accomplished and you have nothing to say you may actually feel ashamed. 4) Testing and feedback - again, it prevents you from keeping tasks "99% ready" (when it's actually around 20%) until the deadline suddenly happens. Do you feel that under Agile you work more than under "conventional" methodologies? Is this pressure compensated by the more comfortable environment and by the feeling of actually getting right things done quickly?

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• Advanced PHP book [closed]

  - by Aaditi Sharma

  I've gone and stumbled across a lot of recommendations for PHP books, including on SO, however could not find a reasonable & convincible answer for this. Is there a really good advanced book for PHP. Background: I've done almost 8 months in PHP. I know the basics. I go through php.net very often. I've played around with Codeigniter, amongst other frameworks. I've been doing JavaScript for almost 2 years, and specifically thank Douglas Crockford for this, I completely changed the way I code JavaScript. I spend a lot of time travelling, and would love to read a book about PHP, that includes the awesome parts and even when something doesn't quite work in PHP. (As a note a lot of previous answers on SO and programmers give varied results.) I have to place an order through a library which has it's limitations. One book that some of experienced PHP programmers could recommend would be helpful. I have gone through http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books, which do NOT have books related to PHP.

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• Experienced programmer, beginner at web design, tools for effective maintainable web design? [closed]

  - by Clinton

  I do quite a bit of programming in my work, which I'm comfortable with, but recently I've being trying to do some web-design for non-work related reasons. I've got a Drupal site up and running, and added some content. But they all look fairly basic. Header with some content. It doesn't look particularly polished. Anyway, as an example, what I wanted to do was make some "bubbles", each with some text in them. From a programmers point of view, say: bubble(question_text, answer_text) might expand to a box with some border, with "Question: " + question_text then "Answer: " + answer_text. Of course I'd have lots of these bubbles, but I'd like to change their look and feel in one place, so simple HTML would be a maintainable nightmare. I also want to lay them out on the screen in some fashion. I was thinking a mixture of javascript and CSS, or possibly use PHP which Drupal uses. On the other hand, I fear I might be taking a 1990s approach to this, and that there's actually tools available now that make this process a lot easier. I'm just wondering what the best approach to this sort of task is? Should I be using offline web design software and copying the code to Drupal, and if so, any recommendations? I'm sorry if my question is a bit vague, because I'm not really sure what question I should be asking. I'd appreciate if you answer and comment, and I'll try my best to be more specific as I understand more.

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• Does unit testing lead to premature generalization (specifically in the context of C++)?

  - by Martin

  Preliminary notes I'll not go into the distinction of the different kinds of test there are, there are already a few questions on these sites regarding that. I'll take what's there and that says: unit testing in the sense of "testing the smallest isolatable unit of an application" from which this question actually derives The isolation problem What is the smallest isolatable unit of a program. Well, as I see it, it (highly?) depends on what language you are coding in. Micheal Feathers talks about the concept of a seam: [WEwLC, p31] A seam is a place where you can alter behavior in your program without editing in that place. And without going into the details, I understand a seam -- in the context of unit testing -- to be a place in a program where your "test" can interface with your "unit". Examples Unit test -- especially in C++ -- require from the code under test to add more seams that would be strictly called for for a given problem. Example: Adding a virtual interface where non-virtual implementation would have been sufficient Splitting -- generalizing(?) -- a (smallish) class further "just" to facilitate adding a test. Splitting a single-executable project into seemingly "independent" libs, "just" to facilitate compiling them independently for the tests. The question I'll try a few versions that hopefully ask about the same point: Is the way that Unit Tests require one to structure an application's code "only" beneficial for the unit tests or is it actually beneficial to the applications structure. Is the generalization code need to exhibit to be unit-testable useful for anything but the unit tests? Does adding unit tests force one to generalize unnecessarily? Is the shape unit tests force on code "always" also a good shape for the code in general as seen from the problem domain? I remember a rule of thumb that said don't generalize until you need to / until there's a second place that uses the code. With Unit Tests, there's always a second place that uses the code -- namely the unit test. So is this reason enough to generalize?

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• What's a way to implement a flexible buff/debuff system?

  - by gkimsey

  Overview: Lots of games which RPG-like statistics allow for character "buffs", ranging from simple "Deal 25% extra damage" to more complicated things like "Deal 15 damage back to attackers when hit." The specifics of each type of buff aren't really relevant. I'm looking for a (presumably object-oriented) way to handle arbitrary buffs. Details: In my particular case, I have multiple characters in a turn-based battle environment, so I envisioned buffs being tied to events like "OnTurnStart", "OnReceiveDamage", etc. Perhaps each buff is a subclass of a main Buff abstract class, where only the relevant events are overloaded. Then each character could have a vector of buffs currently applied. Does this solution make sense? I can certainly see dozens of event types being necessary, it feels like making a new subclass for each buff is overkill, and it doesn't seem to allow for any buff "interactions". That is, if I wanted to implement a cap on damage boosts so that even if you had 10 different buffs which all give 25% extra damage, you only do 100% extra instead of 250% extra. And there's more complicated situations that ideally I could control. I'm sure everyone can come up with examples of how more sophisticated buffs can potentially interact with each other in a way that as a game developer I may not want. As a relatively inexperienced C++ programmer (I generally have used C in embedded systems), I feel like my solution is simplistic and probably doesn't take full advantage of the object-oriented language. Thoughts? Has anyone here designed a fairly robust buff system before?

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• Process Improvement and the Data Professional

  - by BuckWoody

  Don’t be afraid of that title – I’m not talking about Six Sigma or anything super-formal here. In many organizations, there are more folks in other IT roles than in the Data Professional area. In other words, there are more developers, system administrators and so on than there are the “DBA” role. That means we often have more to do than the time we need to do it. And, oddly enough, the first thing that is sacrificed is process improvement – the little things we need to do to make the day go faster in the first place. Then we get even more behind, the work piles up and…well, you know all about that. Earlier I challenged you to find 10-30 minutes a day to study. Some folks wrote back and asked “where do I start”? Well, why not be super-efficient and combine that time with learning how to make yourself more efficient? Try out a new scripting language, learn a new tool that automates things or find out ways others have automated their systems. In general, find out what you’re doing and how, and then see if that can be improved. It’s kind of like doing a performance tuning gig on yourself! If you’re pressed for time, look for bite-sized articles (like the ones I’ve done here for PowerShell and SQL Server) that you can follow in a “serial” fashion. In a short time you’ll have a new set of knowledge you can use to make your day faster. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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