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• How to deal with fellow programmer who likes to delegate task with lack any support from boss [closed]

  - by Rudy

  I have a problem with my fellow programmer. We are currently working together in a small project that need to be shipped every 2 weeks. She has a tendency to ask for help for every issues that she is facing. Whether it's a compile error, algorithm problem or even sync/merge issue that caused by herself. She does not even bother to check Google or try to find out by herself. I can be asked to help her for 5-10 times a day. Everyday her husband keeps calling (4-6 times a day), and most of the code that has been delivered by her are actually incorrect. Today she framed me for sending the wrong delivery product. She went home after lunch on the delivery day without telling PM and other team member on that day and her code she commited does not work at all. It's not even tested. I have no choice to roll back her code and cleaning her code just for sake to able to run the product. I have warned her about her defective codes for almost 3 iterations. She said when she was not around I should be able to test her module for her. I snapped and yelled that I am not her slave and directly reported to my boss. However, my boss is not a person that can manage and care about software quality. What is the most important thing to my boss is delivery of product, whether it tested or not. He can even asked us to deliver something that not even tested by QA to the client, on the next day. Most of our suggestion is not followed by him. He even asked me to apologize to her because I snapped. I am tired of the whole situation. This kind of thing keeps repeated. I do have saving to be able to survive for 6 months and the idea of resigning is keep haunting. There is nothing else that can be learned in my current job and I had been in a better environment than this. What should I do with the situation?

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• Innovation for Retailers

  - by David Dorf

  One of my main objectives for this blog is to point out emerging technologies and how they might apply to the retail industry.  But ideas are just the beginning; retailers either have to rely on vendors or have their own lab to explore these ideas and see which ones work.  (A healthy dose of both is probably the best solution.)  The Nordstrom Innovation Lab is a fine example of dedicating resources to cultivate ideas and test prototypes. The video below, from 2011, is a case study in which the team builds an iPad app that helps customers purchase sunglasses in the store.  Customers take pictures of themselves wearing different sunglasses, then can do side-by-side comparisons. There are a few interesting take-aways from their process.  First, they are working in the store alongside employees and customers.  There's no concept of documenting all the requirements then building the product.  Instead, they work closely with those that will be using the app in order to fully understand what's needed.  When they find an issue, they change the software onsite and try again.  This iterative prototyping ensures their product hits the mark.  Feels like Extreme Programming if you recall that movement. Second, they have time-boxed the project to one week.  Either it works or it doesn't, and either way they've only expended a week's worth of resources.  Innovation always entails failure, and those that succeed are often good at detecting failure quickly then adjusting.  Fail fast and fail often. Third, its not always about technology.  I was impressed they used paper designs to walk through user stories and help understand the needs of the customer.  Pen and paper is the innovator's most powerful tool. Our Retail Applied Research (RAR) team uses some of these concepts in our development process.  (Calling it a process is probably overkill.)  We try to give life to concepts quickly so the rest of organization can help us decide if we're heading the right direction.  It takes many failures before finding a successful product.

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• Reasons to Use a VM For Development

  - by George Stocker

  Background: I work at a start-up company, where one team uses Virtual Machines to connect to a remote server to do their development, and another team (the team I'm on) uses local IIS/SQL Server 2005/Visual Studio installations to conduct work. Team VM is located about 1000 miles from Team Non-VM, and the servers the VMs run off of are located near Team VM (Latency, for those that are wondering, is about 50ms). A person high in the company is pushing for Team Non-VM to use virtual machines for programming, development, and testing. The latter point we agree on -- we want Virtual Machines to test configurations and various aspects of the web application in a 'clean' state. The Problem: What we don't agree on is having developers using RDP to connect to a desktop remotely that contains Visual Studio, SQL Server, and IIS to do the same development we could do locally on our laptops. I've tried the VM set-up, and besides the color issue, there is a latency issue that is rather noticeable, not to mention that since we're a start-up, a good number of employees work from home on occasion with our work laptops, and this move would cut off the laptops. They'd be turned in. Reasons to Use Remote VMs for Development (Not Testing!): Here are the stated reasons that this person wants us to use VMs: They work for TeamVM. They keep the source code "safe". If we want to work from home, we could just use our home PCs. Licenses (I don't know what the argument is, only that it's been used). Reasons not to use Remote VMs for Development: Here are the stated reasons why we don't want to use VMs: We like working from home. We get a lot done on our own time. We're not going to use our Home PCs to do work related stuff. The Latency is noticeable. Support for the VMs (if they go down, or if we need a new VM) takes a while. We don't have administrative privileges on the VM, and are unable to change settings as needed. What I'm looking for from the community is this: What reasons would you give for not using VMs for development? Keep in mind these are remote VMs -- this isn't a VM running on a local desktop. It's using the laptop (or a desktop) as a thin client for a remote VM. Also, on the other side of the coin: Is there something we're missing that makes VMs more palatable for development? Edit: I think 'safe' is used in term of corporate espionage, or more correctly if the Laptop gets stolen, the person who stole would have access to our source code. The former (as we've pointed out, is always going to be a possibility -- companies stop that with litigation, there isn't a technical solution (so far as I can see)). The latter point is ( though I don't know its usefulness in a corporate scenario) mitigated by Truecrypt'ing the entire volume.

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• Collaborative work (small team) - Best practices

  - by LEM01

  I'm currently working in a very small team of programmers (2-3) and I'm looking for advices/best practices on how to organise our work. We're all working on the same application using PHP. Today we're kind of all working on our way. Today situation: List item that have to be worked on by each dev 1/week. What has to be done is defined at a high functional level (ex: Build the search engine for this product..) Commit / merge our individual branches (git) every week before the next meeting No real dev rules, no code review No test written (aouutch) Problems faced: Code quality issue: discovering someone else code is sometime tough (inline, variable+function+class names, spaces, comments..) Changes in already existing classes (impact on someone else work) Responsibility of each dev unclear: after getting someone else code and discover something messy, should I make the change? Should he make the change? How to plan those things,... What I'm looking for: Basically I'm looking into structuring the way we develop things in order to avoid frustration and improve overall quality. How to define coding standards (naming convention, code rules...)? Do you you any validation script to make sure code is valid before committing? Do you think that defining an architect role in the team is needed? Someone that would actually define what has to be developed during the next phase. By defining interfaces or class descriptions that have to be written. (Does it make sense in such a small team?) Today we're losing time into understanding what others did or tried to do, we're also losing time in discussion like "you should have done it that way! Why is this class doing that and not that..? Shouldn't we have a embedded class rather that this set of data...". I'm looking into a work process, maybe with more defined responsibilities and process in order to improve our performance. If you have experience, advices, best practices or anything to share that we could benefit from it will be much appreciated! Thanks a lot for your time!

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• Keep coding the wrong way to remain consistent? [closed]

  - by bwalk2895

  Possible Duplicate: Code maintenance: keeping a bad pattern when extending new code for being consistent, or not? To keep things simple let's say I am responsible for maintaining two applications, AwesomeApp and BadApp (I am responsible for more and no that is not their actual names). AwesomeApp is a greenfield project I have been working on with other members on my team. It was coded using all the fancy buzzwords, Multilayer, SOA, SOLID, TDD, and so on. It represents the direction we want to go as a team. BadApp is a application that has been around for a long time. The architecture suffers from many sins, namely everything is tightly coupled together and it is not uncommon to get a circular dependency error from the compiler, it is almost impossible to unit test, large classes, duplicate code, and so on. We have a plan to rewrite the application following the standards established by AwesomeApp, but that won't happen for a while. I have to go into BadApp and fix a bug, but after spending months coding what I consider correctly, I really don't want do continue perpetuate bad coding practices. However, the way AwesomeApp is coded is vastly different from the way BadApp is coded. I fear implementing the "correct" way would cause confusion for other developers who have to maintain the application. Question: Is it better to keep coding the wrong way to remain consistent with the rest of the code in the application (knowing it will be replaced) or is it better to code the right way with an understanding it could cause confusion because it is so much different? To give you an example. There is a large class (1000+ lines) with several functions. One of the functions is to calculate a date based on an enumerated value. Currently the function handles all the various calculations. The function relies on no other functionality within the class. It is self contained. I want to break the function into smaller functions (at the very least) and put them into their own classes and hide those classes behind an interface (at the most) and use the factory pattern to instantiate the date classes. If I just broke it out into smaller functions within the class it would follow the existing coding standard. The extra steps are to start following some of the SOLID principles.

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• What books would I recommend?

  - by user12277104

  One of my mentees (I have three right now) said he had some time on his hands this Summer and was looking for good UX books to read ... I sigh heavily, because there is no shortage of good UX books to read. My bookshelves have titles by well-read authors like Nielsen, Norman, Tufte, Dumas, Krug, Gladwell, Pink, Csikszentmihalyi, and Roam. I have titles buy lesser-known authors, many whom I call friends, and many others whom I'll likely never meet. I have books on Excel pivot tables, typography, mental models, culture, accessibility, surveys, checklists, prototyping, Agile, Java, sketching, project management, HTML, negotiation, statistics, user research methods, six sigma, usability guidelines, dashboards, the effects of aging on cognition, UI design, and learning styles, among others ... many others. So I feel the need to qualify any book recommendations with "it depends ...", because it depends on who I'm talking to, and what they are looking for.  It's probably best that I also mention that the views expressed in this blog are mine, and may not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle. There. I'm glad I got that off my chest. For that mentee, who will be graduating with his MS HFID + MBA from Bentley in the Fall, I'll recommend this book: Universal Principles of Design -- this is a great book, which in its first edition held "100  ways to enhance usability, influence perception, increase appeal, make better design decisions, and teach through design." Granted, the second edition expanded that number to 125, but when I first found this book, I felt like I'd discovered the Grail. Its research-based principles are all laid out in 2 pages each, with lots of pictures and good references. A must-have for the new grad. Do I have recommendations for a book that will teach you how to conduct a usability test? Yes, three of them. To communicate what we do to management? Yes. To create personas? Yep -- two or three. Help you with UX in an Agile environment? You bet, I've got two I'd recommend. Create an excellent presentation? Uh hunh. Get buy-in from your team? Of course. There are a plethora of excellent UX books out there. But which ones I recommend ... well ... it depends. 

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• OAuth with RestSharp in Windows Phone

  - by midoBB

  Nearly every major API provider uses OAuth for the user authentication and while it is easy to understand the concept, using it in a Windows Phone app isn’t pretty straightforward. So for this quick tutorial we will be using RestSharp for WP7 and the API from getglue.com (an entertainment site) to authorize the user. So the first step is to get the OAuth request token and then we redirect our browserControl to the authorization URL private void StartLogin() {   var client = new RestClient("https://api.getglue.com/"); client.Authenticator = OAuth1Authenticator.ForRequestToken("ConsumerKey", "ConsumerSecret"); var request = new RestRequest("oauth/request_token"); client.ExecuteAsync(request, response => { _oAuthToken = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "oauth_token"); _oAuthTokenSecret = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "oauth_token_secret"); string authorizeUrl = "http://getglue.com/oauth/authorize" + "?oauth_token=" + _oAuthToken + "&style=mobile"; Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { browserControl.Navigate(new Uri(authorizeUrl)); }); }); } private static string GetQueryParameter(string input, string parameterName) { foreach (string item in input.Split('&')) { var parts = item.Split('='); if (parts[0] == parameterName) { return parts[1]; } } return String.Empty; } Then we listen to the browser’s Navigating Event private void Navigating(Microsoft.Phone.Controls.NavigatingEventArgs e) { if (e.Uri.AbsoluteUri.Contains("oauth_callback")) { var arguments = e.Uri.AbsoluteUri.Split('?'); if (arguments.Length < 1) return; GetAccessToken(arguments[1]); } } private void GetAccessToken(string uri) { var requestToken = GetQueryParameter(uri, "oauth_token"); var client = new RestClient("https://api.getglue.com/"); client.Authenticator = OAuth1Authenticator.ForAccessToken(ConsumerKey, ConsumerSecret, _oAuthToken, _oAuthTokenSecret); var request = new RestRequest("oauth/access_token"); client.ExecuteAsync(request, response => { AccessToken = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "oauth_token"); AccessTokenSecret = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "oauth_token_secret"); UserId = GetQueryParameter(response.Content, "glue_userId"); }); } Now to test it we can access the user’s friends list var client = new RestClient("http://api.getglue.com/v2"); client.Authenticator = OAuth1Authenticator.ForProtectedResource(ConsumerKey, ConsumerSecret, GAccessToken, AccessTokenSecret); var request = new RestRequest("/user/friends"); request.AddParameter("userId", UserId,ParameterType.GetOrPost); // request.AddParameter("category", "all",ParameterType.GetOrPost); client.ExecuteAsync(request, response => { TreatFreindsList(); }); And that’s it now we can access all OAuth methods using RestSharp.

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• Cannot install "ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver" (SystemError)

  - by Fisherman John

  I have just installed a fresh copy of 12.04.1 64bit. I formatted my PC completely and enabled updates during the installation. After the installation was complete, I went on updating my software. However, when I wanted to install the additional drivers using the Additional Drivers tool (namely "ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver"), it gave me this error: SystemError: E:Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. The same error shows up if I try installing the post-release updates driver. Installing the drivers from the terminal results in this output: XXXXXX:~$ sudo apt-get install fglrx [sudo] password for XXXXX: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: fglrx : Depends: lib32gcc1 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libc6-i386 but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages." I get this using "sudo apt-get update": http://pastebin.com/AWAtDXjY But "sudo apt-get install fglrx" still get me this error: http://pastebin.com/RYM55bVN & "sudo apt-get -f install fglrx" gives me this error: http://pastebin.com/xxekajvP Any help would be greatly appreciated. (Please note that I'm new to Linux, coming directly from Windows. I have tried Ubuntu twice or so before, but it was not for a long period of time. The drivers got installed smoothly the few times I've tried Ubuntu, but post-release updates never worked for me.) [I am going to work now, so I can only answer from my phone. Can't really test any new solutions you may give me until ~10 hours from now on. Maybe more.] @stonedsquirrel When I try to run that command, I get this error: "XXXXXX:~$ sudo apt-get install fglrx [sudo] password for XXXXX: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: fglrx : Depends: lib32gcc1 but it is not going to be installed Depends: libc6-i386 but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages." ie. I get the same error. ( I am Fisherman John, dunno how to login & thereby respond to your comment again _ )

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• Android Array Lag?

  - by Mike

  I am making a platform game for Android. It is sort of a tile based game. I added bullets and enemies with AI and a bunch of tile types. I created a simple map with no Enemies. Everything was running well and smooth until I shot a bunch of bullets randomly everywhere. A couple of hundreds of bullets later, the FPS lowered. I made a test to find out if the bullets were the problem so I made another simple map with just a tile to stand on and left it for a while. Minutes later, I played around with it a bit to check if the FPS changed and it didnt. I reloaded the same map and shot a lot of bullets. Minutes later, the FPS was visibly lower even after the number of bullets were zero. Points to note: Programmed FPS is 30 Tested on a Samsung Galaxy Y and Samsung Galaxy W Any tile, enemy, bullet that is off screen is not drawn to prevent lag Bullets collide with Tiles (if they dont collide with in 450 frames, they are removed from the array) I used List bullets = new ListArray(); I used bullets.add(new Bullet(x, y, params...)); I used for(...){ if(...){ bullets.remove(i); } } Code for bullet: private void drawBullets(Canvas canvas) { for (int i = 0; i < bullets.size(); i++) { Bullet b = bullets.get(i); b.update(canvas); //updates physics if (b.t > blm) { //if the bullet is past its expiry bullets.remove(i); i--; } else { if (svx((b.x)) > 0 && svx(b.x) < width && svy((b.y)) > 0 && svy(b.y) < height) { // if bullet is not off screen b.draw(canvas); // draw the bullet } } } } I tried searching for solutions and references but I have no luck. I'm guessing that the lag has something to do with the Array and the Bullets or Classes that I've loaded? I'm not sure! Someone please help! Thanks in advance! :)

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• SDL - Getting a single keypress event instead of a keystate?

  - by MrKatSwordfish

  Right now I'm working on a simple SDL project, but I've hit an issue when trying to get a single keypress event to skip past a splash screen. Right now, there are 4 start-up splash screens that I would like to be able to skip with a single keypress (of any key). My issue is that, as of now, if I hold down a key, it skips through each splash screen to the very last one immediately. The splash screens are stored as an array of SDL surfaces which are all loaded at the initialization of the state. I have an variable called currentSplashImage that controls which element of the array is being rendered on the screen. I've set it up so that whenever there's a SDL_KEYDOWN event, it triggers a single incrementation of the currentSplashImage variable. So, I'm really not sure why my code isn't working correctly. For some reason, when I hold down a button, it seems to be treating the held button as a new key press event every time it ticks through the code. Does anyone know how I can go about fixing this issue? [Here's a snippet of code that I've been using...] void SplashScreenState::handleEvents() { SDL_PollEvent( &localEvent ); if ( localEvent.type == SDL_KEYDOWN ) { if ( currentSplashImage < 3 && currentSplashImage >= 0) { currentSplashImage++; } } else if ( localEvent.type == SDL_QUIT ) { smgaEngine.setRunning(false); } } I should also mention that the SDL_Event 'localEvent' is part of the GameState parent class, while this event handling code is part of a SplashScreenState subclass. If anyone knows why this is happening, or if there is any way to improve my code, It'd be helpful to me! :D I'm still a very new programmer, trying to learn. UPDATE: I added a std::cout line to that the code runs multiple times with a single KEYDOWN event. I also tried disabling SDL_EnableKeyRepeat, but it didn't fix the issue. void SplashScreenState::handleEvents() { SDL_PollEvent( &localEvent ); if ( localEvent.type == SDL_KEYDOWN ) { if ( currentSplashImage < 3 && currentSplashImage >= 0) { currentSplashImage++; std::cout << "KEYDOWN.."; //<---- test cout line } } else if ( localEvent.type == SDL_QUIT ) { smgaEngine.setRunning(false); } } This prints out "KEYDOWN..KEYDOWN..KEYDOWN.." in the cout stream when a button is held.

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• SharePoint 2010 HierarchicalConfig Caching Problem

  - by Damon

  We've started using the Application Foundations for SharePoint 2010 in some of our projects at work, and I came across a nasty issue with the hierarchical configuration settings.  I have some settings that I am storing at the Farm level, and as I was testing my code it seemed like the settings were not being saved - at least that is what it appeared was the case at first.  However, I happened to reset IIS and the settings suddenly appeared.  Immediately, I figured that it must be a caching issue and dug into the code base.  I found that there was a 10 second caching mechanism in the SPFarmPropertyBag and the SPWebAppPropertyBag classes.  So I ran another test where I waited 10 seconds to make sure that enough time had passed to force the caching mechanism to reset the data.  After 10 minutes the cache had still not cleared.  After digging a bit further, I found a double lock check that looked a bit off in the GetSettingsStore() method of the SPFarmPropertyBag class: if (_settingStore == null || (DateTime.Now.Subtract(lastLoad).TotalSeconds) > cacheInterval)) { //Need to exist so don't deadlock. rrLock.EnterWriteLock(); try { //make sure first another thread didn't already load... if (_settingStore == null) { _settingStore = WebAppSettingStore.Load(this.webApplication); lastLoad = DateTime.Now; } } finally { rrLock.ExitWriteLock(); } } What ends up happening here is the outer check determines if the _settingStore is null or the cache has expired, but the inner check is just checking if the _settingStore is null (which is never the case after the first time it's been loaded).  Ergo, the cached settings are never reset.  The fix is really easy, just add the cache checking back into the inner if statement. //make sure first another thread didn't already load... if (_settingStore == null || (DateTime.Now.Subtract(lastLoad).TotalSeconds) > cacheInterval) { _settingStore = WebAppSettingStore.Load(this.webApplication); lastLoad = DateTime.Now; } And then it starts working just fine. as long as you wait at least 10 seconds for the cache to clear.

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• Frame rate on one of two machines running same code seems to be capped at 60 for no reason

  - by dennmat

  ISSUE I recently moved a project from my laptop to my desktop(machine info below). On my laptop the exact same code displays the fps(and ms/f) correctly. On my desktop it does not. What I mean by this is on the laptop it will display 300 fps(for example) where on my desktop it will show only up to 60. If I add 100 objects to the game on the laptop I'll see my frame rate drop accordingly; the same test on the desktop results in no change and the frames stay at 60. It takes a lot(~300) entities before I'll see a frame drop on the desktop, then it will descend. It seems as though its "theoretical" frames would be 400 or 500 but will never actually get to that and only do 60 until there's too much to handle at 60. This 60 frame cap is coming from no where. I'm not doing any frame limiting myself. It seems like something external is limiting my loop iterations on the desktop, but for the last couple days I've been scratching my head trying to figure out how to debug this. SETUPS Desktop: Visual Studio Express 2012 Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Laptop: Visual Studio Express 2010 Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit The libraries(allegro, box2d) are the same versions on both setups. CODE Main Loop: while(!abort) { frameTime = al_get_time(); if (frameTime - lastTime >= 1.0) { lastFps = fps/(frameTime - lastTime); lastTime = frameTime; avgMspf = cumMspf/fps; cumMspf = 0.0; fps = 0; } /** DRAWING/UPDATE CODE **/ fps++; cumMspf += al_get_time() - frameTime; } Note: There is no blocking code in the loop at any point. Where I'm at My understanding of al_get_time() is that it can return different resolutions depending on the system. However the resolution is never worse than seconds, and the double is represented as [seconds].[finer-resolution] and seeing as I'm only checking for a whole second al_get_time() shouldn't be responsible. My project settings and compiler options are the same. And I promise its the same code on both machines. My googling really didn't help me much, and although technically it's not that big of a deal. I'd really like to figure this out or perhaps have it explained, whichever comes first. Even just an idea of how to go about figuring out possible causes, because I'm out of ideas. Any help at all is greatly appreciated.

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• Play Framework Plugin for NetBeans IDE

  - by Geertjan

  The start of minimal support for the Play Framework in NetBeans IDE 7.3 Beta would constitute (1) recognizing Play projects, (2) an action to run a Play project, and (3) classpath support. Well, most of that I've created already, as can be seen, e.g., below you can see logical views in the Projects window for Play projects (i.e., I can open all the samples that come with the Play distribution). Right-clicking a Play project lets you run it and, if the embedded browser is selected in the Options window, you can see the result in the IDE. Make a change to your code and refresh the browser, which immediately shows you your changes: What needs to be done, among other things: A wizard for creating new Play projects, i.e., it would use the Play command line to create the application and then open it in the IDE. Integration of everything available on the Play command line. Maybe the logical view, i.e., what is shown in the Projects window, should be changed. Right now, only the folders "app" and "test" are shown there, with everything else accessible in the Files window, as can be seen in the screenshot above. More work on the classpath, i.e., I've hardcoded a few things just to get things to work correctly. Options window extension to register the Play executable, instead of the current hardcoded solution. Scala integrations, i.e., investigate if/how the NetBeans Scala plugin is helpful and, if not, create different/additional solutions. E.g., the HTML templates are partly in Scala, i.e., need to embed Scala support into HTML. Hyperlinking in the "routes" file, as well as special support for the "application.conf" file. Anyone interested, especially if you're a Play fan (a "playboy"?), in joining me in working on this NetBeans plugin? I'll be uploading the sources to a java.net repository soon. It will be here, once it has been made publicly accessible: http://java.net/projects/nbplay/sources/nbplay Kind of cool detail is that the NetBeans plugin is based on Maven, which means that you could use any Maven-supporting IDE to work on this plugin.

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• Designing Snake AI

  - by Ronald

  I'm new to this gamedev stackechange but have used the math and cs sites before. So, I'm in a competition to create AI for a snake that will compete with 3 other snakes in 5 minute rounds where the rules are much like the traditional Nokia snake game except that there are 4 snakes, the board is 50x50 and there are a number of small obstacles on the field. Like the Nokia game, your snake grows when you get to the fruit and if you crash into yourself, another snake or the wall you die. The game runs with a 50ms delay between moves and the server sends the new game state every 50ms which the code must analyze and what not and output the next move. The winner is the snake who had the longest length at any point in the game. Tie breakers are decided by kills. So far what I have done is implemented an A* graph search from each snake to determine if my snake is the closest to the apple and if it is, it goes for the apple. Otherwise, I made a neat little algorithm to determine the emptiest area of the board, which my snake goes for, to anticipate the next apple. Other than this I have some small survivability checks to ensure my snake isn't walking into a trap that it can't get out and if it does get stuck, I have something to give it a better chance of getting out. ... Anyway, I've tested my snake on a test server and it does quite well. Generally, my strategy of only going for the apple when its a sure thing and finding space when its not makes it grow faster than any other snakes (some snakes do a similar thing but often just go to the middle or a corner) sometimes it wins these trial games but is more often than not beaten by the same snake who seems to have the edge on survivability(my snake grows quicker but then dies somehow and this other snake just plods slowly along and wins on consistency. So I was wondering about any ideas anyone has to try and improve my snake. Or maybe ideas at a new approach to take. My functions and classes are good so changes that might seem drastic shouldn't be too bad. I encourage all ideas. Any thoughts ??

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• Using extension methods to decrease the surface area of a C# interface

  - by brian_ritchie

  An interface defines a contract to be implemented by one or more classes.  One of the keys to a well-designed interface is defining a very specific range of functionality. The profile of the interface should be limited to a single purpose & should have the minimum methods required to implement this functionality.  Keeping the interface tight will keep those implementing the interface from getting lazy & not implementing it properly.  I've seen too many overly broad interfaces that aren't fully implemented by developers.  Instead, they just throw a NotImplementedException for the method they didn't implement. One way to help with this issue, is by using extension methods to move overloaded method definitions outside of the interface. Consider the following example: .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: Consolas, "Courier New", Courier, Monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } 1: public interface IFileTransfer 2: { 3: void SendFile(Stream stream, Uri destination); 4: } 5:   6: public static class IFileTransferExtension 7: { 8: public static void SendFile(this IFileTransfer transfer, 9: string Filename, Uri destination) 10: { 11: using (var fs = File.OpenRead(Filename)) 12: { 13: transfer.SendFile(fs, destination); 14: } 15: } 16: } 17:   18: public static class TestIFileTransfer 19: { 20: static void Main() 21: { 22: IFileTransfer transfer = new FTPFileTransfer("user", "pass"); 23: transfer.SendFile(filename, new Uri("ftp://ftp.test.com")); 24: } 25: } In this example, you may have a number of overloads that uses different mechanisms for specifying the source file. The great part is, you don't need to implement these methods on each of your derived classes.  This gives you a better interface and better code reuse.

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• Wi-Fi triangulation using android smartphone

  - by user1887020

  How to make application for wifi triangulation using android platform? This project will be implemented inside the building. No GPS needed. Just using wifi only and doing triangulation to get the current position of the user inside the building. I got minimum 3 access point to implement it. But how to start code in android and integrate triangulation inside android coding? I got the algorithm to do it.. but is there any chance that I can get it done? Because this project is actually want to replace the floor directory board into a smartphone floor directory so that user can find their way to their room for example to the lab. public class Triangulation { public Triangulation() { int dist_1, dist_2, dist_3; //variable for the distances int x1, x2, x3; //coordinates of x int y1, y2, y3; //coordinates of y int final_dist1, final_dist2; //final distance after calc dist_1 = 1; dist_2 = 2; dist_3 = 3; x1 = 5; //test inputs x2 = 2; x3 = 4; y1 = 2; y2 = 2; y3 = 5; final_dist1 = ((dist_1 * dist_1) - (dist_2 * dist_2) – (x1 * x1) + (x2 * x2) - (y1 * y1) + (y2 * y2)) / 2; final_dist2 = ((dist_2 * dist_2) - (dist_3 * dist_3) – (x2 * x2) + (x3 * x3) - (y2 * y2) + (y3 * y3)) / 2; initial_a1 = x1 - x2; initial_a2 = x2 - x3; initial_b1 = y1 - y2; initial_b2 = y2 - y3; //-----------------------STEP 1-------------------------------------- int a1 = initial_a1 / initial_a1; int a2 = initial_a2 / initial_a1; int b1 = initial_b1 / initial_a1; int b2 = initial_b2 / initial_a1; final_dist1 /= initial_a1; final_dist2 /= initial_a1; //-----------------------STEP 2-------------------------------------- a2 = a2 -a2; final_dist2 = -(initial_a2) * final_dist1 + final_dist2; //-----------------------STEP 3-------------------------------------- a2 /= b2; final_dist2 = final_dist2 / b2; b2 /= b2; //-------------------------STEP 4----------------------------------- b1 = b1 - b1; final_dist1 = -(initial_b1) * final_dist2 + final_dist1; } }

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• Using all Ten IO slots on a 7420

  - by user12620172

  So I had the opportunity recently to actually use up all ten slots in a clustered 7420 system. This actually uses 20 slots, or 22 if you count the clusteron card. I thought it was interesting enough to share here. This is at one of my clients here in southern California. You can see the picture below. We have four SAS HBAs instead of the usual two. This is becuase we wanted to split up the back-end taffic for different workloads. We have a set of disk trays coming from two SAS cards for nothing but Exadata backups. Then, we have a different set of disk trays coming off of the other two SAS cards for non-Exadata workloads, such as regular user file storage. We have 2 Infiniband cards which allow us to do a full mesh directly into the back of the nearby, production Exadata, specifically for fast backups and restores over IB. You can see a 3rd IB card here, which is going to be connected to a non-production Exadata for slower backups and restores from it.The 10Gig card is for client connectivity, allowing other, non-Exadata Oracle databases to make use of the many snapshots and clones that can now be created using the RMAN copies from the original production database coming off the Exadata. This allows for a good number of test and development Oracle databases to use these clones without effecting performance of the Exadata at all.We also have a couple FC HBAs, both for NDMP backups to an Oracle/StorageTek tape library and also for FC clients to come in and use some storage on the 7420.  Now, if you are adding more cards to your 7420, be aware of which cards you can place in which slots. See the bottom graphic just below the photo.  Note that the slots are numbered 0-4 for the first 5 cards, then the "C" slots which is the dedicated Cluster card (called the Clustron), and then another 5 slots numbered 5-9. Some rules for the slots: Slots 1 & 8 are automatically populated with the two default SAS cards. The only other slots you can add SAS cards to are 2 & 7. Slots 0 and 9 can only hold FC cards. Nothing else. So if you have four SAS cards, you are now down to only four more slots for your 10Gig and IB cards. Be sure not to waste one of these slots on a FC card, which can go into 0 or 9, instead.  If at all possible, slots should be populated in this order: 9, 0, 7, 2, 6, 3, 5, 4

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• How to create a JMS durable subscriber in WebLogic Server?

  - by lmestre

  WebLogic Server Provides a set of examples that are very helpful to get started with Weblogic ServerHere you can check how to install the examples:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/doc.1111/e14142/prepare.htmAfter you have installed the examples, you can find the example you want to review, in this case TopicReceive, here:wlserver_10.3/samples/server/examples/src/examples/jms/topicTo review details of the specific example, you can open:wlserver_10.3/samples/server/examples/src/examples/jms/topic/instructions.htmlTo create a Durable Subscriber, you can just set the client ID  and invoke createDurableSubscriber instead of calling createSubscriber, i.e.:    tconFactory = (TopicConnectionFactory)       PortableRemoteObject.narrow(ctx.lookup(JMS_FACTORY),                                   TopicConnectionFactory.class);    tcon = tconFactory.createTopicConnection();    //Set Client ID for this Durable Subscriber    tcon.setClientID("GT2");    tsession = tcon.createTopicSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);    topic = (Topic)       PortableRemoteObject.narrow(ctx.lookup(topicName),                                   Topic.class);    // Create Durable Subscription    tsubscriber = tsession.createDurableSubscriber(topic, "Test");    tsubscriber.setMessageListener(this);    tcon.start(); Enjoy!   You can read more about this here:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/web.1111/e13727/advpubsub.htm#CHDEBABChttp://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/web.1111/e13727/manage_apps.htm#i1097671    http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/apirefs.1111/e13943/WebLogic.Messaging.ISession.CreateDurableSubscriber_overload_2.html

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• while(true) and loop-breaking - anti-pattern?

  - by KeithS

  Consider the following code: public void doSomething(int input) { while(true) { TransformInSomeWay(input); if(ProcessingComplete(input)) break; DoSomethingElseTo(input); } } Assume that this process involves a finite but input-dependent number of steps; the loop is designed to terminate on its own as a result of the algorithm, and is not designed to run indefinitely (until cancelled by an outside event). Because the test to see if the loop should end is in the middle of a logical set of steps, the while loop itself currently doesn't check anything meaningful; the check is instead performed at the "proper" place within the conceptual algorithm. I was told that this is bad code, because it is more bug-prone due to the ending condition not being checked by the loop structure. It's more difficult to figure out how you'd exit the loop, and could invite bugs as the breaking condition might be bypassed or omitted accidentally given future changes. Now, the code could be structured as follows: public void doSomething(int input) { TransformInSomeWay(input); while(!ProcessingComplete(input)) { DoSomethingElseTo(input); TransformInSomeWay(input); } } However, this duplicates a call to a method in code, violating DRY; if TransformInSomeWay were later replaced with some other method, both calls would have to be found and changed (and the fact that there are two may be less obvious in a more complex piece of code). You could also write it like: public void doSomething(int input) { var complete = false; while(!complete) { TransformInSomeWay(input); complete = ProcessingComplete(input); if(!complete) { DoSomethingElseTo(input); } } } ... but you now have a variable whose only purpose is to shift the condition-checking to the loop structure, and also has to be checked multiple times to provide the same behavior as the original logic. For my part, I say that given the algorithm this code implements in the real world, the original code is the most readable. If you were going through it yourself, this is the way you'd think about it, and so it would be intuitive to people familiar with the algorithm. So, which is "better"? is it better to give the responsibility of condition checking to the while loop by structuring the logic around the loop? Or is it better to structure the logic in a "natural" way as indicated by requirements or a conceptual description of the algorithm, even though that may mean bypassing the loop's built-in capabilities?

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• Testing and Validation – You Really Do Have The Time

  - by BuckWoody

  One of the great advantages in my role as a Technical Specialist here at Microsoft is that I get to work with so many great clients. I get to see their environments and how they use them, and the way they work with SQL Server. I’ve been a data professional myself for many years. Over that time I’ve worked with many database platforms, lots of client applications, and written a lot of code in many industries. For a while I was also a consultant, so I got to see how other shops did things as well. But because I now focus on a “set” base of clients (over 500 professionals in over 150 companies) I get to see them over a longer period of time. Many of them help me understand how they use the product in their projects, and I even attend some DBA regular meetings. I see the way the product succeeds, and I see when it fails. Something that has really impacted my way of thinking is the level of importance any given shop is able to place on testing and validation. I’ve always been a big proponent of setting up a test system and following a very disciplined regimen to make sure it will work in production for any new projects, and then taking the lessons learned into production as standards. I know, I know – there’s never enough time to do things right like this. Yet the shops I see that do it have the same level of work that they output as the shops that don’t. They just make the time to do the testing and validation and create a standard that they will follow in production. And what I’ve found (surprise surprise) is that they have fewer production problems. OK, that might seem obvious – but I’ve actually tracked it and those places that do the testing and best practices really do save stress, time and trouble from that effort. We all think that’s a good idea, but we just “don’t have time”. OK – but from what I’m seeing, you can gain time if you spend a little up front. You may find that you’re actually already spending the same amount of time that you would spend in doing the testing, you’re just doing it later, at night, under the gun. Food for thought.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• git workflow for separating commits

  - by gman

  Best practices with git (or any VCS for that matter) is supposed to be to have each commit do the smallest change possible. But, that doesn't match how I work at all. For example I recently I needed to add some code that checked if the version of a plugin to my system matched the versions the system supports. If not print a warning that the plugin probably requires a newer version of the system. While writing that code I decided I wanted the warnings to be colorized. I already had code that colorized error message so I edited that code. That code was in the startup module of one entry to the system. The plugin checking code was in another path that didn't use that entry point so I moved the colorization code into a separate module so both entry points could use it. On top of that, in order to test my plugin checking code works I need to go edit UI/UX code to make sure it tells the user "You need to upgrade". When all is said and done I've edited 10 files, changed dependencies, the 2 entry points are now both dependant on the colorization code, etc etc. Being lazy I'd probably just git add . && git commit -a the whole thing. Spending 10-15 minutes trying to manipulate all those changes into 3 to 6 smaller commits seems frustrating which brings up the question Are there workflows that work for you or that make this process easier? I don't think I can some how magically always modify stuff in the perfect order since I don't know that order until after I start modifying and seeing what comes up. I know I can git add --interactive etc but it seems, at least for me, kind of hard to know what I'm grabbing exactly the correct changes so that each commit is actually going to work. Also, since the changes are sitting in the current directory it doesn't seem like it would be easy to run tests on each commit to make sure it's going to work short of stashing all the changes. And then, if it were to stash and then run the tests, if I missed a few lines or accidentally added a few too many lines I have no idea how I'd easily recover from that. (as in either grab the missing lines from the stash and then put the rest back or take the few extra lines I shouldn't have grabbed and shove them into the stash for the next commit. Thoughts? Suggestions? PS: I hope this is an appropriate question. The help says development methodologies and processes

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• Working the Chart Percentages

  - by Tim Dexter

  Charting in BIP is such fun, well sometimes it is. Not so much today, at least not for Ron in San Diego. He needed a horizontal bar chart showing values plotted for various test areas with value labels at the end of the bars. Simple enough right? The wrinkle, they were percentage values so he needed to see '56%' not '56'! Still, it should be simple enough but the percentage formatting has a requirement for your values to be in a decimal format i.e. 0.56 not 56.0. 56.0 gets formatted as 5600%. OK, so either pull the values out as decimals or use the div function to divide the values in the chart by 100 e.g. <xsl:value-of select="myval div 100)" /> Now I can use the following the chart XML to format the percentages as I need them:   <Graph ... > ... <MarkerText visible="true"> <Y1ViewFormat> <ViewFormat numberType="NUMTYPE_PERCENT" decimalDigit="0" numberTypeUsed="true" leadingZeroUsed="true" decimalDigitUsed="true"/> </Y1ViewFormat> </MarkerText> ... </Graph>   That gets me the values shown the way I want but the auto axis formatting gets me from 0 >> 1. I now need to go in and add the formatting for the axis too.   <Graph ...> ... <Y1Axis axisMinAutoScaled="false" axisMinValue="0.0" axisMaxAutoScaled="false" axisMaxValue="1.0" majorTickStepAutomatic="true"> <ViewFormat numberType="NUMTYPE_PERCENT" decimalDigit="0" scaleFactor="SCALEFACTOR_NONE" numberTypeUsed="true" leadingZeroUsed="true" decimalDigitUsed="true" scaleFactorUsed="true"/> </Y1Axis>   Now I have a chart that's showing the percentage values and formatting axis scale correctly for me too. You can of course mess with the attributes above to get more decimal points on your labels, etc. Happy Charting!

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• Does OO, TDD, and Refactoring to Smaller Functions affect Speed of Code?

  - by Dennis

  In Computer Science field, I have noticed a notable shift in thinking when it comes to programming. The advice as it stands now is write smaller, more testable code refactor existing code into smaller and smaller chunks of code until most of your methods/functions are just a few lines long write functions that only do one thing (which makes them smaller again) This is a change compared to the "old" or "bad" code practices where you have methods spanning 2500 lines, and big classes doing everything. My question is this: when it call comes down to machine code, to 1s and 0s, to assembly instructions, should I be at all concerned that my class-separated code with variety of small-to-tiny functions generates too much extra overhead? While I am not exactly familiar with how OO code and function calls are handled in ASM in the end, I do have some idea. I assume that each extra function call, object call, or include call (in some languages), generate an extra set of instructions, thereby increasing code's volume and adding various overhead, without adding actual "useful" code. I also imagine that good optimizations can be done to ASM before it is actually ran on the hardware, but that optimization can only do so much too. Hence, my question -- how much overhead (in space and speed) does well-separated code (split up across hundreds of files, classes, and methods) actually introduce compared to having "one big method that contains everything", due to this overhead? UPDATE for clarity: I am assuming that adding more and more functions and more and more objects and classes in a code will result in more and more parameter passing between smaller code pieces. It was said somewhere (quote TBD) that up to 70% of all code is made up of ASM's MOV instruction - loading CPU registers with proper variables, not the actual computation being done. In my case, you load up CPU's time with PUSH/POP instructions to provide linkage and parameter passing between various pieces of code. The smaller you make your pieces of code, the more overhead "linkage" is required. I am concerned that this linkage adds to software bloat and slow-down and I am wondering if I should be concerned about this, and how much, if any at all, because current and future generations of programmers who are building software for the next century, will have to live with and consume software built using these practices. UPDATE: Multiple files I am writing new code now that is slowly replacing old code. In particular I've noted that one of the old classes was a ~3000 line file (as mentioned earlier). Now it is becoming a set of 15-20 files located across various directories, including test files and not including PHP framework I am using to bind some things together. More files are coming as well. When it comes to disk I/O, loading multiple files is slower than loading one large file. Of course not all files are loaded, they are loaded as needed, and disk caching and memory caching options exist, and yet still I believe that loading multiple files takes more processing than loading a single file into memory. I am adding that to my concern.

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• Is it dangerous for me to give some of my Model classes Control-like methods?

  - by Pureferret

  In my personal project I have tried to stick to MVC, but I've also been made aware that sticking to MVC too tightly can be a bad thing as it makes writing awkward and forces the flow of the program in odd ways (i.e. some simple functions can be performed by something that normally wouldn't, and avoid MVC related overheads). So I'm beginning to feel justified in this compromise: I have some 'manager programs' that 'own' data and have some way to manipulate it, as such I think they'd count as both part of the model, and part of the control, and to me this feels more natural than keepingthem separate. For instance: One of my Managers is the PlayerCharacterManager that has these methods: void buySkill(PlayerCharacter playerCharacter, Skill skill); void changeName(); void changeRole(); void restatCharacter(); void addCharacterToGame(); void createNewCharacter(); PlayerCharacter getPlayerCharacter(); List<PlayerCharacter> getPlayersCharacter(Player player); List<PlayerCharacter> getAllCharacters(); I hope the mothod names are transparent enough that they don't all need explaining. I've called it a manager because it will help manage all of the PlayerCharacter 'model' objects the code creates, and create and keep a map of these. I may also get it to store other information in the future. I plan to have another two similar classes for this sort of control, but I will orchestrate when and how this happens, and what to do with the returned data via a pure controller class. This splitting up control between informed managers and the controller, as opposed to operating just through a controller seems like it will simplify my code and make it flow more. My question is, is this a dangerous choice, in terms of making the code harder to follow/test/fix? Is this somethign established as good or bad or neutral? I oculdn't find anything similar except the idea of Actors but that's not quite why I'm trying to do. Edit: Perhaps an example is needed; I'm using the Controller to update the view and access the data, so when I click the 'Add new character to a player button' it'll call methods in the controller that then go and tell the PlayerCharacterManager class to create a new character instance, it'll call the PlayerManager class to add that new character to the player-character map, and then it'll add this information to the database, and tell the view to update any GUIs effected. That is the sort of 'control sequence' I'm hoping to create with these manager classes.

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• Normal Redundancy (Double Mirroring) Option Available

  - by TammyBednar

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} The Oracle Database Appliance 2.4 Patch was released last week and provides you an option of ASM normal redundancy (double mirroring) during the initial deployment of the Database Appliance. The default deployment of the Oracle Database Appliance is high redundancy for the +DATA and +RECO disk groups. While there is 12TB of raw shared storage available, the Database Backup Location and Disk Group Redundancy govern how much usable storage is presented after the initial deployment is completed. The Database Backup Location options are Local or External. When the Local Backup Option is selected, this means that 60% of the available shared storage will be allocated for the Fast Recovery Area that contains database backups and archive logs. The External Backup Option will allocate 20% of the available shared storage to the Fast Recovery Area. So, let’s look at an example of High Redundancy and External Backups. Disk Group Redundancy – High --> Triple Mirroring to provide ~4TB of available storage Database Backup Location – External --> 20% of available shared storage allocated to +RECO +DATA = 3.2TB of usable storage, +RECO = 0.8TB of usable storage What about Normal Redundancy with External Backups? Disk Group Redundancy – Normal --> Double Mirroring to provide ~6TB of available storage Database Backup Location – External --> 20% of available shared storage allocated to +RECO +DATA = 4.8TB of usable storage, +RECO = 1.2TB of usable storage As a best practice, we would recommend using Normal Redundancy for your test and/or development Oracle Database Appliances and High Redundancy for production.

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