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  • How to correctly export UV coordinates from Blender

    - by KlashnikovKid
    Alright, so I'm just now getting around to texturing some assets. After much trial and error I feel I'm pretty good at UV unwrapping now and my work looks good in Blender. However, either I'm using the UV data incorrectly (I really doubt it) or Blender doesn't seem to export the correct UV coordinates into the obj file because the texture is mapped differently in my game engine. And in Blender I've played with the texture panel and it's mapping options and have noticed it doesn't appear to affect the exported obj file's uv coordinates. So I guess my question is, is there something I need to do prior to exporting in order to bake the correct UV coordinates into the obj file? Or something else that needs to be done to massage the texture coordinates for sampling. Or any thoughts at all of what could be going wrong? (Also here is a screen shot of my diffused texture in blender and the game engine. As you can see in the image, I have the same problem with a simple test cube not getting correct uv's either) http://www.digitalinception.net/blenderSS.png http://www.digitalinception.net/gameSS.png

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  • Should I ditch a creative pet project in lieu of one that would demonstrate skills more applicable to an employer?

    - by Hart Simha
    I am currently working on a project on github that I think would be a good demonstration of my initiative, creativity and enthusiasm. It is an educational game I am developing in pygame that enables the user to learn to improve their development productivity by using vim, specifically with python, though learning to code faster with vim should be transferable to any language. I think this is something that might have a mass appeal and benefit to a lot of people in a measurable way. -However- I am graduating from college in a month (my degree is computer science with a minor in english), with no experience that is relevant to helping me get any kind of job in the field, and a gpa that doesn't tout my merits. I could pursue a career in game development, but it's not necessarily what I'm most interested in, and see myself applying to startups around the country. To the places I am looking at applying, showing that I have experience with pygame is going to be largely irrelevant, except in demonstration of my ability to code, period. A lot of skills that ARE more marketable, such a data modeling, GIS, mobile development, javascript, .net framework, and various web development technologies, are not going to be showcased by this project (on the upside, employers do like to see familiarity with git and python). I'm wondering if I should sink all my free time in the next couple of months into this project, since I'm motivated and interested in it, and if the value of being able to demonstrate ambition and 'good ideas' (for lack of a better term, and in my own opinion) will compensate for the absence of demonstrating more sought-after skills. I am probably at a point where I should either commit fully to this project now, or put it on the backburner in favor of something else, and I am leaning towards continuing with what I am already working on, because I think it's a great idea, and something achievable to me with enough dedication over the next couple months. But the most important thing to me is being able to get a job out of college, which I am exceedingly concerned about as the professional landscape which I am navigating for the first time is a lot more intimidating than I could have anticipated, with almost every job (even short-term contract positions) requiring years of experience which I lack. Oh, and in case anyone is interested, my repository is here: www.github.com/hmsimha/vimagine

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  • Need Help With Conflicting Customer Support Goals?

    - by Tom Floodeen
    It seems that every OPS review Customer Support Executives are being asked to improve the customer KPIs while also improving gross margin. This is a tough road for even experienced leaders. You need to reduce your agents research time while increasing their answer accuracy. You want to spend less time training them while growing the number of products and systems being used. You have to deal with increasing service volumes but at the same time you need to focus on creating appropriate service insight. After all, to be a great support center you not only have to be good at answering questions, you also need to be good at preventing them.   Five Key Benefits of knowledge Management in Customer Service will help you start down the path meeting these, and other, objectives. With Oracle Knowledge Products, fully integrated with Oracle’s CRM solutions, you can accomplish both increased  service demand while driving your costs down. And you can handle both while positively impacting the satisfaction and loyalty of your customers.  Take advantage of Oracle to not only provide you with a great integrated tool suite, but also with the vision to drive you down the path of success.

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  • still about perl vs python but (to me) slightly different from what has been asked [closed]

    - by B Chen
    Being a newbie to coding, I read from this site that Perl is still as viable as it has been, while Python, quoted from someone else's post, is good but just "snake oil" (not sure what this refers to exactly though). So from the responses in that post, I got the gist that Perl is good and worthy to learn. My question is - pardon me for phrasing it in this "non-programmer's" way - Which one should I learn FIRST? (I am actually currently learning R) Here below is the background info - (a) I will be using it mostly for data mining and statistics analysis (b) Will there be this "first" and "later" issue with learning either Perl or Python? That is, after I become competent with one language, would there be a need to learn the second one (for a similar task??) (c) If there should be circumstances where I must learn the second one, would learning Perl FIRST be better than learning Python? I hope to learn as much from exchanging info here, so please help provide with more than just "it depends" type of info. Great many thanks to all who choose to respond to my query.

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  • Opportunity Nokia's

    - by Andrew Clarke
    Nokia’s alliance with Microsoft is likely to be good news for anyone using Microsoft technologies, and particularly for .NET developers. Before the announcement, the future wasn’t looking so bright for the ‘mobile’ version of Windows, Windows Phone. Microsoft currently has only 3.1% of the Smartphone market, even though it has been involved in it for longer than its main rivals. Windows Phone has now got the basics right, but that is hardly sufficient by itself to change its predicament significantly. With Nokia's help, it is possible. Despite the promise of multi-tasking for third party apps, integration with Microsoft platforms such as Xbox and Office, direct integration of Twitter support, and the introduction of IE 9 “later this year”, there have been frustratingly few signs of urgency on Microsoft’s part in improving the Windows Phone  product. Until this happens, there seems little prospect of reward for third-party developers brave enough to support the platform with applications. This is puzzling when one sees how well SQL Server and Microsoft’s other server technologies have thrived in recent years, under good leadership from a management that understands the technology. The same just hasn’t been true for some of the consumer products. In consequence, iPads and Android tablets have already exposed diehard Windows users, for the first time, to an alternative GUI for consumer Tablet PCs, and the comparisons aren’t always in Windows’ favour. Nokia’s problem is obvious: Android’s meteoric rise. Android now has 33% of the worldwide market for smartphones, while the market share of Nokia’s Symbian has dropped from 44% to 31%. As details of the agreement emerge, it would seem that Nokia will bring a great deal of expertise, such as imaging and Nokia Maps, to Windows Phone that should make it more competitive. It is wrong to assume that Nokia’s decline will continue: the shock of Android’s sudden rise could be enough to sting them back to their previous form, and they have Microsoft’s huge resources and marketing clout to help them. For the sake of the whole Windows stack, I really hope the alliance succeeds.

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  • Need Guidance Making HTML5 Canvas Game Engine

    - by Scriptonaut
    So I have some free time this winter break and want to build a simple 2d HTML5 canvas game engine. Mostly a physics engine that will dictate the way objects move and interact(collisions, etc). I made a basic game here: http://caidenhome.com/HTML%205/pong.html and would like to make more, and thought that this would be a good reason to make a simple framework for this stuff. Here are some questions: Does the scripting language have to be Javascript? What about Ruby? I will probably write it with jQuery because of the selecting powers, but I'm curious either way. Are there any great guides you guys know of? I want a fast guide that will help me bust out this engine sometime in the next 2 weeks, hopefully sooner. What are some good conventions I should be aware of? What's the best way to get sound? At the moment I'm using something like this: var audioElement = document.createElement('audio'); audioElement.setAttribute('src', 'paddle_col.wav'); audioElement.load(); I'm interested in making this engine lightweight and extremely efficient, I will do whatever it takes to get great speeds and processing power. I know this question is fairly vague, but I just need a push in the right direction. Thanks :)

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  • What tools should every programmer know?

    - by acidzombie24
    What are some tools every programmer know about? Some examples i thought were Source control. (No explanation needed) Profiler. Many could go without but its good to know how to use one when the occasion arise What else? I was thinking a bug report software but i havent used one so i wasnt sure. Should programmers know how to use TRAC? I remember in the past a person telling me if i was making a shared library i should know (Some Name) which generates docs from the source (in that case C++). What was that called and what else should i know about? -edit- what about team management software? any software you could not live without in a specific project would be a good mention. I'll also mention i use VMs frequently during the prototype or end phase to see if there are any issues on a clean XP or linux distro and if i forgot anything in my redistribution. I cant imagine the end/release and testing phase of a project without a VM.

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  • Architecture Standards &ndash; BPMN vs. BPEL for Business Process Management

    - by pat.shepherd
    I get asked often which business process standard an organization should use; BPMN or BPEL?  As I explain to folks, they both have strengths.  Here is a great article that helps understand the benefits of both and where to use them.  The good news is that, with Oracle SOA Suite and BPM suite, you have the option and flexibility to use both in the same SCA model and runtime container.  Good stuff. Here is the great article that Mark Nelson wrote: The right tool for the right job BPEL and BPMN are both ‘languages’ or ‘notations’ for describing and executing business processes. Both are open standards. Most business process engines will support one or the other of these languages. Oracle however has chosen to support both and treat them as equals. This means that you have the freedom to choose which language to use on a process by process basis. And you can freely mix and match, even within a single composite. (A composite is the deployment unit in an SCA environment.) So why support both? Well it turns out that BPEL is really well suited to modeling some kinds of processes and BPMN is really well suited to modeling other kinds of processes. Of course there is a pretty significant overlap where either will do a great job What BPM adds to SOA Suite | RedStack

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  • Improved Customer Experience, but at what Cost?

    - by Tony Berk
    We can all probably agree that improving your customers' experience is a good thing. But a key question many people are asking is will it help your organization and, in particular, what are the financial benefits?That's a good question, especially when companies ARE experiencing phenomenal return on investment (ROI). Of course, there are many factors that impact ROI or other measures of success, but we'd like to share some success stories as examples of customer experience in action and delivering positive results. If you would like to learn more about the economics of customer experience, see Brian Curran's presentation at the Oracle Customer Experience Summit last month. In this series of blog posts, we'll share actual customer stories. Today's example is Dell, which uses Oracle Real-Time Decisions (RTD) and Siebel CRM as part of their customer experience portfolio to better understand their customers' needs and wants and provide consistent interactions. Regular readers of this blog are probably familiar with Siebel, but RTD may be new to many of you. RTD is a complete decision management solution that delivers real-time decisions and recommendations and automatically renders decisions within a business process to create tailored messaging for every customer interaction.What does that mean? In the video below, Dell describes how customer experience is important not just for one interaction channel, but across all "vehicles." RTD is helping Dell understand customer behavior and communicate with the customer in a more relevant manner, across all communication  or interaction channels including sales and service call centers, email marketing and online. Dell continues to expand use of RTD because the benefits are showing up in sales, service and marketing results including 19% increase in close rates, faster issue resolution and 40% improvement in revenue per click in email marketing. Click here, to learn more about Oracle Customer Experience and stay tuned for more customer spotlights.

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  • Is '@' Error Suppression a Valid Technique for Testing for an Optional Array Key?

    - by MikeSchinkel
    Rarst and I were debating offline about the use of the '@' error suppression operator in PHP, specifically for use to test for existence of "optional" array keys, i.e. array keys that are being used as a switch here a their lack of existence in the array is functionally equivalent to the array having the key with a value equaling false. Here is pseudo-code for this scenario: function do_something( $args = array() ) { if ( @$args['switch'] ) { // Do something with this switch } // continue on... } vs. this approach: function do_something( $args = array() ) { if ( ! empty( $args['switch'] ) && $args['switch'] ) { // Do something with this switch } // continue on... } Of course in most use-cases, suppressing errors would not be A Good Thing(tm). However in this use-case where an array is passed with an optional element, it seems to me that it is actually a very good technique but I could be wrong and would like to hear other's opinions on the subject before I make up my mind. I do know that there are alleged performance hits for using the former approach but I'd like to know how they compare with the alternative and if they performance hits really matter in real world scenarios? P.S. I decided to post this because, after debating this offline with Rarst, he asked a more general question here on Programmers but didn't actually give a detailed example of the specific use-case we were debating. And since I'm pretty sure he'll want to use the out-of-context answers on that other question as justification for why the above is "bad" I decided I needed to get opinions on this specific use-case.

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  • From TFS to Git

    - by Saeed Neamati
    I'm a .NET developer and I've used TFS (team foundation server) as my source control software many times. Good features of TFS are: Good integration with Visual Studio (so I do almost everything visually; no console commands) Easy check-out, check-in process Easy merging and conflict resolution Easy automated builds Branching Now, I want to use Git as the backbone, repository, and source control of my open source projects. My projects are in C#, JavaScript, or PHP language with MySQL, or SQL Server databases as the storage mechanism. I just used github.com's help for this purpose and I created a profile there, and downloaded a GUI for Git. Up to this part was so easy. But I'm almost stuck at going along any further. I just want to do some simple (really simple) operations, including: Creating a project on Git and mapping it to a folder on my laptop Checking out/checking in files and folders Resolving conflicts That's all I need to do now. But it seems that the GUI is not that user friendly. I expect the GUI to have a Connect To... or something like that, and then I expect a list of projects to be shown, and when I choose one, I expect to see the list of files and folders of that project, just like exploring your TFS project in Visual Studio. Then I want to be able to right click a file and select check-in... or check-out and stuff like that. Do I expect much? What should I do to easily use Git just like TFS? What am I missing here?

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  • When does the "Do One Thing" paradigm become harmful?

    - by Petr
    For the sake of argument here's a sample function that prints contents of a given file line-by-line. Version 1: void printFile(const string & filePath) { fstream file(filePath, ios::in); string line; while (file.good()) { getline(file, line); cout << line << endl; } } I know it is recommended that functions do one thing at one level of abstraction. To me, though code above does pretty much one thing and is fairly atomic. Some books (such as Robert C. Martin's Clean Code) seem to suggest breaking the above code into separate functions. Version 2: void printLine(const string & line) { cout << line << endl; } void printLines(fstream & file) { string line; while (file.good()) { getline(file, line); printLine(line); } } void printFile(const string & filePath) { fstream file(filePath, ios::in); printLines(file); } I understand what they want to achieve (open file / read lines / print line), but isn't it a bit of overkill? The original version is simple and in some sense already does one thing - prints a file. The second version will lead to a large number of really small functions which may be far less legible than the first version. Wouldn't it be, in this case, better to have the code at one place? At which point does the "Do One Thing" paradigm become harmful?

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  • Seeking solution for printing-reporting .NET

    - by Parhs
    I am developing an application that prints in separate threads in extreme cases about 20-25 pages per minute to various thermal printers. Currently templates for these are XAML xps documents. All printers have graphics drivers that support EMF/GDI printing. So GDI-EMF is done by operating system resulting in slower performance. Sending raw text for printing is another good solution but doesnt work always , because some clients have old chinese thermal printer that nobody support thus impossible to change codepage / emulation. So it doesnt work always. Also most computers running my software are low end ATOM CPU. So I am thinking to return to GDI, EMF printing and have both Text-Only reports and EMF reports. Another reason i want EMF is because here receipts are signed by Electronic Fiscal Memory device.Most of these dont do good job extracting text from XPS as they dont follow the standard but how windows convert GDI to XPS.Even with text-only mode some of them dont support all character encodings and are impossible to send paper cut command after the sign. I know that using a reporting engine would solve rendering problem but I dont want to buy one. All I want is to be able to show tabular data and insert an image and replaced text.I know there is StringTemplate that could do the generation of template but the problem is i should parse somehow the template and render it using GDI commands. Is there any other solution/approach for this ? Or is there anything ready ?

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  • "Don't do programming after a few years of starting career" Is this a fair advice?

    - by Muhammad Yasir
    I am a little experienced developer having around 5 years experience in PHP and somewhat less in Java, C# and trying to learn some Python now a days. Since the start of my career as a programmer I have been told every now and then by fellow programmers that programming is suitable for a few early years of carrier (most of them take it as 5 years) and that one must change the direction after it. The reason they present is that headaches and pressures associated with programming. They also say that programmers are less social and don't usually like to give time to their families etc. and specially "Oh come on, you can not do programming in your entire life!" I am somewhat confused here and need to ask others about it. If I leave programming then what do I do?! I guess teaching may be a good option in this case but it will require to first earn a PhD degree perhaps. It may also be noteworthy that in my country (Pakistan) the life of a programmer is not very good in that normally they must give 2-3 extra hours in office to accomplish urgent programming tasks. I have a sense that situation is somewhat similar in other countries and regions as well. So the question is, do you think it is a fair advice to change career from programming to something else after spending 5 years in this field? Thanks for sharing thoughts!

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  • How can player actions be "judged morally" in a measurable way?

    - by Sebastien Diot
    While measuring the player "skills" and "effort" is usually easy, adding some "less objective" statistics can give the player supplementary goals, especially in a MUD/RPG context. What I mean is that apart from counting how many orcs were killed, and gems collected, it would be interesting to have something along the line of the traditional Good/Evil, Lawful/Chaotic ranking of paper-based RPG, to add "dimension" to the game. But computers cannot differentiate good/evil effectively (nor can humans in many cases), and if you have a set of "laws" which are precise enough that you can tell exactly when the player breaks them, then it generally makes more sense to actually prevent them from doing that action in the first place. One example could be the creation/destruction axis (if players are at all allowed to create/build things), possibly in the form of the general effect of the player actions on "ecology". So what else is there left that can be effectively measured and would provide a sense of "moral" for the player? The more axis I have to measure, the more goals the player can have, and therefore the longer the game can last. This also gives the players more ways of "differentiating" themselves among hordes of other players of the same "class" and similar "kit".

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  • Who is code wanderer?

    - by DigiMortal
    In every area of life there are people with some bad habits or misbehaviors that affect the work process. Software development is also not free of this kind of people. Today I will introduce you code wanderer. Who is code wanderer? Code wandering is more like bad habit than serious diagnose. Code wanderers tend to review and “fix” source code in files written by others. When code wanderer has some free moments he starts to open the code files he or she has never seen before and starts making little fixes to these files. Why is code wanderer dangerous? These fixes seem correct and are usually first choice to do when considering nice code. But as changes are made by coder who has no idea about the code he or she “fixes” then “fixing” usually ends up with messing up working code written by others. Often these “fixes” are not found immediately because they doesn’t introduce errors detected by compilers. So these “fixes” find easily way to production environments because there is also very good chance that “fixed” code goes through all tests without any problems. How to stop code wanderer? The first thing is to talk with person and explain him or her why those changes are dangerous. It is also good to establish rules that state clearly why, when and how can somebody change the code written by other people. If this does not work it is possible to isolate this person so he or she can post his or her changes to code repository as patches and somebody reviews those changes before applying them.

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  • How to properly learn ASP.NET MVC

    - by Qmal
    Hello everyone, I have a question to ask and maybe some of you will think it's lame, but I hope someone will get me on the right track. So I've been programming for quite some time now. I started programming when I was about 13 or so on Delphi, but when I was about 17 or so I switched to C# and now I really like to program with it, mostly because it's syntax is very appealing to me, plus managed code is very good. So it all was good and fun but then I had some job openings that I of course took, but the problem with them is that they all are about web programming. And I had to learn PHP and MVC fundamentals. And I somewhat did while building applications using CI and Kohana framework. But I want to build websites using ASP.NET because I like C# much, much more than PHP. TL;DR I want to know ASP.NET MVC but I don't know where to start. What I want to start with is build some simple like CMS. But I don't know where to start. Do I use same logic as PHP? What do I use for DB connections? And also, if I plan to host something that is build with ASP.NET MVC3 on a hosting provider do I need to buy some kind of license?

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  • Little mysterious RowMatch

    - by kishore.kondepudi(at)oracle.com
    Incidentally this was the first piece of code i ever wrote in ADF.The requirement was we have tax rates which are read from a table.And there can be different type of tax rates called certificates or exceptions based on the rate_type column in the tax rates table.The simplest design i chose was to create an EO on the tax rates table and create two VO's called CertificateVO and ExceptionVO based on the same EO.So far so good.I wrote all the business logic in the EO and completed the model project.The CertificateVO has the query as select * from tax_rates TaxRateEO where rate_type='CERTIFICATE' and similary the ExceptionVO is also built.The UI is pretty simple and it has two tabs called Certificates and Exceptions and each table has a button to create a tax rate.The certificate tab is driven by CertificateVO and exception tab is driven by ExceptionVO.The CertificateVO has default value of rate_type set to 'CERTIFICATE' and ExceptionVO has default value of rate_type to 'EXCEPTION' to default values for new records.So far so good.But on running the UI i noticed a strange thing,When i create a new row in Certificate i see the same row in Exception too and vice-versa.i.e; what ever row i create in one VO it also appears in the second one although it shouldn't be.I couldn't understand the reason for behavior even though an explicit where clause is present.Digging through documentation i found that ADF doesnt apply the where clause to new rows instead it applies something called as RowMatch to them.RowMatch in simple terms is a where condition applied to the VO rows at runtime.Since we had both VO's based on the same EO we have the same entity cache.The filter factor for new rows to be shown in VO at runtime is actually RowMatch than the where clause defined in the VO.The default RowMatch is empty as a result any new row appears in both the VO's since its from same entity cache.The solution to this problem is to use polymorphic view objects which can do the row filter based on configuration or override the getRowMatch() method in the VOImpl and pass the custom where filter instead of default RowMatch.Eg:@Overridepublic RowMatch getRowMatch(){    return new RowMatch("rate_type='CERTIFICATE'");}similarly for ExceptionVO too.With proper RowMatch in place new rows will route themselves to appropriate VO.PS: The behavior(Same row pushed to both VO's from entity cache) is also called as ViewLink Consistency.Try it out!

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  • Branching and CI Builds with Agile

    - by Bob Horn
    We follow many agile processes, including automated tests, continuous integration, sprint reviews, etc... We're currently having a debate about how often we should branch release builds. We've been doing two-week sprints and trying to deploy to production at the end of each sprint. Some of us think we should be branching every sprint. Some of us think that's overkill. If a project encompasses three Visual Studio solutions, and we branch every sprint, then that's three branches, and three CI builds to create every two weeks. If we do this for six months, we'll end up with 36 branches and 36 CI builds. There is overhead involved in that. For those of us that think that branching every sprint is overkill, we don't have a very good alternative. On my last project, we deployed some solutions from the Main trunk. Yeah, that's not good, but it saved on some of the overhead. What's the right way to manage branching/releasing and CI builds, using agile, when we have such short (two-week) sprint cycles?

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  • Where to look for a programming partner?

    - by David
    Say that you want to start a new project (I'm talking about a serious project — e.g if you had an idea that seems good and profitable — not about something you start just to learn a new technology or just for your enjoyment) but you don't feel like you can do it alone since, for example, you lack the experience or the technical skills to go through all the phases needed to go from the idea to the final product. Say also that you don't simply want to hire someone. You want someone who can be as passionate as you in the job, that is “proficient” in and enthusiast of the same technologies as you are and that possibly has a background similar to yours (e.g. you both are students, you both come from a prestigious univerity or just you're both Star Trek nerds). So, basically you don't want a person to tell what to do (e.g. “implement this and that, slave!”) but someone who can be inspiring and bring something new and important to your project. Someone to go with you from the earliest stage — from clearly shaping the project's philosophy to drawing mockups etc. Someone who agrees to share the outcome of the project, that strongly believes in the idea behind it and is completely 50-50 with you. Now the question is: how to improve your chances of finding this person (or persons)? Where would you look at first? For example, if you had a lot of funds and were looking for someone to hire, you'd maybe post an ad in SO careers or jobs.73signals; if you already had a team and were looking for funding, you'd start a project on kickstarter or indiegogo, or you'd go to some startup event. But if you had to find a good partner (and programmer, of course) for you're project, where would you start looking? Which strategies would you use?

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  • Advice: How to convince my newly annointed team lead against writing the code base from scratch

    - by shan23
    I work in a pretty reknowned MNC, and the module that I work in has been assigned to a new "lead". The code base is pretty huge (~130K or more, with inter dependencies on other modules) , but stable - some parts have grown ugly over the years, but its provably in working state. (Our products are running for years on them, even new ones). The problem is, our lead wants to rewrite the code from scratch, to encompass "finer granularity and a proactive design". I know in my guts thats not a very good idea, but how do I convince him/the rest of the team(who are pretty much more senior than me in terms of years of exp), without sounding too pedantic myself (Thou shalt not rewrite , as Joel et al have clear articles prohibiting it)? I have a good working relation with the person concerned, and don't want to ruin it, but neither do I want to be party to a decision which would surely plague us for years to come !! Any suggestions for a milder,yet effective approach ? Even accounts of how you have tackled such a situation to your liking would help me a lot! EDIT: The code base I'm talking about is not a product/GUI, but at kernel level with all the critical functionalities for our product. I hope now you know why i sound so apprehensive !!

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  • Learning Electronics & the Arduino Microcontroller

    - by Chris Williams
    Lately, I've had a growing interest in Electronics & Microcontrollers. I'm a loyal reader of Make Magazine and thoroughly enjoy seeing all the various projects in each issue, even though I rarely try to make any of them. I've been reading and watching videos about the Arduino, which is an open source Microcontroller and software project that the people at Make (and a lot of other folks) are pretty hot about. Even the prebuilt hardware is remarkably inexpensive , although there are kits available to build one from the base components. (Full disclosure: I bought my first soldering iron... EVER... just last week, so I fully acknowledge the likelihood of making some mistakes. That's why I'm not trying to do the "build it yourself" kit just yet. It's also another reason to be happy the hardware is so cheap.) There are a number of different Arduino boards available, but the two that have really piqued my interest are the Arduino UNO and the NETduino. The UNO is a very popular board, with a number of features and is under $35 which means I won't hurl myself off a bridge when I inevitably destroy it. The NETduino is very similar to the Arduino UNO and has the added advantage of being programmable with... you guessed it... C#. I'm actually ordering both boards and some miscellaneous other doodads to go with them.  There are a few good websites for this sort of thing, including www.makershed.com and www.adafruit.com. The price difference is negligible, so in my case, I'm ordering from Maker Shed (the Make Magazine people) because I want to support them. :) I've also picked up a few O'Reilly books on the subject which I am looking forward to reading & reviewing: Make: Electronics, Arduino: A Quick Start Guide and Getting Started With Arduino (all three of which arrived on my doorstep today.) This ties in with my "learn more about robotics" goals as well, since I'll need a good understanding of Electronics if I want to move past Lego Mindstorms eventually.

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  • Starting out with OpenGL when most tutorials are out of date

    - by AUTO
    I'm sure there are already a bunch of questions like this asked, but the constant updating of the OpenGL library throws them all away, and in a month or two, the answers here will be worthless again. I am ready to start programming in OpenGL using C++. I've got a working compiler (DevCpp; do NOT ask me to switch to VC++, and don't ask me why). Now I'm just looking for a solid tutorial on how to program with OpenGL. My assistant found the tutorial provided by NeHe Productions, but as I've come to find out, it's WAY OUT OF DATE! (although I did pull together a basic window to support an OpenGL canvas) Then I went online, and found the OpenGL SuperBible, which apparently uses freeglut? But what I'd like to know is whether or not SuperBible 5th edition is up to date any longer. The suggestion to freeglut I found said the latest version was 2.6.0 but now it's 2.8.0! Is the OpenGL SuperBible still a good, and fairly up-to-date place to start? Is there a better place to go to learn OpenGL? Am I allowed to simply store freeglut in the DevCpp include directory (maybe in GL), or is there some important procedure? Are there any comments or suggestions that I didn't think to ask since I'm only just beginning? @dreta cleared some things up for me, so now I have a better idea of what to ask: I think I'd like to start out with OpenGL using a wrapper library instead of directly accessing OpenGL.I just think that, for a beginner, it would be easier for me to program and get good results, while I don't yet have to understand all the grimy details (as @stephelton mentioned). The problem is, I can't find any library that doesn't have undefined references to no longer supported functions. Freeglut sounds operational, but it still uses GLU.Does anyone know what I can do?Also, I tried compiling the first SuperBible's source, but I got errors since GLAPI is not being defined as a type, the error originating in the GLU library. I'd like to use the SuperBible, but I don't know how to fix this.

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  • Music While Coding [closed]

    - by inspectorG4dget
    Hi SO, Generally, while I'm coding, I prefer to listen to some background music. Nothing that'll get me distracted, but something that'll help keep the rhythm and isn't counterproductive when I need to stop coding to debug or to think of a way to solve a small problem that stands in the way of progress. Now, I have read some similar questions on reddit and on SO - specifically: which songs do you find most productive to listen to while coding, Music while programming and more. Sadly a lot of these questions were closed as off-topic, etc. But (1) I don't think this question is off-topic and I think that a lot of programmers can benefit from it. (2) It's a real question. I really want to know what music you guys would recommend because music helps when I'm coding. It's sad that SO: Music to listen to while coding cannot be found and this isn't of much help. I hope this doesn't get closed. PS: I want to turn this into a community wiki, but I don't seem to know how. I'd appreciate any help. Thank you, all. In response to kirk.burleson's comment: In case the question isn't already clear, I'm asking for recommendations/opinions of music to listen to while coding. I would like to know what you listen to when you code so that I can try it too. I am running out of good "coding music" and this is a problem for me because good "coding music" helps me code better.

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  • Mock the window.setTimeout in a Jasmine test to avoid waiting

    - by Aligned
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2014/08/21/mock-the-window.settimeout-in-a-jasmine-test-to-avoid-waiting.aspxJasmine has a clock mocking feature, but I was unable to make it work in a function that I’m calling and want to test. The example only shows using clock for a setTimeout in the spec tests and I couldn’t find a good example. Here is my current and slightly limited approach.   If we have a method we want to test: var test = function(){ var self = this; self.timeoutWasCalled = false; self.testWithTimeout = function(){ window.setTimeout(function(){ self.timeoutWasCalled = true; }, 6000); }; }; Here’s my testing code: var realWindowSetTimeout = window.setTimeout; describe('test a method that uses setTimeout', function(){ var testObject; beforeEach(function () { // force setTimeout to be called right away, no matter what time they specify jasmine.getGlobal().setTimeout = function (funcToCall, millis) { funcToCall(); }; testObject = new test(); }); afterEach(function() { jasmine.getGlobal().setTimeout = realWindowSetTimeout; }); it('should call the method right away', function(){ testObject.testWithTimeout(); expect(testObject.timeoutWasCalled).toBeTruthy(); }); }); I got a good pointer from Andreas in this StackOverflow question. This would also work for window.setInterval. Other possible approaches: create a wrapper module of setTimeout and setInterval methods that can be mocked. This can be mocked with RequireJS or passed into the constructor. pass the window.setTimeout function into the method (this could get messy)

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