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• Placement of defensive structures in a game

  - by Martin

  I am working on an AI bot for the game Defcon. The game has cities, with varying populations, and defensive structures with limited range. I'm trying to work out a good algorithm for placing defence towers. Cities with higher populations are more important to defend Losing a defence tower is a blow, so towers should be placed reasonably close together Towers and cities can only be placed on land So, with these three rules, we see that the best kind of placement is towers being placed in a ring around the largest population areas (although I don't want an algorithm just to blindly place a ring around the highest area of population, sometime there might be 2 sets of cities far apart, in which case the algorithm should make 2 circles, each one half my total towers). I'm wondering what kind of algorithms might be used for determining placement of towers?

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• How do you reproduce bugs that occur sporadically?

  - by furtelwart

  We have a bug in our application that does not occur every time and therefore we don't know its "logic". I don't even get it reproduced in 100 times today. Disclaimer: This bug exists and I've seen it. It's not a pebkac or something similar. What are common hints to reproduce this kind of bug?

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• Develop an classic UI or be bold with a newer design?

  - by DeanMc

  Forgive me if this is the wrong place but I am curious as to how other programmers feel about this topic: I am currently working on my portfolio site, it is being designed and built in silverlight 4. I initially started off with a typical stylised e-folio theme much like a standard website in terms of layout and flow. As I work more in the concept stages something has struck me. Am I trying to shoe-horn yesterday into today? What I am talking about is UI expectations. I'm all for clean user interfaces but that does not mean they should not take advantage of new concepts in presentation right? If you where to develop a site in silverlight as your own portfolio piece would you stick to the tried and tested "website" feel or would you try to come up with a UI that is intuitive and complements the technology? I feel that UI discussions are all the more important now that all forms of web development are allowing better methods to engage the user.

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• When exactly does a method have side effects?

  - by Kim

  As I always understood it, any change to the programs state (or anything to do with IO) is a side effect. It does not matter, whether the change occurs in a global variable or in a private field of the object the method is called on. It follows that all methods which do not return anything either do nothing at all or have a side effect. My confusion comes from one of our university's instructors (who is still a student and thus not omniscient yet;) ) telling me setters don't have side effects.

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• Explaining NULL and Empty to your 6-year old?

  - by Atomiton

  I'm thinking in terms of Objects here. I think it's important to simplify ideas. If you can explain this to a 6-year old, you can teach new programmers the difference. I'm thinking that a cookie object would be apropos: public class Cookie { public string flavor {get; set; } public int numberOfCrumbs { get; set; } }

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• How Does Differential Execution Work?

  - by Brian

  I've seen a few mentions of this on SO, but staring at Wikipedia and at an MFC dynamic dialog demo did nothing to enlighten me. Can someone please explain this? Learning a fundamentally different concept sounds nice. Edit: I think I'm getting a better feel for it. I guess I just didn't look at the source code carefully enough the first time. I have mixed feelings about DE at this point. On the one hand, it can make certain tasks considerably easier. On the other hand, getting it up and running (i.e. setting it up in your language of choice) is not easy (I'm sure it would be if I understood it better)...though I guess the toolbox for it need only be made once, then expanded as necessary. I think in order to really understand it, I'll probably need to try implimenting it in another language.

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• What is an ideal variable naming convention for loop variables?

  - by just mike

  If you are writing a simple little loop, what should you name the counter? Provide example loops!

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• When I'm iterating over two arrays at once, which one do I use as the limit?

  - by Martijn Courteaux

  Hi, I'm always struggling with something like the following Java example: String breads[] = {"Brown", "White", "Sandwich"}; int count[] = new int[breads.length]; for (int i = 0; i < ****; i++) { // Prompt the number of breads } ****: which array.length should I choose? I can choose between breads.length and count.length I know it would be the same result, but I don't know which one I shoud choose. There are many other examples where I get the same problem. I'm sure that you have encountered this problem as well in the past. What should you choose? Are there general agreements? Thanks

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• What is the difference between a mixin and the decorator pattern?

  - by leeand00

  The Decorator Pattern is dynamic extension-at-runtime of classes. It dynamically forms a is-a relationship. I started to wonder if I was over-complicating my API by using the Decorator Pattern after I got this answer about the difference between a mixin and an abstract class.

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• What is the most efficient way to store a mapping "key -> event stream"?

  - by jkff

  Suppose there are ~10,000's of keys, where each key corresponds to a stream of events. I'd like to support the following operations: push(key, timestamp, event) - pushes event to the event queue for key, marked with the given timestamp. It is guaranteed that event timestamps for a particular key are pushed in sorted or almost sorted order. tail(key, timestamp) - get all events for key since the given timestamp. Usually the timestamp requests for a given key are almost monotonically increasing, almost synchronously with pushes for the same key. This stuff has to be persistent (although it is not absolutely necessary to persist pushes immediately and to keep tails with pushes strictly in sync), so I'm going to use some kind of database. What is the optimal kind of database structure for this task? Would it be better to use a relational database, a key-value storage, or something else?

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• Check for hung Office process when using Office Automation

  - by Rob

  Is there a way to check to see if an Microsoft Office process (i.e. Word, Excel) has hung when using Office Automation? Additionally, if the process is hung, is there a way to terminate it?

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• How To Create a Flexible Plug-In Architecture?

  - by justkt

  A repeating theme in my development work has been the use of or creation of an in-house plug-in architecture. I've seen it approached many ways - configuration files (XML, .conf, and so on), inheritance frameworks, database information, libraries, and others. In my experience: A database isn't a great place to store your configuration information, especially co-mingled with data Attempting this with an inheritance hierarchy requires knowledge about the plug-ins to be coded in, meaning the plug-in architecture isn't all that dynamic Configuration files work well for providing simple information, but can't handle more complex behaviors Libraries seem to work well, but the one-way dependencies have to be carefully created. As I seek to learn from the various architectures I've worked with, I'm also looking to the community for suggestions. How have you implemented a solid plug-in architecture? What was your worst failure (or the worst failure you've seen)? What would you do if you were going to implement a new plug-in architecture? What SDK or open source project that you've worked with has the best example of a good architecture? A few examples I've been finding on my own: Perl's Module::Plugable An SO question with a list for Java (including Sever Provider Interfaces) An SO question for C++ pointing to a Dr. Dobbs article These examples seem to play to various language strengths. Is a good plugin architecture necessarily tied to the language? Is it best to use tools to create a plugin architecture, or to do it on one's own following models?

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• Beginner's resources/introductions to classification algorithms.

  - by Dirk

  Hi, everybody. I am entirely new to the topic of classification algorithms, and need a few good pointers about where to start some "serious reading". I am right now in the process of finding out, whether machine learning and automated classification algorithms could be a worthwhile thing to add to some application of mine. I already scanned through "How to Solve It: Modern heuristics" by Z. Michalewicz and D. Fogel (in particular, the chapters about linear classifiers using neuronal networks), and on the practical side, I am currently looking through the WEKA toolkit source code. My next (planned) step would be to dive into the realm of Bayesian classification algorithms. Unfortunately, I am lacking a serious theoretical foundation in this area (let alone, having used it in any way as of yet), so any hints at where to look next would be appreciated; in particular, a good introduction of available classification algorithms would be helpful. Being more a craftsman and less a theoretician, the more practical, the better... Hints, anyone?

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• Are there any good sites for blogging about programming?

  - by Jacques Bosch

  I have a few programming articles I would like to write, but I do not have a site of my own - yet ;). Is there a site that is specifically geared toward technical / programming topics, with great functionality and style? Or will I have to go with things like wordpress or blogspot? I would like a site that can track number of views and that has an intuitive commenting system. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

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• How does Amazon's Statistically Improbable Phrases work?

  - by ??iu

  How does something like Statistically Improbable Phrases work? According to amazon: Amazon.com's Statistically Improbable Phrases, or "SIPs", are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside!™ program. To identify SIPs, our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside! program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside! books, that phrase is a SIP in that book. SIPs are not necessarily improbable within a particular book, but they are improbable relative to all books in Search Inside!. For example, most SIPs for a book on taxes are tax related. But because we display SIPs in order of their improbability score, the first SIPs will be on tax topics that this book mentions more often than other tax books. For works of fiction, SIPs tend to be distinctive word combinations that often hint at important plot elements. For instance, for Joel's first book, the SIPs are: leaky abstractions, antialiased text, own dog food, bug count, daily builds, bug database, software schedules One interesting complication is that these are phrases of either 2 or 3 words. This makes things a little more interesting because these phrases can overlap with or contain each other.

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• Compiler Construction course

  - by donpal

  I'm looking for a course (preferably video, much preferably) like MIT's video courses on Compiler Construction. Can someone point me to some decent resources or help material (preferably video)?

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• What features would you like to see added to your favorite programming language?

  - by George Edison

  Are there any features you would like to see added to a programming language? Maybe... A programming construct An extra operator A built-in function you think would be useful I realize questions like this are frowned upon, but I think this one is a genuine programming question that can be answered and the answers will spawn valuable discussion. (And it's community wiki.) Here is one of mine: How come C++ has no exponent operator, like Python's **?

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• Statements and state

  - by FredOverflow

  Is there any deeper meaning in the fact that the word "statement" starts with the word "state", or is that just a curious coincidence? Note that english is not my native language, so the answer might be obvious to you, but not me ;)

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• Programming modifications impact if the 1-cent (penny) is eliminated from the U.S. Currency. [close

  - by Frank Developer

  The COIN (Currency Overhaul for an Industrial Nation) Bill in U.S. Congress will soon be re-visited. One of the main items in this bill involves the elimination of the 1-cent coin from circulation. What impact do you think this will have in programming modifications?

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• Is this bad Object Oriented Design? (derived class used in base class)

  - by Earlz

  Hello, Can someone tell me if this class structure is bad? class abstract Parent{ public Child Foo(){ return new Child(); } } class Child : Parent{} I've heard that referring to a derived type from a base type is always bad and signs of bad design. Can someone tell me why this is bad or even if it is bad?

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• Can these sorts of programs exist in every Turing-complete language?

  - by I can't tell you my name.

  In every Turing-Complete language, is it possible to create a working Compiler for itself which first runs on an interpreter written in some other language and then compiles it's own source code? (Bootstrapping) Standards-Compilant C++ compiler which outputs binaries for, e.g.: Windows? Regex Parser and Evaluater? World of Warcraft clone? (Assuming the language gets the necessary API bindings as, for example, OpenGL and the WoW source code is available) (Everything here theoretical) Let's take Brainf*ck as an example language.

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• Throwing cats out of windows

  - by AndrewF

  Imagine you're in a tall building with a cat. The cat can survive a fall out of a low story window, but will die if thrown from a high floor. How can you figure out the longest drop that the cat can survive, using the least number of attempts? Obviously, if you only have one cat, then you can only search linearly. First throw the cat from the first floor. If it survives, throw it from the second. Eventually, after being thrown from floor f, the cat will die. You then know that floor f-1 was the maximal safe floor. But what if you have more than one cat? You can now try some sort of logarithmic search. Let's say that the build has 100 floors and you have two identical cats. If you throw the first cat out of the 50th floor and it dies, then you only have to search 50 floors linearly. You can do even better if you choose a lower floor for your first attempt. Let's say that you choose to tackle the problem 20 floors at a time and that the first fatal floor is #50. In that case, your first cat will survive flights from floors 20 and 40 before dying from floor 60. You just have to check floors 41 through 49 individually. That's a total of 12 attempts, which is much better than the 50 you would need had you attempted to use binary elimination. In general, what's the best strategy and it's worst-case complexity for an n-storied building with 2 cats? What about for n floors and m cats? Assume that all cats are equivalent: they will all survive or die from a fall from a given window. Also, every attempt is independent: if a cat survives a fall, it is completely unharmed. This isn't homework, although I may have solved it for school assignment once. It's just a whimsical problem that popped into my head today and I don't remember the solution. Bonus points if anyone knows the name of this problem or of the solution algorithm.

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• Perls Of Wisdom For a .Net Programmer [closed]

  - by DeanMc

  Hi Guys, I like to think that recently I have moved from complete beginner to beginner. It has been a hard road and one on which I took many wrong turns. Very rarely in any profession is there a place where so many rock stars gather, this is something I would like to take advantage of. What I would like to ask is what are your perls of wisdom for a .net programmer. They can be anything you feel of value, a concept, a book, a process that should be followed, anything of that nature, it doesn't have to be .net specific just contextual. Thanks for taking the time to read this and respond.

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• What is the MVC equivalent of this code:

  - by Ian Boyd

  Here's the easy pseudo-code: void TextBox1Changed() { //If the text isn't a number, color it red if (!IsValidNumber(TextBox1.Text) TextBox1.Color = Pink; else TextBox1.Color = WindowColor; } What's the MVC enterprisey version?

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• Resources needed: Sort 2D array "graphically"

  - by aw

  I have a 2D array 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and want to sort it like this Snake 1 2 3 8 9 4 7 6 5 Snake (different) 1 2 3 6 5 4 7 8 9 Rotated 1 4 7 2 5 8 3 6 9 Wipe (diagonal) 1 3 6 2 5 8 4 7 9 Well, you got it, all kinds of sorting. Searching the interweb for hours now. Any resources (specific language or pseudo code) on that greatly appreciated...

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