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• Playground for Artificial Intelligence?

  - by Dolph Mathews

  In school, one of my professors had created a 3D game (not just an engine), where all the players were entirely AI-controlled, and it was our assignment to program the AI of a single player. We were basically provided an API to interact with the game world. Our AI implementations were then dropped into the game together, and we watched as our programs went to battle against each other. It was like robot soccer, but virtual, and with lots of big guns. I'm now looking for anything similar (and open source) to play with. (Preferably in Java, but I'm open to any language.) I'm not looking for a game engine, or a framework... I'm looking for a complete game that simply lacks AI code... preferably set up for this kind of exercise. Suggestions?

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• How would you start automating my job?

  - by Jurily

  At my new job, we sell imported stuff. In order to be able to sell said stuff, currently the following things need to happen for every incoming shipment: Invoice arrives, in the form of an email attachment, Excel spreadsheet Monkey opens invoice, copy-pastes the relevant part of three columns into the relevant parts of a spreadsheet template, where extremely complex calculations happen, like =B2*550 Monkey sends this new spreadsheet to boss (email if lucky, printer otherwise), who sets the retail price Monkey opens the reply, then proceeds to input the data into the production database using a client program that is unusable on so many levels it's not even worth detailing Monkey fires up HyperTerminal, types in "AT", disconnect Monkey sends text messages and emails to customers using another part of the horrible client program, one at a time I want to change Monkey from myself to software wherever possible. I've never written anything that interfaces with email, Excel, databases or SMS before, but I'd be more than happy to learn if it saves me from this. Here's my uneducated wishlist: Monkey asks Thunderbird (mail server perhaps?) for the attachment Monkey tells Excel to dump the spreadsheet into a more Jurily-friendly format, like CSV or something Monkey parses the output, does the complex calculations // TODO: find a way to get the boss-generated prices with minimal manual labor involved Monkey connects to the database, inserts data Monkey spams costumers Is all this feasible? If yes, where do I start reading? How would you improve it? What language/framework do you think would be ideal for this? What would you do about the boss?

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• True random number generator

  - by goldenmean

  Sorry for this not being a "real" question, but Sometime back i remember seeing a post here about randomizing a randomizer randomly to generate truly random numbers, not just pseudo random. I dont see it if i search for it. Does anybody know about that article?

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• Detecting regular expression in content during parse

  - by sonofdelphi

  I am writing a parser for C. I was just running it with some other language files (for fun, to see the extent C-likeness). It breaks down if the code being parsed contains regular expressions... Case 1: For example, while parsing the JavaScript code snippet, var phone="(304)434-5454" phone=phone.replace(/[\(\)-]/g, "") //Returns "3044345454" (removes "(", ")", and "-") The '(', '[' etc get matched as starters of new scopes, which may never be closed. Case 2: And, for the Perl code snippet, # Replace backslashes with two forward slashes # Any character can be used to delimit the regex $FILE_PATH =~ s@\\@//@g; The // gets matched as a comment... How can I detect a regular expression within the content text of a "C-like" program-file?

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• How do I generate a random string of up to a certain length?

  - by slavy13

  I would like to generate a random string (or a series of random strings, repetitions allowed) of length between 1 and n characters from some (finite) alphabet. Each string should be equally likely (in other words, the strings should be uniformly distributed). The uniformity requirement means that an algorithm like this doesn't work: alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" len = rand(1, n) s = "" for(i = 0; i < len; ++i) s = s + alphabet[rand(0, 25)] (pseudo code, rand(a, b) returns a integer between a and b, inclusively, each integer equally likely) It doesn't work because shorter lengths are as likely as longer ones, meaning it's more likely to generate a shorter string than a longer one, so the result is not uniform.

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• What are some good code optimization methods?

  - by esac

  I would like to understand good code optimization methods and methodology. How do I keep from doing premature optimization if I am thinking about performance already. How do I find the bottlenecks in my code? How do I make sure that over time my program does not become any slower? What are some common performance errors to avoid (e.g.; I know it is bad in some languages to return while inside the catch portion of a try{} catch{} block

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• Efficiently selecting a set of random elements from a linked list

  - by Matt Sheppard

  Say I have a linked list of numbers of length N. N is very large and I don’t know in advance the exact value of N. How can I most efficiently write a function that will return k completely random numbers from the list?

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• Why Aren't Programs Written In Assembly More Often?

  - by mudge

  It seems to be a mainstream opinion that assembly programming takes longer and is more difficult to program in than a higher level language such as C. Therefore it seems to be recommend or assumed that it is better to write in a higher level language for these reasons and for the reason of better portability. Recently I've been writing in x86 assembly and it has dawned on me that perhaps these reasons are not really true, except perhaps portability. Perhaps it is more of a matter of familiarity and knowing how to write assembly well. I also noticed that programming in assembly is quite different than programming in an HLL. Perhaps a good and experienced assembly programmer could write programs just as easily and as quickly as an experienced C programmer writing in C. Perhaps it is because assembly programming is quite different than HLLs, and so requires different thinking, methods and ways, which makes it seem very awkward to program in for the unfamiliar, and so gives it its bad name for writing programs in. If portability isn't an issue, then really, what would C have over a good assembler such as NASM?

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• Code Golf: Numeric Ranges

  - by SLaks

  Mods: Can you please make this Community Wiki? Challenge Compactify a long list of numbers by replacing consecutive runs with ranges. Example Input 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 Output: 1 - 4, 7, 8, 10, 12 - 15 Note that ranges of two numbers should be left as is. (7, 8; not 7 - 8) Rules You can accept a list of integers (or equivalent datatype) as a method parameter, from the commandline, or from standard in. (pick whichever option results in shorter code) You can output a list of strings by printing them, or by returning either a single string or set of strings. Reference Implementation (C#) IEnumerable<string> Sample(IList<int> input) { for (int i = 0; i < input.Count; ) { var start = input[i]; int size = 1; while (++i < input.Count && input[i] == start + size) size++; if (size == 1) yield return start.ToString(); else if (size == 2) { yield return start.ToString(); yield return (start + 1).ToString(); } else if (size > 2) yield return start + " - " + (start + size - 1); } }

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• Can i change the view without changing the controller?

  - by Ian Boyd

  Pretend1 there is a place to type in a name:     Name: __________________ When the text box changes, the value is absorbed into the controller, who stores it in data model. Business rules require that a name be entered: if there is no text entered the TextBox should be colored something in the view to indicate baddness; otherwise it can be whatever color the view likes. The TextBox contains a String, the controller handles a String, and the model stores a String. Now lets say i want to improve the view. There is a new kind of text box2 that can be fed not only string-based keyboard input, but also an image. The view (currently) knows how to determine if the image is in the proper format to perform the processing required to extract text out of it. If there is text, then that text can be fed to the controller, who feeds it to the data model. But if the image is invalid, e.g.3 wrong file format invalid dimensions invalid bit depth unhandled or unknown encoding format missing or incorrectly located registration marks contents not recognizable the view can show something to the user that the image is bad. But the telling the user that something is bad is supposed to be the job of the controller. i'm, of course, not going to re-write the controller to handle Image based text-input (e.g. image based names). a. the code is binary locked inside a GUI widget4 b. there other views besides this one, i'm not going to impose a particular view onto the controller c. i just don't wanna. If i have to change things outside of this UI improvement, then i'll just leave the UI unimproved5 So what's the thinking on having different views for the same Model and Controller? Nitpicker's Corner 1 contrived hypothetical example 2 e.g. bar code, g-mask, ocr 3 contrived hypothetical reasons 4 or hardware of a USB bar-code scanner 5 forcing the user to continue to use a DateTimePicker rather than a TextBox

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• What Use are Threads Outside of Parallel Problems on MultiCore Systesm?

  - by Robert S. Barnes

  Threads make the design, implementation and debugging of a program significantly more difficult. Yet many people seem to think that every task in a program that can be threaded should be threaded, even on a single core system. I can understand threading something like an MPEG2 decoder that's going to run on a multicore cpu ( which I've done ), but what can justify the significant development costs threading entails when you're talking about a single core system or even a multicore system if your task doesn't gain significant performance from a parallel implementation? Or more succinctly, what kinds of non-performance related problems justify threading? Edit Well I just ran across one instance that's not CPU limited but threads make a big difference: TCP, HTTP and the Multi-Threading Sweet Spot Multiple threads are pretty useful when trying to max out your bandwidth to another peer over a high latency network connection. Non-blocking I/O would use significantly less local CPU resources, but would be much more difficult to design and implement.

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• If you use MVC in your web app then you dont need to use Smarty(TemplateEngine) Right?

  - by Imran

  I'm just trying to understand the Templating(system). If you use MVC in your web application then you don't need to use something like Smarty(template engine) as you are already separating application code from presentation code anyway by using MVC right? please correct me? So am i correct in thinking it's MVC OR Templating or do you use both in your apps?If any one could explain this in detail it would be great. Thank you in advance;-)

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• How does the Amazon Recommendation feature work?

  - by Rachel

  What technology goes in behind the screens of Amazon recommendation technology? I believe that Amazon recommendation is currently the best in the market, but how do they provide us with such relevant recommendations? Recently, we have been involved with similar recommendation kind of project, but would surely like to know about the in and outs of the Amazon recommendation technology from a technical standpoint. Any inputs would be highly appreciated. Update: This patent explains how personalized recommendations are done but it is not very technical, and so it would be really nice if some insights could be provided. From the comments of Dave, Affinity Analysis forms the basis for such kind of Recommendation Engines. Also here are some good reads on the Topic Demystifying Market Basket Analysis Market Basket Analysis Affinity Analysis Suggested Reading: Data Mining: Concepts and Technique

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• Parsing: How to make error recovery in grammars like " a* b*"?

  - by Lavir the Whiolet

  Let we have a grammar like this: Program ::= a* b* where "*" is considered to be greedy. I usually implement "*" operator naively: Try to apply the expression under "*" to input one more time. If it has been applied successfully then we are still under current "*"-expression; try to apply the expression under "*" one more time. Otherwise we have reached next grammar expression; put characters parsed by expression under "*" back into input and proceed with next expression. But if there are errors in input in any of "a*" or "b*" part such a parser will "think" that in position of error both "a*" and "b*" have finished ("let's try "a"... Fail! OK, it looks like we have to proceed to "b*". Let's try "b"... Fail! OK, it looks like the string should have been finished...). For example, for string "daaaabbbbbbc" it will "say": "The string must end at position 1, delete superflous characters: daaaabbbbbbc". In short, greedy "*" operator becomes lazy if there are errors in input. How to make "*" operator to recover from errors nicely?

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• How does the verbosity of identifiers affect the performance of a programmer?

  - by DR

  I always wondered: Are there any hard facts which would indicate that either shorter or longer identifiers are better? Example: clrscr() opposed to ClearScreen() Short identifiers should be faster to read because there are fewer characters but longer identifiers often better resemble natural language and therefore also should be faster to read. Are there other aspects which suggest either a short or a verbose style? EDIT: Just to clarify: I didn't ask: "What would you do in this case?". I asked for reasons to prefer one over the other, i.e. this is not a poll question. Please, if you can, add some reason on why one would prefer one style over the other.

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• routine to generate a 2d array from two 1d arrays and a function

  - by intuited

  I'm guessing that there's a word for this concept, and that it's available in at least some popular languages, but my perfunctory search was fruitless. A pseudocode example of what I'd like to do: function foo(a, b) { return a * b // EG } a = [ 1, 2, 3 ] b = [ 4, 5, 6 ] matrix = the_function_for_which_I_search(foo, [a, b] ) print matrix => [ [ 4, 8, 12], [5, 10, 15], [6, 12, 18] ] // or function concatenate(a,b) return a.b } print the_function_for_which_I_search( concatenate, [ a, b ]) => [ [ '14', '24', '34'], ['15', '25', '35'], [16', '26', '36'] ] In other words, function_for_which_I_search will apply the function given as its first argument to each combination of the elements of the two arrays passed as its second argument, and return the results as a two-dimensional array. I would like to know if such a routine has a common name, and if it's available in a python module, cpan package, ruby gem, pear package, etc. I'm also wondering if this is a core function in other languages, maybe haskell or R?

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• How can I lookup data about a book from its barcode number?

  - by Joel Spolsky

  I'm building the world's simplest library application. All I want to be able to do is scan in a book's UPC (barcode) using a typical scanner (which just types the numbers of the barcode into a field) and then use it to look up data about the book... at a minimum, title, author, year published, and either the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress catalog number. The goal is to print out a tiny sticker ("spine label") with the card catalog number that I can stick on the spine of the book, and then I can sort the books by card catalog number on the shelves in our company library. That way books on similar subjects will tend to be near each other, for example, if you know you're looking for a book about accounting, all you have to do is find SOME book about accounting and you'll see the other half dozen that we have right next to it which makes it convenient to browse the library. There seem to be lots of web APIs to do this, including Amazon and the Library of Congress. But those are all extremely confusing to me. What I really just want is a single higher level function that takes a UPC barcode number and returns some basic data about the book.

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• What is the preferred way to indent cases in a switch?

  - by neutrino

  Hey there, As I was writing another switch in Eclipse, I once again came across a rather weird (to me, at least) default indentation, which is applied to 'switch' statements: switch (i) { case 1: ... case n: ... } I tend to prefer another way: switch (i) { case 1: ... case n: ... } Which way is more readable and eye-pleasing for you? I'm still not hundred percent determined what's best for me, so I'd like to stick to what's best for other people who would read my code. BTW, you're free to close this question if this is too subjective. :)

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• How to program simple chat bot AI?

  - by Larsenal

  I want to build a bot that asks someone a few simple questions and branches based on the answer. I realize parsing meaning from the human responses will be challenging, but how do you setup the program to deal with the "state" of the conversation? EDIT: It will be a one-to-one conversation between a human and the bot.

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• Does installation occur during runtime, or during compile time?

  - by David Cary

  According to published books suitable for a Wikipedia reference: Does installation occur during runtime, or during compile time? 'a "run-time error" is detected after or during the installation or copying of the program' -- Wikipedia

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• Which external DSLs do you like to use?

  - by Max Toro

  The reason I'm asking is because right now there seems to be tendency to make DSLs internal. One example is LINQ in C# and VB. You can use it against in-memory objects, or you can use it as a replacement of SQL or other external DSL. Another example is HTML5 vs XHTML2. XHTML2 supported decentralized extensibility through namespaces, in other words you embed external DSL code (XForms, SVG, MathML, etc.) in your XHTML code. Sadly HTML5 doesn't seem to have such mechanism, instead new features are internal (e.g. <canvas> instead of SVG). I'd like to know what other developers think about this. Do you like using external DSLs ? Which ones ? If not, why ?

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• Problem Naming an Interface

  - by Jens Schauder

  I have an interface named PropertyFilter which used to take a Propertyand decide if accepts it or not. And the world was good. But now the interface changed, so that implementations may choose to add additional Propertys. For example a Customer property might get expanded into Name and Address properties. I think it is obvious this is not a Filter anymore, but how would you call such a thing?

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• Matching an IP address with an IP range?

  - by Legend

  I have a MySQL table setup as follows: +---------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +---------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | ipaddress_s | varchar(15) | YES | MUL | NULL | | | ipaddress_e | varchar(16) | YES | | NULL | | +---------------+-------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ where, ipaddress_s and ipaddress_e look something like: 4.100.159.0-4.100.159.255 Now is there a way I can actually get the row that contains a given IP address? For instance, given the IP address: "4.100.159.5", I want the above row to be returned. So I am trying for a query that looks something like this (but of course this is wrong because in the following I am considering IPs as strings): SELECT * FROM ranges WHERE ipaddress_s<"4.100.159.5" AND ipaddress_e>"4.100.159.5" Any suggestions?

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• Pros and cons of Localisation of technical words ?

  - by paercebal

  This question is directed to the non-english speaking people here. It is somewhat biased because SO is an "english-speaking" web forum, so... In the other hand, most developers would know english anyway... In your locale culture, are technical words translated into locale words ? For example, how "Design Pattern", or "Factory", or whatever are written/said in german, spanish, etc. etc. when used by IT? Are the english words prefered? The local translation? Do the two version (english/locale) are evenly used? Edit Could you write with your answer the locale translation of "Design Pattern"? In french, according to Wikipedia.fr, it is "Patron de conception", which translates back as "Model of Conceptualization" (I guess).

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• Integration tests - "no exceptions are thrown" approach. Does it make sense?

  - by Andrew Florko

  Sometimes integration tests are rather complex to write or developers have no enough time to check output - does it make sense to write tests that make sure "no exceptions are thrown" only? Such tests provide some input parameters set(s) and doesn't check the result, but only make sure code not failed with exception? May be such tests are not very useful but appropriate in situations when you have no time?

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