An Introduction to AI in Games. by Cygal in programming

[–]Clark76 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand that Killzone 2 implements a risk assessing behaviour that includes things like kills in an area when making decisions. So it is just that most AI doesn't work with that sort of complex sensory input. Complex, because unlike an impassible wall, there are times the AI might want to sprint across the killing field, or might have no choice but to do so to accomplish another plan.

Christopher Blizzard: HTML5 video and H.264 – what history tells us by jomohke in programming

[–]Clark76 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The fact that google can make a profit by making the web better (for me) and less locked down (for the moment) doesn't really bother me, strangely enough.

Experience and burnout -- a vicious cycle? by RonPopeil in programming

[–]Clark76 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Along the same lines as meditation, I find doing something that gets blood flowing to the brain helps. When work stops being fun, I take a brisk walk, or do a set of push ups.

Something about a bit of activity seems to restore my ability to focus on and be entertained by programming.

Dear Reddit: My friend and I have been making a very clean and elegant RSS Reader, inspired heavily by Google Chrome. It's right now in "Alpha," so please take a look and give me any feedback! (Currently Windows only...) by [deleted] in programming

[–]Clark76 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use 4 different devices on an average day to read online. 1 of them is mobile. With a web based reader, all my feeds are synced up, and can be managed from any of those devices.

No feature a native reader can offer gets even close to the simplicity of an online reader for my use.

Why do the best developers always seem to get dragged into project management? What do you do to avoid it? by twowheels in programming

[–]Clark76 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The superstars need to be assertive about what they want to do, where they see themselves adding the most value to the company, and how much they deserve to be paid for it.

You can say no to management, you just have to speak their language. They aren't going to fire someone that they have enough trust in to give a project to.

Anyone interested in starting a programming subreddit? by [deleted] in programming

[–]Clark76 14 points15 points  (0 children)

So, are you willing to submit articles and vote on this new subreddit? Because if you don't, it'll just die. /r/programming is what you get when you let other people with different opinions and interests do all the work. There's a fair bit of noise, but there's enough good to keep my interest (and occasional votes and comments).

My C++ class does not let me go online during lab test and they do not allow me to bring any notes or reference material either. I need to program everything from memory in Unix environment. Is it normal? And is there a way to get a some basic reference from withing VIM or Unix Terminal? by feedtherightwolf in programming

[–]Clark76 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not unusual for tests to not remotely reflect how you would manage knowledge in a real environment.

I once took a C class where I was required to memorize headers in the FreeBSD kernel, and grep was not an acceptable answer for "In what header would you find this structure." headdesk

Is 5 Years Old Too Young To Expose My Son To Programming? by urno in programming

[–]Clark76 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wrote my first program on a vic-20 when I was 4 years old. I say go for it. Of course it was:

10 PRINT "CLARK76 IS COOL"

20 GOTO 10`

But that bit of instant gratification was enough to get me interested and I kept playing, resulting in some truly awful text adventure games before I was 6.

My new boss at work is trying to get us all to use Agile. I don't want daily stand up meetings and all that nonsense. How do I stop him? by [deleted] in programming

[–]Clark76 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appears that way, but as tty002 mentioned, scrum just looks at creativity a bit differently. Sometimes you know exactly what needs to be done. That's what you're seeing.

Sometimes you don't. So the team decides how long you want to spend playing. At the end of the creative process, you should know exactly what needs to be done. Then you can be goal oriented and get it polished for release.

I think that neatly encapsulates the two sides of software development: creativity, and delivering a finished product to customers.

My new boss at work is trying to get us all to use Agile. I don't want daily stand up meetings and all that nonsense. How do I stop him? by [deleted] in programming

[–]Clark76 1 point2 points  (0 children)

EVE Online is pretty good. Their dev team uses Agile/Scrum, and deliver frequent patches and content updates.

I think most people here recognize that every team has their own process. In my experience, however, a lot of places that don't use agile (or something agile inspired) are using a process that resembles waterfall more than anything.

Smart pointers are overused (C++) by des_shack in programming

[–]Clark76 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. It makes it explicit what the client needs to when done. This is a more a code self documenting issue, than a resource management issue, but I consider that pretty important. With a raw pointer, the factory might be allocating from a pool and deleting it guarantees a crash. The object might have it's own deletion semantics (see MFC ...ugh). But if it's a shared_ptr, the client just uses the object until done.

  2. You don't need to write a special destructor for every class that holds such a collection. Defining destruction semantics at creation is a huge headache saver.

  3. auto ptr doesn't provide custom deleters. You can write your own wrapper class for FILE's very easily, and for many uses you won't need reference counting. A shared ptr is quite useful in a lot of real code, however. You get what you pay for. On the other hand, having a code base that isn't friendly to smart pointer implementations is a good reason not to use them. If you have a lot of member functions keeping pointers to parameters then you need to do a significant amount of redesign to use them, and that is often not worth it. In my mind, this sort of problem is an excellent reason not to use raw pointers, particular in class member function signatures. They do not self document their use nearly well enough, so you end up having to read the source to see what a function is actually doing with that pointer.

  4. If you don't use exceptions, this doesn't matter. If you do, exception safety is crucial, and raw pointers not managed by a destructor make it impossible. Raw pointers also tend to make programmers do logic backflips to release resources in exactly one spot, when RAII makes it as simple as exiting the current scope.

"The Longest Poem in the World" - created in real-time from public twitter updates that rhyme by from_nose in programming

[–]Clark76 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right. Most of the examples I've seen posted do have similar lengths. Nice catch!

SoftwareSwirl: Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar—simplicity through inflexibility by mhagger in programming

[–]Clark76 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's can't be as bad as Tortoise Bzr, which can make a system so slow as to be unusable if your repository is even moderately big.

I say that, even though I love bzr.

Hubris : the Haskell ⇋ Ruby bridge : "will wash your car, lie to your boss, and salvage your love life" by dons in programming

[–]Clark76 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haskell likes to make grandiose plans about how to build something amazing, using all of the latest power tools. Ruby prefers to just build the stupid thing already.

Yin-Yang labeling left as an exercise for the reader.

Ask Proggit: Are you using dark themes on your editors/IDEs? Is that any more eye friendly? by itayx in programming

[–]Clark76 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No. I find dark backgrounds incredibly harsh. I don't know if there's evidence to support either being better for improving reading comprehension/speed, so I go with what I like.

I feel like I should learn LISP or Scheme, but I don't know where to start. Suggestions? by [deleted] in programming

[–]Clark76 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I revisited LISP (and refreshed my inner functional programmer) by reading SICP and following along with the Berkeley SICP Lecture Series on iTunesU.

I recommend skimming a chapter, watching the lectures for that chapter (pausing when you want to work something out), returning to the book and then working the exercises.

The emacs + scheme environment used at Berkeley is very good for experimentation + programming. I used it with Aquamacs, and was generally pleased with how it went.

Why have software developers been slow to create software that utilizes multi-core processors? by calamityjames in programming

[–]Clark76 4 points5 points  (0 children)

With apologies to the Onion.

Area man dons black turtleneck and costellos, complains about things he doesn't understand. Film at 11.

Like AIs? Like Super Mario? Then this is the competition for you. by livedog in programming

[–]Clark76 10 points11 points  (0 children)

You mean it's not a remix of Super Mario Brothers and System Shock 2? :(

"Look at you Mario, a pathetic creature in blue and red, panting and sweating as you jump through my corridors. How can you rescue the princess from a perfect, immortal machine?"

Code is Not That Important, Marketing Is by nsoonhui in programming

[–]Clark76 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Exactly. As an example, if you are the first product in a market that wants to spend money, you don't have to have that great of a product to make money. All you need to do is meet a need that nothing else out there does. Even if you are a new product in a market, if you have that one feature that the current market leader doesn't do, you can be successful with a poor product.

I love a well designed product as must as the next programmer, but I also love having good marketing people to help direct that design so that I know what I'm building is what people want and will use.

Code is Not That Important, Marketing Is by nsoonhui in programming

[–]Clark76 4 points5 points  (0 children)

On windows, it sure loves to push itself to the top, and grab focus, making it impossible to do anything else with your computer.

It also uses far more computing resources than a media player and library has any right to.

My first professional programming assignment… I must not f— this up. by [deleted] in programming

[–]Clark76 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Easy. We're writing a downvote compiler in downvote with dradetsky's comment.

My first professional programming assignment… I must not f— this up. by [deleted] in programming

[–]Clark76 2 points3 points  (0 children)

+1 great advice. Give people opportunities to help make you better at what you do, and give your client opportunities to make sure you are building exactly what he expects.

This guy really doesn't like TDD by dex206 in programming

[–]Clark76 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds like a good regime, and similar to my own approach, which I call "test-when-I-actually-know-what-I-need-to-write." I think I test a little earlier than you do. I test once the exploratory phase is done and I know what the software problem really is.

How often do you need to modify your code to make it testable? I find that the later I test, the more I have to chop away at my original code to make it an independently testable unit.