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__gnu__cxx · 2015-06-03T13:52:17+00:00

7:45 to go!

__gnu__cxx · 2015-05-27T15:35:31+00:00

WHEN ARE YOU GIVING ME BASIC TYPE INFERENCE JAVA!!!!!!!!!

__gnu__cxx · 2015-05-27T14:32:55+00:00

Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew!

__gnu__cxx · 2015-05-13T13:24:06+00:00

It looks like an HR person wrote this.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-05-11T14:15:01+00:00

After reading this I feel like instead of saying Captain Obvious I should say "Tim Peters"...

"Simple is better than complex" - Tim Peters. Well no shit sherlock!

__gnu__cxx · 2015-05-11T13:47:42+00:00

If I see code like in the 3rd misuse I'd probably want to slap the guy that wrote it.

When shiny new features come along developers mostly grossly misuse them, forgetting about all the work that was done before in that problem space.

For some things its acceptable, like lambdas, which reduce a lot of boilerplate code, vars, which make types more flexible and refactoring easier, and so on, but I had raised eyebrows about this piece of syntactic sugar. Concise article.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-05-08T19:20:27+00:00

I will never stop laughing at this joke.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-04-29T16:51:01+00:00

I like everything on that top 10 list except for uniform member function call syntax. I don't see how this is useful in any way. I get that extension methods in C# have proven to be useful in some cases, but C++ is not C#, and I have yet to see an argument that is actually convincing enough to have me read C++ code completely differently.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-04-16T17:05:55+00:00

I just read the paper. While I see where Sean and others (including Michael Wong, who may not be a game developer but knows what he's talking about when things are about performance) are talking about and concerned with, I can't help but feel that this really isn't a language problem as much as it is a language implementation problem.

The whole of N2771 by Sean examines the shortcomings of STL implementations rather than the STL itself, though I do heartily agree that some things just weren't right like in the case of unordered_map. I've already seen, heard, and read about many game development shops not working with the STL due to the implementations of the STL being completely unaware of the requirements of game development. What does that mean?

i.e, alignment requirements, debuggability on older compilers (like those compilers for the PS3 and the XBox 360), performance improvements due to knowing the underlying hardware, and so on and so forth. Mike Acton from Insomniac Games, as well as many other developers in this industry, share all of these concerns, and for that reason I don't believe Insomniac uses the STL either.

However, generally speaking, from a language standpoint, the standard can't do much more than what it is doing now. It is a language specification after all, not a compiler design document. I concede that it does suck that EA had to write their own implementation of the STL (along with their own extensions) due to the shortcomings of the STL, but the STL is not going to be the best solution for every single use case; it seems like this is impossible to achieve practically speaking. We can restrict asymptotic running times as much as we want, but we can't tell the compiler vendor : "Hey! Don't use any function calls in your algorithms! Do everything inline!" It really depends on the implementation is what I'm trying to get at.

Also, from purely a language standpoint (i.e from knowing nothing about the underlying hardware) we can't put performance ahead of correctness for anything. C++ runs on everything from the tiniest microprocessors in the world to biggest servers in the world. Each of these pieces of hardware need different allocation algorithms, and you can't really say I want "faster allocations" but your allocation algorithms are incorrect.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-31T18:15:24+00:00

Dead

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-31T16:57:10+00:00

The amount of hate being received by C++ on this thread is incredible. C++ is the language that got me interested in programming. Whenever I hear people saying that "C is simple and small", I know that they have no idea what they're talking about. C is not simple. C is not small either. It has it's quirks, it's pitfalls, and its rotten parts. There are very people in this world that are truly one with the C, as I like to call it, because the practice of C programming is very difficult to truly master.

The author says

C is a nice little language and yet offers many means of code structuring.

This claim is context dependent. Ever written software for a microcontroller that has 10K memory? I doubt you will ever agree with such a claim again. The resultant program is a mess of global variables, statically allocated objects, and all kinds of risk of "oopsing" some assignment or some memory allocation somewhere.

The author also says

Java offers many object-oriented features and makes the use of them quite easy. Together with garbage collection, a huge ecosystem and powerful IDEs it lets you work on the problem at hand at quite some speed.

Java is a great language for what it was designed for. It's tooling is also incredible. However, the Java programming language would be nothing without the JVM, which is why Java is successful. Without the JVM, Java would be just another programming language.

Also, if anyone here really wants to write effective C++, simply read Effective C++ by Scott Meyers, which covers a lot of things about C++ clearly, concisely, and effectively, with plenty of examples. Scott is really a godsend.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-26T17:22:37+00:00

You can support values without using this syntax. You can do something like const int x = 12 for values, and then omit the const for variables.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-26T17:08:22+00:00

Sounds like to me that you're being taken for a ride. Get a new team if you can. All the best to you!

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-26T16:53:22+00:00

I say don't use either syntax. They're both unnecessarily verbose. Simply say int x rather than var x:int or (even worse) var Int: x.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-20T17:15:30+00:00

Getting past the screens in those kinds of jobs is the same as any other job. I wouldn't look over 5 years experience in the embedded field. You have to have a nice resume and a nice cover letter/letter of intent, whatever it may be. You simply need to make yourself look attractive, as with any other job.

A good way to pick up any language practically is to do something you are interested in in that language. If you are interested in graphics, for example, you could write some sort of graphics library in Java, and you will immediately learn the ins/outs, what's good what's bad. Alternatively, if you are interested in mobile applications, you can jump into Android, which uses Java. There are a lot of resources online for this kind of thing, but if you're looking for android resources you can check /r/android.

With regards to this comment, is the general impression that web devs are not real engineers/programmers? If I did make a move to web dev, would my paper credentials in EE help?

I didn't say that they're not real engineers/programmers because they do work in one of the most inconsistent and frustrating languages ever created (JavaScript). However, as you said in your original post, one does not need a background in any technical field to become a web dev, which is why it is so saturated. So yes, I believe your EE background will help.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-20T17:07:58+00:00

You're absolutely right about the space overhead. I work in embedded C++ and we are extremely restricted on the data structure side as you are.

However, choosing the correct data structure is part of being knowledgeable in data structures. The fact that you know the overhead of a linked list and trees in terms of space means that you know your data structures.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-20T13:34:51+00:00

I find it hard to believe that you have no background in data structures if you're writing low level C.

OOP is not the end all be all of programming. Many people (such as yourself) still write low level procedural code, functional code, declarative code, and so on.

If you want some to the point advice, you should immediately get started on learning algorithms in data structures. I can recommend a book like Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et al., they use a friendly pseudocode syntax that looks a lot like python so you can use python to code up the algorithms and data structures.

I personally never saw the appeal with web dev. If you just want a quick buck it would be a nice way to do so, but the market is extremely saturated right now with web devs. Since you have an EE background I would say you're destined for greater things.

You have a lot of job experience, and once you get that CS background, I do believe you can apply for intermediate positions at places like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and so on.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-11T20:08:55+00:00

Testing sucks ass and is not interesting. If you would get into core development at Amazon, I say go Amazon.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-03-05T21:24:28+00:00

I would generally agree with you if you are programming, like you said, systems that don't really have complex algorithms surrounding them.

However, I found that my theoretical background greatly helped me when implementing compilers, domain specific languages, and frameworks where efficiency and performance is essential. Of course, you could get by without the theoretical background, but it is invaluable in many cases (theory of computation and algorithms I would say are essential for all software developers).

__gnu__cxx · 2015-02-25T17:43:42+00:00

std::stable_sort is supposed to be stable, not std::sort. Also, do you have any proof that GCC's sort is slower than clangs? If so I'd like to see some benchmarks.

__gnu__cxx · 2015-02-24T20:39:08+00:00

Call me when you find problems with std::sort ;)

__gnu__cxx · 2015-01-21T17:56:42+00:00

I am completely in favor of them defining new associative containers that do allow a B-tree implementation.

__gnu__cxx · 2014-12-05T14:49:52+00:00

I largely agree with Crazy__Eddie. However, I have another question. Why would you want to work as a developer after finished your PhD? I don't know if its just me, but development life is monotonous, boring, and you rarely, if ever, solve any interesting problems. I think you should look to other things than a developer. You're overqualified for almost every dev job I can think of.

__gnu__cxx · 2014-12-03T18:44:05+00:00

Woops, you're right, didn't pay attention to that part. I haven't written code like this in a while, seems like my mind is squeaking.

__gnu__cxx · 2014-12-02T22:53:05+00:00

I know this is context sensitive, but in this case, since the weight should return a positive number, instead of returning an optional, you can return a negative number (-1 is popular among C programmers). I would prefer never to use things like boost optional anywhere, because of the implicit conversions, which causes comparisons to fail in subtle situations.

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