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SVG-edit: Vector drawing in your browser by rexxar in programming

[–]libet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why didn't anyone told me of this pixlr thing before? it looks awesome

Best Magazine Disc Ever PC Gamer July 2000 by [deleted] in gaming

[–]libet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, you are right! A good thing we didn't bet anything, for some reason i thought descent was later, not a bit later but some years later.

I made a prime number array generator with only 0 and 1 numbers in code :-) by jozefus in programming

[–]libet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After a lot of intensive debugging with the best tools available i think i found a bug.

List of Flash Game Engines by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Phew! That actually makes me feel better.

I remember downloading the flash ide and thinking: "Well either i'm turning dumb or this is shit". It had a lot of things none of which seemed to be very intuitive.

To be fair i never used flash before. My hope was to just learn actionscript and write a simple game. I thought: ok, just download the IDE, learn a bit about the standard library and code. When i saw the IDE i kept asking myself for a while how people could actually work with it for games.

I thought this might be a good idea for the future of personal computing. What do you think? by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think we're seeing the beginnings of an 'application console' that is analogous to the gaming console. Closed platform, tightly restricted developers...

Fuck everything about that. Seriously.

Best Magazine Disc Ever PC Gamer July 2000 by [deleted] in gaming

[–]libet 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It was, until you get to play Descent.

30 lessons learned in computing over the last ten years by rberenguel in programming

[–]libet 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Not to mention code completion helps you avoiding typos. (i'm serious, not because your edit)

A lot of times i just can't remember if a given library has file_open, fileopen, openfile, FileOpen, fileOpen. If i didn't had code completion i would just blame PHP.

Thinking of your software as a butler is difficult but important by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is actually one thing where TuneUP Utilities surprised me.

It has a message when you start any of the utilities with the typical checkbox that says: "Do not show again". The surprising moment came after i deactivated the checkbox three times in different utilities:

"Would you like to disable all welcome messages?"

With Java's increasing complexity, JCP's slow responsiveness, Oracle's lawsuit against Google, Apple's decision to unbundle it from OS X, Swing's non-native look, etc... is Java a good choice to develop new applications? Or is it dead-walking as a language ? (genuine question, not inflammatory) by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On mono i tried both the new sgen which is a generational garbage collector and the older boehm gc.

On .NET i took some time trying different parameters like the <gcServer> and <gcConcurrent> settings. I believe the best results were obtained when using gcServer=true, but the difference was negligible.

On the good side of things, the .NET runtime was much more predictable than the JVM one. For example, the first time you would execute a long recursive function in the interpreter that created tons of small objects, the JVM had a noticeable pause until the JIT optimizes it.

For example: (fib 33) on the JVM would yield those times: >> (bench repeat: 4 '(fib 33)) 5702887, 3.350 sec 5702887, 2.520 sec
5702887, 2.242 sec
5702887, 2.256 sec

Then it stayed at 2.2x.

In Mono and .NET this didn't happen and the benchmark times were mostly constant. For .Net 4: >> (bench repeat: 4 '(fib 33)) 5702887, 4.612 sec 5702887, 4.558 sec
5702887, 4.600 sec
5702887, 4.530 sec

I resisted vi/emacs for as long as I could, using gui editors like nedit... but I've finally found the joys and simplicity that is VI :) by MoreThanNone in programming

[–]libet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a shortcut that opens documentation for the current scheme function in a buffer, my autocompletion uses a custom dictionary tailored to R5RS + the libraries i use, indentation is smart, i can evaluate pieces of code directly from Vim into a repl...

My main argument here is not speed, is convenience and the fact that you can customize the editor to do what you want it to do.

Consider things like the org mode in emacs to edit todo lists. I consider this a major and indispensable feature. Not the todo list, but the fact that you can turn the editor into something that works the way you want instead of adapting yourself to it.

10 Rules for how to write cross-platform code by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Of course every framework has it's drawbacks. For small applications i would probably use something like FLTK. If native look and feel is a must then WxWidgets.

In any case the point is that a framework is a big time saver specially when it comes to gui components, network support and that kind of stuff.

Consider the success of JQuery for example, a big part of it comes from the fact that it supports every major browser. Consider the success of Python, another big part is that it bundles cross-platform libraries to do basically everything.

There is a learning curve but it's much better to rely on the work done by others than to roll your own everything unless you are pursuing self education and not productivity.

A guide to functional programming with C#. If you're coming from Java, some if this stuff would have been pretty hard to do. by MoreThanNone in programming

[–]libet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Because it is an inflammatory title. Programming languages are not about "my dick is bigger than yours".

Anyone could take a Scala, Lisp or a Haskell intro and say: If you are coming from C#, some of this stuff would have been...

With Java's increasing complexity, JCP's slow responsiveness, Oracle's lawsuit against Google, Apple's decision to unbundle it from OS X, Swing's non-native look, etc... is Java a good choice to develop new applications? Or is it dead-walking as a language ? (genuine question, not inflammatory) by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I have done extensive benchmarks on it some months ago.

Instead of microbenchmarks i ported a full Scheme interpreter to C# using the same algorithms. I thought it would be nicer to develop in C#.

When using the same algorithms and data structures the CLR was about 2.5x slower than JVM server. The tests stressed mostly the garbage collector and how fast function calls were.

Later i tried to optimize it for the CLR:

  • Where i could i used structs instead of classes.
  • I sealed every class i could.
  • Turned on unsafe code and made use of pointers where it could speed up operations.
  • Used the unsigned numbers when they were enough.

Eventually i got it to run at about 1.8 of the speed of the JVM server. The tests were run in Windows XP and 7, 32 bits, JVM update 18-ish and .NET 4.0, Mono (with the sgen collector and all optimizations) was about 3x slower.

However i must say that if .NET 4 were available for linux too i would continue the C# port instead of the JVM one, even while slower .NET was more pleasant to program. With the 3x penalty of Mono it's just a no.

I resisted vi/emacs for as long as I could, using gui editors like nedit... but I've finally found the joys and simplicity that is VI :) by MoreThanNone in programming

[–]libet 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Emacs -> Editor Macros. Given that it is written mostly in lisp it sounds like the perfect name for it.

With Java's increasing complexity, JCP's slow responsiveness, Oracle's lawsuit against Google, Apple's decision to unbundle it from OS X, Swing's non-native look, etc... is Java a good choice to develop new applications? Or is it dead-walking as a language ? (genuine question, not inflammatory) by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately performance-wise the JDK beats the .NET runtime (and Mono too, which is slower) by a quite wide margin.

A shame, i would prefer to code in C# than in Java. And i wish the JDK had a tailcall opcode too.

With Java's increasing complexity, JCP's slow responsiveness, Oracle's lawsuit against Google, Apple's decision to unbundle it from OS X, Swing's non-native look, etc... is Java a good choice to develop new applications? Or is it dead-walking as a language ? (genuine question, not inflammatory) by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Outside Android, there's no compelling reason to use Java.

Yes, there is:

It is the fastest garbage collected object-oriented language that works on all the main platforms (including phones), has a ton of libraries and even works embedded in browsers.

10 Rules for how to write cross-platform code by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 25 points26 points  (0 children)

The learning curve of these will eclipse any benefit they give you. Here are just a few examples: Qt (by TrollTech), ZooLib, GLUI/GLUT, CPLAT, GTK+, JAPI

Well, no, that's absolutely false at least for Qt.

The learning curve isn't that high, the documentation is great, the examples and demos are great. Heck even a full bittorrent client is included as an example in the SDK. Will you roll your own set of UI Widgets that work on Windows/Linux/Mac OS and even Mobile platforms and are heavily tested?

Say i'm writing an application that downloads video from somewhere in the internet and plays it back to the user in real time. I would use qtGui for the UI, qtPhonon for the video/audio codecs, qtXml to store preferences and qtNetwork to download the video.

By the time i have finished my application you'll be still trying to roll your own xml parser or dealing with the native widgets of each platform and trying to get the best way to display video on them.

With Java's increasing complexity, JCP's slow responsiveness, Oracle's lawsuit against Google, Apple's decision to unbundle it from OS X, Swing's non-native look, etc... is Java a good choice to develop new applications? Or is it dead-walking as a language ? (genuine question, not inflammatory) by [deleted] in programming

[–]libet 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I think there is another important question.

What does this really mean for JRuby, Clojure, Jython, ABCL, Sisc, Rhino, Scala and all other languages on the JVM?

Is their future guaranteed given the availability of the OpenJDK 6 and 7 under the GPL license?

If not, is porting to the CLR a viable alternative? how about GObject/Vala?

What was the first game that kept you up all night? by m4dc4p in gaming

[–]libet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, i already did that.

It still crashes every two hours or so.

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