Programming & IT Discussion

[Beryllos]

I’m still here.

how about doing your own game? doesn’t have to be big… just simple ones but highly profitable…

My concern about making your own game is the market. As a solo programmer (or small company), can it be highly profitable? Maybe so, because your operating expenses are low.

It wouldn’t hurt to try. Even if you don’t make a lot of money, you can pick up skills and experience that will help you on subsequent (or non-game) projects.

 

[S_A_M]

btw, how about you? what’s your project for now? what langs is your specialization?

 

[Beryllos]

My programming at the moment is an at-home hobby, and not market-ready yet, but maybe someday it will be. I’m using Python for the framework, tkinter for the user interface (but this could change as needed in the future), and C for the number crunching. I’m trying out some new ideas for audio signal analysis. I don’t mean a new presentation of existing ideas, but functionality that hasn’t been introduced yet because it’s almost impossible.

P.S. I’m developing it in Linux, but it could be portable to other systems if needed. My IDE is a text editor (gedit).

 

[Fauken]

Great tip! thanks. Sounds like you gotta do them then, but just make sure you do it properly. Study and practice, I’m afraid.

Yeah, but that’s how it is for coding in general: there is no substitute for practice. May I recommend the MVVM/MVC framework to try first? It’s popular for massive UI programs and there are Nuget libraries in C# that support it – I use MVVMLight.

how about doing your own game? doesn’t have to be big… just simple ones but highly profitable…

How many of those exist these days though? The most recent one I can think of was Undertale, and it wasn’t like a Mass Effect or COD game in terms of popularity. In my opinion, the hardest code possible to be made is simple and powerful. This should be more so for games which rely heavily on a story, mechanics, and graphics.

 

[ZMystiCat]

Sorry for the many posts. I came in late and have a lot to say.

When I go to a meeting and hear about the vast infrastructure behind modern cloud systems, it’s all double-dutch to me.

When I first interviewed at Google, one of the questions asked was basically over an algorithm that would be important to making a critical feature of any cloud work. I failed miserably. I did work in Microsoft Azure for a bit, though, which cleared up some confusion of how the cloud works.

I’ve been out of the mainstream for so long that I can’t say how useful they will be.

I know Python has become the most popular language by some metrics, but I think a lot of that has to do with its popularity outside of software engineering. Software engineers seem to love it less.

I’ve also got a lot of F# - the .Net functional language. If it’s your cup of tea, then it’s heaps of fun and very useful.

I tried F# a while ago. It was interesting, and I don’t mind playing around with it, but I wouldn’t want to use a functional language as my go-to language. Some of the concepts are good, but I’d rather apply some functional paradigms to C++ or Java while still having the flexibility to break from that when it aids readability and/or performance.

I did, yes, but I don’t use it. Quite frankly I prefer C# since I don’t have to worry as much about pointers or memory allocation problems (not that they don’t exist in C#, since it uses methods from C++ that have to have allocation and deallocation taken into account, but C#'s garbage collector is nice).

Modern C++ has kind of solved this problem with the addition of smart pointers. The raw pointers are still there, and I still find myself having to use them, but the unique_ptr adds almost no overhead, is safer, and is self-documenting when it comes to ownership transfers.

With that said, I think C++ making pointers clear, rather than hiding them like C# and Java, still makes it preferable for finer-grained memory management and makes potential side-effects easier to spot.

 

[ZMystiCat]

By the way, in the CAF editor, code can be formatted as shown by surrounding it with the

 and

tags, each on its own line.

I prefer to use the markdown syntax.

I’ve written a lot of C++ and wouldn’t go back to it voluntarily. It’s over-featured (eg. all the different class and method signatures, along with macros from C), and then you have to know the STL to be up-to-date, and “design patterns”, …

C++'s massive scale was actually a motivation behind Go from what I hear. Still, I would say most languages have a tendency to be larger and more complex than most realize. C++ makes that part of the initiation process, but spend enough time with C#, Java, or Python, and you’ll probably find yourself travelling down a similar rabbit hole to C++'s name lookup (sorry!).

AFAIK C++ it’s mostly used in legacy systems. But there’ll always be a lot of work in legacy systems…

I’ve seen some reports that indicate C++ is picking up steam again, perhaps as people become more aware of things like the aforementioned smart pointers. With that said, I doubt it will catch Java any time soon.

(What money-crazed computer scientists cooked up some of these weird languages? Some of the language names are not appropriate, FYI.)

Bear in mind, Python started off as a fun side project from a guy who liked Monty Python a bit too much.

(Caution, some colorful language.)

I should point out that as of C++11, the C++ one is kind of outdated.

These features are being added to C# with each release, but to me that’s just turning the language into a dogs breakfast.

I kind of realized that C# was losing its way in some regards, not from functional additions, but when they decided to add the dynamic type. Not only is it unnecessary, but it allows programmers to stop holding to compile-time type safety.

 

[ZMystiCat]

(although I’ve heard C# generics are better - from the F# people… ) .

It is.

When Java added generics, they decided that backwards-compatibility was important. As such, they embraced type erasure, so an ArrayList<String> is actually backed by an Object array rather than a String array. They can offer compile-time safety, but it makes the runtime slower, doesn’t allow one to check type information at runtime, can mess up method overloading, and don’t allow primitives to be used.

Microsoft, on the other hand, said “screw backwards compatibility” and didn’t embrace type erasure. As a result, a List<string> is actually backed by a string array. This solves all the problems Java has. With that said, for all the code I’ve seen taking advantage of C#'s runtime type information on generics, I have almost never seen it used in a way that is justifiable. Other advantages still stand, though.

I think the pay is high

It isn’t, and that’s part of the problem. It’s very much something people do out of passion. With that said, I know things have gotten better over the years, but recent leaks from Bioware and Treyarch* have revealed that overworking and mistreating employees is still a problem.

* Some of the stuff in the Treyarch leak, particularly regarding contractors, would hold for companies like Microsoft and Google as well.

 

[Edmundus1581]

Sorry for the many posts. I came in late and have a lot to say.
…

Great stuff! Thanks for all the insights

 

[S_A_M]

and you’ll probably find yourself travelling down a similar rabbit hole to C++'s name lookup (sorry!)

talking about name lookup, can you give me the link for iostream header’s definition? i always curious about its definition file

Sorry for the many posts

well, actually, even that’s what i actually wanted… crowdy thread :v

May I recommend the MVVM/MVC framework to try first?

never heard about it before? any reference links?

 

[Fauken]

never heard about it before? any reference links?

Model–view–viewmodel - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Wikipedia is not the worst place in the world for reading about programming. Basically, you have a Model, which is your data. The ViewModel has several properties that bind to and interact with the properties of your model to the View, which is your UI.

 

[ZMystiCat]

talking about name lookup, can you give me the link for iostream header’s definition? i always curious about its definition file

There isn’t necessarily one iostream file… For instance, there’s the GCC (.h) and LLVM (.h, .cpp) versions, which reading over will show their similarities and differences. I’m sure Microsoft has at least a similarly-written header file for Visual C++, but they haven’t open-sourced that as far as I’m aware.

 

[S_A_M]

wow, thank you!!! now i know where i can find source codes for many major projects!! but what is the difference between gcc version and the other version?

Wikipedia is not the worst place in the world for reading about programming

lol you’re r8 but i thought it would be another reference other than wikipedia

 

[S_A_M]

anyway, where’s everybody? nobody wants to open any discussion?

 

[ZMystiCat]

wow, thank you!!! now i know where i can find source codes for many major projects!! but what is the difference between gcc version and the other version?

Generally speaking, I tend to Google for what I want and add “source code” to the query. Github is probably the most popular location for storing at least a copy of the source code, and you can find such projects as Linux and Git there. However, because certain projects (e.g. GNU and GCC) aren’t on Github as far as I can tell, it is best to use Google.

but what is the difference between gcc version and the other version?

Different implementations for different compilers. GCC, Clang/LLVM, and Visual C++ are some of the more popular ones. All of them are capable of compiling C++ code, but C++ code written for one may not compile or behave appropriately on another, something I learned the hard way in college.

anyway, where’s everybody? nobody wants to open any discussion?

Here’s some interesting news: Apparently Microsoft is exploring shifting from C and C++ to Rust. Now I know Facebook and Google already use Rust in a very limited capacity, but it sounds like there’s rumblings in Microsoft to take it further.

On a personal level, I still need to play around with Rust a bit more and was, coincidentally, planning on delving deeper into it over the next few weeks to get a general feel for the language. I also need to do a bit more research as to why someone would go with Rust rather than Go, Swift, or even more modern versions of C++.

 

[S_A_M]

Generally speaking, I tend to Google for what I want and add “source code” to the query.

omg, this means I searched with the wrong keywords all this time!! I searched using “iostream definition file” or similar

Here’s some interesting news: Apparently Microsoft is exploring shifting from C and C++ to Rust.

hmm… at a glance, i don’t really like the language… pretty weird for me, no offense for rust’s coders… haha…

 

[Fauken]

Here’s some interesting news: Apparently Microsoft is exploring shifting from C and C++ to Rust. Now I know Facebook and Google already use Rust in a very limited capacity, but it sounds like there’s rumblings in Microsoft to take it further.

On a personal level, I still need to play around with Rust a bit more and was, coincidentally, planning on delving deeper into it over the next few weeks to get a general feel for the language. I also need to do a bit more research as to why someone would go with Rust rather than Go, Swift, or even more modern versions of C++.

I’ve heard of Rust, but I’m not incredibly familiar with its concept or the language itself. I thought I heard though that it’s popular because it’s a multi-platform language.

 

[S_A_M]

really?? so it’s like java? but i think java is more preferable bcoz ppl already familiar with its syntax and it already developed so it should be more “mature” in language capabilities…

 

[Fauken]

but i think java is more preferable bcoz ppl already familiar with its syntax and it already developed so it should be more “mature” in language capabilities…

Both of those things don’t really matter. I just Googled Rust and it’s apparently similar in syntax to C++, and by your logic of Java being more developed, we should opt to use Cobol and Fortran since they were more developed than the languages used today were in their infancies.

 

[adamhovey1988]

I can use a computer, does that count?

 

[S_A_M]

and by your logic of Java being more developed, we should opt to use Cobol and Fortran since they were more developed than the languages used today were in their infancies.

are they still developed till today? afaik, they’re not… what i mean, is still dvlped till now…

I can use a computer, does that count?

well, as far as you want to discuss IT stuffs and not violate the rules, that’d be fine