At 11/6/09 08:57 AM, Alphabit wrote:

At 11/6/09 07:54 AM, urbn wrote:

At 11/5/09 08:26 PM, Alphabit wrote: Stuff

It was your own damn fault for not logging in prior to the interview.

Lol, yeah... It was alright though; the interviewer was late :)

lol. He probably had to do the same update :P

I will further recommend Python. It is a very simple language to use. It'll give you a great chance to learn programming fundamentals, without having to worry about messy details. Once you have a good grasp with it, you can move on to a more widely used language.

At 10/23/09 05:52 AM, CronoMan wrote: I'm making a game called fnelda
and by using bubblesort, I needed 18 000 sprites in the same view simultaneously before the framerate dropped below 60fps (where each sprite got sorted by y, so I could draw them in the right order)
And I'm betting you probably don't have that amount of movieclips in your scene
Of course, that's in a completely different language, and the performance is probably a shitload better than AS, but the point is that you probably won't need more than bubblesort. Implementing quicksort, bitsort etc is quite a hassle compared to bubblesort, as you'll need to write binary trees and whatnot and you'll have less time to spend focusing on the content itself

But obviously, this is up to you :P It's fun to write new algorithms anyway, and you'll learn new approaches to common problems

Most languages have sort functions already written. All you have to do it figure out how to use them correctly. They are usually really well implemented, so you won't have to worry about performance. It will also save you a lot of time.

At 10/20/09 06:43 PM, amaterasu wrote: ...or you could just add a comment above that line of code explaining what the "magic number" is.

problem solved.

Or you can make your code self-documenting. This is considerably more reliable than writing comments that often don't get changed to reflect changing code, and become misleading.

I would say that clarity is a more important reason to use named constants instead of magic numbers. Think of a programmer that will have to read your code later. Will they instantly understand the significance of the number 300?

If your lines are too long, you should consider breaking up the calculation into smaller bits. You can store the intermediate bits in variables.

For example, if you were going to calculate the roots of a function using the quadratic equation, you could have one variable that just contains the discriminant. This would make your lines smaller, and your overall function much easier to read.

At 10/15/09 01:23 AM, henke37 wrote: Except that the current time is not random at all.

What would be a better seed? I think in this scenario, the current time would make an adequate seed.

At 10/14/09 10:08 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: FYI, 0 to 8 is 9 moves total, not 8

I believe that the move numbers are 1 to 8, not 0 to 8.

At 10/14/09 09:08 AM, henke37 wrote: Just remember to use something that's actually random as the seed.

Right. For example, you could seed the random number using the current time:

#include <ctime>
#include <cstdlib>

srand( time(0) );

rand() will generate a random number between 0 and a predefined constant. You need a number between 1 and 8, so you'll need to do some math. Specifically, reduce the random number mod 8 and shift up by one. More specifically,

int computer_move = rand() % 8 + 1;

This will generate the random number. You will need to generate a new number every time the computer wants to make a move.

The seed (srand()) only needs to happen once, at the beginning of your program. That is, you should put this function call at the top of main.

Hehe. I approve :). I'm glad people are starting to care about functional programming. Making a list is one thing, but the really impressive stuff can be seen when you implement "data" structures using only functions.

Also,

(define (make-a-list final-len)
     (local ((define (make-list-internal final-len cnt-len)
                 (if (equal? final-len cnt-len)
                      empty
                      (cons (read)  (make-list-internal final-len (+ 1 cnt-len))))))

     (make-list-internal 10 0))

Makes a 10 element list with input from the user. :)

At 2/22/09 07:31 PM, Cryzabey wrote: Are those degrees specific to a certain area of programming, or do they pretty much transfer over to anything that involves it? Does the college you go to greatly affect the knowledge you would gain from a degree with a similar title? and are most degrees take 2, 4, or more years to acquire?

A CS degree will give you enough general knowledge about programming. After, you will be able to learn what you need easily. The degree is 5 years, but a non-coop program is usually 4 years.

I wrote an intro tutorial that talked about practical applications of pointers:

At 2/21/09 12:19 PM, Cryzabey wrote: - Are there any pre-college things I can work on?

Try to do anything that would let you apply programming to projects (ie, develop a site for someone, participate in contests, ect). This will help a lot for getting a job later. Employers really care about your experiences.

Do a lot of research on your own too. Show initiative in learning new things in the field and you should be good.

- What college courses are a must?

Most computer programmers have a degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering. I'm currently in CS at Waterloo, doing a Software Engineering option.

- How would you go about job seeking?

My university is co-op based so, this is actually taken care for me. I get to work for 6 different companies over my five year program. I would look into co-op, if I were you.

Otherwise, try meeting employers in person or just applying online.

Good Luck :)

I love university. I'm about to here a talk from Joel Spolsky. I can't say that I've ever read his blog, but he's a fairly big name in the industry. Later this month, there's a talk from Richard M. Stallman. They have some really cool people come to talk to us. It's really cool. I'll let you know how it went.

Well I doubt that Statistics would make reference to AI, but AI will almost definitely reference stats. On that principle I would probably study the statistics first. It will probably give you the mathematical knowledge that will make AI a little easier to understand.

At 1/3/09 07:28 PM, smulse wrote: I think sometimes you hear what you wanna hear

<3 Flight of the Concords.

In other news, I'm back in residence again. Classes start tomorrow. Goodbye free time!

At 1/3/09 11:07 AM, littleMonsterGames wrote: Cool! A .exe would be helpful. I downloaded the .zip from the link, and the .exe hidden deep in there didn't work. I'm just taking a look at your code now though...

And I'm getting started on mine.

Do you get an error message or anything? The only potential problem is that you need the .NET 3.5 framework, but you should have it.

Here is my solution.

It draws the words from a text file to allow for easy customization. Written in C#.

You might want to rethink releasing the code bit. I think it'd be better to release code as soon as you're done. There's no need to keep it hidden. If someone wants to cheat, they can go right ahead. It doesn't really change anything.

At 1/3/09 12:58 AM, littleMonsterGames wrote:

At 1/3/09 12:52 AM, Cinjection wrote: Sounds good.

So you in? :)

Yes. I'm probably going to crank something out tonight. Shall I post it in this thread?

At 1/3/09 12:49 AM, littleMonsterGames wrote:

At 1/3/09 12:30 AM, Cinjection wrote: Teehee. Someone may have done this before ;)

Yeah, over a year ago. And we'd like to do it again! Thanks for the link! We might be able to use ideas based off ones they used for challenges (not the same ones tho).

Sounds good.

Teehee. Someone may have done this before ;)
Linky poo

At 1/2/09 02:09 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: for(int i = 0; i<num_sides; i++){
vertices[i] = stuff;
normals[i] = stuff;
edges[i] = stuff;
}

Vectors will let you use the exact same code, but will give you more power on top of that. You can treat vectors like arrays a lot of the time. Vectors just give you more freedom, should you ever need it.

At 1/2/09 12:06 AM, DougyTheFreshmaker wrote:

They allow the compiler to create the specific type at run time as needed.

Just a clarification here... templates are resolved at compile time. C++ compilers don't operate at run-time ;)

Bah. I hate typing. My bad.

At 1/2/09 01:07 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: So I don't see why I couldn't expand that to a polygon class effectively.

Although that may code will work, it's a convoluted way of doing that. It makes more sense to use a constructor-based approach. I would always choose the most intuitive way to solve a problem, and using templates doesn't really make sense in this situation.

At 1/1/09 09:26 PM, sasuke2910 wrote: how about C++ is can do EVERY THING, except make websites, and flash

I have a feeling that C++ is going to start getting left behind in the next couple years. More and more programmers are starting to realize that it wastes their time. C is in a place where it won't go away. It's pretty unique like that. It's the language for low-level programming.

C++ doesn't really stand out like that. You really shouldn't be using C++ if you want to write low-level procedural code. Although it's possible, C++ is more tailored to OOP development. The thing with that is, there are a lot of other languages that let you do the same thing, but with less hassle (Like C#).

So learning C++ might not be as useful as learning something in the .NET area.

At 1/1/09 09:39 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: I'm making a polygon class right now, and seeing as I'm still relatively new to c++, I have no idea when it's appropriate to use a template class.

Basically I'm making a "polygon" class (which I will expand into a rigid body engine but that's not the question here), and I want to be able to pass it a variable number of edges. Is it better to use a dynamically allocated array for this and pass it a number in the constructor, or use a template class and reference it as Polygon<#sides>?

Okay. There several solutions, but using templates is not one of them. It depends on what you need the polygons to do. You basically have two options:

Option 1:
Pass in the number of sides to the constructor. This information becomes part of the state of the class.

Option 2:
Use inheritance to inherit various polygons from an abstract Polygon class. This solution works if you need to have very distinct behavior for different shapes.

I think you might be better off with the first option. By using a constructor, you can set the number of sides for the object whenever.

On a side note, templates are used for creating generic classes. This means that the class does not rely on a specific type. For example, if I wanted to make a List class, you would need to specify what Type the List will hold. This is where Templates come in handy. They allow the compiler to create the specific type at run time as needed.

At 1/1/09 07:21 PM, BillysProgrammer wrote: Basics:
C++
C#
Java

You might want to choose to learn one of these languages really well. I would recommend C#.

At 12/31/08 08:35 PM, DanielZ wrote: Ewww... .NET? I'd rather be unemployed than work with that.

What's don't you like about .NET. I personally think it's fantastic. It gives programmers a lot of power without bogging us down with small nitty-gritty things.

Happy New Years Guys! Hope you all had some fun nights.

Source

I found that an interesting read. It's a prediction of the top IT skills for people interested in getting employed in the new year. Top 2 are:
1) SAP (which I've never heard of before :s)
2) .NET technologies.

Give it a read, especially if you're getting a job in the IT field sometime next year. Any surprises there? Anything you think should be on the list?

I'm personally just glad Java is not on that list.