Recent Posts

27101

Developer's Corner / Re: The Best Introductory Language

« Last post by mouser on April 16, 2007, 10:39 AM »

C# is a good choice if you are on windows.

but don't get me wrong, if you can get excited about learning c++ then go for it.  my advice to all new programmers is simply to find something that motivates you, usually a particular book or something.  whatever language you choose will be fine as long as you can stay motivated enough to keep programming and practicing.

ps. whatever language you choose, check out our Programming School section to help motivate you with some challenges: https://www.donation...index.php?board=77.0

27102

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: Help with small simple program

« Last post by mouser on April 16, 2007, 10:16 AM »

yeah i agree that installing farr just for this would be overkill

27103

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Post your FARR v2 Plugin Idea Requests Here - Plugin Writers Read In

« Last post by mouser on April 16, 2007, 10:14 AM »

to jump on Earthcoder's bandwagon, i would also like to see a simple plugin which would load a set of text files (maybe in its "Notes" subdirectory or let you configure where), and then when you trigger it would search through the lines of text matching them.  When you select it could copy the text from the line to the clipboard.

i think it would be a useful plugin for keeping and searching through simple text notes.

note that the farr plugin system is quite well suited for this, can can handle all filtering and matching of lines, and so will do most of the work.  it also includes a feature to copy text to clipboard so it's easy.

my farrfox plugin in fact does almost exactly what this plugin would do, except it grabs url bookmarks from a text file, so perhaps i should just write this plugin myself.. if no one does it by the end of the week i will.

27104

Developer's Corner / Re: The Best Introductory Language

« Last post by mouser on April 16, 2007, 10:07 AM »

I am a long time C++ programmer and consider it more my native language than english.  But I would not start with c++ as a beginner, for a few reasons:

1) A major design goal of C++ was to be backward compatible with C.  Because of this, and because it was one of the pioneering object oriented languages, it carries around with it a lot of baggage in terms of idiosyncrasies and ugly illogical design aspects.  These are things that as a coder your learn to ignore and look past, but as a new learner it makes things harder.  It's like learning to congugate irregular verbs in a spoken language.  yuck.

2) C++ was designed with a lot of emphasis on speed and minimal memory use.  While this can be very advantageous in some cases, it means that some things are a little more raw and low-level than a more modern language; again useful for a hardcore coder but perhaps overkill to handle when just learning.  This shows up in things like lack of array boundary checking, which can be deadly to new programmers, who are rightly angry when the computer starts acting weird instead of flagging an error.

3) C++ has no standard user interface library and it's not fun to find and use one -- this can be a killer issue for new coders who want to jump right into GUI programming.  Languages like java and C# are similar to C++ but provide such libraries and can make it easier to transition to gui stuff.

There are more reasons as well, but as a long time programmer, my view can basically be summed up as follows: 95% of learning how to program has nothing to do with what language you use/learn.  The more you learn, the easier it will be to switch to a new language.  Better to pick whatever path gets you into the game and productive.  C++ has some great things going for it, and mastering c++ will serve you well eventually, if only because you'll have an easier time figuring out whats going wrong when something truly goes wrong with your code.

27105

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: Help with small simple program

« Last post by mouser on April 16, 2007, 09:52 AM »

btw i think this would be a *very* useful and *very* simple FARR plugin (see https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=8071.0), which would also give you live searching as you type.

i'm tempted to write it myself but i don't want to steal someones "fun".

27106

General Software Discussion / Re: The sorry state of open source today: Thought-provoking, self-critical article

« Last post by mouser on April 16, 2007, 04:33 AM »

osnews.com is a good place to hear intelligent OS/linux friendly comments on such articles:
http://www.osnews.co...nt.php?news_id=17701

27107

Official Announcements / Remember: DonationCredits are for Giving

« Last post by mouser on April 16, 2007, 02:36 AM »

This post is your reminder that you may be sitting on a gold mine of non-interest bearing donationcredit just waiting for you to give out 

When you donate to this site, your donation is "credited" back to your account, for you to give out as you see fit.

We hope you will give some of it to the general site account, which helps pay our substantial server fees and expenses, and then give some of your credits to people on the forum whose work you want to support.

• If you are a fan of one or more of our software programs, we hope you will donate to the author of those programs.   If you like the Coding Snacks section of our forum, we hope you will donate to the coders who participate there.  If someone makes a post that helps you, or writes a review you like, send them a little as a way of saying thank you.
• Sometimes someone on our forum might even ask for a little help to afford something to help them keep creating stuff.  In a world where business vultures are securing multi-million dollar investments from venture capitalists, we hope you can spare a few nickels to help a teenager buy a $25 copy of a programming tool, as wreckedcarzz recently asked for help to do here.  I hope you'll look on such requests favorably.  Again, you don't have to donate a lot -- I hope we all can get into the habit of just sending a tiny bit here and there and work as a team to support deserving projects.

You can donate as little as 1 cent, and often you'll find that it's not the amount that matters to the recipient, but simply the gesture.


Whenever you see a gold coin next to a user on our forum, just click on it to give them some credits.

You can read more about DonationCredits here -- DonationCoder.com is one of only a handfull of micro-donation supported sites in the world.

27108

General Software Discussion / The sorry state of open source today: Thought-provoking, self-critical article

« Last post by mouser on April 16, 2007, 01:19 AM »

Thought-provoking and self-critical article on Open Source developments..

This editorial is an experiment. It was originally written by Radu-Cristian Fotescu for his blog, but he offered us the chance to publish it here on The Jem Report as well. It is extremely long, and divided up into separate pages, which is something I don't usually do with articles. So the format in which this is published is the first experiment. The second experiment is a matter of this article's content. I don't agree with everything Radu-Cristian says in his article, but I very much agree with what he is doing, which is to take a brutally honest look at the failures of the open source community and demand that we begin to recognize them instead of continuing to ignore the parts that aren't working correctly. This is the first step in fixing some of the problems that frustrate us all as GNU/Linux and *BSD users. Maybe it's time for a great re-examination of our processes and attitudes, and think about what needs to be done to create great software instead of continuing to perpetuate old mistakes on the basis that tradition, politics, rhetoric, and dogma are more important than critical thinking.

http://www.thejemrep...bo/content/view/309/

from http://www.dpwright.com

27109

Developer's Corner / Indievelopment Show: Episodic webshow about indie game developers

« Last post by mouser on April 16, 2007, 12:12 AM »

If you are an indie game dev company or have any interest at all in indie game development, check out the Indievelopment episodes from GameSpot which follow the progress of four game developers as they quit their jobs and attempt to launch their indie game development studio.

Watch the video episodes here:

http://www.gamespot....velopment/index.html

from http://www.antair.com/blog/

27110

Site/Forum Features / Re: should we get rid of the topic icons?

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 11:29 PM »

here's what im thinking currently:
1) remove ability for users to set topic/post icons (will always use standard icon)
2) keep the column
3) allow admin to set icon

idea will be that 99.99% of (new) topics will use the standard icon
an occasional post by admin can have an unusual icon to set it apart.

but i do agree that the icon choices sucked and we could bring it back if we had more informative icons.

27111

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Maze Craze - Fun 2D game by Wreckedcarzz

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 11:14 PM »

yeah might as well get rid of "bonuses" and just make regular levels.

27112

Screenshot Captor / Re: Text scraping: instructions

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 09:51 PM »

winscraper will grab text like sc will; kleptomania is capable of advanced stuff.

27113

General Software Discussion / Re: PhotoWipe

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 09:48 PM »

Nice find! 

27114

Site/Forum Features / Re: should we get rid of the topic icons?

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 09:15 PM »

yeah sorry my image is from "unread" posts screen which shows both the topic icons, and then another column of icons releated to how "hot" the topic is.

i'm suggesting getting rid of the ones you showed, and replacing them all with a standard image (the image on the first row in your screenshot)

27115

Site/Forum Features / Re: should we get rid of the topic icons?

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 07:41 PM »

yeah they seem a little like distracting noise to me, that's why i ask.  i find myself occasionally choosing a random one just for variety, but i think it may just serve as a distraction.

27116

Site/Forum Features / should we get rid of the topic icons?

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 07:03 PM »

im wondering if we should get rid of the poster-selectable topic icons.. im not sure if they serve much of a purpose.

ie:

27117

General Software Discussion / XNeat: rearrange taskbar, ontop windows, hide tray icons (free)

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 06:03 PM »

Haven't tried this yet but it looks promising if you have need of some of these features:

1- TaskBar Arranger
TaskBar Sorter allows you to re-arrange the programs appear in the taskbar the order you like, without being bound with the default windows arrangement.

2- Show / Hide Windows
XNeat adds extra Show/Hide windows menu item to the windows taskbar context menu saving you some desktop space while providing access to them. Very Handy with programs like OutLook and others.

3- Show / Hide Tray Icons
Show / Hide Tray icons menu item added by XNeat allows you to show and hide icons from your taskbar's system tray area.

4- Stay On Top Windows
Stay On Top added by XNeat allows you to keep any windows on top of other windows, so that it can’t be hidden by other windows... Very handy if you want to have fast access to a certain program like (windows calculator,excel, notepad ...etc)

5- Taskbar Apperance
Taskbar Apperance menu item added by XNeat gives you the ability to show any item in your taskbar ( Start menu button, Taskbar buttons, System tray, clock ).

5- Middle Button Close
Actually the mouse middle button is totally forget by microsoft team, now you can use it to close any window found in your desktop.

http://www.xneat.com/windows_manager/

from http://www.all4you.dk/FreewareWorld

27118

General Software Discussion / Re: PowerPro development to cease this month

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 05:50 PM »

For those who don't know it:

PowerPro Homepage: http://powerpro.webeddie.com

27119

Screenshot Captor / Re: Text scraping: instructions

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 03:41 PM »

I'm afraid that screenshot captor can't handle such complicated text capture -- it can only handle simple cases of text boxes, etc.

The one program i know of which is really good at capturing text in such complicated cases is a shareware program called Kleptomania: http://www.structurise.com/kleptomania/

27120

Living Room / Re: Choosing a keyboard and a mouse

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 03:43 AM »

Welcome to the site roadrunner2525.  all i can say is:

I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out why F5 was trying to open a file when I was wanting to refresh explorer.

been there. done that. 

27121

Developer's Corner / Re: SkyIDE - Latest Release Information

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 02:55 AM »

very nice looking! 

27122

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Maze Craze - Fun 2D game by Wreckedcarzz

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 02:50 AM »

i like the new graphics too. 

27123

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Maze Craze - Fun 2D game by Wreckedcarzz

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 02:50 AM »

ALRIGHT !!!!!!!! 



really really great work!!!  now we're talking!!! 

control feels really good.. a little easy maybe -- i'd love to see it with much faster dynamics (gravity,etc.) so that it might require a little more skill to control.

27124

Official Announcements / Re: The Gizmo Effect!

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2007, 12:12 AM »

evidence:

27125

Post New Requests Here / Re: On Screen Status Display

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2007, 06:11 PM »

let us know how 3RVX works for you FABZ and give us a little minireview if it does.