Recent Posts

7201

DC Gamer Club / Re: How Valve Will Single-handedly Save PC Gaming

« Last post by wraith808 on July 12, 2012, 01:39 PM »

I don't think "PC gaming" needs "saving".

-Renegade (July 12, 2012, 11:24 AM)

This.

7202

DC Gamer Club / Will Microsoft purchase Activision/Blizzard?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 12, 2012, 01:37 PM »

And if so, how will it affect the gaming industry?

http://www.examiner....rd-along-with-others

One thing I do know... I don't like the look of any of the other buyers... but with MS, there's so much that could change that it's not funny.

7203

Site/Forum Features / Re: Moving messages to another thread

« Last post by wraith808 on July 11, 2012, 07:16 PM »

Do a search on gri or grivitiniks on Google (or look at Gri's other posts here)... I wouldnt worry too much about understanding.

-kfitting (July 11, 2012, 05:34 AM)

I did, and they are all posts from him saying the same thing, in some insane, none English fashion 

I'm lost, and will probably never be found on this one, so I shall leave this to people who know how to translate this lol

-Stephen66515 (July 11, 2012, 07:51 AM)

You want even more humor?  Click on his post count under his name.  See all of the posts on DC by them.  This can't be random information generator the whole time, can it?  I mean... this is on purpose?

7204

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for July 9, 2012 - 100 Days of Summer Slumber

« Last post by wraith808 on July 11, 2012, 01:31 PM »

It's their world and they make the rules.

-mouser (July 11, 2012, 12:08 PM)

I would figure that it's not really their option, but maybe many people receiving the newsletter have moved it to spam and google/yahoo assumed that everyone else considers it spam too?

-jgpaiva (July 11, 2012, 12:26 PM)

And it becomes a self-perpetuating problem as people that receive it have it moved to spam without realizing it, so don't move it back (I've been guilty of that)...

7205

Developer's Corner / Re: Light Table - a new way to view IDEs

« Last post by wraith808 on July 11, 2012, 01:18 PM »

The only thing that gripes me a bit is the "live preview" of executions. Even though it sounds interesting, it looks like for large projects it might be impossible to configure the IDE to run it decently enough to get the live preview. Also, I'm not sure how that works if the functions take a lot of time to run (think of factorial with 400 as an argument ), does it timeout or does it hang up the editor?

-jgpaiva (July 11, 2012, 12:30 PM)

Good questions.  It seems that perhaps in practice now that he's released the playground, some of those same questions have occurred as he's put in a way to turn off live execution, and to perform it only for certain areas on demand, i.e. if you're in a bit of code you can run it on demand for that code.

7206

Site/Forum Features / Re: Moving messages to another thread

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2012, 09:56 PM »

Not me.   

7207

Developer's Corner / Light Table - a new way to view IDEs

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2012, 01:25 PM »

So, most IDE's are pretty much the same.  Other apps get better and change paradigm, but with the IDE, it's more of an evolution rather than a revolution.

Chris Granger came up with a new concept, and created a decently successful kickstarter campaign around it.  It sort of morphed during the process - he actually got real investors in addition to using crowd funding (though he was quite open about it).  But the concept still remains, and even though my language of choice is still C#, I have been looking with interest at Clojure for a while, and the concepts that he's putting forward are really cool and hopefully imply that there's still some level of innovation out there in IDE development.

Light table is based on a few guiding principles:

• You should never have to look for documentation
• Files are not the best representation of code, just a convenient serialization.
• Editors can be anywhere and show you anything - not just text.
• Trying is encouraged - changes produce instantaneous results
• We can shine some light on related bits of code

There's more on the kickstarter, and he has a playground on his site that you can download and play with.  But I really like the promises of what he's trying to deliver.

And one last quote - the one that really got me on board:

We built drafting tables for a reason

Towards the end of my time on the Visual Studio team, I came to the conclusion that windows aren't a good abstraction for what we do. Other engineers have large tables where they can scatter drawings, tools, and other information around. A drafting table is a much better abstraction for us. We shouldn't need to limit ourselves to a world where the smallest moveable unit is a file - our code has much more complex interactions that we can better see when we can organize things conceptually.

Currently, Light Table has plans to support Clojure, JavaScript, and Python, but I'm hoping for much more than that.  I think the reason that people keep creating the same thing over and over with iterative improvements is that Granger is right.  We're developing in a paradigm that limits us, rather than frees us.  At the end of the day, advanced coding/programming/whatever you want to call it is about solving problems.  And our tools aren't really geared towards that purpose: no matter how many ways we can split and slice our windows, they just aren't built for what we need.  Maybe this can start a revolution in our tools, and make us much more productive.

Also, though this thread was started about Light Room, I welcome other discussion on the topic.  I've been quite dissatisfied with IDEs and what's been out there for a while...this just sort of crystallized a lot of what I have been feeling towards the tools that are available.

Thoughts?

7208

General Software Discussion / Re: It's official: Microsoft discontinuing Windows Home Server

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2012, 12:31 PM »

So my plan was to trash all the needless complexity, and use WHS for what I expected to be a more straightforward configuration.

Anybody have better suggestions for running a house-wide network with decent security?

-CWuestefeld (July 10, 2012, 12:25 PM)

Is there any reason your plan has changed?  I ask because my plan was to do the same thing... and with 40's announcement, I have it in my newegg cart... didn't see a downside to using it even if they discontinue it.

7209

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for software to manage and merge various MS word documents

« Last post by wraith808 on July 10, 2012, 10:22 AM »

Writing Outliner is also a good choice.  Before I stopped using Word for writing, it was my go-to tool for that type of thing.

7210

General Software Discussion / Re: Dropbox Chat Client

« Last post by wraith808 on July 09, 2012, 02:07 PM »

Interesting idea... I never have the time to follow through on these things, but if I do, I'll let you know.

7211

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual Basic or Visual C++

« Last post by wraith808 on July 09, 2012, 01:36 PM »

Whether they teach it in universities these days, I dunno - but I'd hope so.

-db90h (July 08, 2012, 04:22 PM)

My BIL is in college right now, and had to take one course in C/C++.  One.  From there, it was on to Java world.  Admittedly, that's what he's studying, but... yeah.  One course doesn't even really count.  Then again, several years ago, I only took 1 also, so...  

Most of my experience with C++/C is self-taught and on the job, not that I have ever used anything from college anyway...

7212

Living Room / Re: Do we need other programs?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 08, 2012, 12:44 PM »

There's the issue of choice also.  If a developer sees that what he's doing is something that he wants to do in an original way- whether that be additional features, implementation of functionality, and/or user interface- that might drive a developer to want to do it.  And I'm glad.  I'd hate to be stuck with VI and notepad.

Many of the most popular programs out there were originally written by somebody for their own personal use and only later turned into a public release at the suggestion of friends.

As long as somebody has an itch to scratch there will always be new programs written.

So do we need all these new programs? Well...as far as at least one person is concerned, I think the answer would have to be: yes.

And if that one person is a coder, a majority of one easily wins the vote.

-40hz (July 07, 2012, 01:58 PM)

+1 - Well said! 

7213

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual Basic or Visual C++

« Last post by wraith808 on July 08, 2012, 11:47 AM »

^ I'd agree with all of those statements.  I glanced at their methodologies after I posted the reply, and it's quantitative rather than qualitative, i.e. from their site:

The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

Those two lines seem to indicate it's more about the job market penetration, rather than any metric that would be useful to those that actually utilize the languages, in my opinion.

7214

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual Basic or Visual C++

« Last post by wraith808 on July 08, 2012, 11:05 AM »

LOL... no problem, at least to me.  I like to see dissenting positions and reasoning behind them.  I just don't like to see the posing of a dissenting position being based on tearing someone else's position down.  I know that's a valid debating talent- that's why I never got into debating.

Oh... cool link on the positions of programming languages.  I finally went to the link after I noticed today the chart was from 2010, and found out it was from a different site, and they update monthly.  I haven't looked into their methodologies, but it's a pretty cool artifact nonetheless.

Here is the link to the live chart - http://www.tiobe.com...info/tpci/index.html

The rankings are quite a bit different now...

7215

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual Basic or Visual C++

« Last post by wraith808 on July 07, 2012, 06:40 PM »

Still, I believe strongly ANY programmer needs to understand the fundamentals of unmanaged C/C++ and even assembly language... As the universities TEACH. It is important to understand these so you know what the higher level languages are doing behind the scenes. Now, for 'Web programming', it is a slightly different story ...

-db90h (July 07, 2012, 04:58 PM)

Actually, the universities don't seem to agree with you anymore, and haven't for many years.  And I'd be surprised if Ath didn't understand static linking.  He was talking about .NET programming in Visual Studio from the prospective of his talking about the .NET runtime, and under those situations (using managed C++) it doesn't really apply as managed C++ doesn't compile to native code- it compiles to MSIL just like C# if you're using C++/CLI.

(Even though even with that caveat it's more complicated than that, as C++/CLI supports several modes of code generation. The /clr option generates a IJW mixture of native and MSIL code, while /clr:pure results in a managed-only assembly, although native types as needed could be translated into their .net equivalent structures, which also makes it very much like C# with /unsafe, i.e. type-safety isn't guaranteed and pointer arithmetic might be in use.  The strictest of options is /clr:safe, which produces type-safe, verifiable MSIL-only assembly, exactly like the C# compiler does.)

Of course, all of this is going a bit far afield.  Everyone will have their own preferences, and their own reasons for it, which is why its best IMO if these stay to stating your own opinion rather than trying to denude someone else's statements.

7216

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 prices seem to have been announced during period to 31st January

« Last post by wraith808 on July 07, 2012, 10:42 AM »

This is a great idea. Now how about throwing in Office 2013 (or whatever the version is), too?

-zridling (July 03, 2012, 10:52 PM)

Pretty much they do.  Most of the functionality is available on the web in Office Live.

7217

General Software Discussion / Re: Wakoopa discontinuing service

« Last post by wraith808 on July 07, 2012, 10:41 AM »

OT, but for the record: Comma-separated_values^w

-Ath (July 07, 2012, 02:15 AM)

Yeah... I should have known.  But I haven't taken a look at the file- just downloaded it.

7218

General Software Discussion / Re: Visual Basic or Visual C++

« Last post by wraith808 on July 07, 2012, 10:38 AM »

Would love to see that backed up with any real statistics...

-db90h (July 06, 2012, 02:19 PM)

Something like this ohloh graph ?

It shows that Java is quite dominant in what they measured, but MS/VS doesn't have a Java-language any longer (though C# is close in some areas). It also shows that C# is quite a bit more used than VB or C++.

-Ath (July 07, 2012, 03:58 AM)

Thanks for that!  I never knew about that site!

And my .02 is that if you have already done work in QBasic, VB.NET, while a totally different beast, would feel more like what you've been doing in syntax and such, so the new concepts being stacked on top wouldn't be that much.

If you are starting from scratch, I'd actually recommend Python.  I'm not a big python enthusiast (some here are), but I know my brother-in-law, who had no little aptitude for the subject, was able to pick it up from this book with little help from me, and it helped his transition to programming conceptually.  There's also a tutorial on google code.

But, if you're determined to delve into Visual Studio, and don't have that much experience, I'd definitely recommend C# over C++ or VB.NET.  There's more resources for C# than VB.NET, and it's more forgiving than C++.

Just my .02.

7219

General Software Discussion / Re: Wakoopa discontinuing service

« Last post by wraith808 on July 06, 2012, 11:37 PM »

They're CSV

-wraith808 (July 06, 2012, 11:21 AM)

Just for the record, they're actually TSV (tab-separated) files even though they have the CSV extension.

-skwire (July 06, 2012, 11:30 AM)

Oops.  Thanks for the clarification

7220

General Software Discussion / Re: Wakoopa discontinuing service

« Last post by wraith808 on July 06, 2012, 11:21 AM »

We still have nothing to import them.

-Tuxman (July 05, 2012, 11:33 AM)

They're CSV, so the data at least is open.  But no replacement service...

7221

General Software Discussion / Re: Wakoopa discontinuing service

« Last post by wraith808 on July 05, 2012, 10:54 AM »

It's done... the logs are available for export at http://social.wakoopa.com if you want to download it until October 1, after which they will be deleted.

Dear Wakoopian,
 
This is a follow-up on our previous e-mail where we announced the closing of Wakoopa Social.
 
As of today you can download your personal export from the website http://social.wakoopa.com. This possibility will be around for three months, until October 1st. After that we will destroy all the data.
 
We want to thank you all for the time and effort you have put into our product. Together we truly made discovering software social.
 
Best regards,
Wouter Broekhof, Founder & CTO

7222

Living Room / Re: "You may lose your internet service Monday" ?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 05, 2012, 10:40 AM »

It is true, and was discussed on here a while back.  Visit the site, see if you're infected, and follow the instructions.

7223

General Software Discussion / Re: Software to ONLY search bookmarked/favorited pages?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 04, 2012, 01:07 PM »

Pretty Run

http://delphistep.cis.si/prettyrun.htm

- Search Internet Explorer favorites
- Search Firefox bookmarks
- Search Chrome bookmarks

-PhilB66 (July 04, 2012, 06:02 AM)

He's talking about searching the bookmarked pages for certain terms.  Pretty run just searches your favorites when you type in a search term for a certain page matching that term- FARR does something similar.

7224

General Software Discussion / Re: Software to ONLY search bookmarked/favorited pages?

« Last post by wraith808 on July 03, 2012, 10:38 AM »

Sounds like a possible job for mouser's Web Link Captor

-Ath (July 02, 2012, 03:34 PM)

I think you may be right.  mouser, any chance of this making its way into the program?  I'll place a request in its forum.
I'm testing it out right now, I wasn't even aware of this one.

-superboyac (July 03, 2012, 10:24 AM)

Wow... you know, I don't think I ever understood that program before.  But this discussion has placed it in a whole new light for me.

7225

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by wraith808 on July 03, 2012, 10:32 AM »

I've copied this post (above) to the relevant discussion in the Soap Box:
Re: "Terrorist Police State" [NSFW?]

...

-wraith808 (July 02, 2012, 02:00 PM)

-IainB (July 03, 2012, 02:33 AM)

Why?  It wasn't to start discussion or anything, especially as I said in there that I don't want to discuss?  And of course you could have done it without the announcement.  But... whatever... have fun.