Amateur Programming Study

[Gorth]

I know. It's just... NULL just sounds so negative

[Malcador]

Pfft, I always called them "null terminated strings" /hipster

 

Well, hardly hipster to use the correct term. The character at the end isn't zero no ?

 

Came across this day, might be interesting to some and is remotely relevant to this thread - http://wordaligned.org/articles/two-star-programming

 

Made me realize how much of my C is rusted.

[Gorth]

Pfft, I always called them "null terminated strings" /hipster

 

Well, hardly hipster to use the correct term. The character at the end isn't zero no ?

 

Came across this day, might be interesting to some and is remotely relevant to this thread - http://wordaligned.o...tar-programming

 

Made me realize how much of my C is rusted.

 

Heh, pointers to arrays of pointers. That was common practice on the Commodore Amiga

 

Good old Linus, always wondered what became of him. We didn't use Linux as case study at the University though, we used Minix (Tanenbaum) instead.

[Nightshape]

I've been so ingrained with OO programming it's funny how much more involved my solution would likely have been... lol.

 

That'd be called over-engineering lad. Avoid it. and use KISS all the time.

[Malcador]

That'd be called over-engineering lad. Avoid it. and use KISS all the time.

 

Can you come work here, please?

 

We have some classes written with methods like

 

class Adder {

 

public int add ( int x, int y )

{

return x + y ;

}

 

}

[Gorth]

That'd be called over-engineering lad. Avoid it. and use KISS all the time.

 

Can you come work here, please?

 

We have some classes written with methods like

 

class Adder {

 

public int add ( int x, int y )

{

return x + y ;

}

 

}

 

#define Adder(a, b) (a + b)

 

Ok, there is such a thing as over simplifying

[Malcador]

Well that can be useful if you later want to sabotage it by defining it as ( a - b ) :D

[alanschu]

Well, hardly hipster to use the correct term. The character at the end isn't zero no ?

Well, null is typically a  0 byte, so it's still a fair term IMO

 

 

That'd be called over-engineering lad. Avoid it. and use KISS all the time.

 

But think of how extensible it'd be!  You could easily add new alternatives, new menu items, even new days!  The versatility!

 

Ultimately my laziness contributes to the KISS.

 

 

One thing I learned for sure was to not code extra features that people may use in the future.  Let whomever needs said feature add it

[alanschu]

 

 

 

That'd be called over-engineering lad. Avoid it. and use KISS all the time.

Can you come work here, please?

 

We have some classes written with methods like

 

class Adder {

 

public int add ( int x, int y )

{

return x + y ;

}

 

}

 

#define Adder(a, b) (a + b)

 

Ok, there is such a thing as over simplifying

 

Fortunately my knowledge of good ol' cstdlib helped me dissect some of the helper functions for some of the aspects of Frostbite.  I don't know the full reasoning, but I know some of them are replicated (IIRC it's so that it probably uses our memory manager in a way that we have ultimate control over.  Fun things like small block allocators and whatnot).

 

I remember working stupid hours over Christmas for DA2 trying to isolate some situations that were leading to some grotesque situations of memory fragmentation on the PS3

Edited January 18, 2013 by alanschu

[Gorth]

I was raised in the belief that NULL is less than nothing. It's emptier than an empty string and more zero than zero. Usually used to indicate that a the nature of a value hasn't been given yet (usually done first time it's referenced, even if it's just assigning zero or an empty string to it).

 

Ah yes, memory allocations. Pointer exercises are a good way of becoming familiar with low level CPU architecture. Nothing like 'Segmentation Fault' to tell you that you forgot to initialize a pointer in your array of pointers

[alanschu]

I still remember my first exposure with C++, while also on Linux.  My first year was with Java which had built in Exception Handlers.  The C++ was using g++ on a console.

 

Try running application:

 

"Segmentation Fault?"

 

WTF does that mean!?  Off to google.

 

Although ironically, I learned to love it.  "A hard crash!  This should be easy to find!"  I remember doing an AI course and it was my first exposure to C (and my good friend malloc and free).  We were given some skeleton code, and I failed to realized I had accidentally used the wrong variable while iterating over the memory block, and clobbered the crap out of it.  My free() call led to some bizarre "glibc" error and I had no idea wtf was causing it.  Fortunately some combing with a fine tooth comb found the problem, but yeah... sometimes I loves me a solid IDE and debugger!  Haha.

 

 

Also:

[i was raised in the belief that NULL is less than nothing. It's emptier than an empty string and more zero than zero. Usually used to indicate that a the nature of a value hasn't been given yet (usually done first time it's referenced, even if it's just assigning zero or an empty string to it).

 

I'd agree, but looking at the raw registers and memory words we know this isn't true

Edited January 18, 2013 by alanschu

[Malcador]

Pointer heavy programs and GDB back in school gave me such good memories.  Granted being up at 3 AM eagerly watching changes in some random address or using my hands drawing in the air the way the pointers link up isn't everyone's idea of fun. 

[Zeckul]

Don't understand anything of that Zeckul but it looks interesting :D

It's F#, a functional programming language. Once you have a good idea of procedural and object-oriented techniques, it can very enriching to learn about functional techniques as well. Take your time.

[Osvir]

This is the sloppy structural diagram I did, put it together rather quickly. Misunderstood the first assignment from last week. I need to finish one of the assignments (the travel planner) but when I've done (tomorrow presumably) I'll post the new assignment (Just one this time).



~as I said, pretty sloppy

[Sandro G Meier]

installn?   Is that word mean installing?     Can really understand the diagram......sigh (Oh, sorry, I'm off topic.)

[Osvir]

Inställningar = Options

I'm Swedish, so understand if it's non-understandable.

Start = Not off

-> Lista = Menu of options
-> 1-5 = gives different types
-> 1 -> start game -> playing game -> 2, getting points/score
-> 2 -> Look at your points/score
-> 3 -> Help (How to Play)
-> 4 -> Options -> Into game
-> 5 -> Quit

-> Playing game -> Winning/Losing -> Continue? Y/N
-> Y -> Start Over
-> N -> Quit

Edited January 23, 2013 by Osvir

[Osvir]

Hi! So I was super enthusiastic about this and really wanted to do this, unfortunately no more.

I don't feel the need to go into anything of it but let's just say external factors made stuff bad for me. Sorry, but this thread can be closed/deleted and/or used by someone else who is interested or whatnot.

Thanks for helping out, although it was brief, and letting me use this place

[Gorth]

Hi! So I was super enthusiastic about this and really wanted to do this, unfortunately no more.

 

I don't feel the need to go into anything of it but let's just say external factors made stuff bad for me. Sorry, but this thread can be closed/deleted and/or used by someone else who is interested or whatnot.

 

Thanks for helping out, although it was brief, and letting me use this place

 

Sorry to hear that Osvir

 

Maybe we'll just leave the thread for now. You never know, somebody might resurrect it some day and share some questions and answers about algorithms.

[alanschu]

Hope everything is all right.

 

If you still enjoy the topic itself, keep playing around and feel free to ask for some advice/perspective.

[Luridis]

Edit: Assuming your ultimate goal is amateur game development...

 

Personally, I think if you just want to play around with game creation then ground-up isn't the way to go in this day and age. I consider C++ a middle-level language and if your intention is to build graphics APIs or 3D engines then, yea, that would be the way to go. But, as I'm sure any of the actual developers here can tell you, creating full fledged game engines from scratch is a huge endeavor. These guys have been building personal knowledge on game tech for the last two decades at least. They're already hardened C++ engineers who know the APIs, the platforms, the graphics pipelines, the instructions and shader languages for the GPUs, and the quirks and inconsistencies of all of the above. All that said, it takes a team of these people years to hammer out a full-featured engine. And, I don't even want to get started on digging up your calculus book for the mathematics involved.

I know, what's my point?

Like it or not, I think we've entered the era of Application Level game development. Let the engine guys do the boiler-plate code and figure out the ins and outs of various platforms and GPUs. With engines out there like Cry, Unreal, Source and especially Unity, there's little reason to revisit what teams of experienced developers are already doing. Think of it this way: You're trying to learn gcc and makefiles in the age of Visual Studio and Eclipse. Am I saying don't learn good programming techniques? No. But, I am saying you don't need to learn console tic-tac-toe to mess around and experiment with 3D game development. So, pick up a good book on Javascript or C# and go through the basics in an IDE. Most of the beginners books that I have seen will give you solid starting programmer skills. (Check the reviews.) These books obviously won't cover advanced algorithm design, but you're not exactly going to be writing sort algorithms for system libraries either. If you are shown good basic coding skills you're not likely to need more unless you actually started working on huge coding projects. After that, you can download Unity and actually start attaching scripts to primitives and cameras and see some of the fun stuff. Later, download Blender and make some models for Unity. That has really been the hard part for me as I'm not much of an artist. And the technical details! UV maps, baking, oddly placed edges, N-gons... who the hell knew things had come so far from Elite's wire frame models! I want a program with a big button that says "Make Spaceships", "Make Skyboxes", "Make Terrains", "Make Humaniods" and then a textbox where you enter the number you need.

 

With an IDE like Unity it shouldn't be difficult to make some silly basic game in a few months of spare time. I say basic because if you intend to make something near the complexity of an RPG there will be a ton more involved. The one piece of advice I ran across consistently for amateur game developers is do not make an RPG your first project. There's far more going on in the background than I expected. So, I've been working on a space shooter, hopefully along the lines of classic Start Raiders and it's more than enough hobby for me to chew on at my skill level.

 

Unity tutorials are all over the place...

 

Edited February 7, 2013 by Luridis

[PrimeJunta]

What do I think has changed most in programming over the past 30 years? Tools. In 1983, toolkits and libraries with high-level prepackaged things were just starting to emerge. So whatever you were doing, you'd have to start from very basic things. You'd be re-inventing wheels every time you go.

This has changed completely. Nowadays by far the most code is written against high-level libraries that package very complex things behind simple-to-use interfaces. So if you're designing a user interface, you won't have to start by designing a "menu" or "input field." You'll just pick the one you want -- say, a date input field with a dropdown calendar which formats the date according to the locale and lets you set or get the value as a Date object -- from the framework you're using. You'll only resort to low-level "old-school" programming where it's absolutely needed, for example to open up bottlenecks that slow down your program, or in specialized teams that do work close to the hardware -- drivers, kernels, some embedded systems and such.

 

The principles and practices are still the same, though. Almost all of Alan J. Perlis's epigrams are just as applicable now as they were when he wrote them.